"Oh Lonesome Me"

I was guessing Buddy Holly.

When I woke up this morning, some lyrics to "Oh Lonesome Me" were pinballing around in my head--I have no idea why. I don't recall any dreams about being lonesome. But something happened, something that retrieved (some of) those old lyrics from my (fading) memory and insisted I think about them every minute or so this morning.

I checked Google downstairs before I headed out to the coffee shop and saw that the performer was not Buddy Holly but a guy I'd totally forgotten: Don Gibson. Here's a YouTube link to Gibson's performance. The pictures of Gibson, by the way, make him look like a cross between Gene Autry and someone doing an ad for Brylcreem. But he definitely has A Look, and that matters in whatever music world you choose to inhabit.

Here's a few things I learned about Gibson (1928-2003; link to his obituary). Born in North Carolina, he is credited for helping create the "Nashville sound" and always claimed to be more of a songwriter than performer. (He's in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Country Music HOF.) He wrote more than 350 songs--many were hits for others.

The lyrics to the song are ... catchy, as they used to say:

Everybody's goin' out and havin' fun

I'm just a fool for staying home and havin' none

I can't get over how she set me free

Oh, lonesome me

A bad mistake I'm making by just hanging round

I know that I should have some fun and paint the town

A lovesick fool is blind and just can't see

Oh, lonesome me

I'll bet she's not like me, she's out and fancy free

Flirting with the boys with all her charms

But I still love her so and brother don't you know

I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues

Forget about the past and find somebody new

I've thought of everything from A to Z

Oh, lonesome me

Oh, lonesome me

Well I'll bet she's not like me, she's out and fancy free

Flirting with the boys with all her charms

But I still love her so and brother don't you know

I'd welcome her right back here in my arms

Well, there must be some way I can lose these lonesome blues

Forget about the past and find somebody new

I've thought of everything from A to Z

Oh, lonesome me

Oh, lonesome me

Oh, lonesome me

The song, I see, was later covered by Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, and Johnny Tillotson. It was #51 in the top hits of 1958; oddly, #53 was Ricky Nelson's "Lonesome Town"--seems as if lonesome was an important word in 1958. I also see that a group called the Kentucky Headhunters released it again in 1990, and it soared to #8. Others who have covered it: Bing Crosby, Edyie Gorme, Connie Francis, Stonewall Jackson, Neil Young, Loretta Lynn, Sammy Davis, Jr.--quite an assortment.

I see Gibson originally recorded and released it in December 1957--and guitar legend Chet Atkins was playing, as well. It perched at #1 on the Country charts for eight consecutive weeks--and reached #7 on the general charts.

In December 1957, I was in eighth grade (a grade level I would later teach for decades) and was having "Lonesome Me" feelings pretty much all of the time--as many eighth graders do. Yes, I had a girlfriend, but I was clueless about how to act and behave with her. (Sixty years later I haven't improved all that much!)

I was in my daffiest of years--certain that I would play both professional basketball and baseball (I played neither)--certain that public school years would never end (they did)--certain that if I couldn't be a professional athlete, well cowboy would do (that didn't work out, either). I also thought that my parents just didn't get it (they did).

So ... I remember "Oh Lonesome Me" on the radio, at sockhops. I remember liking it. Thinking it was relevant. Moving.

And I never would have suspected that sixty years after its release, I, age 73, would snap awake early one balmy (!) January morning and hear Don Gibson's voice, hear those guitar riffs, mouth those lyrics. And flash back to the Hiram Local Schools, 1957-58, where everything was possible, where fame and health and immortality were certain.