JIM REEVES – "Distant Drums"

And it kept My Generation off number one! It’s a horrible song. Even the Big O couldn’t polish it.

Doctor Mod said:

Although this is a US disc, I have never–NEVER–heard it. I think that Jim Reeves would have been confined to Country-Western radio stations by the mid-60s, and I never listened to them. My understanding, though, is that in the UK, just about anything and everything that was “popular” (i.e., not “classical”) music was rather lumped together in “official” (i.e., not “pirate”) radio programming. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

There is also the political element here–and, yes, there is a matter of politics involved–that would not have been exactly welcome on youth-oriented US radio in 1966. Granted, there were still some (and mostly in C&W music, which in the US leans to the right) who wanted to romanticise war, but the message being broadcast on pop/rock stations was quite the opposite.

But lest we forget, Reeves had died shortly before this was released. There’s nothing like dying to make the public buy your music…..

He’d died two years before, so I’m not sure it’s a posthumous halo effect at work.

“Distant Drums” isn’t anti-war but it’s not pro-war either: the war is what’s splitting the couple apart after all. It’s sufficiently ambiguous that it might have appealed to undecided romantics, or those on either side of the debate.

In England I wonder if the gentle stateliness of it hit a nostalgic chord – a generation who remembered the sacrifice/nobility/duty/etc. of WW2 and responded to a song evoking that?

Doctor Mod said:

I suppose I was just maundering about a song I’ve heard *about* without ever actually hearing. And the only reason I’ve heard about it was it’s success in the UK.

I think what I was driving at was the reason I’d never heard it, even though I listened to pop/rock radio stations at every conceivable minute of the day back then. War-related sentimentality didn’t play well with my generation in the mid-60s, and US radio was very commercial–there were also a wide array of stations to choose from in Southern California. As to whether this had anything to do with the song’s popularity in the UK, I haven’t a clue. I can only say that it’s just one of those things I find utterly enigmatic about the UK charts–not to say that there isn’t plenty of hit-record weirdness on this side. But what Tom says (about WW2 nostalgia) does make sense, and I presume that “Distant Drums” (like “Tears” the year before and some other things coming up) must have sold to a great extent to an older generation.

I stand corrected about how long Reeves had been dead before the song came out–it goes to show how little I actually know about it.

I am painfully aware of “The Ballad of the Green Berets”–indeed, one Los Angeles rock station that dared play it was the target of protests until they took it off the air. It was good to know, what with the broadcast embarrassment of riches that was L.A. radio in the mid-60s, that you always change to another station when that song came on.

I too was under the impression that this singles success was due to Jim boys passing. I still feel it was sold as a post-humous release and the fact that it ‘sounded’ like an epitaph must have helped. Needless to say it was definitely the older generation who propelled it to number 1 (as they did previously with Doddy and would do with Engel)probably because radio playlists on the BBC light programme were still aimed at that market (no Radio 1 yet). I also agree that 2 way family Fav. & gravy are inextricably linked.

ITF

Hiya guys. I’ve finally got round to linking this blog so I thought I’d put my nose round the door.

This is way before my time, but when I tried to be a student in Lancaster [Lancashire, not Pennsylvania] a decade or so ago, every charity shop in the city seemed to have a big stack of Jim Reeves LPs. And there were a lot of charity shops there.

I did once see this described as “Britain’s first posthumous Number One”, which evidently isn’t true, but it is interesting that the previous ones both entered the charts within weeks of the maker’s deaths.

ian curtis maybe?

not necessarily relevant to any of the arguments being made abt this particular song, but in John Miller Chernoff’s informal study* of which artists are (or were) popular in West Africa in the 60s and 70s, ‘Gentleman’ Jim Reeves places very highly indeed — comments recorded in this study (about why they like what they like) suggest that he was blessed with a ?natural radio voice?, meaning that the subtle distortion of broadcast transmission enhanced rather than effaced the easy perfection of its tone

*an appendix in JMC’s African Rhythm and African Sensiblity, which i recommend anyway, quite apart from its detail on reeves

It did make 45 in the US chart, though, which is actually pretty respectable for a country record at the time

And is sure better than “My Generation” did.

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Jim Reeves was big in Jamaica, too, and a favourite of Bob Marley, among others. Here’s his role in the invention of hip hop, from a piece about Kool Herc:

“Cindy and Clive’s father, Keith Campbell, was a devoted record collector, buying not only reggae, but American jazz, gospel, and country. They heard Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole, even Nashville country crooner Jim Reeves. “I remember listening to Jim Reeves all the time,” Clive says. “I was singing these songs and emulating them to the fullest. That really helped me out, changing my accent, is singing to the records.”

Doctor Mod, It probably tells you that the review of Out of Time was quickly followed by something else, whereas Distant Drums has been allowed to mature like a good parmesan. Probably keeping us in suspenders for the next one.

I do remember Distant Drums, but that doesn’t make it any less dull and pedestrian, even within a genre I have little enthusiasm for.

The next song…whoa, we may have to wait. It’s a doozy.

2 points????????????

I’d have given it minus 5.

There are a lot of people in the UK who think country music is ‘country and western’ and like to gather from time to time, wearing stetsons and bad skirts, to demonstrate their line-dancing skills. They were there in the 60s, and they came over all maudlin when ‘Gentleman Jim’ died, forcing us to endure a couple of years when he never seemed to be out of the charts.

They’re with us still, mostly congregated in East Anglia, and they wouldn’t know a Steve Earle record if it leapt off the deck and bit them.

Frankly, Tom, I think there are some records you should just skip altogether. This was one.

The captivating thing about this song is Jim Reeve’s wife was named Mary and the song seems to predict there soon to be ill fate. The distant drums were not calling him off to war but calling him off to Heaven. The first time I heard the song I immediately thought of the above interpretation and not of a man going off to war. Anyway, it’s a great & timeless song and Jim Reeves was an amazing singer!

And in the opposing corner: http://musicsoundsbetterwithtwo.blogspot.com/2011/09/you-cant-play-that-on-bbc-part-1-who-im.html Thanks for reading as ever!

I went to a talk about Dalston’s Four Aces club, and the panel were reminiscing about how 1970s pub jukeboxes in Dalston, Clapton and Stoke Newington would be equally divided between Jamaican and Irish singles. Sat in the middle, equally popular with both sets of clientele, was Jim Reeves.

This is a dull record. He’ll Have To Go isn’t; lyrically it’s quite shocking for a major 1960 hit. He may be acting the ‘gentleman’ but you know that Jim is in the vicinity of the bar, maybe even in the phone box across the street, his fists clenched.

meanwhile, at number 1 over in the USA, a familiar song in a version unfamiliar to me – to be cherished here.

Distant Drums sounds like the sort of thing that would pop up on the BBC Light Programme in the pre-Radio 1 days. I can see it appealing to those who’d lost loved ones in previous conflicts but it sounds virtually comatose. Perhaps the youth vote was split between the varied bands vying for attention and this took advantage.

The stately pace and the passionless vocals from Jim mean that I can’t go any higher than 3/10 I’m afraid.