Sweet-talkin' Fool (Under construction)

Raphael and Delmont selected some of their uncle's schmaltziest material for this one.

Del: "Uncle Lee always said there was nothing he hated more than a love song. I think what he hated was that he didn't expect he'd ever write a 'Here, There, and Everywhere' or an 'As Time Goes By.' He wrote a few hearts-and-flowers tunes, but he wasn't generally happy with them. So not many got recorded."
 
Raphie: "Which is too bad, because some of them are actually pretty good. So we thought we'd fix that with a whole album of amore."
 
Del: "Yeah. Yuck, right? We almost called it 'Chicken Fat.' Because that's what schmaltz is. Then Ray remembered a bumper sticker Uncle Lee used to have. One of those I-love-my-cockapoo-type deals. He'd covered the dog head with a picture of Patsy Montana."
 
Raphie: "Which our cousin Gwen [Fullerton, Leon's daughter] says was gasoline on the fire of his divorce from [Fullerton's first wife] Ana."
 
Del: "So we decided to call it 'I Heart My Valentine.' But Uncle Lee used to say that if matches were ever made in heaven, no one would've have called 'em lucifers. So we figured he wouldn't entirely appreciate the sentiment of that one.
 
Raphie: "Then we remembered that other wife of his, Corky something-or-other [Cowperthwaite] called him a sweet-talkin' fool."
 
Del: "Right. Said she married him for the sweet-talkin' part and divorced him for the fool part."
 
Raphie: "He's got to admit, we've got him there."

Songs on this page:

1. Married in Maine
   
2. Calgary Cowboy

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1. Married in Maine
copyright Leon Fullerton (instrumental)

Leon Fullerton didn't take many wedding gigs because the bride or groom (or, often, both!) would ask him to play inutterably horrendous songs - Don Ho, Tony Orlando, and worse. Which, he said, would mean he'd have to learn them. Which would mean they'd be in his head. And there's no telling what damage they might do there. He wasn't eager to risk it, and few couples were willing to sign the music veto-power condition written into his standard wedding contract.

His daughter Gwen, however, thought his motives were less about principle than practicality. She explained it to Fullerton biographer Rex Geronimo this way: "He liked to claim that his musical sensibilities were superior to the average newlyweds. But he's play anything for anyone. His real difficulty was learning songs. He could write and sing and play them, but ask him to learn five new songs for an event and he melted down like snow in a skillet."

For reasons too particular to be interesting, he did play one wedding in coasral Maine. The young couple's only musical stipulation was that he compose a processional. He was more than happy to oblige. "Married in Maine" is the result.

It was his first visit to a state most famous for L.L. Bean, lobsters, and its infamous Mud Season. The wedding was in May. He told the young couple later, "If I'd knowed what it was gonna be like here, I woulda called it "Muddied in Maine."

​Here are two recordings: one by nephew Del Fullerton and one by the full Outcasts of Samarra band.

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2. Calgary Cowboy
copyright Leon Fullerton

​[New audio track coming soon.]

He started up in Calgary,
he ended down and out.
He was in it for the money, maybe,
and for the woman,
without a doubt.

He said goodbye to the rodeo,
he was hot upon her trail.
He said hello to loneliness,
just like his old friends Don and Phil.

She maybe thinks of her Calgary cowboy
when a cold blue norther comes blowing down.
Or maybe not, and who could blame her,
when them bold young ropers blow into town?

She maybe thinks....

Fullerton met Wayne Willis at a cuspidor competition is Sascachawan, where he described Willis's technique as adequate in volume but disappointing in trajectory. Willis made most of his yearly income horse training and working the rodeo circuit and lost most of it competing on the spittoon circuit.

Expensive as it was, competition spitting was a passtime Willis was nometheless disinclined to forgo. As he explained to Fullerton, "You gotta follow your heart."

Or your spittle. Fullerton observed the intensity of Willis's concentration in the playoffs, noting that it lent a whole new dimension to the term "watch like a hawk." Neither won the Golden Gob that year, but they established an easy rapport - not unusual, considering the cameraderie competitive expectorators engenders.

Fullerton took particular notice of Willis's fondness for Kentucky's harmonizing brothers Don and Phil Everly, whom Willis claimed to know personally, and his distaste for all things Texas, beginning with (and frequently circling back to) a gone-but-never-forgotten rodeo sweetheart named (inacurately, in his opinion) Constance,* whom he'd loved and lost.

* Her cuspitating Calgary cowpoke a fond if occasional memory, Connie went on to find fame and fortune as leader of the cowgirl quartet Connie Stoga and the Westward Hos.

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"Sioux City Sue, Sioux City Sue,
You're hair is red, your eyes are blue, 
I'd swap my horse and dog for you." Gene Autry