I'm a little late getting this uploaded, and it just hit me that next month is March, which is when we do our story song series! I haven't even started or reached out to any other musicians! So I'll have to whip up some story songs quickly for next week! This upload comes from the same recording session as Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die that I uploaded two weeks ago. In the notes for that upload, I mentioned that Granny was cooking in the kitchen while we recorded. At the very end of this upload, if you listen really closely, you'll hear a squeaking sound. That was Granny closing the squeaky door of our oven in the kitchen. :-) I turned down the master volume as fast as I could, but it's still on there, preserved for posterity. In this upload, unlike DLYSLD, I sang a brief part alone. In that solo part, you can definitely hear the youth in my voice, a little whiney, if you will. In my defense, I can tell that I was also dividing my focus between the vocal and the C run that I was making on the top two strings, which at the time, might have been a little challenging or tricky for me. Pap makes some nice runs on the Taylor, including a falling run on the top string as the song goes "around the horn" into the fourth chord. I can remember Pap singing Too Late as a solo around the house when I was very little. It always caught my attention because of the clear sense of regret the speaker feels in the song. The imagery of the note left on the pillow struck me. The song also stood out because, unlike most country songs, the man is at fault in this song, rather than the lady. The lopsided placement of blame in country music was famously pointed out by Kitty Wells in "It wasn't God who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Pap most likely learned Too Late from the Louvins. For a while, I figured they wrote it. When I learned that they didn't, I mistakenly thought Hugh X. Lewis wrote it. Somehow, it just sounded like one of his songs. One of the Acorns let me know in a comment 8 years ago, when Pap and I uploaded a video of us singing Too Late, that Jimmy Wakely wrote Too Late. Since then, I've heard his version, and it is very good! I could be wrong, but it seems clear that the Louvins learned it from him because they use almost the exact same melody line leading up to the high chord in the chorus each time. Back when Pap and I recorded Too Late on the cassette recorder, he was crazy about my guitar break because he said it was very different than anything he had ever heard any guitar player do on the song. I remember that he had me play it several times for his friend, the Late Jack Dockery, who was a great local flat picker in our area. Looking back on the break, I guess it was pretty good at my age. I think the harmony between me and Pap on this cassette recording is very tight, and our voices sound very much alike. On the word "you" in the line "but if you don't change your way of living," it even sounds like we are trying to push our voices against each other as much as we can. There are a couple of other places like that in the song too. To compare us singing the song about 18 years after this cassette recording, just follow this link: • Too Late
As always, thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this duet on Too Late.
Listen to original singles released on Spotify:
open.spotify.com/artist/5VX6Z...
Listen to original singles on KZread:
/ @paulwilson6260
Listen to Shepherd of My Soul (Album released in 2016):
open.spotify.com/album/4VnoOy...