My Pappy Said Son, You’re Gonna Drive Me to Drinkin’
Hot rods—old cars that have been stripped down and souped-up with larger engines—have been around since the late 1930s. It took the record industry until 1950 to capitalize on the trend with “Hot Rod Race” by Arkie Shibley and His Mountain Dew Boys. In “Hot Rod Race,” a Ford and Mercury race down a highway until they are overtaken by “a hopped-up Model A” Ford.
“Hot Rod Race” has been called the first of a series of hot rod songs of the 1950s and ’60s. “Hot Rod Race” was a Western swing hit, but its second verse started with “Now along about the middle of the night, we were rippin’ along like white folks might.” Radio stations in the East refused to play it. Three cover versions in 1951 changed the lyric to “plain folks,” “rich folks” and “poor folks.”
“Hot Rod Lincoln” was a crossover hit for country-western singer Johnny Bond in 1960, an answer song to “Hot Rod Race.” Bond’s follow-up song is told in the voice of the driver of “that Model A.” Bond’s tune inspired country-rockers Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen to record their version of “Hot Rod Lincoln,” a Top 10 hit in 1972.
The Airmen played a mix of country swing, rockabilly and R&B. The Commander, George Frayne, told Monica Sirignano and Dave Bower that the inspiration for the band’s name came from reruns of an old Republic Pictures serial.
“We were sitting around trying to think of band names and it happened to be on the TV at the bar we were at, and the character on the screen had this black leather jacket on, with a rocket on the back. And the camera was zeroing in his controls that he was sitting with his hands . . . it’s at this exact moment that I’m trying to think of a band name.
“So his name was Commando Cody, we changed that. So he’s got the jacket, the rocket on the back and the headgear, and he puts it on fast and then he up and takes off, and I thought, ‘that’s pretty cool.’ The name of the movie is Lost Planet Airmen, we thought it was pretty good too and as we were about to change our frat band into being a country and western swing band and we thought that would get everyone’s attention.”
Frayne told Classic Bands how the band came to cover “Hot Rod Lincoln.”
“At that time I couldn’t sing a note really, but I could talk fast . . . I would have to be Commander Cody because I could basically talk fast and had a good rap and gave pretty good radio. Then people started saying ‘Who’s the Commander and what’s he gonna do?’ So, I had to come up and do a number, because I couldn’t sing, I found out there’s a long history of guys who couldn’t sing. I first found it out through Phil Harris and traced it back to Johnny Bond.”
Airmen guitarist Bill Kirchen found the Johnny Bond album in a discount bin at Kmart. Kirchen tried to emulate the tune’s twangy guitar parts.
“We learned this from a Johnny Bond record and I was pretty new to learning songs off records then,” Kirchen told NPR. “I thought I pretty much nailed it exactly but I go back now and it wasn’t even close. But I like mine better and it was originality born of incompetence.”
But Bond’s version of “Hot Rod Lincoln” was also a cover; the song was written and first recorded by country-western singer Charlie Ryan. Ryan’s website, now cached, tells the origin of the track.
“In the early 1950’s Charlie had been driving his 1941 Lincoln between his home in Spokane and the Paradise Club in Lewiston, Idaho where his band played nightly engagements.
“One night his Lincoln chased a friend’s Cadillac over the Clearwater River bridge and up the Lewiston grade. The telephone poles were whizzing by so fast they looked like picket fences . . .
“While the song tells of a race between a Lincoln and a Cadillac on the Grapevine grade in California, the actual location was on the Lewiston grade in Idaho. The mythical Hot Rod Lincoln was really a Model “A” coupe body set on the original 1941 Lincoln frame Charlie had been driving in the early 50’s with a hopped-up Lincoln engine.”
Though the track would be Commander Cody’s only hit, Frayne told Classic Bands that the pressure was on to come up with another “Hot Rod Lincoln.”
“It was actually the seeds of the beginning of the end of the band. The record company immediately wanted me to do another vocal . . . They came up with ‘Love Potion Number 9’ and that didn’t work out . . . It got on the charts, but didn’t go very well. Then we did ‘Smoke That Cigarette,’ which was a Country ‘n Western hit. That’s a Hank Thompson song. Then after that, there was no more hits.”
