Happy Birthday, Jerry Reed!

Here's a guy I've been wanting to blog about for a long time. Jerry Reed was one of my favourite music personalities back in the 1970s through the mid 1980s. I had turned away from the pop music stations at that time, as they were becoming way too rock oriented for my liking. Instead I turned my attention to the world of country music and found all sorts of performers that I enjoyed much better. (That was back when country was still country, before it too succumbed to the pop/rock virus that took over as "New Country". Blecch!)

I liked the rhinestone encrusted leisure suits and big sideburns that all the guys sported during that era, and the big hairdos and sequins on all the gals. My favourite entertainers on the Nashville scene were the crazy rascals like Ray Stevens, Roy Clark, and especially Roger Miller and this good ol' boy from Atlanta, Georgia... Jerry Reed. I think I really took to him in a big way when he co-starred alongside Burt Reynolds in 1977's Smokey and the Bandit, still one of my all-time guilty pleasures. Jerry played Bandit's trucker buddy, Cledus Snow, who went by the CB handle, "Snowman". He wrote and performed a number of songs for the movie's soundtrack, including the infectious, "Eastbound and Down", featuring Jerry's own special brand of manic guitar pickin'. You can see him playing a rousing version of the song in this video clip from the TV special, Nashville Salutes America. In fact, it was from this particular performance that I sketched the caricature pictured above.

I was lucky enough to get to meet him briefly after seeing him in concert back around 1980 or so, and got him to sign a caricature I'd done from watching him in a little known film called W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, his first big screen role, also with Burt Reynolds. Sadly, we lost Jerry Reed a couple of years ago at the age of 71 after he lost his battle with emphysema. It was actually quite a shock when I heard he'd died, as I hadn't seen him in years and didn't realize he was that old. He'd also filled out in his later years, and was no longer the lean and lanky wild man in his 40s that I recall so fondly. Anyway, here's another music clip to enjoy and remember the phenomenal talent that was Jerry Reed. All right, do it boys!!...

Hey Burt!

It looks like Burt Reynolds is heading up here to Toronto to accept an award for all of the charity work he's done for kids over many years. Here's an article about it here. I think that's great, as I feel that ol' Burt has been given a bad rap over the last decade or so from critics that like to hold him up to ridicule for some of the roles he's had in recent years. The fact is, Burt's long past his leading man days of the 70's and is now firmly in that category we call "character actor". As such, he sometimes gets cast in roles where he's playing rather sleazy or ridiculous characters, like the congressman in "Striptease". Hey, an actor has to keep working, so I don't begrudge him a thing.

However, I think it's only fair to bear in mind that Burt Reynolds was the box-office champ for several years running from 1978 to 1982. Even before that, he'd made quite a number of really good films, especially these two, "The Longest Yard" and "Hustle" that were recently cited on Jeremy Richey's excellent blog, Moon in the Gutter. Unfortunately, the big box-office receipts came later when Burt was firmly entrenched in his good ol' boy roles in such films as "Smokey and the Bandit", "Hooper" and the rather silly two "Cannonball Run" films. I must confess, "Smokey and the Bandit" is still a guilty pleasure of mine, although I prefer a lesser known film he'd done just a couple years earlier called "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings", which also had him playing a sort of southern fried Robin Hood but in a film that really had a lot more heart. From what I've heard, that film is one of Burt's personal favourites too. Much to my dismay, though I think it might have been out briefly on VHS years ago, it has yet to be released on DVD. I continue to hold out hope for that to happen. In the meantime, here's to ol' Burt - I'm happy to see him being honoured here in Toronto for his charitable work on behalf of the kids!