It’s pretty rare that I find a record that I want these days that I don’t already have (I have a LOT of rekkids). When my friend Ed Pauli posted this record the other day and said he listed it on eBay, I knew I needed to own it. It arrived today, and I can say that it has filled a hole in my soul that I didn’t know was there before.
“Pukin’ My Heart Out Over You”/”She Took Her Ass to Dover” by the Funny Boners on Joker Records of Hollywood, on yellow wax, to boot? Yes, please! Sign me up. I couldn’t live without a record like that. It’s a humorous double-entendre Western swing novelty record, not too racy but definitely racy enough that these guys didn’t use their real names. It’s wild that the record label address is at a Hollywood PO Box at the same post office and just a few boxes away from my own PO Box (and interestingly enough, in the same post office where Merle Travis had a PO Box in the 1940s and 1950s!). Even though the label says that both songs were registered with “Clown Music” and “Target Music, BMI,” there is no record of either one on the BMI website. Also, the songwriter’s name, “Lee Penny,” is a name I’ve never heard.
I’m wondering—and maybe my knowledgeable western swing pals like Steve Hathaway, Cary Ginell, Dave Stuckey, Mark Lee Allen, Dick Blackburn, and Kevin Coffey could tell me—if “Lee Penny” might actually be Hank Penny? The A-side, “Pukin’ My Heart Out Over You,” doesn’t exactly sound like Hank’s voice, but it does sound exactly like Hank’s accent and vocal delivery. Like, a dead ringer. Perhaps it’s Hank Penny making a “character voice” so people didn’t know it was him? Hank was known to make racy novelty records, such as 1947’s “Let Me Play With Your Poodle” b/w “The Freckle Song” for King Records. I really think the delivery and accent sounds like Hank—curious to hear what the peanut gallery says.
Thanks Ed for the record! I NEEDED IT.
