1955 Jimmy Young: The Man From Laramie

Us Brits don't do country music all that well. Never have done. It's not in the blood you see. Sure, we have our own traditions of folk songs and murder ballads that draw from the same well of hand me down experience, but original country was always shot through with that old time religion, a love of home and a dread of the hereafter that's typically Southern Gothic. A bit of a simplistic view maybe, but enough to make my point that in tackling a bona fide country song, Jimmy Young was very much a stranger in town.

Being about cowboys and guns, 'The Man From Laramie' seems tailor made for Frankie Laine to have a bash at so it's curious to note that he doesn't seem to have ever actually recorded it. Even so, it's easy enough to imagine what any Laine version would sound like and Jimmy tries to appropriate some of Frankie's tough guy mannerisms to fill the void, but in his efforts he's trying to wear a ten gallon hat on a two pint head.*

That the song's foundations are built on cliché doesn't help: "The west will never see a man with so many notches on his gun " - the only 'west' Young was familiar with was his own home county of Gloucestershire so it's apt that throughout he sounds as authentically cowpoke as a social worker off to a fancy dress party decked out in a Stetson, chaps and cap guns in holsters. Things might have gone better had Jimmy joined in the fun and given a knowing wink to his audience, but his method actor vocal leaves no room for that and any humour has to be wrestled from the camp lyric itself or else unintentionally from every fourth line of verse where Jim tries to end on a high note of drama but produces a strangled yelp of sound as if that dastardly Laramie man has just shot him in the nuts.

As a scene setting song from the film of the same name, 'The Man From Laramie' is a curious proposition that both gives too much information ("The man from Laramie, he was a man with a peaceful turn of mind. He was kind of sociable and friendly") yet not enough so as you actually give a toss. It could work as a useful souvenir for those who'd been to the flicks to see it, but as a stand alone single I have little comprehension as to how anyone under the age of ten could muster much enthusiasm for this. That's not necessarily Young's fault but his blandness does not help, even if it was enough to make him the first artist to score number ones with consecutive singles.

* With respect to Billy Howard.