Via the pistolero, I have just been reading a bit of a site called Country California. He's right: it's pretty funny. As he said, it's like The Onion for country music. But I've just read the post Lonely Guys in Empty Houses and I am forced to make a couple of comments.
First, very simply: Captain Kangaroo was not a cartoon.
Second, regarding the song "This Ole House." The reason this song is "oddly jaunty" is because the record company made Stuart Hamblen record it that way so it would sell better. His original version is very slow and somber. Second, this is not a heartbreak song. I repeat: this song has nothing to do with heartbreak. This is a country gospel song. The singer is telling the story of his life, which he realizes will soon be over. The house in the song is both his literal house as well as a metaphor for his physical condition: he is in failing health, nothing can be done about it, and he is preparing himself for the hereafter.
How do I know this? Because I have a box set of "country gospel" records in which Mr. Hamblen tells the whole story about the song, and then sings his original down-tempo version. So there.
We have an old 78 of Rosemary Clooney's version of the song that we listened to a million times growing up. It was only years later (after a little spiritual reading) that I took the meaning of the song to be about the body as well as the house and it made an old song like new!
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