Friday, February 17, 2012

Another song from my childhood



This is one of those songs that has been lurking around in the backroads of my memory for a long time.  I liked it as a kid, but never knew who sang it or even what it's title was.  Yesterday I was thinking about it again, for some reason, and G00gled some of the lyrics and found it quickly enough.  (Leon Everette, "Hurricane").

But there was another one, a sort of country novelty song, that I've been looking for and can't come up with anything based on the lyrics that I remember.  It's a story about a boy named Leon Rhodes (I think?, maybe Leon Rose?) who played the bugle.  He went to church every Sunday, and the preacher there had an annoying habit of ending all of his sermons with, "Someday Gabriel's gonna blow his horn--I can almost hear him now."  So one Sunday morning Leon decided to play a joke on the preacher.

One day little Leon Rhodes took his beat-up bugle along
Climbed up in that hot church attic and waited for the closing song
Well, Reverend Jones ended his sermon in the same old way
Said a few words about Gabriel, cupped his hand up behind his ear
And he said,
Someday Gabriel's gonna blow his horn, I can almost hear him now...

At this point Leon blows a little tune on his bugle, and "it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop."  So Reverend Jones shakily repeated his thing about Gabriel, and Leon blew the little tune again.  Then it goes something like:

Well, the people didn't waste no time gettin' out of that spooky place
The preacher rushed down from the pulpit with a worried look on his face
About that time little Leon Rhodes decided to save his hide
Took one step, fell down through that ceiling and he landed by the preacher's side

The preacher thinks Leon is Gabriel and he shouts something that I can't remember, and then:

...and he ran out the big front door
Far as I know that man's still runnin'
'Cause he ain't been seen no more

Then it goes on to tell how Leon grew up to be a great bugle player, and the song ends with a trumpet solo on the fade-out.  I'm pretty sure it was a trumpet, not a bugle, based on how I remember it.  Anyway.

If anyone reads this and knows what song I'm talking about, please let me know who sang it and what the title is.

3 comments:

  1. Jimdep@juno.com
    Says

    The preacher turned white as a sheet and
    said "Dont move gabriel I cut cha"

    I have also dont know who sang it but I have been wishing to find it. It was the first song I recorded on the cassette recorder I got for christmas one year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gabriel's Horn is the name of the song. It was done by Billy Ed Wheeler.

    ReplyDelete