I love "Hillbilly" movies. This attraction stems from the fact that I, in fact, could probably be considered one, having grown up on the banks of the Ohio River in Adams County, Ohio and a family line that extends back into the darkened recesses of the hills and valleys of Northern Kentucky....
Lum n' Abner (both the radio show and the series of films from the 1940s), the various incarnations of
Li'l Abner (in the comic strips and various films, my favorite being the 1940 Mascot film, which literally adapts the first few years of the strip....and has
Buster Keaton (!!!) as "Lonesome Polecat")....
H.G. Lewis' ventures into hillbilly territory (notably
This Stuff'll Kill Ya! and
Year of the Yahoo!, which at some point I'd love to reconstruct Claude King's soundtrack),
Snuffy Smith comics, vintage
Mountain Dew merchandise....you name it, I find it endearing...
From this fascination with rural folk was born what I've come to dub the
FERLIN HUSKY PROJECT....
In 1966, Husky (a fairly popular country and western singer of the period) starred in two of my favorite "Hillbilly" flicks, Las Vegas Hillbillys and the always enjoyable sequel, Hillbillys in A Haunted House, and after years of searching for them on VHS, I finally scored copies of the now OOP (Out of Print, for the layman) VCI DVD releases a few years back, and made a disheartening discovery.....no formal soundtracks were ever released for these two films steeped in country and western music of the era.
So, I set out to try, using my own personal collection of vinyls, cassettes, 8-tracks (though I haven't found a decent A/V bridge for that format) and CDs....with a little help from LimeWire and other various torrent sharing applications, and reconstruct a formal soundtrack for both films. So far, some progress has been made, but I fear soem of the tunes are exclusive to the films themselves, or tracking down recordings have been a bitch....but still, I struggle on...
So, here I present my work so far, and bear in mind these downloads are a work in progress...and at some point in the near future there will be updates, but as with many things of this type, who knows when that'll be...
Las Vegas Hillbillys Track Listing:
01 -Ferlin Husky- I Feel Better
02-Bill Anderson - Bright Lights and Country Music
03- Connie Smith - Nobody But A Fool (Would Love You)
04- Del Reeves - Woman Do Funny Things To Me
05- Sonny James - The Minute You're Gone
06- Del Reeves - Belles Of Southern Bell
Download Link (Hosted by Megaupload)
Hillbillys In A Haunted House Track Listing:
01- Merle Haggard - Swinging Doors
02- Merle Haggard-Someone Told My Story
03- Sonny James - The Cat Came Back
Download Link (Hosted By Megaupload)
Thanks to Music From Monster Movies 1950-69, I'm continuing my compilation of soundtracks to the two Ferlin Huskey-starring B-Movie epics: Hillbillys In A Haunted House and Las Vegas Hillbillys.
