My Time Ain't Long: Ian Buchanan Sings Jimmie Rodgers

It was on a cold rainy Tuesday night in February, 1970; the Pig Meat Blues Band, with Ian Buchanan had just finished their one and only set at the Filmore East and were enjoying a free case of Heineken in their cubby-hole of a dressing room, when a stranger in a "Six Button Benny" camel hair overcoat walked in. He introduced himself as Roy Horton and asked as if we'd be interested in recording some Jimmie Rodgers songs. He said he was told by our one and only record producer, Harold Kleiner of GRT records, of our insistence in always including a Jimmie Rodgers song in our playing. Would we be interested?!!

It was Jimmie Rodgers singing and yodeling that brought Ian Buchanan and me together in 1951 when I heard him playing "Brakeman's Blues" sitting on the stoop of his Mother's house in Forest Hills, Queens. It was the love of this music that morphed us from the gangland zip-gun life and anti-social activities of the streets into the even more anti-social world of Hillbilly music and the Blues. But it was safer.

After years of playing together, Ian delved further into the Blues, while I became his rhythm man and stayed closer to Country and Hillbilly music. We always played Blues and rural American music in all our band efforts; The TBQ, the Cagemen (in our rock and roll period), and the Pigmeat Blues Band, named after Leadbelly's "Pig Meat Papa".

So, on that cold and rainy night in February, a beautiful and far too brief relationship started with Country Music Hall of Famer, Roy Horton.

Inviting the Band up to his offices, Peer Southern Music in the Mony building in midtown NY, Roy realized how much we loved Jimmie Rodgers and graciously unlocked the door to the Jimmie Rodgers archives at Peer Southern and showed us the personal letters and photographs sent by Jimmie to Ralph Peer. Needless to say Ian and I had entered "Hillbilly Heaven".

Roy recorded us, under his personal supervision, at the Peer Southern studios and gave us free reign in song selection and let us invite the house band of Jimmie Ryan's Cafe on 54th street, which was fronted by "Little Jazz" himself, Roy Eldridge, to assist on two of the songs.

Ian and Roy are passed on now, so this project is a cherished memory for me.

Marty Brennan