Album Notes

This recording has been a long time in coming. Some of these songs are twenty years old. Six of them are true stories. Chicken Legs, White Christmas/Music City, and the two blues tunes are fiction. I have some folks to thank for this CD. First of all, my mom and dad, Paul and Arden Arrington for giving me life and a great childhood more or less. I guess I’m lucky they didn’t kill me and my brother, Mitch, for some of the things we did while growing up. Some of the things, I guess we’re lucky to be alive. I thank my dad for passing his love of music on to me and his dad, Fiddlin Charlie Arrington, for the same. Charlie played on the Grand Ole Opry for years with Paul Warmack and the Gully Jumpers Band. He made wine and shine and Roy Acuff and all that bunch would come out after the Opry and party all night in his front yard and pick and sing. My grandmother wasn’t too happy with it though because she always had to cook breakfast for them the next morning. My mom and dad took me and my brother to see Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer and Chet Adkins play at The Municipal Auditorium in the early sixties and it was wonderful. I told them after the show I wanted one of those horns that fellow was playing. My mom and dad got me one so I could take band in the fifth grade. Later on they bought me one just like Boots. I’m still playing it today, a Selmer Mark 6.It’s been a good one, probably forty years old. The car on the CD cover is a 1953 Chevy that belonged to one of my daddy’s brothers, Gene Arrington. He was a fine guitar player and a fine man. God, how I miss him. Another one of his brother’s, Glenn bought it after he died in a car wreck from his daughter. Glenn is also a fine guitar player and a fine man. Thanks Glenn for selling me the car. I like it a lot. All my daddy’s brother’s and sisters played music growing up but one. They’d get together at one of their houses and play and sing and I remember the first time they let me play. It was on the tune, The Black Mountain Rag, and I didn’t know how to transpose into their cord and they had to play in BFlat. They didn’t seem to mind too much. Thanks ya’ll .The fellow who helped me produce this recording has been a friend for a long time, Gene Dunlap. Gene is a fine man and a great piano player. He used to work the Opry with Lorretta Lynn and then come out and play with the band I was working with on top of Germantown Hill. When I decided to do this project, I called him to see if he’d play on it with me and he said he would. Then he asked me who else was going to play. I hadn’t really asked anybody yet and told him that and he asked,”Would you want to use Lorretta’s band?”. Of course I agreed to that if I could afford it. Then he told me he had a new studio and we could cut it there too. Well, he made it where I could pay for it and what you’ll hear is the end product if you decide to buy it .Larry Barnes played bass, Bobby Vogel played guitar, Eric Kaberle was the drummer, Mike Sweeney on the steel, Gene on the piano, me on the sax and vocals, and Jerry Hair was the engineer. All these guys are great to work with in the studio and I feel so lucky to have been able to have done this project with them. Thanks guys and thank Lorretta for giving you enough time off to do it. I hope you enjoy listening to this CD as much as I did making it and writing these songs. Thanks, Mike Arrington