Cash Sang Bass

I had intended that to be my last Statler Brothers posting, at least for a while, but then I came across this.  The group got its start singing back-up for Johnny Cash, and here's a video of Cash singing "Daddy Sang Bass" on TV (it appears to be from his TV series) with the Statlers in the background -- made fun, too, because June Carter Cash also sings along on this with a brief solo. 

Interestingly, though, if this is from the Johnny Cash show, that didn't begin until 1968, and the Statlers were already recording artists on their own.  (Their huge "Flowers on the Wall" was released two years earlier.)  But they stayed with Cash, to whom they felt great loyalty, until 1971 when it only made sense to finally break off on their own.

But here they all are, with Johnny Cash in the foreground, and everyone else singing backup.

Just for fun, here's the same song and basically the same performers reunited, probably 25 years later.  (You can see it's on the Music City Tonight show on The Nashville Network that didn't start until 1993.  And the video above is likely around the late'60s.)  By the point of this performance below, the Statlers Brothers had long-since become major celebrities, and Johnny Cash was deeply into Legend Status.  They got together and redid the arrangement a bit so that the Statlers had somewhat more to do and make a real duet out of it -- or quintet, or whatever you'd called it.

So, here again, is "Daddy Sang Bass."  Just 25 years later.