Johnny Paycheck dies in his sleep

Frank Parish · From: Nashville,Tn. USA

Just heard it on the news today at 5:00 pm Nashville time. He was 65 years old and had been bed ridden for a good while with emphysema. A good friend I know that worked with him a long time ago told me Johnny was a pretty good steel player too although I never heard him. He's been one of my favorites for years and defines honky tonk to me. He'll be missed here for sure.

Herb Steiner · From: Spicewood TX 78669

Wow. I'm saddened but not surprised.

Sing a sad song tonight. He was one of the real honky tonk heroes.

ad infinitum Don't have room for all the sad face emoticons.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

Gene Jones · From: Oklahoma City, OK USA, (deceased)

Another ICON gone, how sad. I always had a great respect for his music.

His quality of life has been so very poor for such a long time it would not surprise me if he became tired of the fight and decided to just "Take This Life and Shove It" and let it slip away!

...and to paraphrase another of his songs that seems to be appropriate at his death.." Just like an old violin...never to be played again"! www.genejones.com

[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 20 February 2003 at 04:11 AM.]

Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

What ashame. He was truly one of the greats of country music. Rest in peace Mr. Paycheck.

Richard Bass · From: Sabang Beach, Philippines

Herb you hit the nail on the head. "Honky Tonk Hero" is exactly right. Great singer and writer, Touch My Heart, Apartment #9, come to mind. I pray he is in a better place. God Bless Donny.
Richard

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

I worked with Johnny several times, up to a year solid once, (1985). One of two of the greatest folks I ever recorded/toured with.
He was one of the funniest guys I've ever known, great singer,great entertainer,lousy steel player but he loved steel and every one that played it. Miss him? You bet, and always will. Funny stories? I have them! Let's remember the great things about this guy, there's a lot to love about him.
Bobbe,

Herby Wallace · From: Sevierville, TN, R.I.P.

I never got to work with Johnny on a regular basis, but I was fortunate enough to get to back him many times. In my opinion, he was one of the finest true country singers that ever lived. He had that magic, which I call soul and feeling, and he just blew me away everytime I was able to play behind him. I can count the real singers on one hand that I have been able to play behind during my career that moved me that way and he was one of them.

Herby Wallace

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Ben Lawson · From: Brooksville Florida

In the early 90's we worked a package show at Hunter Mt. in New York state. Johnny was one of the artists. He had a hard time breathing and needed to take a break or two during his set. When I heard him sing "Touch My Heart" I believe Ray Price would have been the first to rise for a standing ovation. As Herby said there was more soul and feeling in his singing than most singers could even understand.

Ron Whitworth · From: Yuma,Ariz.USA Yeah they say it's a DRY heat !!

This is so sad..Another one of the GREAT's passes on..What a shame..He will be sorely missed by all the lovers of pure country music!!.Wow Herby - what a tribute to say about Mr. Paycheck - that is very nice of you.And Bobbe, you just gotta let some of them good stories out & also very nice of you to remember Mr. Paycheck as you did also.
I never met the man but he must have surely stood head & shoulders above many of his peers!!..He will be missed but never forgotten...Ron

Sonny Curtis · From: Columbus, Ohio, USA

I had the priviledge of playing for Johnny before he was known as Paycheck. He went by Donny Young (or Lytle). I have a reel to reel made in a house on a Sunday afternoon of Johnny singing. The musicians were myself, Gary Adams, Don Adams, and Arnie Adams. That became my audition tape for George Jones. I will treasure this tape always.

Johnny and I traveled with George together for 2 or 3 years then Johnny left to pursue his own career. I spoke with Marty Martel a few weeks ago by e-mail and ask about Johnny. He said he would see him the next day and would relay my best to him. I'm glad he knew that I was still thinking about him. He was a good friend. I have many fond memories. You can see a picture of us together on my web site of our early days (photo page) www.sonnycurtis.net He is in several photos.

I will miss you my friend.....

Sonny Curtis

Gaylon Mathews · From: Jasper, Georgia

One of the highlights of my career was backing Johnny in 1986. I'll never forget that night or him. Sadly missed.
http://www.geocities.com/nashville/1064/paychk1.html
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Gaylon's Homepage
www.geocities.com/nashville/1064

Craig Collins & High Lonesome
www.craigcollins.org

[This message was edited by Gaylon Mathews on 19 February 2003 at 06:13 PM.]

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Al Miller · From: Waxahachie Texas

I cant say thAT i ever had the Pleasure of pickin with johnny. but i must say that his music will live forever in my heart........ "tonight I feel Like a AN OLE VIOLIN SOON TO BE PUT AWAY AN NEVER PLAYED AGIAN" bOBBIE SEMORE...... i AM sO SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS I kNOW HE WAS AN AWSOME FREIND.
jOHNNY GOD SPEED AND MAY YOU REST IN IN PEACE MY FREIND!!!!!!!!
bOO miLLER

Fred Justice · From: Mesa, Arizona

Remembering in the early 70s,I was on a sit down job in Ruidoso Downs N.M.I was moonlighting as a cop in the day time at the horse track,I saw Johnny sitting down low by himself,in my cop uniform i walked up and put my hand on his arm and said,are you Johnny Paycheck,He looked up and said,yyyyah,scared him to death,then we talked for a while,that night,Doug Jernigan came in and played three sets for me,a day and night i will never foreget,Good Bye Johnny,Rest In Peace.

Mike Jones · From: Goodlettsville,TN,USA

Read this is the Tennessean tonight,

Honky-tonk stylist and outlaw Johnny Paycheck dies after lengthy illness.

By TOM ROLAND
For The Tennessean

''All my friends are dressed in black and they're standing reverently/Let's have a few moments silence for the late and great me.''

Johnny Paycheck examined the possibility of his own death — a death caused by heartache — in a 1960s recording called The Late and Great Me. That possibility came to pass, as Mr. Paycheck, 64, died in his sleep overnight Tuesday after a lengthy illness. The Grand Ole Opry, of which he was a member, confirmed his death, though no other details were immediately available.

Mr. Paycheck was best known for his 1977 recording of Take This Job and Shove It, a blue-collar anthem about a factory worker who fantasizes about revenge on his boss. When Mr. Paycheck's music had all but disappeared from the radio, Take This Job remained a calling card, played during the Friday drive home by stations ranging from country to Top 40 as a signal that the weekend had begun.

For many years, it seemed as if the weekend never ended for Mr. Paycheck. In 1987, before he began serving time in prison for shooting another man in the head during a barroom argument, he vowed to turn his life around. And, indeed, during the last decade-plus of his life, he claimed sobriety, achieving enough respectability that the conservative Grand Ole Opry added him to its membership.

But Mr. Paycheck had accrued a nasty reputation that created anger among some Opry fans for his induction. His history included:

• A court-martial and imprisonment for two years in the 1950s for slugging a Navy officer.

• Playing for beer in Los Angeles dives in the 1960s, even with three Top 20 records under his belt

• A $175,000 judgment against him in a slander suit filed in March 1982 by a Frontier Airlines' flight attendant.

• A suit by the Internal Revenue Service in April 1982 to collect $103,000 in back taxes.

• Bankruptcy in September 1982.

• A plea of no contest in 1983 to a sexual assault charge involving a 12-year-old girl in Wyoming. His lawyer said ''critical witnesses'' were unwilling to testify. In later years, Paycheck insisted he was innocent, that his incriminating plea was entered on the advice of his attorney.

• Admission in The Tennessean in 1984 that he used narcotics, calling cocaine and alcohol ''upfront drugs.''

• Serving two years in prison for the non-fatal shooting in the Ohio bar, returning to civilian life in January 1991.

• His wife, Sharon, said in Nancy Jones' book Nashville Wives, that during his years in the wilderness, she would go weeks or months without even hearing from Mr. Paycheck.

Those stories were weighty enough that even after he embarked on a personal revolution, they overshadowed his reformation. Even to the end, the fans usually viewed him as a wild man.

''People still come to see me, because they still remember me as that crazy, good-time-Charley honky-tonker,'' he told The Tennessean in 1997, ''and I don't tell 'em any different.''

Mr. Paycheck was born May 31, 1938, in Greenfield, Ohio, with the given name of Donald Eugene Lytle. He received his first guitar at age 6, entered talent contests before turning 10, and in his early teens, became a regular performer at Club 28, a Greenfield honky-tonk owned by family friend Paul Angel.

At age 15, he became, he once said, a ''gypsy,'' jumping trains or hitchhiking, traveling around the eastern U.S. He scored another regular club gig in Columbus, Ohio, at age 16, then headed to Toledo, where he joined the Navy. There, while still a teen-ager, he was court-martialed for reportedly fracturing the skull of a superior officer. He escaped twice from a military prison during his subsequent incarceration.

Returning to his wanderlust after his release in 1958, Mr. Paycheck ended up in Nashville, where bass player Buddy Killen helped him get a recording contract with Decca Records. Under the name Donny Young, Mr. Paycheck recorded four songs for Decca, then another two for Mercury.

Killen, who later ran Sony/Tree publishing and would produce Exile and soul man Joe Tex, played bass on George Jones' 1959 hit White Lightning, on which Mr. Paycheck provided backing vocals. It was an early moment in Mr. Paycheck's career as a sideman. He toured — still under the name of Donny Young — with Jones, Porter Wagoner, Faron Young and Ray Price, his raucous carousing contributing to his revolving employment.

There are those who believe that Jones' inimitable, lonesome vocal style was derived from his on-again, off-again work with Mr. Paycheck during that period.

In 1965, he took the name of Johnny Paycheck from a Midwestern boxer, legally adopting the name the following year.

Also in '65, Mr. Paycheck made his first appearance on the country chart, with A-11, a Hank Cochran song inspired by the jukebox at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, the infamous songwriter hang-out across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium.

In 1966, Mr. Paycheck scored his first Top 10 hit, The Lovin' Machine, a celebration of the automobile. It marked the beginning of a period at Little Darlin' Records that many critics have viewed as the most remarkable of his career. Mr. Paycheck embraced a series of strange characters and soap opera storylines through such oddly titled songs as (Pardon Me) I've Got Someone to Kill, He's in a Hurry (To Get Home to My Wife), Don't Monkey with Another Monkey's Monkey and If I'm Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom).

Interestingly, he briefly titled his first Little Darlin' album Johnny Paycheck at Carnegie Hall, though the album wasn't recorded at that venue, and wasn't even a live recording.

Mr. Paycheck's Little Darlin' work garnered poor sales, however, and by the end of the decade, he was working small California clubs, feeding a drug and alcohol habit.

After music executive Nick Hunter located Mr. Paycheck, producer Billy Sherrill signed the singer to Epic Records in 1971, where he would enjoy his strongest commercial success, beginning with She's All I Got, which earned a Grammy nomination in 1972. That song, and its follow-up, Someone to Give My Love To, have both been re-recorded by Tracy Byrd in the '90s.

With the emergence of the outlaw movement in country music, Mr. Paycheck, with his wild and unfettered reputation, was easily cast among its membership. I'm the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised) joined his stable of Top 10 singles in 1977, and became the proposed title for his autobiography, which Mr. Paycheck had been working on with writer Richard Courtney just prior to his death. I'm the Only Hell preceded Take This Job and Shove It, which instantly vaulted Mr. Paycheck from cult status to major country star.

He was unable to sustain its success, however. He last hit the Top 10 in 1979, when former boss George Jones joined him on Mabellene, a re-make of the Chuck Berry classic. Over his career, Mr. Paycheck notched 11 Billboard Top 10 hits.

The early-1980s produced the roughest period of Mr. Paycheck's personal life, including the slander suit, the IRS entanglement, the bankruptcy and the sexual assault charges.

The turmoil peaked when he shot Larry Wise in an Ohio tavern in December 1985. Mr. Paycheck later downplayed the severity of the incident — claiming the wound to Wise's forehead was treated with a Band-Aid, and that Wise was back in the bar later that same evening — but it landed the singer in jail in 1989, where he remained for the next two years.

It was during that era that Mr. Paycheck said he finally pledged to re-vamp his rowdy ways.

''The hardships that (I) put on my family — all of this was due to one thing only: my stupidity, OK?'' he admitted in 1997. ''I decided in the latter part of '87: 'This is it. I'm gonna turn this thing around, 'cause I want no more of this, for myself, but mainly for my family and my fans — people who've been good to me all my life.'

''With that in mind, I proceeded to embark upon that venture, which was a great adventure. And I beat it. And I did it on my own. A lot of people go to rehabs, and a lot of people need that. I've always been the kind that says, `Look, I got myself into that, I'm gonna get myself out of it.' That's the only true way for me: I either beat it, or I lose.''

It appeared as if Mr. Paycheck had beaten his demons during the final years of his life. He never shrunk from the bad-boy reputation that he had created, but he professed to more than a decade of sobriety.

He became a regular guest on the Grand Ole Opry and was surprised when he was offered membership. He officially joined Nov. 8, 1997. He made several well-received nightclub appearances in Nashville that year, and closed the year as the opening act on Tim McGraw's New Year's Eve concert at the Nashville Arena.

But even as Mr. Paycheck's credibility rose, his health was deteriorating. Breathing problems repeatedly sent him to the hospital during the past few years, and he was unable to rally from emphysema.

Mr. Paycheck's final contribution as an performer was on Daryle Singletary's That's Why I Sing This Way album. Singletary re-recorded Mr. Paycheck's Old Violin and invited the old outlaw to supply the song's recitation. Mr. Paycheck recorded that part from his bed.

Mr. Paycheck leaves a colorful legacy, some ace honky-tonk recordings, and that now apropos title, The Late and Great Me.

No details are yet available about funeral arrangements or memorials.

Bob Carlson · From: Surprise AZ.

So sad so many people in this trade have to die this way and so young. God bless you Johnny and I feel you're with the Lord.

And you were a good steel player...it's just that there some better.

Bob

KENNY KRUPNICK · From: Columbus, Ohio

I heard them talking about Johnny Paycheck on WSM on the radio when I got off work tonight. I wondered if something had happened.

George Kimery · From: Limestone, TN, USA

I remember his great resitation of THE OUTLAWS PRAYER. As it ends, he says "Well, Lord, I'll be seeing you....I hope!" I hope so too, Johnny, and sing your heart out among the angels.

Neil Lang · From: Albert Lea, Minnesota, USA

A HUGE LOSS in country music!! REAL COUNTRY!!
I don't know if he is in the HALL of FAME or not? Can anyone tell me? If not there is something WRONG with the system!!!!

John P. Phillips · From: Folkston, Ga. U.S.A., R.I.P.

Yes Neil, there is definately something wrong with the picture !!!
Guys like Johnny never really get their due until they're gone and not here to enjoy it.
I woke up this morning to the sounds of "Don't Take Her, She's All I Got" coming out of the speakers of my little clock radio. The first thought that crossed my mind was, A fine time to be playing decent country music for a change !! I call these modern stations "PABLUM COUNTRY". But it was truly refreshing to hear sounds like that on the airways again. Good bye Johnny, another fallen outlaw has bit the dust.
Ain't it about time to propose a COLORADO KOOL-ADE toast ? Who'll join me ????????????

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JUST 'CAUSE I STEEL, DON'T MAKE ME A THIEF

[This message was edited by John P.Phillips on 20 February 2003 at 05:47 AM.]

Janice Brooks · From: Pleasant Gap Pa

After the Colorado Kool aide are you going back home to Georga in a Jug? or maybe Barstool Mountain

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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047

Tommy Minniear · From: Logansport, Indiana

Well, we been knowin' it was comin'. That don't make it any easier to accept. Paycheck was the "Hank" for my generation of players. He taught us how to honky tonk and then showed us how to survive and sing about it. He was always an inspiration to me!
I've missed hearing him on the radio for years, now,.....I'm really going to miss him!

Tommy Minniear

Carl West · From: La Habra, CA, USA (deceased)

So very sad to hear. God bless you Johnny.
I have vivid memories of working with Johnny
when he went by the name Donny Young. We did many demo session in the Los Angeles area. He lived with Skeets McDonald a while
and would spend many nights with Wynn Stewart at Georges Round-Up in Long Beach. What a great singer and a pleasure to work with. He loved steel. He even got sick one night and messed up my 62 Chev. But that is just one of the fond and lasting memories. Rest in peace my friend.

Carl West

Paul King · From: Gainesville, Texas, USA

I was saddened to hear of the loss of Johnny Paycheck. Not only could he sing but he could write also. There have been several tomes I would have liked to go to the job and sing "Take This Job And Shove It." Another favorite was "Me And The IRS" as well as "Friend, Lover' She's My Wife." As a teenager my mom chewed me out one day when I was listening to the song "The Only Hell My Moma Ever Raised." I remember there was alot of steel on the song and I never heard the words. That was before I ever got a steel guitar. Johnny Paycheck will be greatly missed but never forgotten. I hope a product will be released with his hits. Paul King

Ken Williams · From: Arkansas

Rediscovered Johnny Paycheck's music a couple a years ago. I have bought everything I can get my hands. Wow! What a singer and stylist. My favorite Paycheck song is "For a Minute There."

Ken

Paul Graupp · From: Macon Ga USA

Godspeed, Johnny ! You surely did it your way and a lot of fine folks thought the world of you !

Regards, Paul

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