Song Of The Day 7/18/2015: Preacher George Jessup – “Till My Hair Has Turned to Skin”

A few weeks ago we started the global discussion about Crazy Cajun Records via one of the songs the label put out: Willie Nelson's "Night Life." About five minutes after the discussion started it ended, because I couldn't find enough information on Crazy Cajun or its second-tier artists on what's supposed to be the internet. The label was based in Houston, founded by Louisiana-born, Texas Gulf-raised raconteur Huey Meaux. He took a freakishly wide view of music sales by signing almost every type of music he'd even remotely heard about to his cause: country, R&B, early psych rock, Tex Mex and, of course, Cajun. Almost all the music he put out was great (Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, Jean Knight, etc.). I also just learned he had a big hand in getting Houston's Archie Bell & the Drells' classic band breakdown hit "Tighten Up" onto Atlantic.

As far as compelling music is concerned, you can't do much better than the equally funny and haunting "Till My Hair Has Turned to Skin" by Preacher George Jessup. As with almost everything released through the aegis of Crazy Cajun that wasn't a national hit, I can't find diddly on Preacher George Jessup. I ran across some crosstalk about Preacher Charles Jessup, a fiery Pentecostal type who married a 15-year-old and served time for organized cockfighting. But nothing on George. They probably aren't related.

I also found an insanely entertaining video showing portions of Huey Meaux's last radio show on Houston's KPFT from 1974, right before he hit it big in the business with Fender's "Before the Next Teardrop Falls" (and well before Meaux's precipitous fall from grace via reports of lewd photographs of minors). Yep, I remember innocence.