VA- Nashville Chowdown

This was an odd priced item for Half Priced Books for $2.50. Normally, their records are in dollar increments. But it is exactly the kind of gimmicky thing I like to by and post.  Plus they have a singing “rice-ipe” about Houston.

This is a two record set featuring a 12″ of various country stars accompanied by a flexible 7″ of “singing rice-ipes”.  The record was released by Colombia’s Special Products Line.  Can not figure out who is behind the food angle.  (Apparently, this was done by Riviana Foods).  I believe this was released somewhere around 1970 or so.

The 12″ is a collection of country stars doing songs which are standards but not exactly by the singers on the record.  For instance, we have the Carter Family doing ” I Walk The Line”, Tammy Wynette doing “Gentle on My Mind”, Ray Price with “Cold, Cold Heart”, and Marty Robbins with “Never Tie Me Down”.  Pretty decent stuff.  Good singers and good songs.

The 7″ is the real treat of this set.  It features seven singing rice-ipes.  These are recipes packaged as country songs and are quite humorous.  They are obvious take offs done in various styles such as Johnny Cash and Lynn Anderson. Somehow they find a way to work all the ingredients into the song.  There is also an accompanying lyric sheet with the recipes spelled out proper on the back.The common denominator in all these recipes is rice.

Listening to this, the best songs I felt were the Carter Family’s “Walk the Line” as well as the singing Rice-ipe, “Houston Hash”.  However, some other music blogger beat me to this record and has already posted these songs to his blog, which are totally worth checking out.   This really bummed me out.  This blogger has correctly identified that these are the strongest songs on the album.  Let me know if the link ever goes dead and I will post these songs on my page. anyway, besides these songs, this blogger has a bit more of the history of the record.

You should definately check out this link for these songs.

If you want to know how to make Houston Has but can not figure out from the song, here is how.  Take 2 sliced green peppers and 2 sliced onions and saute in  a heavy skillet in  3 tablespoons of shortening until tender.  Add 1 pound of ground beef and cook until no longer pink.  Add 2 cups of canned tomatoes, 1 cup of cooked rice. and seasonings (1 teaspoon of chili powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 dash of black pepper).  Arrange in a greased baking dish and top with 1/4 cup of bread crumbs.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 mins.  Make a Johnny Cash voice when you eat it.

So, for samples, I am left with Jimmy Dickens and “Night Train to Memphis”.  For the rice-ipe, I went with “Sunnyside Rice”  which is an obvious take off of “Keep On The Sunnyside”.  I also decided to go with “Skillet Gumbo” as well.

As I am a bit disappointed some else beat me to blogging about this, I got a kick out of this record. Satisfactory.

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