Happy Birthday Faron Young!

The great Faron Young was born February 25th, 1932
near Shreveport LA.

For those of you not familiar with Faron, he started
out in the shadow of Hank Williams, literally and
figuratively. Why does Faron matter? He had
the twang and yodel vocally of Hank, but a bit
smoother. You can probably hear alot of contemporary
singers in Faron. He also managed to keep a
career going thru the 80's, turning his down-home
country music into a pop direction.

Faron grew up outside of Shreveport, raised on his
family's farm. Learning to play guitar early
helped him land a spot on the Louisana Hayride
as a perfomer. He hooked up with Webb Pierce
and found a long lasting friendship, touring and
dueting with Pierce.

It was June 1952 where he had his memorable
run-in with Hank. Faron was dating
a young lady named Billie Jean Jones, and
he had brought her to the Opry for a performance.
Well, once Hank had seen Billie Jean, he made
it pretty clear to Faron, that she was no
longer his. There's a great description of
all of this in the must-read book by Colin Escott
"Hank Williams" - the Biography. At some
point, Faron claimed that Hank had made his
point with a gun. But they seemed to remain
friendly.

One of Faron's best songs (ever!) is "Goin Steady"
Again, according Escott's book, there is some
idea that the song, (even though it is credited
to Young, who himself was a great songwriter),
was actually written by Hank, and might have
been some kind of payback, maybe for Billie Jean?
Whatever the case, (it does sound like a Hank song),
Faron gives it the bounce it needs, probably doing it
faster, and more fun, than even Hank might have
done it. Hank, with his back pain
and general state of alcohol intoxication, might
not have been able to do a song called "Goin' Steady"
without some residual physical and emotional
angst. He would record "Your Cheatin' Heart"
in September of the same year.

Back to Faron...what a great education it must
have been performing on the Hayride and the
Opry. He got to learn from best. His
vocals would later take on a George Jones
depth. Faron was also the first to record
a Willie Nelson song "Hello Walls"

Some of the other stand out songs from Faron
are "Sweet Dreams" the "Honky Tonk Song"
and plenty of other songs with honky tonk
material. As you can see in some of these

videos, Faron had some great costumes!

There's plenty of Best of's available to buy, or
if you really want to splurge, there's a Bear
Family box set " The Classic Years"

with all of his early material.



We lost Faron December 9th, 1996.
We miss you already.