The Steel Guitar Forum

Bob: I'm on a roll today ! If I'm posting too much let me know and I will shut up.

How many remember Tex Carmen playing his flat top unamplified non-Dobro steel guitar hanging from his neck. Tex would sing and play his guitar and absoulutely sell out with the audience. Back in the So.Calif. radio days he would be on for fifteen minutes and get more fan mail than any other performer. When playing with Ole Rasmussen, when the band would go on break Ole would hire Tex to play during the intermissions. Later on he became a permanent part of the "Town Hall Party".

Did he go by the name Tex Carmen Jenks, or am I thinking of someone else? I know I heard a name like that somewhere, years ago!

Here's a YouTube video of Tex playing "Dixie Cannonball". He was certainly unique.

When I brought up Tex with Jerry Byrd, he said most entertainers/players considered him a joke.
But, bottom line, he seemed like a nice guy and certainly was well received by the audiences. I doubt he was a big seller of his own LPs/products, however.

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Some musicians would kid about Tex and sometimes made a little fun of his style. Once you got to know Tex you loved him for his sincerity. Tex would have been a star on early Grand Ol Opry. Did you notice on the video that it was Billy Mize plsying the steel chorus and he played using licks from early steel guitar style to support Tex. We all pretty much did that when backing Tex.

Those backing Tex had to stay on their toes to compensate for when he'd go off meter or change the song up.
Part of his act and appeal, I guess.
Never heard a bad word about him though, so his personallity must have swayed a lot of minds.
Everybody's got to have their gimmick!
I mean, the Town Hall had Herman The Hermit!

here's a past thread.......


http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum2/HTML/004679.html

Jinx "Tex" Carmen was the first guy that really attracted me to the steel guitar. When I was about 10 years old, his "Hillbilly Hula" just killed me. Some people might make fun of his style, but it's so unusual, it's hard to duplicate. I tried to do that on my first album, Dobro, as a tribute to Jinx, because I had such fond memories of that sound. I had the engineer fade out of my playing "Hillbilly Hula" (with Vassar Clements strumming rhythm on his fiddle) after about 30 seconds, as the opening cut, before going into "Tennessee Stud"... kind of a way to segue from an old time style to a modern style of Dobro playing. I never saw him play until I recently stumbled over a youtube clip... he still cracks me up!

Mike

Well, at least I had my question about the ‘Jenks’ part of his name answered! I assume Jenks is short for Jenkins! (?) And “Tex” was his nickname! I thought those three names went together somehow!

So, which was correct?

Carmen or Carman?

It's obvious from l©©king at (3)-Album Jackets that his name was [Jenks “Tex” Carman] I doubt they would have made a ‘same mistake’ 3-times! I'm convinced!

Ron:.

You referred to "Herman the Hermit". If you meant Herman Snyder who was Herman The Hermit in So. Calif.
then, He was Cliffie Stone's foster father and taught Cliffie to play bass. He and Cliffie worked for Stuart Hamblen in the 40's on Stuart's daily radio show. When Ole Rasmussen first went into the 97th Street Corral, Herman was playing stand up bass in the band. Herman was a very learned man and knew music. If I would use a wrong chord in a song he would come over and politely correct me. Perhaps Jason Odd could give some more background on Hermit the Hermit. He also had his own "one-man band" which had a whole article with pictures in an old Popular Mechanics Magazine which I cut out and still have.

My mention may have come off as belittling of Herman, but I'm aware it was shtick and that he was all that you mentioned and probably a lot more. He wouldn't have been on that super star-studded stage of talent if he didn't have some tricks up his sleeve besides the get up, which is what makes Tex somewhat an annomaly.

To echo Mike's response, when I was a kid I looked
at Jink's style as somewhat corny and oddball, but later I was just intrigued by it. I too, set out to learn "Hillbilly Hula" like he played it. It is no easy task, full of sidetrips and quirky licks. He was using an A tuning and sometimes I could swear he had two unison E's in there. I had planned to put it on my dobro CD, but then I found out Mike had done it, so there was no need to try to follow that!