Nashville Fifties

From Noted Stories · 25:30

Show by David Ray Skinner

Send us Fan MailThis episode of Noted Stories chronicles my formative years in Nashville and features three songs I wrote about those days. One of my earliest memories is watching cartoons on our old Motorola TV. Also, my favorite TV ad was a cartoon—the “Rockabilly Pig,” a guitar-playing “spokespig” for Jacobs Preferred, a local meatpacker. Nashville was becoming a rockabilly crossroads, and that dancing pig made quite an impression. Years later, I wrote “The Rockabilly Pig” to remember him.After my family moved to Donelson, I developed a crush on a little girl who dressed like a cowgirl. Her family moved away, but years later I spotted her in one of our family home 8mm Kodak movies. That childhood memory inspired the second song, “Kodacolor Cowgirl.”I also grew up with little red 78 rpm children’s records. However, sometimes on Sundays, Lester Sweatt, a family friend and member of our church, would give me promotional 45s after the morning service. Lester was a Marine Technical Sergeant serving as a recruiter, and he was also involved in producing radio programs for the service, hence his access to promo records. These records introduced me to Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and other rock 'n' roll and rockabilly artists. Later, my father built me a small radio transmitter, and I started my own (not so legal) neighborhood radio station, which I called WKID, and where I was able to spin these records for my little group of friends to hear on their transistor radios.So the last song is “Little Red 78s” and it imagines an elderly man finding comfort in the records he loved as a child.© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI

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