Sam Johnson

Sam Johnson

Colorado Folk Ballads

(1965)

Side One:
The Place That They Call Home
A Long and Sad Farewell
Don't Blame Me
If You Like That Kind of Thing
All of September
This Weary Road

Side Two:
Where Man Once Was
Quiet Valley
Satan's Got a Way
Long Road Home
Ballad of Wilborn's Wall
There's Still a Place for Faithfulness
Together, Hand in Hand

I'm calling it.  My best obscure Colorado discovery of 2015 (actually, a fellow collector found this and sent it to me, but still).

Love. This. LP.

I first noticed the cover, the same picture used on the Emanon Majority LP I featured back in 2009. Your standard issue private vanity cover (collectors of these call this particular cover art the "burying a body," "taking a wiz," or the "Big Foot" cover).

Can't find a thing about Sam Johnson.  The only other name on this record is that of Scotty Glasgow, who produced this album in his basement recording studio on Cascade Avenue, in Colorado Springs. Scotty, who was born in 1916, worked at the Gazette-Telegraph, hosted the Scotland Pride show on KRDO-TV, and ran the Scotty Glasgow Advertising Agency, when he wasn't recording local singers.

He died in 1977.

Thankfully the LP had a typewritten insert from Sam:

"In response to recent requests for it, I have decided to release this album of original folk songs, featuring my favorites, the folk ballads."


"Concerning the songs of protest.  The purpose of 'Satan's Got a Way' is to explain the basic cause of the need to protest, not only in songs, but in everyday conversation. Understanding the cause of society's problems is certainly one big step toward realizing a solution.  If our great leaders can dig out from under their cover of intellectualism, open their hearts to Truth, and fight, not in the war between the nations, but in the war within their own hearts, more and more people will someday see a victory, at least in individual lives.  In the great physical war, as nations rise against nations, victory and destruction will be synonymous, but in the spiritual war, victory if attained, will be once and for all, and will mean real peace."