Dec 2025 Updates: A Bummer Country Mix and Full Time Daycare

Posted on December 13, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

A Bummer Christmas Mix

Every December I think that I should make an Xmas mix and I usually don’t. I assume that if you want to hear holiday music then there are hundreds of other places to do that, so my addition would just be another link on your feed. Nonetheless people ask me to make them and I realize that it’s not about the amount of mixes, but that people respect my taste and want to hear specifically what Dollar Country can make out of it. This year I did something that I thought would stand out, all bummer Xmas songs.

Country music has a great tradition of sharing human emotions, often about things that people might not feel comfortable talking about with each other. For many, Christmas can be a difficult time of year. It reminds folks of who’s not there, who has been lost, and point out how happy other people seem, which can create difficult comparisons to your own situation. In the 60s and 70s a lot of families were affected by the war in Vietnam, and there is no lack of country songs about Christmas in Vietnam, Christmas without someone who’s in Vietnam, and the loss of a family member from the war.

My assumption was that people didn’t want to hear sad Xmas songs about loss, broken families, and death, but I had all of these singles about that stuff and I really wanted to share them. So the Bummer Xmas Mix was born. People loved it, give it a listen and tell me what you think.

*See tracklist below

Full Time Daycare

Years ago I studied abroad with someone who’s family had a child care business and at one point she told me that her mom would say “we don’t watch days, we watch children.” Whenever I say Daycare I always think about that because it’s true, it’s child care. Well we’re having our child watched now. It has opened up my week to be able to actually do DC again. I was hobbling along for the last two years but really I only had the time and energy to do whatever task was the highest priority on a given day, and sometimes not even that.

This affects you, dear listener, in a big way. I have had time in the last two weeks to put together the above Xmas mix, get a show ready to record, and do a bunch of other work that I had been neglecting. I’m hoping to be able to share more and more things with this new time I have. It has been on the front of my mind for the last two years that I want to be able to make more shows to share stuff, but the time I had to do it in wasn’t enough, and the product never felt completely up to snuff. Such is life with a newborn/baby/toddler. If I did manage to make an episode of DC it took up all of my available free time that week to put it together. Now I’m hoping to get back to somewhat regular releases, although I won’t set any schedule in stone.

That’s all the updates for today, I hope you have a holiday that’s slightly better than some of these folks:

Tommy Hestler – Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas
Eleanor Wells – Christmas In Vietnam
Sullivan Family – Merry Christmas From Vietnam
Arlie Brady & The Cavaliers – Christmas Plea
Starla Parrish & The Parrish Bros – Is There A Santa Claus In Vietnam
Dallas McComb – Blind Christmas
Jack Cardwell – Christmas In Vietnam
Lena Hix – I Want My Daddy For Christmas
Bobby Myers – I Want A Mommy For Christmas
Brent Pace – I Won’t Be Home For Christmas
Bob Smith – Lonely At Christmas
Clyde Murphy – There’s A Christmas Tree In Heaven
Billy Egr – What Would Santa Claus Think
Mike Tuttle – Can Johnny Come Over For Christmas
Joyce Brown – Christmas In Viet Nam
Susan Wheeler – A Christmas Prayer
Royel Clark – Christmas Time Draws Near
Jim Eanes – It Won’t Seem Like Christmas
Commander Cody – Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas

Fall 2025: 14,000 Records, Volunteers, Sale Lists and Nick Shoulders

Posted on November 25, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

Hello, hello, hello. I wrote a reminder for myself to make a blog post every weekend to keep the internet updated on Dollar Country, but of course when the reminder bell went off I was pretty tired so I put it off and put it off. Many things have happened this Autumn in the world of DC.

Nick Shoulders

On November 18th and 20th I had the pleasure of playing records at the Nick Shoulders shows in Detroit and Cleveland respectively. I’ve done this a handful of times before, all of the gigs he’s done in Cleveland since 2021, and a few elsewhere. It’s always fun because Nick is a buddy and it’s great to see him, but I also love his music. The crowd at his shows are just about the perfect crowd for Dollar Country too. I met a ton of nice folks who seemed interested in what DC does and a bunch of people who already knew about DC. Opening the Detroit show was Jackson & The Janks, and Clover Lynn at the Cleveland gig, both were acts I’d never seen before and both were excellent.

Tour poster signed by all the folks who played in Cleveland.

Playing with Nick is a perfect storm because we’re both admirers of what each other does, so the admiration ends up going both ways. It makes me feel good.

A Truck Full Of Records

In early November my buddy Brian contacted me saying there was a guy on the east side of Cleveland who had boxes and boxes of LPs, 45s, and 78s and that I should get over there and look them over. Well, I couldn’t make it there that weekend and before I knew it Brian had texted saying the guy wanted $1000 for all the 45s and would I like to go in on the collection with him. The answer was Yes and a day later we were the proud owners of 100+ white boxes of 45s. I told him I just wanted the country stuff, and so we got to work looking through all these records. Buying that many 45s at a time is something that is always exciting because anything could be in there, but then a week later you’re surrounded by boxes and asking yourself what the hell you were thinking. Fast forward another week and those feelings have gone back and forth so many times that you don’t even know how you feel about it, but now you have a few boxes of cool records you didn’t have before.

All in all I found about two boxes of keepers for myself, 5 or 6 boxes of country stuff I’m going to add to the sale list, and most of the rest went back to Brian for him to sell.

Sale List

I stashed many boxes of stuff to sell over the years and finally started putting it all together recently. I’ve sent out the sale list twice so far, if you wanna be on the email list then let me know at host at dollarcountry dot org. I’ll be adding a TON of solid country to the list from the recent buy.

Dollar Country Volunteers

In the last couple months I’ve come to the realization that the amount of work I’ve set out to do can’t be done by one person, so I’ve been trying to take advice from other folks by understanding that to really have Dollar Country do all the great archiving it can do then I will need help from others and have to let go of some of my control to allow for more to happen.

KMC and Zach have been helping with computer stuff. KMC hosts the website and I’ve been working with him for a few years now, Zach has been writing code to make the database a lot better. Zach and Glen are helping me with digitization. Zach digitizes LPs and posts them and things from his own collection at The Vinyl Archive on youtube. Glen will be digitizing 45s. DJ is going to be helping with database submissions and editing starting next month.

If you’d like to help with the database then please drop me a line. I’m looking for folks who are interested in editing the database (adding records and editing record information) as well as research.

Database Update: Browse By Location

Posted on October 30, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

I’ve been doing a TON of backend changes to the database in the previous months, but the nature of stuff like that is you often might not notice it as a database browser. Zach, a patron and now volunteer, has been writing code to help the database be more customizable and essentially making it more like the vision I’ve had for it. Without Zach’s help this stuff wouldn’t be happening. Thanks Zach!

The major change is that now I can link items with each other. Before, if I had a record that was released from Lawrence KS, I could write Lawrence KS in the data field but it was just text, now it will actually link to the Lawrence KS page and the and that page will have this record listed on it under Releases. That has allowed me to make much better State pages.

Long story short is that you can click on a State’s page and see a list of cities that have releases in the database. Then you can click on a city and see the releases from that city. I plan on adding Labels, Artists, and other things to the location pages too when I get the chance.

Check it out and browse around!

State Browsing Page

Let me know if you have any suggestions for browsability upgrades.

Cheers
Franklin

Psycho Zine is DONE / Acetate Project / End of August

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

I spent the last 4-6 weeks obsessively researching Psycho and now it’s done. I’ve handed in my final draft to be printed up. It’s not finished, but it’s all I can do now.

It’s available for sale on my big cartel as well. BUY IT HERE

I feel a bit like I just finished a marathon and I have to rest for a while before being able to digest all the information and talk about it. I’m not sure why this research gripped me in this way, but it did. For future editions I’d like to find some more information about the Noack version between 1968-1980. I’d also like to talk to some radio folks from the late 60s and get the lay of the land. Also I’m quite sure there is some insider info about K-Ark Records and I might know who has it but I’ll have to see.

For the rest of August I’m hoping to do a couple shows and publish them before my family and I head out of town for a few days. I pushed everything off because of the Psycho stuff, so now I’m going to try and work on some other things.

The other big news is that I received a grant for my acetate digitization project. I’ll be posting more about it later but, like I said, I’m needing a bit of rest and relaxation before I can get my brain together. Long story short, I got enough money to buy the gear I needed for this project. A new turntable with specific control adjusts, a set of archival grade styli for different old records, and a special eq box that allows me to get certain types of transfers. It’s all technical and I still feel like I barely understand it, but that’s the jist.

I’ll be transferring acetates in no time and posting them to my website. The point of this project is to get all of this music online free of charge for anyone who wants to hear it. Big thanks to the Ohio Arts Council for all of this.

Until next time, Cheers
Franklin

August Update: Psycho and other things

Posted on August 4, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

Howdy folks. I meant to update this more but here I am having waited months. Funny how that works, but I genuinely do enjoy writing the blog as opposed to every other social media option. Our world just kind of pushes us away from longer form writing sometimes, or that’s the way it feels. Immediacy and shouting your one-sentence thoughts into the void are much more common. I appreciate those of you who might spend 10 minutes to read this. 10 minutes is a lot of time to read one thing on the internet now.

That’s my way of saying that this is an update that’s been too long in coming.

Newsletter News

I’ve been working hard on the next newsletter. Way harder than I planned. I got the idea to write about the song Psycho, originally released by Eddie Noack, and it’s been a real rabbithole. The second I think I’ve reached the end of one thread I find another to investigate, and so it’s coming eventually. I put together a price history of known sales going back to 2006.

The reason I’ve put it together is because I think that to really write about Psycho I want to offer the context of what it means to collectors and it’s general reputation as THEE rare country record. That’s been shown in the price over the years. In 2006 it sold for $158 which is a lot for most country records now in 2025 but was a hell of a lot back then. Accounting for inflation that’s $252 today. Just this year it has sold for a record $961 (1450 AUD), which jump started a bit of a selling frenzy. Just in the last month I’ve seen three copies listed on private groups in the $500 range, two of them selling within the day.

So that context is important to show what it means to collectors, but the most interesting thing I’ve found is that there are a few mentions of Psycho early on when it first came out. The common assumption I’ve heard is that it must have flopped when it came out because it was just too weird and immediately gone into obscurity. That doesn’t seem to be the case completely, I think that happened to some degree but there are a few notes in old magazines saying it had become a favorite at certain stations and was getting requested a lot. Not enough to make it a household name, but it’s more than nothing.

The dark spot for my research is what happens between it’s release in 1968 and it’s inclusion on compilations in the mid to late 80s. The Noack version seems to have been relatively obscure until it was put on the Wavy Gravy compilation, and the Jack Kittel version was relatively well known in that time period. So far I’ve got enough information to write a pretty decent zine if not a very small book on just this record and it’s history, which is much, much more than I was expecting.

That’s where I am now. I’ve got about 10 pages of newsletter to put together in what is normally a 4-6 page printing. All in all that makes me feel great because I’ve never really put this much work into a piece before and having it come together in a way that I think reads well is very rewarding.

Newsletter Note: I was selling newsletters as “Months” but now they’re just “Issues.” So if you bought 12 months worth of newsletter you’ll get 12 issues, I’m not gonna make you pay for three months and only get one mailing in that time.

If you’d like to get the newsletter when it comes out you can subscribe to it on the big cartel.

https://dollarcountry.bigcartel.com/product/physical-newsletter

Database News

I asked for someone who could help with some database stuff and Zach responded, which means there are some updates happening. He made a thing that puts stats at the top of certain pages that I can’t wait to utilize more. It says how many records by how many artists and labels are in the DB on certain pages.

He also made something to add all the releases by an artist to that artist’s page.

The DB is still not super polished but I’m very excited to be having this stuff done and I couldn’t have done it at all with out Zach’s help.

Browse the database and see for yourself. And feel free to suggest any improvements you’d want to see!

Cheers
Franklin

April 2025 Record Roundup

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

This month I put a power play on the database. The goal was to see how many records I could submit with fresh pictures and audio, and I managed to put up 105 records, many of them with audio. Below are some of the ones I think stand out.

Bluegrass

Foggy Blues is basically a blues song but the flip is a great banjo driven instrumental. Klub was based out of the Carolinas and had plenty of good bluegrass and country on it. Shack Creek Bluegrass Boys and Olabelle & Alex are both great bluegrass singles. The Rimrock, out of Arkansas, is instrumental. The New River is their own label out of Pennsylvania.

Country

I was very happy with this Carson Brothers single, I want to find another copy! It’s crudely recorded country tunes about a truck accident. Maco Light is about a North Carolina legend of a light that’s explained in the song.

The Don West is one of the few records I have from New Hampshire, it’s just two really great honky tonk songs. The Hayseeds I bought many years ago in Kansas City and for some reason I suspect it’s an all female country band but I’m not sure if it’s a hunch or I read something. Either way the Mule Skinner Blues version on that one is one of my favorites.

Gospel

I entered a few LPs this year and this is one of them. Who doesn’t like a girl with big hair? Great accordion and solid gospel LP all the way through. The Harmony Twins were based in Ohio and this is the second of their singles I’ve found. Holmes Family Gospel Singers is on Loyal, a fairly well known gospel label from Alabama. Good stuff.

Here’s the full list of everything added this month to the database

New Editions to the Database 4/27/25

Posted on April 27, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

This past month I’ve been focusing on trying to input a few things every day to the database. It takes a while because my process keeps getting more complicated. At first it was just the record and pics, and then it was the record with *all* the information on it (runout etchings, pressing plants, publishers…), and now it’s the record with all the info with pictures *and* audio. It takes a while, but I think it’s worth it to be able to browse the database, find a cool record, and listen to it right there!

First up is a great double instrumental single out of Concord Arkansas on Rimrock Records. As far as I can tell the Shack Creek Bluegrass Boys didn’t release anything else. There’s another version of this 45 with a black label and picture sleeve, but the same music.

Listen to it here: https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/28075

Next I have three singles from sister and brother Olabelle Reed and Alex Campbell featuring Deacon Brumfield and the New River Boys. Olabelle and Alex released a ton of material together on their own label as well as two LPs on Starday and some other things on random labels. They were based in Oxford PA where they played regularly and released a ton of music together. I labelled it as bluegrass but I’d really call it either old time music or appalachian music.

Check those out here: Aloha / White Flower, Deacons Boogie / Uncloud Day, When My Time Comes / Just Over In The Glory Land

Last but not least is this odd instrumental from David Beeler. It’s not straight country, more like classical or flamenco inspired country instrumentals. I’m not sure if I could really describe it any better, I’d suggest you just give it a listen.

Do that here: https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/28076

Cheers
Franklin

Australia Country Vinyl Special

Posted on April 20, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

At some point I started to get some fans in Australia, I’m not sure if I ever tracked down exactly why, but I think it stemmed from a shop in Melbourne called Lulu’s. Either way some people got word down there and some of them joined the patreon and yadda yadda yadda I had some friends in Australia through Dollar Country.

A few years back one of them was in the states and visited me in Cleveland. At the time he (Willie) brought some records for me that I played on episode 200. There was also another buddy (Nic) who sent me some stuff and ever since I’ve been really interested in Australian country music. It’s a lot like American country music but it has it’s own style and flavor.

Willie sent me two packages of records last month that arrived here last week and it came at the perfect time. I was getting ready to test out two portable turntables I’ve been working on and I decided to get two birds with one stone and have a live stream to test the turntables and play some Aussie country.

You can view the video here: youtube // patreon

The stream was one of those things that was very affirming. The nature of what I do is niche at best, so sometimes when I’ve tried live streaming in the past it hasn’t really worked, but this one went great. In my mind Dollar Country is the internet equivalent of having some friends over and getting to say “hey check out this cool record I found.” Ideally that’s how it would be, but we don’t all live in the same town, so I do what I can. On stream there were 8-12 people in the chat and they seemed genuinely interested in the music and were very excited to hear it. It made me feel great, and it seemed like everyone had a great time.

I just put up the audio on my podcast distributor, so you can view the video online if you want to see the records and turntables, or you can listen via apple podcasts (or wherever you get those) and on mixcloud.

Hope you dig it and if you have any Australian Country, or country from any country besides the USA, and want to get it to me, just drop me a line!

Tracklist:
Jack Munting – The First Man On The Moon
Shirley Thomas – Yodelling In The Moonlight
The Trailblazers – A Pub With MORE Beer
Dick Parry – Little Old Log Shack
Slim Newton – The Redback On The Toilet Seat
Hickey Sisters – Call Of The Bellbird
Singing Kettles – An Old Log Cabin For Sale
Reg Lindsay – When My Truckin’ Days Are Done
Buddy Williams – The Nightmare
Rick and Thel Carey – You Can Say That Again
Slim Dusty – Gumtrees By The Roadway
Reg Lindsay – Jungles Of Vietnam
Nick Antonio – Sister Of Sioux City Sue
Kenny Arnott – The Singing Wanderer
Webb Brothers – The Jockey’s Are Striking
Cole Wilson – The Barman They Couldn’t Sack
Lucky Starr – I’ve Been Everywhere (New Zealand)
Lucky Starr – I’ve Been Everywhere (Australia)
Singing Kettles – Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
Rick and Thel Carey – White Crosses In The Jungle
Dusty Rankin – On The Trail Where The Rockies Meet The Sunset
Slim Dusty and Anne – Wild Rugged Land That I Love
Reg Lindsay – Goodbye Swingers
Reg Lindsay – From Forty To Sixty Five
Wayne Roberts – Aussie Talk
Buddy Williams – The Snowy Mountains
Slim Dusty – A Pub With No Beer

Upcoming Events May/June

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

I’m returning to doing live events in May. On the 1st will be Country Night @ Little Rose, which I had taken a break from since the first of the year. Then in June I’m gong to be playing records with Justis from Wathéča Records.

May 1st – Country Night @ Little Rose
- 7-11 pm, Free!
- 14206 Lorain, Cleveland Ohio

June 19th – Country Night @ Little Rose
- 7-11 pm, Free! Bring money for mixtapes and tips
- with Justis from Wathéča Records playing from his collection of Native American records.

LPs on the Database

Posted on April 1, 2025April 1, 2025 by Frank The Drifter

When Dollar Country started I only collected 45s, it seemed easier and cleaner. Two songs per disc is nice. No picture sleeves, a nice big hole in the middle that helps you hold onto a stack while you flip through. Life was easy back then.

People used to mention how I didn’t collect LPs, I had to turn down so many, but at that point they just didn’t interest me. There’s probably a reason I told people but really I just wasn’t interested in them for whatever reason. At some point that changed because I realized there were a lot of great things on big records and the genres represented were different. In country you’ll always have more than enough 45s. Gospel and Bluegrass are much more LP centered. If you’re gonna spread the word of god you may as well do 30 minutes instead of 6.

So, anyway, things are different now. I’m still picky about country LPs because it’s not really worth collecting stuff unless it’s rare, you can find non-rare stuff in other people’s collections. But with Country Gospel you just have so many options on LP that never made it to a single.

Another thing 45s have going for them is that they’re easy to input to a database, LPs on the other hand have significantly more information. Not just more songs, but more songwriting credits, more publishing credits, more, more more. Personally I also have a check in system for my 45s. Clean them, sleeve them, stamp them with a date, ID number, and source number from where I got it, and now it’s in the collection. LPs take longer to listen to, take longer to log, and take up more space. Now multiply that by a few thousand.

Now that you’ve heard plenty about my feelings towards the different sizes, maybe you can understand why I haven’t put any LPs on the database yet. But I wanted to put them on there, I was just waiting to get my head right. To have the best entry point into it. I made sure the database was ready (there’s a lot of inside baseball for database and info stuff happening here), and I had all the right fields set. Yesterday I put the first full listing up with audio and everything.

This record isn’t special outside of it being the first one. I mean it’s special in the way that any bit of music is special, but I didn’t choose it just for this. I’ve also made the streaming audio into a basic video with the album covers so it’s more like youtube. People seem to like that style of video and something about just having streaming audio felt lacking to me, and maybe to others it did too.

The end goal is to have the website feel institutional in that it’s focused on the information but also not have it feel clunky in the way that many institutional websites feel. Useful in the way that the internet used to feel 10+ years ago and without the constant ads, unneeded widgets, and website features that seem to take away from the actual usefulness of the website. Has anyone else noticed this? It drives me crazy when I want the hours of a business and I have to go to a website that’s mostly scrolling pictures and I can’t just find out when they’re open.

Here it is, I hope you like it. The Byrd Sisters are as good a group as any to start it off. Three Sisters In Jesus, although in real life they’re two daughters and a mother.

Visit the entry here, and keep checking for more.

https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/27946