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**Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:40 pm**

The answer to the final question at least is "Why spoil a good mystery by denuding it of all its mystique?" but I have to say I always chose to believe there was a gay or transgressively sexual undertone to the song. Something about the whole Southern Gothic feel seems to demand it, an atmosphere, I now suddenly realise, I plundered for The Radiators "Hinterland".

**Thu Sep 07, 2006 7:17 pm**

Interesting...very interesting...I can recall it being discussed around the family supper table in 1967. I believe the concensus at my house was that they were throwing a baby off the bridge. It's a pretty cool song, as I recall - haven't heard it in ages. The only other song of hers I remember was her cover of "Son of a Preacher Man".

Max Baer, by the way, played Jethro on "The Beverly Hillbillies". The late Nancy Kulp, who played Miss Hathaway, was my mom's best friend, and I was her "cabana boy" for awhile in the 80s (I would watch her house and feed her cats & dogs & sheep while she was off doing dinner theater). One of the tidbits she shared with me was that Max was often "out of his mind on drugs" during filming and often scared her to death.

Nancy was a very cool person. She moved back to her native Pennsylvania to run for congress as an ultra-liberal democrat (she was soundly defeated) so she and I got along famously.

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:26 am**

Well, what a lot of information gathered in one fell swoop!

I really liked that song back in the day and though I've not heard it in years, could sing a good bit of it.

I THOUGHT Max Baer was of Jethro fame! I loved Nancy Kulp/Miss Hathaway and am quite interested that you were of her acquaintance, O'B!

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:03 am**

A very good song. Thanks for the lyrics Phil and the story behind it too. Should we call you Professor Chevron? "The class is now in session"! :lol:

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:38 am**

Behan wrote:A very good song. Thanks for the lyrics Phil and the story behind it too. Should we call you Professor Chevron? "The class is now in session"!

Professor Google, that's me. :wink:

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:48 pm**

Esther wrote:
I loved Nancy Kulp/Miss Hathaway and am quite interested that you were of her acquaintance, O'B!

She is the ONLY claim to fame my little hometown (Mifflintown, PA) has - so it peeves us when biographers fudge the facts and say she was from Harrisburg just because it's the nearest place anyone's ever heard of.

Nancy & my mom grew up in this still-quaint one-horse town in the 1920s - I have a photo of them at Nancy's fifth birthday party. Nancy's family moved away in the 30s, and she ended up joining the service and then breaking into show biz through the back door, radio advertising in Florida. She told me once that she was fired for using the sales slogan "pants are down at Ruhl's mens store!" on the air, but that sounded slightly apochryphal to me. Funny, though!

Her husband (husband? what was she thinking?) encouraged her to go west. Kin folk said, Nancy, move away from there! Said californy is the place you oughta be...George Cukor discovered her, and she had small roles in a few really world class movies (Shane, A Star is Born, Sabrina) before she got into TV. I remember seeing her on the Bob Cummings Show before she did the Hillbillies, and my mom would always point out that she was an old friend of hers, but that never seemed quite real. How can you be friends with someone on TV?

After the Hillbillies ended she tried moving back to PA with her companion, a younger woman who was a greyhound breeder and a bit of a lush - that sort of hifalutin' hollywood shenanigans didn't fly in the backwoods (it has been said that Pennsylvania consists of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with a whole lot of Alabama in between - that is VERY true, and I live in Tuscaloosa) and after some embarrassing situations Nancy soon went back to Palm Springs. She came back again in the mid 80s to run against a 4-term incumbent Republican senator and that's when I got to know her. She was funny and smart and hated Reagan (he had been president of the Screen Actors Guild and was responsible for screwing 60s sitcom stars out of any residuals for syndication - so even though the Hillbillies were on TV constantly, Nancy wasn't getting paid for it) and one of her most prized possessions was a photograph of her with Bobby Kennedy.

After she lost the election (her old "pal" Buddy Ebson -Jed Clampett - taped a radio ad for her opponent saying "Nancy, I love ya, but you're just too liberal") she moved to California AGAIN, and then back here one more time in 1990. She had just gotten settled into a big house in nearby no-horse town Port Royal when she was diagnosed with cancer. Her last TV appearance was on Entertainment Tonight - dying was the only thing she could do to get back on TV, it seemed - and they sent a film crew here to tape the interview. When it was shown on TV it was misidentified as being in Harrisburg, I guess because that was the airport they flew into.

Nancy went back to California one more time, because the hospitals are better out there, and died alone in 1991. My family was the closest thing to next-of-kin, so we inherited her effects and became executors of her will. Most of what she had was left to the ASPCA, and she was buried in Mifflintown, a stones throw from where I live now.

I was looking through a drawer a while ago and found her old address book, with people like her friends Bette Davis and George Cukor in it. Sort of unreal.

The funny thing about knowing Nancy was talking to her on the phone. I never got used to that. Her voice was so recognizeable, and was a part of my childhood (the Beverly Hillbillies was one of my favorite shows as a kid and a real part of American culture) , so when I was talking to her on the phone it always freaked me out a little. It was like talking to a TV character.

Nancy was a really good person, outspoken and sometimes a bit haughty, but was always very supportive of me. At the time I was a punk musician with a black girlfriend, and that sort of stuff was frowned upon in Alabama/Pennsylvania - which is probably exactly why she took a shine to me.

I'm very proud to say I knew her.

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:10 pm**

Ronald Reagan screwing Nancy Kulp out of her residuals - another black mark against the Gipper.

She sounds like quite a dame. Funny, James Fearnley, or more particularly, James's dad, the late Walter Fearnley, had a similar family friendship with a grande dame of British TV, Doris Speed, who played the regal Annie Walker, snooty landlady of the Rover's Return in Coronation Street.

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 9:27 pm**

THANK YOU, O'Blivion for some really wonderful memories there. Ms. Kulp sounds like quite a wonderful woman, and you are indeed - as you are well aware - a lucky chap for having known her. I'm gonna read this thread to the wife when she wakes up, as we always used to laugh at Miss Hathaway's desert-dry wit when watching The Hillbillys.

**Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:18 pm**

Thanks so much, O'Blivion, for your fond memories of Miss Kulp!! I so enjoyed reading them! I am sure she was very proud to know you, as well.

**Sat Sep 09, 2006 10:59 am**

philipchevron wrote:
Behan wrote:A very good song. Thanks for the lyrics Phil and the story behind it too. Should we call you Professor Chevron? "The class is now in session"!

Professor Google, that's me.

I heard over the radio this past Thursday that Google celebrated its 8th birthday.

**Sat Sep 09, 2006 11:37 am**

Behan wrote:
philipchevron wrote:
Behan wrote:A very good song. Thanks for the lyrics Phil and the story behind it too. Should we call you Professor Chevron? "The class is now in session"!

Professor Google, that's me.

I heard over the radio this past Thursday that Google celebrated its 8th birthday.

No, I'm slightly older than that.

**Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:30 pm**

Modern Times - Bob Dylan

Already love it

**Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:24 pm**

Latest 78 eBay acquisitions: "Stalin Wasn't Stallin' ", a 1943 wartime hit for the Golden Gate Quartet - an acapella gospel choir provides the background for a spoken/preached song praising our then-ally, Joseph Stalin, in his heroic fight against "The Beast of Berlin". Haven't ever heard it but had to have it.

"Our Last Goodbye" The Stanley Brothers. My favorite old-timey band, from the beginning of their stay with Mercury Records in 1953. My other Stanley Brothers 78s are on Columbia. I LOVE this stuff - their records are my most cherished 78s.

Dr. Clayton - "Cheatin' & Lyin' Blues" - A forgotten Blues hero of the 40s and a great song about murderin' his baby.

And a 5-record set of boogie piano stuff with Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, Count Basie, and other giants of stride piano.

I can't wait to hear all this stuff!

**Mon Sep 11, 2006 12:26 pm**

O'B, Robert Wyatt covered "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" in 1982 or so. Excellent version.

**Mon Sep 11, 2006 1:28 pm**

philipchevron wrote:O'B, Robert Wyatt covered "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" in 1982 or so. Excellent version.

I read that when I was researching the record. I'll have to check that out. He was in the Soft Machine, wasn't he? I'm afraid I'm completely oblivious to his stuff.

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