Post by Bret Walker on Feb 20, 2003 12:13:37 GMT -5
The only reason I'm posting this is that the Dead Kennedys version of "Take This Job and Shove It" is the best cover song ever.
Johnny PayCheck dead at age 64
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) - Country singer Johnny PayCheck, the hard-drinking hell-raiser best known for his 1977 working man's anthem "Take This Job and Shove It,'' has died. He was 64.
PayCheck had been bedridden in a nursing home with emphysema and asthma. He died Tuesday.
Specializing in earthy, plainspoken songs, PayCheck recorded 70 albums and had more than two dozen hit singles. His biggest hit was "Take This Job and Shove It,'' which inspired a movie by that name, and a title album that sold 2 million copies.
His other hits included "Don't Take Her, She's All I Got,'' "I'm the Only Hell Mama Ever Raised,'' and "You Can Have Her.''
Born Donald Eugene Lytle on May 31, 1938, in Greenfield, Ohio, he took the name Johnny Paycheck in the mid-1960s about a decade after moving to Nashville. He began capitalizing the "c'' in PayCheck in the mid-1990s.
PayCheck's career was interrupted from 1989 to 1991 when he served two years in prison for shooting a man in the head in an Ohio bar in 1985. Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste commuted PayCheck's seven-to-nine-year sentence for aggravated assault, and the singer returned to his career.
His brush with the law wasn't his first. He was court-martialed and imprisoned for two years in the 1950s for slugging a naval officer.
He was sued by the Internal Revenue Service in 1982 for $103,000 in back taxes. It landed him in bankruptcy in 1990, when he listed debts of more than $1.6 million, most of it owed to the IRS.
After his prison release, PayCheck gave anti-drug talks to young people and became a regular member of the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1997.
Johnny PayCheck dead at age 64
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) - Country singer Johnny PayCheck, the hard-drinking hell-raiser best known for his 1977 working man's anthem "Take This Job and Shove It,'' has died. He was 64.
PayCheck had been bedridden in a nursing home with emphysema and asthma. He died Tuesday.
Specializing in earthy, plainspoken songs, PayCheck recorded 70 albums and had more than two dozen hit singles. His biggest hit was "Take This Job and Shove It,'' which inspired a movie by that name, and a title album that sold 2 million copies.
His other hits included "Don't Take Her, She's All I Got,'' "I'm the Only Hell Mama Ever Raised,'' and "You Can Have Her.''
Born Donald Eugene Lytle on May 31, 1938, in Greenfield, Ohio, he took the name Johnny Paycheck in the mid-1960s about a decade after moving to Nashville. He began capitalizing the "c'' in PayCheck in the mid-1990s.
PayCheck's career was interrupted from 1989 to 1991 when he served two years in prison for shooting a man in the head in an Ohio bar in 1985. Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste commuted PayCheck's seven-to-nine-year sentence for aggravated assault, and the singer returned to his career.
His brush with the law wasn't his first. He was court-martialed and imprisoned for two years in the 1950s for slugging a naval officer.
He was sued by the Internal Revenue Service in 1982 for $103,000 in back taxes. It landed him in bankruptcy in 1990, when he listed debts of more than $1.6 million, most of it owed to the IRS.
After his prison release, PayCheck gave anti-drug talks to young people and became a regular member of the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1997.
