The Hombres
Encyclopedia
The Hombres were a Memphis
, Tennessee
, band
best known for the 1967 single "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)".
Formed in 1966, The Hombres comprised Gary Wayne McEwen on guitar
, B.B. Cunningham (brother of Bill Cunningham
of The Box Tops
) on lead vocals and electric organ
, Jerry Lee Masters on bass
and John Will Hunter (died 1976) on drum
s. Written by McEwen and Cunningham and released on Verve Forecast, "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)" hit No. 12 in 1967 and was revived on the soundtrack
of the 2005 Cameron Crowe
film
Elizabethtown
. It has also been used in a U.S. advertising campaign for Foster's Lager
and included on the compilation album
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. An alternate version of the song by the disc jockey
Barney Pip was included on the Pebbles Volume 7
CD. The song was also covered by Jonathan King
in 1969, and appeared on his 1989 compilation The Butterfly That Stamped. Yet another version was recorded by The Nails
in the mid 1980s.
The song's spoken intro – "I preach, my dear friends, you are about to receive on John Barleycorn
, nicotine
and the temptations of Eve
" – dates to the 1947 novelty recording "Cigareetes, Whuskey and Wild, Wild Women" by Red Ingle and His Natural Seven
.
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, band
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
best known for the 1967 single "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)".
Formed in 1966, The Hombres comprised Gary Wayne McEwen on guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
, B.B. Cunningham (brother of Bill Cunningham
Bill Cunningham
Bill Cunningham is an American talk radio host. His full-time job is hosting The Big Show with Bill Cunningham, a local show on 700 WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cunningham now hosts Live on Sunday Night, it's Bill Cunningham, which is syndicated to over 300 stations by Premiere Radio Networks. He is...
of The Box Tops
The Box Tops
The Box Tops were a Memphis rock group of the second half of the 1960s. They are best known for the hits "The Letter," "Neon Rainbow," "Soul Deep," "I Met Her in Church," and "Cry Like A Baby," and are considered a major blue-eyed soul group of the period...
) on lead vocals and electric organ
Electric organ
In biology, the electric organ is an organ common to all electric fish used for the purposes of creating an electric field. The electric organ is derived from modified nerve or muscle tissue...
, Jerry Lee Masters on bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
and John Will Hunter (died 1976) on drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s. Written by McEwen and Cunningham and released on Verve Forecast, "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)" hit No. 12 in 1967 and was revived on the soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
of the 2005 Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Elizabethtown
Elizabethtown (film)
Elizabethtown is a 2005 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Cameron Crowe starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst. Alec Baldwin has a small role as a CEO of an athletic shoe company and Susan Sarandon appears as a grieving widow...
. It has also been used in a U.S. advertising campaign for Foster's Lager
Foster's Lager
Foster's Lager is an internationally distributed Australian brand of 5.0% abv pale lager, It is a product of Foster's Group brewed under licence in several countries, including the U.S. and Russia...
and included on the compilation album
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era. An alternate version of the song by the disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
Barney Pip was included on the Pebbles Volume 7
Pebbles, Volume 7 (CD)
Pebbles, Volume 7 is a compilation album among the CDs in the Pebbles series; it is subtitled Chicago 2. The previous CD in the series, Pebbles, Volume 6 also features bands from Chicago, as does the LP Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 4....
CD. The song was also covered by Jonathan King
Jonathan King
Jonathan King is an English singer, songwriter, impresario and record producer. He is also the author of three novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner , and Beware the Monkey Man , and an autobiography, 65 My Life So Far .King first came to prominence as an...
in 1969, and appeared on his 1989 compilation The Butterfly That Stamped. Yet another version was recorded by The Nails
The Nails
The Nails were a six piece New Wave band that formed in Boulder, Colorado, during the mid 1970s. In Colorado, they were originally named The Ravers, and their roadie, Eric Boucher, later became known as Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys.-History:...
in the mid 1980s.
The song's spoken intro – "I preach, my dear friends, you are about to receive on John Barleycorn
John Barleycorn
"John Barleycorn" is an English folksong. The character of John Barleycorn in the song is a personification of the important cereal crop barley and of the alcoholic beverages made from it, beer and whisky...
, nicotine
Nicotine
Nicotine is an alkaloid found in the nightshade family of plants that constitutes approximately 0.6–3.0% of the dry weight of tobacco, with biosynthesis taking place in the roots and accumulation occurring in the leaves...
and the temptations of Eve
Eve (Bible)
Eve was, according to the creation of Abrahamic religions, the first woman created by God...
" – dates to the 1947 novelty recording "Cigareetes, Whuskey and Wild, Wild Women" by Red Ingle and His Natural Seven
Red Ingle
Ernest Jansen "Red" Ingle was an American musician, singer and songwriter, arranger, cartoonist and caricaturist. He is best known for his comedy records with Spike Jones and his own Natural Seven sides for Capitol....
.
Discography
- 1967: "Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)" (Cunningham; McEwen), Verve Forecast 5058, #12 (USUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Billboard Hot 100Billboard Hot 100The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
chartRecord chartA record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....
)
External links
- Biography from The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin