Nashville Cats - The Lovin' Spoonful (cover-live by Bill Sharkey)

Nashville Cats (The Lovin' Spoonful, 1966-1967). Live cover performance by Bill Sharkey, Home Studio, Hawaii Kai, HI. 2021-09-25. "Keeping the Oldies Alive"Show more

"Nashville Cats" was the Lovin' Spoonful's last, and last consecutive, top 10 hit, settling in at the #8 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the 1966-1967 winter (Whitburn, 2013). The song is a nod to the excellent musicianship of the pickers in Nashville, TN (songfacts.com, 2021). During the song, John Sebastian mentions the "yellow Sun record from Nashville," which is a reference to the Sun Records company run by Sam Philips who recorded many black R&B artists of the time, such as Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (Ike Turner's band), Prisonaires, Blue Flames, Howlin' Wolf, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Little Milton, Billy "The Kid" Emerson, James Cotton, Roscoe Gordon, and many more (boija.com, 2021). But Philips quickly expanded his artists to also attract white audiences, which led to contracts with the likes of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, and Johnny Cash, so name a few (songfacts.com, 2021). What is interesting, though, is that it appears that John Sebastian took a bit of poetic license with his lyric because Sun Studios was located in Memphis at the time, not Nashville. It was not until July 1, 1969 when Shelby Singleton bought Sun's catalog, that the company was relocated to Nashville where it resides to this day (sunrecords.com, 2022).

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