DESCRIPTION:
From '' Red Dirt ''
Label: Sonic Rendezvous -- SR 9901
Format: Vinyl, LP
Country: Netherlands
Released: 1999

Tracklist
01. Hey Truckers
02. Busted
03. She's A Bag Of Potato Chips
04. I Can Tell
05. Pardon Me (I've Got Someone To Kill)
06. Weapon Of Mass Destruction
07. Easy On The Eyes
08. I'm An Old, Old Man
09. Tramp Trail
10. Psycho
11. I Understand (Do You?)
12. Old John
13. Queen Of The World
14. My Sister Stole My Woman

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Payne wrote “Psycho” in 1968 after a discussion about serial murderers with his longtime steel guitar player, Jackie White. (White would become a victim in the song, buried under a sycamore tree.)
Eddie Noack, a well-liked and respected honky-tonk singer-songwriter (born De Armand Noack in Houston on April 29, 1930) had fallen on hard times by the late ’60s.
Noack had a degree in journalism and English but loved singing.
He became a country music performer after winning a talent contest in the late ’40s.
One associate described Noack as 100 percent honky-tonk.
He had a fine singing voice and a vocal style similar to Junior Brown.
After a minor hit, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” in 1949, Noack struggled for another hit and recorded for a dozen independent labels in the next decade.

He became associated with Pappy Daily, the infamous manager of Lefty Frizzell and George Jones, and in 1956, Noack wrote “These Hands,” a gospel song that became a Top 10 hit for Hank Snow and would become Noack’s best-known song.
Noack decided to concentrate on songwriting in the early ’60s, often writing for George Jones and recording occasionally on small labels.
By 1968, he was a heavy drinker, and dipsomania affected his career.
Noack was regulated to cutting vanity records on the tiny K-Ark label for amateur poetry writers who wanted their poems put to music.

Noack, who knew both Jackie White and Leon Payne, used some leftover recording time to record “Psycho” and three other murder and bedlam songs in 1968, including a song he penned called “Dolores” (about a serial killer who accidentally murders his wife — by coincidence, Noack once had a wife named Dolores).

John Capp, who owned K-Ark, released the records hoping for a hit, oblivious to a solemn fact of the era: radio stations of the day weren’t going to play a song as eerie and depraved as “Psycho,” which includes the murder of a little girl, whacked by a wrench in a park, and the killing of a puppy.

Noack’s chilling and emotionless first-person reading of the song is a tour de force.
You actually believe the killer is singing.
Reportedly a disc jockey in Grand Rapids, Mich., played “Psycho” on a midnight radio show — the DJ denied playing the record when his job was threatened — but whatever occurred, some people heard the jaw-dropping song, and a cult hit was born.

Rumors sprang up about “Psycho.” One rumor was that Payne wrote it after Charles Whitman’s shooting rampage at the University of Texas.
Another rumor held that Payne said it couldn’t be released until after his death.

Payne’s daughter, Myrtie Le Payne, clarified the song origin for the Nashville Scene several years ago. “My father wrote the song after discussing Richard Speck’s mass murder of the nurses in Chicago in 1966,” she said. “Dad and his steel guitar player, Jackie White, were discussing the murders, and Dad, being a history buff, had mentioned other notorious demented murderers. The song sprang out of this conversation.” Myrtie dispelled the notion that Payne wished for the song to be released only after his death. “My dad was in the business of selling songs,” she added, “so he wouldn’t have waited to have it recorded.” Myrtie believes Payne probably pitched the song to Noack.

Leon Payne would die on Sept. 11, 1969.
Noack would continue to struggle for years, performing in dives and juke joints.
He taught songwriting briefly at the University of Tennessee.
Recording sporadically, Noack cut an excellent tribute album to Jimmie Rodgers in the early 1970s. He had a brief tour of England in 1976, where it’s possible he may have played “Psycho.”

But Noack couldn’t shake his demons — after his mother committed suicide, his drinking worsened.
Noack died of cirrhosis of the liver Feb. 5, 1978, in Houston.

Michigan singer Jack Kittel recorded “Psycho” in 1974, and Elvis Costello recorded it for his Almost Blue album in 1981. The song was released as the B-side of Costello’s single “Sweet Dreams” and later released as an outtake on the Almost Blue reissue.

Today “Psycho” is recognized as a cult classic, revealing the darker side of country music.
On his Theme Time Radio Hour broadcast in 2007, Bob Dylan played the song.