Johnny Paycheck - Biography
By Johnny Whiteside
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Johnny Paycheck was one of hard country's most gifted proponents. Best known for his chart busting 1977 hit "Take This Job and Shove It," Paycheck's mixture of extravagant phrasing, populist appeal and underdog tenacity resonated so powerfully that the song's international success ultimately provided the basis for a full-length motion picture of the same name. But Paycheck's success was hardly overnight--he had been recording in Nashville for over twenty years and performing since early childhood. Born Donald Eugene Lytle on May 31, 1938 in Greenfield, Ohio, he was singing on the street for tips at age six, and left home at 15. "I sorta became a gypsy," he said in 1992, "Singin' in bars, wherever I could, I was always just country, always been the same type of singer I am right now."
Paycheck was the genuine honky-tonk article, one almost as famous for an extensive criminal record that stretched back for decades and ranged from charges of burglary, bad checks, theft, striking an officer (that one got him court-martialed and two years in a Naval stockade) and sexual assault. He first recorded, as Donny Young, for Decca in the late 1950s, trying everything from straight country ballads to super-charged rockabilly, with little success. He went on to work the road as bassist for such established stars as Faron Young, Porter Wagoner, Ray Price. He also wrote hits for Price ("Touch My Heart") and, later, Tammy Wynette ("Apartment No. 9"). After George Jones hired him in 1960, Paycheck played bass and sang harmony for Jones both on almost twenty albums and countless one-nighters.
By 1964, as Johnny Paycheck, a name he lifted from a prizefighter, his ambitions were finally realized through an alliance with Nashville song publisher and record man Aubrey Mayhew. "I heard about eight bars of one tape on Paycheck and that was it." Mayhew said. "He is unique. He's got perfect pitch, he's a master musician, a master performer." The pair got a session up and released "A-11," a classic drunken jukebox weeper, on independent label Hilltop, which became Paycheck's first record to crack the country Top Twenty. He and Mayhew formed their own imprint, Little Darlin' Records and embarked on a frenzy of writing, recording, promoting and touring--all of which began to pay off. In the next four years, eighteen of his Little Darlin' singles made the Top Ten, with material that ranged from goofball novelty ("Don't Monkey with Another Monkey's Monkey") to tales of straitjacket-bound madness ("You'll Recover In Time") and homicidal rage, with the much-covered "(Pardon Me) I've got Someone to Kill."
The Paycheck-Mayhew union ended badly in 1969, and the singer left Nashville for Los Angeles where, as many country music insiders recall, he embarked on a nonstop, three-year bender of harrowing intensity. However back in Music City, Epic Records hit-maker Billy Sherrill, who had produced "Apartment No. 9," the song that first put Tammy Wynette on the map, knew Paycheck was worth straightening out. Sherrill returned him to Nashville in 1971, cleaned him up, got him to wear a suit and tie and almost immediately topped the charts with "Don't Take Her (She's All I've Got)."
Where the Little Darlin' records had bristled with near-over modulated shrieking steel guitar and crazed, roaring fiddle lines, Sherrill's smooth, luxurious production softened Paycheck's fang-bearing persona and considerably amplified his appeal; it was a brilliant resuscitation and the pair enjoyed a series of very successful singles. Throughout the mid-70's Paycheck raised his profile with "Slide Off of Your Satin Sheets," "I'm the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised" and the mother of them all, David Allan Coe's "Take This Job and Shove It." It took Paycheck weeks of constant pleading and cajoling to get Coe's go ahead to cut it, but the effort was hardly misspent. "I figured it would it be a number one country hit," Billy Sherrill said, "but I didn't think it would become the working mans theme song. That one really did it for him--I mean, Paycheck was having lunch with Walter Cronkite!" That year, he also received his only formal industry recognition, not from the Country Music Association or NARAS, but courtesy of Los Angeles’ Academy of Country Music, who presented him with a tailor-made Career Achievement award.
Paycheck had it made, but his rough and rowdy ways created more than a few headaches for Epic; in Nashville, they could keep tabs on him (there were some real lulus that the company was able to either cover up or buy off) but out on the road, Paycheck was pretty much free to go nuts--and he did. It was very costly: by 1982 he was facing almost $4 million dollars worth of lawsuits, filed by everyone from his manager to disgruntled concert promoters to an airline stewardess (allegedly snarling "You can tell that bitch I've got my seat belt on" cost him $175,000) and, of course, the IRS. Yet even his contentious relationship with the tax man produced a memorable rant, "Me & the IRS", and during this period he was also recording some of the most affecting and dramatic ballads in country music history ("I Did the Right Thing”). There were also several arrests and when a Casper, Wyoming woman filed statutory rape charges against him, Epic had had their fill. Although plea bargaining reduced the charge to misdemeanor sexual assault, the label dropped Paycheck and, after a stint on Mercury, he would never again enjoy the badly needed stewardship of a major Nashville label's trouble shooting apparatus.
Back in the buckeye state for the holidays in December 1985, Paycheck finally went too far. Drinking at the North High Lounge in Hillsboro, Ohio, Paycheck took severe umbrage at another patrons invitation to sample some home cooked deer meat and turtle soup. "Do you see me as some kind of hick?" Paycheck said. "I don't like you. I'm going to mess you up." He later claimed the guy was coming after him with a beer bottle, so he pulled a .22 handgun and fired a shot that, luckily, only grazed the man's head. Paycheck ran, ditched the gun and disappeared. "Did I feel out of control? You never feel that way." he said in 1992. "That was just one of many instances. That's been so much a part of my life, where you drink, run around, you're out in clubs and stuff. You have arguments all the time--that's the nature of the beast . . . when you shoot a man, that's a different story. It was my own fault, for bein' drunk and bein' in there in the first place. When you do that, just bein' who I am, you're askin' for trouble.”
He was convicted on assault and weapons charges, and after exhausting the appeals process, served two years. Winning an early parole in 1991 (thanks to intervention by a West Virginia legislator), Paycheck returned to recording and touring almost immediately. He jumped from one obscure independent label to another, always turning in characteristically brilliant, action-packed vocal performances but never scored another hit. A surprising invitation, late in life, to join the Grand Ole Opry in 1997 was a welcome boost, but years of hard living--and emphysema--were wearing him down. Shortly after Sony Legacy issued the 2002 CD retrospective "The Soul & The Edge," Paycheck died on February 19, 2003.
