I met the owner of Bear Family Records this weekend.

He was visiting from Germany.

Very nice man.

And they do a great job of reissuing sometimes complete discographies from artists

and gorgeous packages but i said you know you probably get pitched a lot of ideas and he said yeah

i don't mind and somebody has an idea and i said well good i have an idea i'm going to throw at you said

i have no skin in this game so, so take it for what it is.

In the 60s and 70s, Memphis wrestling was huge.

They would sell out to Memphis Coliseum every Monday night, 10,000 people,

and they would sell a lot of different kinds of merch to people.

One of the things that they would sell would be 45s of the wrestlers singing,

people like Jackie Fargo and handsome Jimmy Valiant singing,

and the musicians who played on these records were studio musicians, the recession players in Memphis.

They were the same people playing on Elvis Records, Al Green, Dusty in Memphis.

I thought it would be a great idea to reissue all of this stuff. I thought it would be an interesting box set of some sort. He seemed impressed. He laughed a little bit and he said,

I've been pitched a lot of ideas, but that's one of the more original ones I've ever heard.

And I think he was just being nice to me and I don't expect this to ever pop up.

But just in case you walk into your local record store one day and you see this box set sitting on the shelves, I just want everyone to remember that you heard it here first.

Yeah. Hi, friends, this is Otis Gibbs, and you're listening to Thanks for Giving a Dam.

I'm sitting here in my living room at East Nashville.

This is a personal journal.

This is a bit of an experiment.

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