Out to Hunch

OUT TO HUNCH

A 1986 article in Kicks on Hasil Adkins caused a sensation, and Norton Records – named for Ed Norton, the Art Carney character on the long-running Jackie Gleason TV comedy The Honeymooners – was born when they released Out to Hunch later that year, the first of several albums collecting Adkins’s music.

There’s plenty more out there: Allmusic reports that he released 5 or 6 songs about a “lascivious but non-existent dance craze called ‘the hunch’” – collected in that first Norton album, Out to Hunch – and another song about eating peanut butter on the moon.

(May 2011)

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Just this month I learned of the untimely death of writer and musician Billy Miller, and also the co-founder (with wife Miriam Linna, a former drummer with the alt-rockabilly band the Cramps) of the excellent reissue label Norton Records, who was responsible for introducing Hasil Adkins to a wider audience through such albums as Out to Hunch, Poultry in Motion and The Wild Man. I learned of a past UARA named the Lonesome Drifter through their albums.

(Year 7 Review)