A
country singer who has spent a little too much time in jail,
Otis Lee Crenshaw is the composer of such splendid songs as
He Almost Looks Like You (
'And when he calls another man's name/he almost looks like you'), but it is for his between-song patter as much as his songwriting and performing skills that he is best known.
His observations on
Jailhouse Rock - pointing out that no warder ever held a party in any jail
he was in, and that the last thing you want to hear in jail is
you're the cutest jailbird I ever did see - have changed the way many see the song forever.
Then there's his celebrated comment - 'I've had nine wives, all of them called
Brenda. The psychiatrist says it's
Oedipal, but there's nothing wrong with it - leastways, that's what my mom, Brenda, says'.
Crenshaw often performs as support act to his nephew,
comedian Rich Hall, but many have suggested that he is in fact merely Hall with a small fake beard stuck on. We shall never know...