“I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night” (1965) – George and Gene * Written by Ted Daffan * Produced by Pappy Daily * Label: Columbia/Musicor * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#99), Billboard Country (#16)
As the two biggest names on Pappy Daily (Texas) and Art Talmadge’s (New York) Musicor label, George Jones (Texas) and Gene Pitney (Connecticut) found themselves in a Nashville studio as “George and Gene.” They laid down two albums’ worth of material in 1965: George Jones and Gene Pitney and It’s Country Time Again. The two singers’ dichotomous deliveries—fervency on one side (Pitney) and fatalism on the other (Jones)—made for an unusual sounding country duo. Their biggest hit together ended up being a cover of Ted Daffan’s “I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night.” (Daffan had Houston roots, making him a comfortable resource for the Beaumont natives Jones and Daily.) The record reached Billboard’s country top 20, and was the fifth of seven or so forays by future country icon Jones, during his long career, into the lower regions of the Hot 100. The record’s arrangement turns Daffan’s laconic original into something much peppier, while the instrumental refrain, sounding like a lost melody from the Civil War years, features fiddles in violin drag, and comes off as much more early sixties than ’65. (Adjusted to today’s currency value, the amount they’re celebrating is $40.56. When Daffan recorded the song in 1950, a fiver had the buying power of $51.56.)