Nostalgic about Sidekicks

"Fuzzy pants!" Saw that on my son's girl's blog and it brought up one of my "clang associations" (see schizophrenia) from the past -- from the last century, from the medieval ages. My dad (who Johnnie is a lot alike in temperament and character -- that's a compliment -- take my word for it) used to tease me about going to B-grade westerns on Saturdays. The formula for those included a funny "sidekick" for the hero. (Johnnie has a photo of Rudy and his sidekick, Xena.) Lee "Lasses" White (slow as molasses --in January, as I think the cliche goes) was the sidekick of Jimmy Wakely, a troubadour (who really sang quite well and wrote some nice old country standards, including "Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes"). My dad would refer to "Lasses White and his fuzzy pants" and I would crawl under the couch with embarrassment. I didn't like Jimmy Wakely because he sang. I liked the cowboys who were no-nonsense, always winning fistfights, always shooting the gun out of the villain's hand, who didn't sing, and who never kissed girls. Nowadays I like kissing at least as well as fighting. My favorite sidekick now (at least in retrospect) was Smiley Burnette, who split his sidekicking between Gene Autry and the Durango Kid. Smiley sang well, played violin (OK, fiddle, he wasn't Nathan Millstein), and wrote a lot of songs. And he was really funny. I miss him and his gentle kind. I think he might have been the composer of the song that has the chorus:

"Oh what a face! It's a disgrace! To be showing it in any public place!"

(I know the tune. I can still hear Smiley and his country swing band, decked out in ten-gallon hats, western shirts, and string ties, singing it with big grins. The supposed hatchet-faced lady was mercifully absent, in fact nonexistent. Those guys weren't mean. Not a mean bone in all of their bodies.)

Bear with me. Just an old coot with his memories...