Daryl Lykins – The Whirlwind Heart of a Country Ranger

The breeze is Texas-hot, but so far it is the only one on this stifling Kentucky summer day and not to be missed. The young man on the porch expertly flicks his sandy blonde hair aside and catches it on his sweating forehead, smiles to himself and places his fingers on his guitar one more time…

Daryl Wayne “Butch” Lykins entered the world as a premature treat on Halloween 1952. Parents Dorsie and Minnie were more than up to the task, however, having already endured the wonderment of child rearing the year prior with their firstborn son Dorsie Burl.

The family dynamic was an interesting one.

Father Dorsie had been running a small general store in the Old Salem area of Montgomery County when he fell in love with his employee. Despite nearly thirty years difference in age, the couple’s courting led to a marriage that would endure until Dorsie’s death in 1978. By the time Butch arrived, Dorsie was pushing fifty and his perpetual limp from childhood polio probably made the casual observer assume him to be even older. In contrast, his work ethic was that of someone half his age as his future hard laboring as a farmer, sawmill operator and chicken producer would attest.

Music grabbed Butch early and he was encouraged by his parents with a Christmas gift of a guitar around age eleven. A natural lefty, Butch learned to play right handed and was able to pick up some basic chords from his maternal Aunt. It was not unusual for him to spend hour after hour sequestered in his room plucking and singing…and missing calls to supper much to the consternation of his parents!

Butch’s teen years were typical of rural Kentucky. A good weekend might find him hotrodding in his best friend Gary Lee Cope’s 1964 GTO and maybe sneaking a few beers along the way. A worse weekend might find the two pals duking it out with other boys. Despite his slight stature, Butch was never one to shy away from a fight and the older Cope always backed his play. Of course, this school of hard knocks was offset by more formal education.

His years at Montgomery County High School certainly expanded his musical horizons through his association with the high school band. Butch tackled saxophone in addition to continuing to refine his skills on the guitar. He was also sharpening his skills in love.

Little sister Deana was receiving piano lessons from a pretty blonde teen in Clay City. Butch was instantly smitten with Joann and more than happy to chauffeur his kid sister to the nearby town. While Deana tickled the ivories, he worked on tickling Joann’s fancy. The two were soon ready steady with a pearl ring and an engraved bracelet cinching the deal.

Music. Romance. Both had to be balanced with work. Butch’s part-time gig at Fraley’s Auto wasn’t enough and he found work after graduation in 1970 at AO Smith Manufacturing. Arguably the finest product to roll off the line during Butch’s time there was the Country Rangers.

The primary parts from which the Country Rangers were assembled were fellow co-workers John Ulrey (b. 1943 on lead guitar) from nearby Bath County and Rusty Klaber (b. 1949 bass) who had returned to the Menifee County area some years before. The later addition of a couple after-market parts included local teens in keyboardist Arthur Wayne “Bob” Ratliff (born 1955) and drummer Jerry Carmichael (b. 1954). Butch had splurged on a new Gibson guitar and would play rhythm as well as handle the lead vocals. The band was road worthy.

The fuel was a solid country catalog, which the young men quickly compiled at practices at the Lykins’ place on New Cut Road and across the county line at the Ulrey homestead. These practices were informal affairs with primarily country tunes from the likes of George Jones, Waylon Jennings, or Don Gibson supplemented by some Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Animals and a smattering of original cuts. The flow was easy and fun with Lykins sometimes surrendering the microphone to his kid sister for a tune or two while he sipped hot coffee to keep his pipes warm.

These good times were soon offset by heartbreak. Butch’s fiancé Joann broke it off suddenly and he was understandably devastated. He ultimately responded in the only way he knew how – his music.

Butch was the songwriter and John Ulrey who was approaching thirty was the “old man” of the crew. As de facto leaders they arranged a recording session with Ashland’s Bur-K studio in early 1973. Although Lexington was closer, it is likely that the smaller studio up I-64 offered a cheaper recording package. The session was short with only two original songs recorded and pressed, which yielded a sound that could easily have come from a record cut a decade earlier.

Daryl’s soft vocal delivery is just southern enough to prove his country bona fides and he is joined in harmony by the Rangers’ Jerry Carmichael on the A-side ballad “Julie”. The name may be camouflaged, but the heartfelt spoken word plea to his love is for all the world to witness. The lyrical foreshadowing below, though unintentional, would later prove to be particularly haunting.

Julie, if you’re ever gonna love me, please love me now
If you wait till I’m sleeping, never to wake again
There would be walls between us and I couldn’t hear you then

 

The loved-and-lost autobiographical B-side “Girl of My Dreams” would not have felt out of place in Norm Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico, studio but here Ulrey picks while Lykins eschews Holly hiccups in favor of his own unique approach with repetition, phrase truncation and vocal exclamations:

She wore, she wore, she wore my ring on her finger
OH she wore, she wore, my bracelet on her arm
THAT is why I say HEY she’s the girl, girl of my dreams
I love her so, I do I…

 

Copies were distributed to local radio stations WMST and sent to other area stations such as Morehead, Stanton and Irvine. The quantity pressed by Southern Plastics of this ace twin-spin is unknown, but given the scarcity in the region a reasonable guess would be 500 or less.

The band had been building a stable of reliable venues and each weekend was showtime. The Country Rangers booked a wide variety of shows: Natural Bridge State Park’s Hoedown Island, county fairs, a school in Morgan County, a family reunion, Court Days in Mount Sterling, a festival in Columbus, Ohio, the music barn at Cave Run, and a live television appearance on a half hour country/gospel show in Hazard.

Rapid changes were happening in Butch’s personal life. Lykins unexpectedly began courting a young lady and within weeks was married. His new wife Connie would become accustomed to their road trips and would occasionally sing a number or two with Rusty’s wife Ramona.

The dreams of youth are big and the Country Rangers were looking to break bigger. Seeking industry contacts, they rented an RV and drove to a big show in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to mix and mingle with country stars like fellow Kentuckians David “Stringbean” Akeman and Grandpa Jones.

Stringbean took an instant liking to the happy-go-lucky Lykins and was interested in having the band join him for a series of state park concerts he had planned for the following year. Of course, Stringbean was a Hee Haw regular and despite the recent television rural purge, the show was thriving in syndication. Lykins felt that a series of successful shows in ‘74 as an opening act for Stringbean might lead to an audition for the program. The senseless and brutal murder of Stringbean and his wife in November 1973 dashed all hopes on that front.

 

The wind roars and gathers an army as it streaks across the Bluegrass. Telephone poles crack awkwardly and high-tension wires form spaghetti heaps in roadside ditches. Far away in a Paducah motel, the young man crawls under his bed for safety and thinks of his family back home…

The F4 tornado that hit Mt Sterling and many other communities on April 3, 1974 was part of a larger Super Outbreak with lines of tornadoes ravaging Kentucky and the surrounding states. The devastation was immediate and long lasting. Electricity and phone lines were the first to go and communication in the rural areas was not to return quickly.

Butch was working the western part of the state selling insurance policies to factory workers. His route was extensive and covered much of the Jackson Purchase area with a focus on the river city of Paducah. This was not to say that he had forsaken his musical dreams, but with a pregnant wife back home in Montgomery County pragmatism was the order of the day.

A week had gone by with little communication from his family and Butch was behind the wheel on another late-night trip. Cruising west of Paducah they must have been on his mind, but on this dark night the concrete tether of Highway 60 stretching hundreds of miles across the state was the only thing connecting him to his family back in Montgomery County. The roadway’s dashed lines were hypnotic and he was so tired. His green Chevy Vega drifted…

The predawn phone call from a state trooper was unimaginable. It was April 10, 1974. Daryl was only 21. His body was brought first to Eastin-Richey funeral home in Mt Sterling, but keeping with generations-old tradition his mother insisted on bringing Daryl Wayne home to New Cut Road one last time.

The Country Rangers single had been played by request on WMST following weekend shows in the year after its release. Now, the station disc jockeys spun it more frequently, but with each play it ripped open the wound of his death and his mother would break down anew. It was oldest son Burl who finally called the station and asked them to take it out of rotation.

The blow to the family was great, but Butch’s second family the Country Rangers were equally devastated. As expected there was talk of dissolution, but Rusty Klaber switched to rhythm and recruited his replacement Rick Rogers on bass. Jerry Carmichael moved on and Johnny Jefferson (b. 1951) assumed the role as drummer and the band literally did not miss a beat. John Ulrey would continue on lead and the boys would play on until the late 70s.

Rusty Klaber and the reformed Rangers went on to release a single on Winchester’s RCM label around 1977 or 1978 featuring a Klaber penned cut “Me and Baby”.  Otherwise, the Rangers roamed the same venues as before and added another television appearance with a guest spot on June Rollings’ Town Talk on WKYT in Lexington.

After the Country Rangers, Rusty Klaber continued to play in a variety of country bands around the central Kentucky area like the Nite Owls, Distant Thunder and Running Wild. He remains in the Frenchburg area and still plays informally with friends when he can. Update: Russell “Rusty” Klaber passed away on December 29, 2021 at age 72 – sc

John Ulrey had long career as a Tool and Die Maker and passed away in 2014 at age 68.

Bob Ratliff went on to briefly play with Jimmy Smith and his cousin Jay after their Elite UFO days. By all accounts Bob walked on the wilder side of life, but his death in a motorcycle accident in November 1977 still shocked the community. He was just a month shy of his twenty second birthday.

Original drummer Jerry Carmichael and his replacement John Jefferson both remain in the Mt Sterling area.    [2020 Shawn Chambers / Lexingtunes]

 

 

Discography:
45s:
BUR-K
12776/7       Julie  /   Girl of My Dreams      1973

Interestingly, the A-side Julie clocks in a full minute longer than the 3:00 indicated on the label – long for a single at the time for sure. It is unknown whether this was an innocent typo or an attempt to portray it as a shorter song in order to not discourage radio play for a longer cut.