Showing posts with label bobby bare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bobby bare. Show all posts

Monday, September 30, 2024

Kris Kristofferson


The late sixties and early seventies were Kris Kristofferson's time. One could not turn on country radio without hearing one of his compositions, though you might not have known it was his. Some pundits posit that he changed country music. Maybe, to a degree. They were certainly a jolt to a country fan's senses. Most country was straightforward. There was little to ponder in the lyrics. Whether it was Merle Haggard or Tammy Wynette's singles (mostly written by Billy Sherrill) or Loretta Lynn, the singer told you where they stood. 

Kristofferson's lyrics were straightforward, too, but they were elegant. And bittersweet. I joked once that every time a woman left his bed, he wrote a song about it. (Prove me wrong.)

His songs lent themselves to the syrupy, stringy fad of the time, but they could have been recorded in a more "countrified" manner ~ it wasn't his fault. Ray Price schmaltzed up what was probably a really good song, but I've never liked the recording.

 

Sammi Smith's producer also had a heavy hand, but I like this one far better:



Unlike a pure lyricist, Kristofferson could craft a melody; not a unique melody, but at least a pleasing one. His melodies broke no ground and they didn't vary much. Lyrics were his strong suit and he wrapped his melodies around the words.

The first time I heard Sunday Morning Coming Down was a live performance on Johnny Cash's ABC variety program. I didn't know it was also being recorded at the same time for the single release. My first take on it was, this melody is boring and repetitive. Only the chorus saves it. While I understand the mood the song wanted to convey, it basically consisted of, "I did this and then I did that". 


There are a few lesser-known Kristofferson songs (lesser known to non-country fans) that are much better. These, too, were big hits, by the way:


This is probably my favorite (sorry, can't find a decent live performance):

 

And who could ever forget this? (JLL was a treasure):
 


Again, no live video, but here's Faron Young:


Waylon:


Obviously, I can't include every hit. There are far too many for this space. But it struck me that reviewing Kris Kristofferson's songs is like a trip back in time to revisit all the greats in country music. (No, I didn't forget about Me and Bobby McGee.)

Kris would probably have been the first to tell you that he was no singer. That he was passable is the best one can say. Nevertheless, he had one big hit of his own:

Kristofferson transitioned from music to acting, then back again as one fourth of The Highwaymen.
 


(No, Jimmy Webb wrote that one.)

Kris Kristofferson lived to be eighty-eight; a very full life. And he left an indelible mark on country music.

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Me And The Seventies

 

I'm not sure why I have a love/hate relationship with the decade of the 1970's. Truthfully, it was the most impactful decade of my life. I was young enough to experience every moment; not yet so old that the years ran together like a muddy river.

I came of age in the seventies. I was still a high school girl from '70 to '73; I got married for the first time in 1974, and I became a mother twice over between 1976 and 1978. I also landed my first "real" job and quickly learned that work was something to endure rather than enjoy. It wasn't fulfilling; it was a slog ~ a slog of menial tasks and a morass of neurotic coworkers.

Maybe I've dismissed the 1970's because I didn't particularly like the person I was then. 

If "clueless" was an actual term back then, clueless was my middle name. I was painfully naive about life. Not that it was necessarily my fault. My family wasn't exactly The Cleavers. In fact, my dad, if he worked at all, played at being a part-time bartender. But truth be told, he spent most of his time planted on a stool on the other side of the bar he owned. Thus my mother was perpetually angry. She'd carefully mapped out a way to better their lot in life by abandoning farming and purchasing a business, a motel/bar combo, but she ended up doing all the work while my dad played. Everybody always knew my dad was an alcoholic, but he kept the demons at bay simply by the responsibilities of planting and harvesting the wheat and potato fields. Give him a bar right next door, however, and a woman who could be relied on to shoulder all the work, and he was lured to whiskey like a child offered candy from a pervert in a van. 

Thus my home life consisted of pots and pans slamming and a cold shoulder. I escaped to the quiet of my room and fashioned my own sanctuary. I had one actual friend and a handful of acquaintances I only interacted with in the school hallway or in whatever classes we happened to share. 

My inner life was consumed by the music I let wash over me. I collected albums and cheap electronics, like a JC Penney reel-to-reel tape recorder and a "stereo component set", which set me back an outrageous hundred dollars, which I'd amassed from my many summer hours of cleaning motel rooms. I stayed up 'til three or four in the morning during summer vacations, my ear glued to the radio, the third component of my new stereo setup. I tuned the dial to WHO and WBAP and if the heavens allowed, WSM. I fancied myself a singer and recorded three-part harmonies on my reel-to-reel. (I actually wasn't as bad as I thought at the time.) I typed up music "newsletters" on the manual typewriter I'd somehow claimed from my mom, who'd bought it with the intent of producing motel invoices.

My life was insular.

So, I never learned much of anything except how to swish out a toilet and make hospital corners. I could fry up a grilled cheese sandwich and stir together some Kraft macaroni and cheese, which I did whenever my mom was busy manning the motel desk and Dad was, naturally, indisposed. Nobody at home ever talked to anyone else. I had a little brother and sister, who I think I must have conversed with at some point, but they were little kids, after all. How much could we have in common?

I was on my own, a strange amalgam of independence and naivete. Anything I learned, I discovered through experimentation and failure. My mom never went clothes shopping with me or taught me about makeup. I employed my talent for observation to simulate what the other girls my age were doing and I mimicked them. 

I did learn how to smoke, however, all on my own. Smoking wasn't so much cool, per se, as it was another means of escape. 

The music that dominated my senior year in high school was an incongruent mix of country at home and rock blaring from the car radio of my best friend's beige Buick (No, I hadn't yet learned how to drive, either). Alice and I dragged Main Street on Friday and sometimes Saturday nights, singing along to Stuck In The Middle With You and Drift Away and The Joker.


 

Our tastes in country singles matched, too ~ Ride Me Down Easy, Southern Lovin', Here Comes The World Again. 


 

I met my first husband on one of those Main Street runs. I thought the friend he was with was better looking, but the four of us matched up more or less according to height.

My future husband was older and had lived on his own, so he knew how to cook, whereas I did not. I could man a mean vacuum cleaner, though. We married in 1974 and since no one we knew actually rented an apartment, the thought never even crossed our minds. Instead we trudged down the highway from my parents' motel to a mobile home lot and were bamboozled into paying far too much money for a 12 by 66-foot tin box. I was thrilled. Finally something of my own that didn't require proximity to two crazed ultimate fighters.

We furnished our home with a Sears green and white flowered sofa and a set of K-Mart tables, among other cheap amenities. K-Mart and Woolworth's were my go-to's for curtains and bedspreads and collapsible nightstands. I brought my bed and my TV from my motel hideaway. That first Christmas I plopped a two-foot plastic tree atop a table and decorated it with home-crafted ornaments (it didn't require many). We inherited a console stereo, which claimed one wall of the living room and after work I spun Emmylou Harris's Elite Hotel (loved that album) and one by someone named LaCosta, who it turned out was Tanya Tucker's sister. 


The communal radio at work was tuned to rock, so I still had one foot in that world. Sundown, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and Mockingbird were the order of the day.

(Not to state the obvious, James, but those drugs seem to really be kicking in.)



My first son was born in November of 1976. I worked up until his birth, albeit not at that soul-sucking job I'd landed right out of high school. Truly, that place was yet one more dysfunctional family, but I wasn't tied to them by blood, so I bailed. Where did I go? Well, shoot, back to Mom and Dad. In my defense, however, Dad was newly sober and had become an actual human being, and thus my mom was ninety per cent less frenzied. 

Once I delivered my son, however, I retired. I loved it. Achingly poor, yet happy. I knew it couldn't last, but I was willing to forego a Country Kitchen breakfast and a couple of new LP's if it meant watching my baby grow. Anyway, I still had the radio:



And I hadn't abandoned country completely.

(although this is kind of skirting the country line)

 

                                           (whereas this is definitely country)

In March of '78 when I became pregnant for the second time, we traded up to a fourteen by seventy-eight-foot mobile home with three bedrooms. Those extra two feet wide, boy, felt like a palace, Still a tin palace that sounded like Armageddon during a hailstorm

In December I gave birth to my second son and I knew my mom-time was fast waning.

In rock, nothing much struck me. This track was considered "rock", but come on. It's Roy Orbison dressed up in a new package:


 I dipped my toe back into country music, kind of as a farewell to the decade.


 

In essence, despite all signs to the contrary, I grew up in the seventies. And yes, I did eventually learn how to cook. I also learned how real life works, how to stop apologizing for my talents; how to wrangle two toddlers into a car and motor over to the mall and come out the exit doors sane. How to soothe colic. How to fall in love with an unlovable dog who loved no one but me. How a clothes dryer works so much better if one occasionally cleans the lint filter. How linens dried on a fresh-air clothesline smell so delectable. How to coax houseplants to flourish. 

How a baby's giggle is manna from heaven. 

In ten short years I went from a self-involved, self-pitying victim to an actual grown-up human. 


I was the last person to see that coming.


 

Sunday, August 22, 2021

Tom T. Hall

 The first time I became cognizant of Tom T. Hall was via a hit record that I quickly grew to hate:

 

It was one of those tracks that intrigues you the first time you hear it, but over-exposure bakes in its more annoying features, like the dobro riff that completely devalues a wonderful instrument like the dobro.

Nevertheless, I don't even know how I knew that Tom T. Hall wrote the song, nor did I have a clue who Tom T. Hall was. Radio in 1968 didn't exactly tout the writer of a hit song. Maybe his name stuck in my head because he, like Jeannie C. Riley, incorporated his middle initial into his name.

As I became more cognizant of him as a pre-eminent country songwriter, I noticed something odd -- his songs rarely included choruses. They were a series of verses, prose; a narrative story. They didn't fit the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure that everyone in music understood was the norm. Yet somehow they worked. Often the listener didn't notice there was no chorus. The most one could claim about Hall's songs was that they included a "refrain".

I suspect Tom T. was a frustrated novelist. Yet he had the magic spark that spun his songs into gold. 

I've written before about the first country song I actually swooned over the first time I heard it late one night on a scratchy signal from Ralph Emery's WSM:


It may have been simply because it was Faron or perhaps it was the arrangement, or both; but I can't deny that this track clutched my heart. And Tom T. Hall wrote it.

Then I found out that Hall also wrote this:


 And this:

(This one actually does have a chorus)

And this:

 
I bought a Tom T. Hall album. Not sure why, but I bought a lot of albums, basically whatever was available in J.C. Penneys' basement in 1968 - 1971. I think it might have been because I liked this track:
 

I confess I never understood Hall's songwriting method, but no one can deny that it worked. Somehow. Few can go against the grain and yet produce something timeless. 
 
And I'll always be in his debt for giving me my first country music swoon.
 
RIP, Tom T. Hall, who passed away on August 20, 2021.
 
"Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes
God bless little children while they're still too young to hate"
When he moved away I found my pen and copied down that line
'Bout old dogs and children and watermelon wine


 



Saturday, September 14, 2019

September Is Country Music Month ~ Oops, Let's Go Back





I was so excited to begin country music month, I realize I gave short shrift to the decade of the sixties. Granted, for part of the sixties I was too young to remember much, but the wonder of music is, one can hear songs from eons before and fall in love with them still.

When I embraced country around 1967, I knew I had a lot of catching up to do. It wasn't that I was oblivious to country music entirely; my mom and dad's tastes had seeped inside my brain. But I was a sixties kid ~ I liked The Beatles and other assorted British Invasion groups. I'd had a brief interlude in the mid-decade of residing at my uncle's restaurant/bar establishment, and what else was there beside the radio and the jukebox? My uncle Howard stocked his machine with the latest country hits of the day, because that was expected by couples who stopped in to sip beer and whiskey sours and chance onto the dance floor for a two-step. So I knew who Buck Owens was, and I was familiar with exactly one Bobby Bare song.

As I researched "old" country, however, I found some gems; so let's stroll through the decade, shall we?

1960. This is not just the best song of 1960, it's one of the best country songs (er, instrumentals) ever. No one records instrumentals anymore ~ they died when the decade ended. It's quite a feat to grab one of the top twenty-five "best country songs ever" slots with a song that has no words. Words equal emotion. How can an instrumental do that? Here's how:



1961.

'61 is tough, because there is more than one song that tops the year. There are, in fact, three; and two of them were written by Willie Nelson:







1962. '62 is tough. It wasn't the best year for country singles (sort of like 1981). One looks for songs that later became classics, and there really weren't many. I'm going to pick a couple that I either like for my own reasons or were later re-recorded and became even bigger hits:





Things started getting interesting in 1963. Suddenly Bakersfield was giving Nashville a run for its money, but never fear ~ producer Chet Atkins was on the case, especially with a song written by Mel Tillis:



June wrote a song for Johnny:



Then there was Buck:



Something happened in 1964 ~ a phenomenon. This new guy who was sorta weird, but sorta mesmerizing, suddenly appeared. He was all over every network TV show, and none of the hosts actually spoke to him, because they were too busy having a laugh at his expense. Turns out Roger Miller was no flash in the pan and no joke. He'd written a lot of classic country hits before he embarked on a solo career. But what did network people know? Who's laughing now, idiots?



Take your Lorettas; take your Norma Jeans. This new girl singer (with the songwriting assistance of Bill Anderson) started racking up a string of number ones in 1964, and didn't stop for another decade:



I'm not one of those "George Jones is the greatest country singer of all time" adherents, but this song was pretty cool:



Truly, Roger Miller and Buck Owens dominated 1965, but since I've already featured them, let's find a few other gems.





1966 was rather a transitional year. Buck and Roger and Johnny were still dominating, but a few new voices appeared, such as David Houston and some guy named Merle. A young kid who called himself Hank, Junior, first appeared on the charts. There are those who worship Hank, Jr.; one of those people is not me. The fanatics are unaware of his early recording history ~ not me. But I digress.

You know that Ray Price holds a special place in my heart, and he had three hits in the top 100 in '66. Here's one:



Then there was this new girl singer:



1967 is where I come in, which is a weird time to show up, considering that the charts were dominated by yucky Jimmy Webb songs and pseudo-folk protest tracks like Skip A Rope. The first country albums I bought were by Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, and Charley Pride. Even at age twelve I had good taste.







Here's a bonus:





By 1968 Merle was a superstar, Glen Campbell was still churning out pop hits, Tammy had the hit that would define her career. Johnny Cash had a network TV show.

I've been trying not to repeat artists, but this particular hit has special meaning to me ~ not because I was in prison or anything ~ but because this was a hit the year I actually "met" Merle Haggard:



Just because live performance videos of David Houston are infinitesimal doesn't mean he wasn't huge in the sixties, because he was ~ I was there. It bothers me that simply because an artist died years ago, we tend to erase them from history. I would feature one of Houston's hits, but I can't find them. This phenomenon also applies to Wynn Stewart, who, if you don't believe me, none other than Dwight Yoakam cites as one of his early influences. Here he is, with none other than Don Rich:



Something interesting happened in 1968 ~ a rock 'n roll icon decided he wanted to go country. And if you know anything about Jerry Lee Lewis, you know he does exactly what he wants. I love Jerry Lee:



This new duo showed up in 1968, featuring a girl singer with impossibly high blonde hair. I wonder whatever happened to her:



Lynn Anderson was more (much more) than Rose Garden, a song I came to truly hate after hearing it on the radio one bazillion times. Lynn is another somebody who should not be forgotten. Before her then-husband got his hooks into her and moved her to Columbia Records, she was truly country, and her Chart albums prove it. Here is a hit from '68:



No disrespect to Merle, but this is the best song that came out of 1968. On the rare instances when I hear it on Willie's Roadhouse, I am right there croaking along (he sings higher than I can). Johnny Bush:



1969 was Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. And Merle. You might not know that there were others, and there definitely were. Faron Young was my favorite country singer for years, until George Strait showed up. And speaking of sing-along country songs, well, here you go:



Maybe it was my pop roots peeking through, but I played the hell out of this '45, recorded by a former member of Paul Revere and the Raiders and written by Joe South (curse you, Joe, for Rose Garden).

Freddy Weller:



Yea, the sixties ~ that decade became imprinted on my musical mind and never left. Maybe it was my age; maybe it was simply that country was so good; so pure. So new? The sixties were a renaissance. The nineteen eighties were an epiphany, but they couldn't have happened without the sixties.

And so the river flows...




Friday, May 18, 2018

Happy Bir....

(To my friend, "Your Name Here")

My birthday isn't until tomorrow, but I'm choosing to celebrate it tonight. 

When I was a kid, I considered the year 2000 and thought, wow, I'll be forty-five! Essentially on my death bed! The good news is, it's 2018 and I'm still kickin'. And I know now that forty-five is nothing. When I was forty-five, gravity was still averted. You know that picture you run across from 1945 in the ragged family photo album and you think, really? That's my mom? Turns out that, yes, we all were young and dewy-skinned once. I don't look like myself anymore, but I'm so used to my countenance in the morning mirror that I don't give it a second thought. It's only when I (accidentally) see a photograph of myself that I realize some grievous calamity has apparently occurred.

I've given up on regaining my lost figure. It just doesn't work anymore. I'm not going to become one of those delusional fitness fanatics. I've never exercised more than ten days in my life and I'm not about to start now. Plus, I deserve to eat.

The thing about turning 63 is that I spend more time looking back than forward. I mostly choose to remember the good things. It's not that I've forgotten the bad. I can conjure up those memories in a snap if I choose to, but when I do, I tend to view them philosophically, like a neutral bystander. Humans do the best they can do with what they have. I don't hold it against my parents for what they did. They didn't damage me on purpose. 

Today I received some birthday wishes from my co-workers. My best work friend Barb brought me a single-serve DQ cake. It was awesome. The cake had a cobalt-blue plastic butterfly ring atop it and I slipped it on my finger and wore it throughout the day. Everyone I encountered chose to ignore the humongous butterfly encircling my finger; sure (no doubt) that I'd made an unfortunate fashion choice. That made me giggle. A boy (really) that I trained four years ago asked me about my birthday plans and we got to talking about retirement. I told him that 2020 is the year. He said, "It won't be any fun here without you." I didn't realize I was still "fun". I used to be fun back in 1997, when I commanded a department at Aetna (US Healthcare), but I essentially just feel tired now and don't have the energy to be engaging. How lame must everyone else be, that I am regarded as the "fun" one?

I blame (or credit) Sirius Radio with my current state of look-back. Every single song I click on evokes memories. I hover between classic country and sixties and seventies rock; and sometimes fifties rockabilly. Some of the songs make me cry, for reasons only known to me. My best friend died in 2000 (when she was only forty-five). The songs we shared together are bittersweet. I almost feel embarrassed to still love those songs, because Alice is gone and she and I can't share them. 

When I hear John Lennon's voice, my heart breaks a little. John was my education in "real" music, beginning when I was nine years old or so. 

I don't "sum up" when it comes to music. Songs are quicksilver. Songs are not dissectable, like some scientific experiment. Anyone who slices and dices music is not a music lover. I love a song by the Honeycombs and one by Tommy James, and one by Steve Wariner and "God Bless The USA" by Lee Greenwood just because. I like Boston and Gene Pitney and Bobby Bare and Dobie Gray. Nobody needs to know why. 










Happy Birthday to me.










Saturday, February 24, 2018

Life In 1964 ~ With Music!


It occurred to me that 1964 is akin to the nineteenth century to many people. To me it's my childhood, albeit somewhat hazy by now. My mind flashes on scenes, but they sort of run together. My "fun adventure" possibly lasted no more than six months, but my brain squeezes it into approximately one week.

My regular life wasn't what one would call exciting. I rode the orange bus two times a day and in between I endeavored to grasp knowledge inside my third grade classroom. Granted, third grade was my favorite grade. My teacher, Mrs. Thomlinson, abetted my natural show-off tendencies. I was a third grade star. Then came summer vacation and I tried to find adventures, but living in the country demanded that I engage my imagination in order to find things to do that didn't involve traipsing along a dirt road, riffling my outstretched hands across the tall wheat-heads. No wonder I made up little melodies and told myself stories. It was just me alone with the sapphire sky.

Then my Uncle Howard stepped in. He'd invested in a triple-threat business in a tiny town called Lisbon; a splotch of a village criss-crossed by Highways 27 and 32 in the southeastern sector of North Dakota.

This is it:


As you can see, it's now an Eagles Club. And smoke free? Ha! Not in 1964!

The establishment was called Triple Service - because it contained a bar, a restaurant, and a service station. One-stop drinking! The problem was, my uncle was a bachelor and he didn't exactly know how to cook. So he presented a proposal to my mom and my aunt. He'd pay them handsomely to alternate weeks functioning as fry cooks. My mom, scouring her checkbook, acceded. Farming was a credit business. One charged everything; gas, seed, groceries, clothes -- everything except ice cream cones -- and waited for a late fall certified check to grace the mailbox so the charge accounts could be settled up. 

Mom had two little kids and me. Luckily my big sister was eighteen and negligibly responsible, so Carole was tasked with minding the little ones while my dad harvested the wheat and potatoes, and Mom and I packed our pink Samsonite suitcases and crunched inside the Ford Galaxie and aimed it down Highway 81 toward Lisbon.

My Aunt Barbara had two kids roughly my age. The deal was that the three of us kids would reside in Lisbon, North Dakota, trading off "moms" every week. It wasn't at all strange, because we'd had sleepovers our whole lives, so Aunt Barbara was really my second mom. 

Living in an apartment attached to actual real life was an awesome experience. We could step outside our kitchen door and inside a tiny room stocked top to bottom with all manner of crystal liquor decanters. Next to that was a cavernous dance floor, hollow in the daytime hours, but slippery and shimmery when the klieg lights were flipped on.

The cafe itself was a parcel of cushiony booths and twirly stools straddling a long Formica counter. 

The Triple Service bar was dark and smoky, lit by lavender sconces, jam-packed on weekend nights, the glow of the Wurlitzer heating up the corner; smelly with whiskey/cigarette butts and hops in the bare-bulb light of day.

My cousins, Paul and Karen, and I, forged a new life inside Triple Service.

We'd formed a little trio, thanks to our accordion teacher back home. Paul manned the accordion, Karen strummed a guitar, and I burnished the snare drum, brushes in hand. We had costumes and everything -- white-fringed felt skirts and western shirts and boots. I don't remember if there were hats -- possibly only neckerchiefs. Rules prohibited us from actually entering the bar area (when it was open), so we set up in the "triple" area of Triple Service, abutting the service station counter, and put on a show. Our big number was "Bye Bye Love". It's a funny thing about men who'd imbibed -- they turn into philanthropists. We raked in dollars and quarters and nickels from patrons who exited the bar through the service station door.

We became jaded, as neuveau-riche people do; and stuffed our glass piggy banks with coin and greenbacks, until we made that Saturday expedition to F.W Woolworth's to stuff our pockets and plastic purses with candy necklaces and molded Beatle figurines.

The only hitch in our (at least my) resplendent lives was the fact that our mothers had enrolled us in Catholic school. For my cousins, who were used to it, this was de riguer. For me, a dedicated public school girl, it was cataclysmic. My new fourth grade teacher was a nun! Nuns were evil, my catechism experience had taught me. Evil and sadistic. However, this teacher was semi-youthful and frightfully timid, so I settled in. The curriculum, however, was predicated on 1963 topics, and this was 1964! So, I was bored because I'd already learned all this stuff, and I hated my new school, because I didn't like new people. I wasn't what you'd call "easy to get to know". I'd always had a best friend back home, and it hadn't been easy choosing that honor. Best friends had to meet exacting standards. Karen, on the other hand, always had a group of friends, so the pressure on her was less. She adapted to our new school the very first day. I was miserable for at least a month.

And the nuns at the school, especially the "Head Nun" (sorry; I am not up on Catholic school lingo), heartily disapproved of our living arrangement. "Oh, you live at the place," she would comment. Yes, Sister Denunciatory, we lived at a bar. B-A-R. That sin-soaked den of people enjoying life. Scandalous!

Uncle Howard had a plaque affixed to Triple Service's wall that read:

There's no place anywhere near this place
Quite like this place
So this must be the place

I guess Mother Condemnation was right after all.

Kids being kids, we found all manner of off-duty pursuits, most of them stupid. Karen and I climbed up on the roof and perched between the big red letters that spelled out T-RI-P-L-E S-E-R-V-I-C-E and serenaded the guys who'd pulled up to the gas pumps below. "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" was our favored choice. Paul, Karen and I hid in the liquor room, which was right off the cavernous dance floor and did stupid things, like slide ice cubes across the linoleum. Paul, one night, captured a frog outside, and released it to hop across the floor. Essentially, we were scientists -- we just wanted to find out what would happen.

The juke box was Karen's and my tether. We inspected the white and red title strips and gleaned our musical education from Uncle Howard's ten-cent singles and fifty-cent album showcases. She and I created a comic book, the premise of which was, what happens to musical artists when they get old. That juke box really assisted our creativity. I do remember that Bobby Bare was a bear. Bent Fabric was shaped like -- well, I guess you can figure that one out. Uncle Howard passed our creation among his patrons and they loved it. We got orders for more, which we had priced at twenty-five cents each; but you know how it is with designing something -- once you've done it, it becomes monotony the second or third time. We made a half-hearted effort to produce more copies, but finally drifted away and into more interesting endeavors.

So, what did we glean from Uncle Howard's juke box? Bear in mind that Uncle Howard's clientele didn't go for that rock 'n roll "noise", so his musical choices were relatively sedate.

This was the hottest, I meant hottest, new act of 1964:




 Here's that "Bent Fabric" guy:


Little Millie Small:



One can never, ever forget Bobby Bare (who is not, in reality, a bear):


My dad liked this song; therefore, I, too, like it:



Dean Martin:



A gal named Gale Garnett:


Believe it or not, this was huge in '64. Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz (I guess):




Karen's and my seminal number:


Roger Miller again:



There was no one, however, who dominated country music in 1964 like Buck Owens dominated. Buck Owens was everything. I wasn't even a country-western fan (I was a Roy Orbison fan), but all I knew about country music revolved around Buck Owens.




The couples who stepped onto Uncle Howard's dance floor on Saturday nights contented themselves with Ernest Tubb covers played by a bolo-tie-clad trio of local musicians.We, in the liquor supply room, listlessly tapped our feet to the thump-thumping bass guitar. Had Buck Owens suddenly made an appearance, especially with Don Rich and the guys, it would have been like Uncle Howard's juke box come to life.





Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Mel Tillis


The guys who write obituaries for newspapers are probably around thirty or so. Maybe forty at the most. Everyone knows that companies are in the midst of showing baby boomers the door. That leaves a gap when it comes to writing about someone's life, because these young guys (and/or girls) don't have a clue who Mel Tillis was. It makes me mad when I realize that an obituary consists of bits gleaned from Wikipedia. A life should mean more than that. Especially Mel Tillis's.

Country music would have been so much less if Mel Tillis hadn't come along.

When I first became involved with country music, I didn't know Mel Tillis. I might have seen "M. Tillis" in parentheses beneath the song title on a '45 single, but at that time, I only cared about who sang the song. Granted, I was only around thirteen, so I was as shallow as a...well, thirteen-year-old.

I didn't even know that the title song of my all-time favorite album (because it was Dad's all-time favorite album) was written by this Mel Tillis guy. Dad bought the LP in 1965, when I was still engrossed in the orange and yellow Capital '45's released by this group called "The Beatles".

Sorry, apparently they didn't make videos in 1965, but this is still awesome:




Seeing as how I was a remedial country music student, once my best friend Alice began schooling me in the ways of (good) country music, I caught up with this next song. Alice also was the person who taught me how to play (chord) guitar (I never actually learned how to "play"), and she taught me the intro to this song. 

Detroit City was released in 1963, and while I didn't listen to country music then, one could not help but be exposed to it, because the radio stations played an eclectic mix of musical styles. My cousin and I created a comic book about "singers when they get old". Bobby Bare was one of our subjects, but in our version he was an actual bear. Our comic was a huge hit among my Uncle Howard's bar crowd. Orders rolled in, but unfortunately we would have had to recreate the whole thing by hand over and over, so we sacrificed the big bucks (twenty-five cents) we could have made from the venture, essentially because we were lazy. 

Around 1967 Alice and I were excited to see Bobby Bare in person, but thanks to a freak winter fiasco, we never got to. We ended up going back to her house and watching the local TV broadcast of Bobby's performance. 

A lot of my musical history is tied up in Detroit City, and it was all thanks to Mel Tillis:


The very first song I ever wrote went like this:

1967, you taught me how to play
All those Merle Haggard songs
Man, he had a way
And the intro to Detroit City
I remember it today
You were my hero then
You still are today

So, again, it all started with Mel.

Much like I traveled back in time to capture songs like "City Lights", I didn't quite catch that Mel had written this hit song from 1957. Was Mel around forever? 

I never understood why this guy named Webb Pierce was considered the Hank Williams of the fifties. Pierce didn't even write his own songs! And he was rather an awful singer, but apparently the "nasal" sound worked for him. In the fifties, who was the competition? Pat Boone? The only thing I know about Webb Pierce is that he had a guitar-shaped swimming pool and he was a renowned asshole. Regardless, Mel Tillis wrote this song and Webb should have thanked him for it, but apparently that wasn't Pierce's modus operandi:



More my style was this single released in 1967:


And seriously, all this time, I had no idea that a guy named "Mel" had written these songs.

So, when did I become aware of this Mel Tillis guy? In the mid-sixties, I began hearing songs on the radio by someone who had a different sort of voice. He was no Ray Price. He sang like the words were stuck in his gullet. I was judgmental. The songs were good, but I was perplexed by the singer.


Eventually, as more of this guy's recordings got played by the DJ's, I became used to him.

In 1970, I got hooked. This is one of my favorite recordings ever.



 In the mid-seventies, Mel's career took off. He was still writing songs and still writing hit songs, like:


By then, I'd bought his live album, and it was hilarious. I never knew that Mel Tillis stuttered! Of course, if you read the various obituaries, that's practically all that is written about him.

Yea, Mel Tillis was funny. And Clint Eastwood and all the Hollywood set loved him. 

This might have been from a Clint movie, or maybe not, but I think it was:



This one, I'm pretty much convinced is from a Clint movie:




Here's one more (Mel did it better):



I'm going to guess that the most famous song Mel Tillis ever wrote was this next one. It would have been nice if Kenny Rogers had tweeted a few words and had thanked Mel for his career, but whatever. I'm not going to judge the propriety or impropriety of not acknowledging.




Mel Tillis was with me all my life and I didn't even know it. I didn't know that Mel was wrapped up in my musical belonging. 

Pay it forward, they say.

Mel paid a lot of artists' ways.

Mel Tillis is wrapped up in my musical memories. Ir's not everyone who can encompass a person's life. I wanna cry just thinking about him. And I truly miss him.

Thank you, Mel Tillis, for things I didn't even know you taught me.
















Friday, June 2, 2017

Revisiting Music Before My Time - Top Hits of 1963


It's not that 1963 was technically before my time. I mean, I was alive. But I had very little cognizance of music at that time. Really, it was only later that I caught up with '63's top hits.

The sixties was an odd time in music. The decade could be cut into thirds. One part schlocky, one part innovative, and another part angry and angsty.  Just like with country music, in the early sixties record producers were not convinced that "roots" music was acceptable, so they proceeded to ruin it, mostly by adding strings and background chorals. By roots music, I mean Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly. By "ruin it", think Elvis Presley.

The advantage to catching up with a year's music after the fact is that one doesn't have recurring nightmares of the world's worst songs blaring through their transistor's speaker. We can separate the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately, when I peer at Billboard's Top 100 list for the year, the flashbacks wash over me. My sister graduated from high school in 1963, so I was exposed to her favorite tunes, not only on the radio, but during Saturday afternoon's broadcast of American Bandstand, where all the girls wore wide skirts, mohair sweaters and "flats"; and the boys were decked out in sports coats, skinny ties and ducktail hairdo's (it was a much more formal time, I'm assuming).

The number one record of 1963 was this:



I've tried to put my finger on why this song reeks. Some things are hard to describe, so let me just say I find this to be "icky". Maybe it's the misplaced flute flourishes. Maybe it's the fact that Jimmy, while singing about "getting back to that girl", in fact sounds like a girl himself. No offense.

Nevertheless, I'd listen to Sugar Shack all day, given the choice between that and the number two record of the year. Let me tell you why this track is so hateful:  Well, at age eight, I couldn't understand why Bobby Vinton was so obsessed with the material of the dress his girlfriend wore. I still can't, really. It's rather creepy -- his fabric fetish. It seemed to me that he missed the dress more than the girl.


The number three single of the year was better, but it did contain a recitation, which was another big trend at that time. Shoot, Jimmy Dean made a whole career out of recitations (think "Big Bad John"). This was an odd producer choice. So, the song isn't good enough "sung", so let's talk it! Recitations had their heyday in the early sixties and soon fell out of favor, when singers realized they were expected to sing. The number three song brings to mind my other sister, who was a titch older than my American Bandstand-loving sibling. I don't have a lot of memories of my oldest sister from that time, because she graduated from high school, moved out, and promptly got herself married. I do remember that she liked this song, though:


I suddenly had a flashback regarding this next song. I remembering corralling two school friends and lip-syncing to this song in front of my third grade class. It must have been show-off -- I mean show and tell day. I did lots of outlandish things before I finally realized I was a real pain in the ass. 

This song is most remembered for the fact that George Harrison cribbed it for "My Sweet Lord". In George's defense, however, so many songs could be composed from those first three notes. 


Girl singers were all the rage in 1963. Alas, it was a different time, in that, record heads felt the need to ascribe adjectives to their singers. Thus, "Little" Peggy March:



I don't know how "little" she is. Hang on -- okay, four foot ten. That is little -- speaking from one who is apparently semi-little at five foot one and one-half. 

Speaking of girl singers, who would today be referred to as "singers", this next song played a seminal role in my ascension to "singing wanna-be", because I loved it so much and I perched atop our picnic table in the backyard and sang my lungs out along to:




Before I get too far into 1963, I want to make sure I include this next song. In my two-second research, I learned that this is a traditional folk song. Thus, I imagine it was recorded by many artists. However, none could do it better than Bobby Bare. Some songs are timeless and this is one:


And, aside from the Sugar Shacks and fabric-obsessives, there were a few truly innovative artists who scored hits in 1963. If you were to ask me who the best singer of all time is, I am pretty sure I'd need to go with this next one. My older brother had an LP of this artist's greatest hits, recorded on Monument Records, that I wore out when my brother wasn't around (I was not allowed to touch his albums; little did he know). This is what music does at its best -- it makes your heart soar to the heavens. I endeavor to include videos from the time they were fresh, but I make an exception for this one, because one needs to hear it in all its glory:


I've really, really tried to like Elvis Presley. I guess it's like a kid today who seriously wants to like the Beatles, but just can't (although that's not a fair comparison). My memory of Elvis is Sunday afternoon movies that mostly involved sports car driving and/or scuba diving with a song thrown in now and then for good measure. Elvis could have been better than he was, but he was mismanaged. Someone needed to tell him to cut back on the booming baritone, which sounded clownish. It's not that Elvis wasn't a good singer, but he was drowning in sub-par songs. I do understand how my older sisters came to revere hm, because there was most likely nobody like him at the time; certainly not foppish Jimmy Gilmer or Bobby Vinton. Maybe Elvis was too faux-dramatic for my tastes. It's like the way someone is supposed to sing to signal the world that they're a great singer, when they just need to relax and be themselves.

By 1963, Elvis's best days were already behind him, sadly. But my best friend and I dutifully paid our twenty-five cents to see his movies on Sunday afternoons, and this one is semi-okay (I believe it is from "Clambake"):





Truth be told, I took a lot of my musical cues from my dad. Of course, I was nine years old. Anything my dad liked, I liked. Looking back, my dad's taste in music tended toward catchy lines and/or catchy melodies. I have a fuzzy memory of skipping down the street, singing this song:


This next song is more of a 1964 memory than a 1963. Novelty songs were HUGE at that time. By 1964 I was living at Triple Service with my cousins. Triple Service was situated in a tiny town that had nothing in its favor. My mom had enrolled me in the local Catholic school, which was an ill fit. A really tight fit. I had long had a bias against nuns, with justification. After-school time was my freedom. My cousin Karen and I climbed to the roof and perched between the red wooden letters that spelled out T-R-I-P-L-E S-E-R-V-I-C-E and serenaded unsuspecting patrons with this song (sorry, no live video, but that's probably for the best):




It's not that 1963 wasn't a harbinger of things to come. We had the Four Season, who apparently have no live videos on YouTube, and we had the Beach Boys just coming on the scene. Too, we had Sam Cooke (no live videos, but kudos to the person who created this for their creativity):




Dion hadn't become all maudlin with Abraham, Martin, and John, and was still doing songs that we needed to dance to:




1963 was getting ready for 1964, when all heck would break loose.  Nobody knew in 1963 that the musical world was about to spin off its axis. We were still pining for velvet and traipsing down to the Sugar Shack. 

But oh boy...

































Tuesday, November 26, 2013

2013 CMA Awards





Isn't video great? One no longer needs to slog through a boring awards show to get to the good parts. The good parts come neatly packaged on YouTube for the discerning viewer's enjoyment.

I don't even know half of the acts who performed or were nominated for the 2013 CMA awards, which is one of the reasons why I determined not to watch the telecast. Country music has passed me by, and I'm okay with that. I've accepted it now.

I will say, though, that a little history never hurt anybody. Of course, the 2013 awards offered very "little" history, unless you count the one-second wave from Hall of Fame inductee Bobby Bare, who was situated somewhere deep in the audience. At least they didn't shuttle him up to the balcony somewhere. Be grateful for small favors.

I am, believe it or not, well aware of Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood. Carrie, because I did use to watch American Idol, and I was pulling for her all the way in whatever year that was. She was up against some retro-seventies guy who no one has ever heard from since, so there was very little contest, to be honest. I do remember, though, Simon telling Carrie that she needed to acquire a personality. Seems like she did:



Ahh, I love a good Obamacare joke - can't help it. It makes my heart glad.

I did try to watch a lot of the CMA performances. I thought, well, hell, maybe I'm missing out on somebody good, so I gave everybody a fair chance - if "fair chance" means ten to twenty seconds. I have the knack of making up my mind really quickly. Sorry, kids. None of you made the cut.

Unaware as I am, I had no idea that the CMA's actually featured a tribute to a guy nobody under age fifty has ever heard of - George Jones. See, back when country music was square, in a square Bobby Bare sort of way, George Jones was a big star. Some country music artists call him the "the voice". Of course, that was back when country music was country music, and not sort-of-but-actually-not-really-country music.

Nevertheless, it afforded me the opportunity to see the last of the country artists who still, somehow, manage to chart (for now), George Strait ("my" voice) and Alan Jackson (who sounds eerily like George; not saying he's emulated him or anything, but c'mon).

When George and Alan disappear from the scene, who'd going to be the standard-bearer for country music? Rascal Flatts (cough)?

Thus, I enjoyed this performance a lot, even though the cameraman was utterly befuddled, but that's okay. I knew who was singing what:




Sorry I somehow pasted this twice, and I can't seem to delete one, so choose whichever one you want, or better yet, watch it twice. It's worth it.



Unlike Bobby Bare, the other Hall of Fame inductee certainly got his moment in the sun. I'm speaking of Kenny Rogers, of course.

I will give Kenny this, though: he recorded a bunch of readily sung-along songs, and I actually enjoyed this a lot. But I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Don't know why Dolly wasn't there, but I'm not gonna quibble.



You might guess that the highlight of the evening for me was the Entertainer of the Year announcement.

Sure, I know why they gave it to George. He's quitting touring, you know. It was now or never.

I've read people's comments, carping that George isn't really an entertainer. Well, I was lucky enough to see him in concert. If your idea of entertainment is Lady Gaga-type choreography, then no.

If you like seeing somebody sing a song like it's supposed to be sung, then yea - George Strait is an entertainer.

Couldn't have happened to a better guy. I'm thrilled that it happened for George, and for me, before we both ride off into the sunset.



So, you see, while I didn't watch the awards live, I will concede that four pretty good things happened during the telecast.

I'm just glad that YouTube let me see them.

I'm thinking 2013 was my last chance.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Bobby Bare Inducted into Hall of Fame ~ Thanks to Me!

(Don't let the alien-creature eyes on the right scare you!!)



I'm being (semi) facetious, really.

However, the fact remains that I have been lobbying for Bobby Bare since 2007.  If you don't believe me, check this post.

And this post.

And this post

And this post.

And this post.

Therefore, I was stunned when I read the news this week that Bobby has been named one of the three Country Music Hall of Fame inductees.  He was elected in the Veterans category (you think?)

But let's start at the beginning.  Speaking of veterans, "Cowboy" Jack Clement was a producer and engineer at Sun Records in Memphis, when he discovered this guy:


Jack also worked with the other big three at Sun:  Johnny, Roy, and Carl; and he wrote this song for Johnny:


Later, Jack moved to RCA in Nashville, and produced a bunch of hit records for artists such as Bobby Bare, Charley Pride, and Waylon Jennings; and wrote more hits too, such as:


This is my favorite song written by Jack Clement:



That video brings back happy memories.  I remember watching the Porter Wagoner Show on Saturday afternoons, and liking his new unknown girl singer a lot.

Kenny Rogers ~ what can one say?  If one was alive in the nineteen seventies, she knows Kenny Rogers.  His wild popularity in that decade cannot be underestimated.  He was the singer of the decade.  Kenny started out as a rock singer, with a group called the First Edition.  They played on all the network variety shows in the sixties:  Ed; the Smothers Brothers...I don't know ~ Laugh-In?  Maybe not Laugh-In; but you couldn't turn on your TV and not see this group singing, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)".  Kids would basically buy any song whose title was slapped across the label of a 45 record back then.

Kenny had his big breakout moment when the group, now called Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, released this single (written by Mel Tillis):


You probably can't tell from the video, because Kenny is wearing giant wire-rims, but his eyes actually looked humanoid during this period.

Well, it wasn't long after that Kenny struck out on his own, now having earned some unsought country music cred.  Thus, the First Edition was cast to the winds; I'm guessing never to be heard from again. 

Before Kenny eventually shed his cloak of faux-country authenticity, he was lucky enough to record two songs which shall live in...well, not "infamy".  The opposite of infamy ~ "famy"?

These songs were:


Without a doubt, "Lucille" is a catchy song; an earworm, if you will.  Not a lot of three-quarter-time songs are written, which is a shame, because that rhythm pattern is indigenous to human beings; it is akin to being rocked in the cradle as a baby.  My only quibble with the song is that it takes too long to get to the chorus ~ too much setup.  It should have been shortened; compacted.  I bet people turned the dial the first couple of times they heard it.  "Too boring", they no doubt said to themselves.  It was only after hearing the chorus one day (when they were not in control of the radio knob) that people said, Hey!  This is good!  And, on the plus side, I can sing along with it!  Ta-DA!  A hit.

Kenny's next cyclonic hit was an inferior song; but still catchy ~ again, because of the chorus.  How many people, even today, utter the words (in some random situation), "You gotta know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em"?  Well, there you go!

Kenny went on to record hits by such country luminaries as Lionel Ritchie. 

I saw Kenny in concert once in the seventies.  Granted, he was a teeny, tiny speck, but I can still say I saw him.  I was on vacation with my mom and dad and my two little boys, and we discovered that Kenny was in town for a concert at the town's cavernous auditorium.  We managed to snag tickets in the very top row.  Kenny was a good entertainer.  Oh, he was no Marty Robbins, but he still put on a good show.

I don't remember if he performed this song during the concert, but it is my favorite Kenny Rogers record.  The only performance video available is one in which he incomprehensibly ratchets up the tempo, which basically ruins the song; so I decided to go with this static photo and the song performed in its original (good) version:
  

Naturally, I cannot leave the topic of Kenny Rogers without acknowledging this 1983 hit, written by the renowned country songwriter, Barry Gibb; and recorded as a duet with that unknown girl singer from the Porter Wagoner Show.  

Let me just say, here and now, that if you had a radio in 1983, you couldn't outrun this song.  Every freakin' time I got in my car to drive somewhere, this song was playing.  It got far more radio play than the song warranted.  Yes, yes, it was catchy....the first million times I heard it.  Then it just got annoying as all hell.  AND it made no sense; but why should I quibble?

Here ya go, and don't say I didn't warn you:


Congrats, Kenny.  Can't say you didn't earn it.

Bobby Bare

Why have I thought, since forever, that Bobby Bare deserved to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame?

I don't know that it's anything I can put my finger on, exactly.  Bobby sort of seeped into my consciousness, like a shadow in the night.  I always knew he was there.  I even bought his first greatest hits album (on RCA) back when I was a pre-adult.  He was even there when I was a nine-year-old kid, and was creating my famous comic book with my cousin, which you would have to read about in my book (ha ~ snuck another plug in there, didn't I?) 

I guess it just struck me one day that, wow, Bobby Bare has recorded a bunch of great songs!  And why hasn't anyone formally recognized that?

In doing a (trust me, condensed) retrospective of Bobby's career, this blurb struck me as funny, and sort of typical of Bobby's life and the humor with which he's conducted his career:

Bobby also had a hit in the pop field, "The All-American Boy," released under the name Bill Parsons. He was drafted before he could tour with the hit, and the record label hired another singer to be Bill Parsons and cash in on its success. 

Let's go back a (long) ways, shall we?  To the early nineteen sixties:
And on..... 


And, well, you knew this one was coming (another song written by Mel Tillis ~ I guess both Bobby and Kenny Rogers can basically thank Mel Tillis for their careers)...

Bobby left RCA in 1970 and went to Mercury Records, where he had some monstrous hits, like:

And this (sorry, no performance video):

Both of the above songs were written by a little-known songwriter named Kris Kristofferson.  Did I mention that Bobby was a wiz at discovering new, great talent?

Bobby tripped on back to RCA in 1973; long enough to record this song, which merits a chapter all it own in Rich Farmers (I only write about the important stuff, you know):

And, just for fun, he also recorded this song on RCA (and it's fun ~ c'mon!):


Wikipedia says this about Bobby Bare:

In nearly 50 years of making music, he has made many firsts in country music. Bare is credited for introducing Waylon Jennings to RCA. He is also one of the first to record from many well- known song writers such as Jack Clement, Harlan Howard, Billy Joe Shaver, Mickey Newbury, Tom T. Hall, Shel Silverstein...and Kris Kristofferson.
Deserving?

More like "way overdue deserving". 

I want to say, thanks, Bobby Bare, for almost fifty years of great music.

And, I'm sure if Bobby knew me, he would thank me, too, for getting him inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

It's the least I could do, really.  After all, he hung in there with me for practically my entire life.