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

 

Part 2 ~ Generic Country

My recent dive into Today's Country Hits was at once enlightening and depressing. Discounting the revelation that the songs are bad (bad!), the singers are utterly forgetful.

Music (and artists) are machine-molded. Some cigar-chomping industrial mogul is getting richer by the day churning out these plastic widgets. "Son, it's not about perpetuity; it's all disposable, boy; and the rubes'll keep coming back for more! Hardy-har-har! (cough)"

Granted, I haven't listened to today's country enough to be able to distinguish one bland artist from another, but even if I did, could I? Two days ago I sampled the current top ten tracks and today I would disgracefully bomb the pop quiz. 

I'm a crafter, which means I follow a pattern; but even I switch things up now and then. I like to put my own stamp on my creations. Today's acts, however, seem content following the dots ~ fake southern twang in just the right places, pickup trucks in verse one; one, count 'em, one fiddle riff heavily enveloped by EDM beats.

These guys are not artists; they're products.

I like listening to Willie's Roadhouse on SiriusXM. I'm not completely on board with all the tracks. Some are even before my ancient times; but I certainly know the artists when I hear them; like 'em or loathe 'em. Few of the singers featured on the channel can be confused with someone else. The instant I hear Tanya, Hank, Faron, Webb, Paycheck, Price, Buck, MERLE, even Jack Greene and Bill Anderson, I know who's singing. And each of them had their individual niche. One can't compare a Haggard song to a Ray Price track.  I can even distinguish a Nashville Sound (Atkins) recording from a Bakersfield production (Nelson).

Singers were who they were and each was his own man (or woman).

The lure of country was discovering a new artist who was different or an intriguing sound. Even in the eighties, individualism reigned: Strait, Travis, Yoakam, The Judds, Black. Today's goal seems to be "sound like everybody else". This is not a prescription for legend status. But maybe that's not the goal. "Who wants to be a legend? I want my money now!"

You want a song you can dance to, even in a roadside honky tonk that you ducked inside to get out of the rain?



Good luck, millennial hipsters. Nobody's ever gonna punch your songs up on the juke box.

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...

1968 ~ Caught Between Two Musical Worlds

I was thirteen in 1968, transitioning between seventh and eighth grades, which was kind of a dead zone, really. Long gone was the heady anticipation of graduating from elementary school, yet I had a million years to go (it seemed) to finally transition to the new high school building and be "grown up".

My junior high was probably one of the oldest buildings in my little town. Back in 1910 or so, it had served as the high school ~ black and white portraits of stern long-ago high school principals adorned its sanitarium-grey walls. From the outside it resembled a prison.

And yes, this was our gymnasium (minus the fallen plaster, which would have been dangerous for playing dodge ball):

I had to take the city bus to get (almost) to school, because the school district had not yet established bus service all the way out to my home (in its defense, there were only seven kids who lived in my neighborhood). Last stop on the city bus route was the old Prince Hotel, which was one of those post-World War I hostels that featured tufted burgundy armchairs with gold buttons, as well as spittoons in its lobby; and housed derelicts and Spanish-American war veterans who from their vestibule repose liked to ogle adolescent girls; and its lone desk attendant was older than death and just as lively.

The school's dress code prohibited pants (for girls, I mean), and our dresses were audaciously short; so on minus twenty-degree winter mornings, I'd alight the city bus at the Terror Hotel and commence my six-block tramp along slippery sidewalks in my mini-dress, faux-rabbit coat, plastic knee-high snow boots and no hat (hats were for sissies), clutching my US history and earth science textbooks and three spiral notebooks.

All to frost-bittenly arrive at a place I didn't want to visit for six-plus hours, but an argument my parents (such as they were) were not of a mind to debate.

My only saving grace was that I had a best friend, albeit one who crazily loved country music (one has to take their best friends wherever they find them). A year or so before, I was grooving to The Rascals and Three Dog Night, and now here I was, taking a crash course in the idiosyncrasies of honky tonk.

By now I pretty much got it. I'd figured out who I liked (Merle, Waylon, Tammy) and who I didn't (Glen, Conway, Sonny James). I'd long known who Buck Owens was, but I also learned about new artists like David Houston and Dolly Parton.

Unfortunately, 1968 was a weird year in country music. The worst singles hit number one, while (now) classic songs languished far below on the charts.

My best friend Alice and I agreed that this song reeked. I've always hated political songs, especially those that preach (and which ones don't?) Our main objection to this single, however, was that it was barely country. That, and the fact that it was played on the radio all the time. "Stab 'em in the back, that's the name of the game" ~ we enjoyed making fun of that line. Plus the whole, "Daddy hates Mommy and Mommy hates Dad" really didn't need to flow out of my speaker. Unless my speaker was spewing my own personal reality.

And this song garnered way more fame than it deserved. Again, there are so many things to hate about this song, but the old standby, "overplayed" is number one. I never realized until I studied more of Tom T. Hall's songs that he rarely wrote choruses. Sure, he had refrains from time to time; but I think the absence of a chorus has caused his songs to not age well. Listeners like something they can latch onto. Most people who sing along to the radio mess up the verses comically, but they always land the chorus.

Great songs like this only reached #10. Marty Robbins was a conundrum ~ difficult to pigeonhole. On the one hand, he truly loved his western ballads, and on the other, he could be truly soulful. It seems Marty never once gave an insightful interview, so fans will never know why he wrote the songs he did, or if he even ever thought about it.

I came to appreciate this song later. At the time I frankly wanted twin fiddles and steel guitar.

And this was only number twelve? I won't get into the whole history of me and Merle and this song, but you can read it here. If I hadn't looked at the 1968 charts, I would have sworn this was the number one single of the year.

Twenty-one? Really? Tammy had appeared on the scene in 1967 and had many hit singles before alas, "Stand By Your Man" became both a phenomenon and a punchline in '68. In hindsight, one can pinpoint when a promising career began to stagger downhill, although it's not Tammy's fault that she wrote a song everyone latched onto. The same thing happened with Lynn Anderson, who I loved until "Rose Garden" vomited onto the scene.

Regardless, number twenty-one is good:

I found a new favorite singer in '68. I feel like whenever I post a Faron Young live performance, I have to apologize. Faron was a superb singer, but a real drag to watch live. I somehow convinced my dad to drive us up to the State Fair one year to see Faron in person. Dad, and surely Mom, didn't want to go, and sitting in the bleachers during his concert, I wanted to crawl under my seat and hide in embarrassment. It wasn't (I don't think) that Faron was tipsy; I just think he didn't give a damn about singing a song straight. Maybe he'd been around so long, he said, "screw it". But trust me, his live performances and his recordings were eons apart. Nobody was better in that era.

This single wasn't from 1968, but I think David Houston deserves a mention. Nobody remembers him now (well, I do), but David Houston was huge. Not only did he have many top solo singles throughout his career, but he recorded hit duets with both Tammy Wynette ("My Elusive Dreams") and a newcomer, Barbara Mandrell. In 1968 alone, he had four top one hundred songs. As life marched on, I sort of forgot about David Houston, until I learned he had died at age fifty-eight from a brain aneurysm. Houston is one of those artists that this blog is about, because some of us don't forget.

Country duos suddenly became a thing around 1967-1968. There had been duets before, but I don't think the CMA's had a category for Country Duo before these two folks got together  (before then it was "Vocal Group", which was rather awkward when only two people were involved). Then, suddenly, duets were everywhere. I remember hearing a song on the radio for the first time and saying, "I think that's Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty!" And thus duos were off and running. 

But it was these next two who dominated:

Here's another one of those forgotten artists ~ Wynn Stewart. Wynn was a pioneer in the Bakersfield Sound. Buck liked him; Dwight plays him on his "Bakersfield Beat" Sirius channel. I liked him, too, and my dad really liked him. Dad thought this next song was the bomb. It's not from '68, but Wynn had two top one hundred hits that year (and props to this video featuring the awesome Don Rich):

This is most likely my favorite song from 1968. Mom had shipped my little sister and me off to Texas to stay with my big sister while things were "disheveled" at home. I loved it there and didn't want to come back. We'd stay up 'til the early morning hours playing Scrabble, drinking Dr. Pepper, and listening to Bill Mack on WBAP. Johnny Bush was a newcomer and there was a lot of talk that he was trying to be the next Ray Price. I didn't care ~ I loved this song, and I still love Johnny Bush. Unfortunately, I can't find a decent live performance video, but here's the song in all its glory:

Overall, I wasn't too sad to leave my pop world behind ~ it was simply an adjustment. I liked the stability of having a friend with a semi-normal family, and I'd thrown my heart into country music. There was so much to discover ~ like traveling to a foreign country for the first time. In '67 I was still on the fence about music. By 1968, country had claimed me.

Music's Worth

If I'd been a rich little kid, I would have owned the world's greatest collection of 45 RPM singles.

As it was, ninety-nine cents was damn hard to come by. My mom refused to pay me for housework, of which I actually did none, but nevertheless. I had to depend on the generosity of my Uncle Arnold, who would flip me a nickel or dime once in a while when he was helping my dad repair machinery on the farm. It was hard to save these coins, however, because the creamery truck showed up once a week to deliver milk and butter, and those fudgsicles the deliveryman carried in the back were almost impossible to resist.

By age ten I begrudgingly agreed to "help out" around the house in exchange for a weekly salary of twenty-five cents. Thus I whipped some dust around with a rag and possibly dried dishes, although my memory is unreliable on this. (In my defense, I don't recall my older sisters helping out, either. They probably remember it differently, but I am correct on this. Mom never enforced chores; I think because if you want something done right, well, you know...)

Eventually I managed to save up a dollar and promptly traipsed off to Poppler's Music to choose one lone single. My decision was not easy. I really liked The Lovin' Spoonful and The Dave Clark Five, but I almost always came home with a Beatles single. Like this:

There were, of course, other ways to consume music; most often my way was by borrowing my big brother's singles and albums when he was away. I needn't actually purchase music, because my brother had everything; but there is something about owning, holding, admiring one's own personal records. 

Then there were birthdays. I always asked for singles. I knew about albums, of course, but I really wanted the hits. My brother did buy me albums for my birthdays. He bought me The Mamas and Papas and The Yardbirds. Those two albums were the sum total of my LP collection for years to come.

This was a single I asked my best friend for, for my eleventh birthday:

When we moved in late 1966, I got myself a real job (albeit still working for my parents) and my wages increased to seventy-five cents per hour. Since my dad was constantly getting sloshed and embarking on rambling road trips, and since Mom felt an obligation to follow and track him down, I was regularly left in charge of their motel. I was eleven-going-on-twelve, but hey, the money was good!

If Mom forgot to pay me, I dinged open the cash register and withdrew the wages I was due. Dahmer's Music was my new local record store. A couple of records I purchased with my hard-fought money:

I did buy albums, too, once a year, every September, for my brother's birthday. I owed him, after all. I only purchased Beatles albums for him. In my mind, I wanted him to continue his collection. He was married by then and didn't actually care that much.  I bought Sgt. Peppers and asked him later how he liked it. He said, "It's okay", which kind of hurt my feelings. Shoot, I wasn't rich and I'd only tried to pad his repertoire. But people, and life, move on.

Once my new best friend, Alice, introduced me to country music, I dove into it headlong. Dahmer's wasn't flush with country singles (or albums) and our local country station was firmly ensconced in the Top Forty. I did buy albums, but I was limited to the offerings racked in JC Penney's basement. Thus I made some unfortunate purchases. I bought a duet album by Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn that I listened to approximately two times. Penneys was into "old fashioned", which was not my taste, but they hardly cared. Who but a couple of thirteen-year-old geeks was browsing their bins anyway? Their basement was flush with matrons queuing up at the catalog counter to order damask draperies. Country albums were essentially worthless unless one zeroed in on greatest hits compilations, which I definitely did buy, when available.

Soon I took to listening to far-away country stations, WHO in Des Moines (which came in crystal-clearly after midnight) and sometimes WSM in Nashville on a cloudless night and WBAP in Fort Worth. Ralph Emery and Mike Hoyer and Bill Mack understood country music -- real country music -- and I heard wondrous songs that were never once spun on my local station. But I had nowhere to buy them.

The internet was still a woozy science fiction fantasy, and computers? You mean those gargantuan whirring, beeping cyclops they showed on Lost In Space? I had a manual typewriter.

In the wee hours of Saturday nights, when I was able to tune in to WSM, right after the Opry, there was a program broadcast from Ernest Tubb's Record Shop. I figured, well hell, that store surely must have every country record known to man. I found the address in an issue of Country Music Roundup magazine, and found my way to the post office to purchase a money order*.

*the way kids who had no checking account could buy things through the mail.

I wrote long letters to the shop, specifying exactly which singles I wanted -- "not the fifties version, but the current recording by Mel Tillis". I tucked my money order inside and crossed my fingers.

That's how I eventually and joyfully received this:

And this:

Also this:

When music was hard to get, it meant more. 

Today I have tons and tons of songs on my hard drive, plus racks of CD's; not to mention my cache of fifty-year-old albums. And I never listen to any of them. But I would still get an ache in my heart if I could drop the needle on those obscure singles I strived so hard to procure. 

It's a truism that the more hard-fought a victory, the more it matters. When I click my mouse on an Amazon mp3, okay, now I've got it. I've downloaded songs that I've never once listened to. On the other hand, I played "We Can Work It Out" on my monaural record player approximately five hundred and twenty-three times, until the phonograph needle dug trenches in the vinyl. 

There is really no discovery now. No "you've got to hear this". Everybody knows everything and music doesn't matter because it's easy.

I cherish the times when I was forced to seek out music. When it was a victory to secure it. 

Now? Ehh. It doesn't really matter.

Transitions ~ 1969 In Music

I "graduated" from junior high in May, 1969 and transitioned to Mandan Senior High that September. I was grown-up! Shoot, I was fourteen going on fifteen! On my way to freshman renown!

Richard Nixon had become president. I'd pissed off my dad by tacking my eighth grade history project (a campaign placard) up on the wall right outside the kitchen door ~ "This Time Vote Like The Whole World Depends On It ~ Nixon/Agnew". Dad was reliably perturbed and baffled. I think he literally scratched his head as he alighted the stoop. My work was done!

That summer odd things happened. Teddy Kennedy killed a girl and the Manson Family killed a bunch of people in gruesome ways. Woodstock happened and most people didn't give a shit. My best friend Alice and I went to the Mandan Theater and saw "Butch Cassidy" and "True Grit". We learned that Glen Campbell was a terrible actor and that Paul Newman still had the bluest eyes under the sun.

Oh yea, there was some kind of "moon landing" that summer. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday night, which was really bad scheduling. Plus the optics weren't good. It was hard to make out what exactly was going on. I did park myself in front of our console TV, and I think my dad was there, too. Maybe Dad was more impressed than I. I didn't grasp the enormity of the event, but I was fourteen. I was more excited anticipating the next "World of Beauty" kit that would land in my mailbox.

(I hope it has white lipstick!)

I'd abandoned rock and roll. But old habits died hard. I still had one foot in AM radio, but mostly, thanks to the influence of my new best friend, I became immersed in country music. 

I was still aware of certain '69 hits, like this:

And this song, over and over:

 

This was catchy:

I liked this one because I watched Hawaii Five-O every Thursday night at nine p.m. on CBS television (Book 'em. Danno):

But frankly, the number one song of the year was one my seven-year-old sister really liked, because it was a cartoon. This is where pop music was in '69, as much as one wants to wax nostalgic over "Get Back" and "Lay Lady Lay":

On the home front, life had settled into a routine. Dad was sober "sometimes";  Mom was a harpy, mostly. I retreated to the room I now shared with my adolescent sister and spun records on my (still) battery-operated turntable. 

TV was supreme. After all, that's where I basked in Hawaii Five-O and Medical Center, and that's where I found the Johnny Cash Show on ABC TV. 

1969 was Johnny's year. He was insidious. Johnny, with his black waistcoat and his Carters and Statlers and his Carl Perkins and Tennessee Three climbed inside one's brain matter and made himself at home.

But, try as he might, Johnny could never supersede the artist of the sixties, or basically of ever; Merle:

Glen Campbell had his Goodtime Hour on CBS. It was a summer replacement for that subversive Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. I was so oblivious I didn't know the Smothers Brothers were incendiary. We tended to overlook the political screeds, because they appeared nightly on the network news, and focused instead on the comedy. 

Glen Campbell, on the other hand, was an artist I despised. Fortuitously, I later came to my senses ~ but it wasn't entirely my fault. Glen played the hayseed role so well, he was one of the prime reasons I disavowed any familiarity with country music anytime I was pinned down about my musical tastes.

"Hi! I'm Glen Campbell!" he piped up through the cornfield. If it hadn't been for John Hartford, I would have clicked my TV dial to whatever medical drama was playing out on NBC. 

It didn't help that Glen insisted on recording Jimmy Webb songs, although this one, in retrospect, is not bad:

My musical tastes ran more towards:

As a (bogus) CMA member, I voted for this next song as Single of the Year. Freddy Weller had once been a member of Paul Revere and the Raiders, whose posters from Tiger Beat I had tacked to my bedroom wall. I didn't actually like Paul Revere and the Raiders, but I thought Mark Lindsay was cute, with his ponytail. 

This Joe South song didn't win, despite my best efforts. 

Nobody (but me) remembers Jack Greene, but he had the number one song and Single of the Year in 1967, with "There Goes My Everything". 

In 1969 he had an even better song (as Ricky Van Shelton can attest). 

Porter Wagoner actually had a career without Dolly Parton, believe it or not. Alice and I sat cross-legged in her living room and played this LP (and made up our own lyrics to the song (that are NSFW):

Transitions, yes. Confusion, yes. 

Music was my lifeline. And I was just trying to get by.

The 1960's in Country Music ~ When Everything Changed

People may have selective (or rather, "limited") memories about the nineteen sixties in country music.

I was there.

Let me tell you about the 1960's in country music.

First of all, everything EXPLODED.   Sure, it started out quite sedate and unobtrusive.  But even at the beginning of the decade, something was different.  The most obvious difference was that Nashville no longer had a stranglehold on country music.  No, a town called Bakersfield was making itself known, whether Chet Atkins liked it or not.

Nobody (mostly) remembers Wynn Stewart, but I bet Merle remembers him, because, aside from Lefty Frizzell, Merle sounded like no one more than Wynn, who also wrote one of Merle's first hits, "(Sing Me A) Sad Song".

The top hits of 1960 were the somnambulistic, "He'll Have To Go",  by Jim Reeves, of whom I never understood the attraction; frankly;  Even as a five-year-old, I recognized that this song was sort of "icky"; and it disturbed me.  

On the more righteous side, Ferlin Husky had a hit with "Wings of a Dove"..  

And, in a continuation of the nasally-voiced singers of the 1950's, Hank Locklin had a hit with "Please Help Me, I'm Fallin'".

But, frankly, not too many people cared about Jim Reeves, or even Ferlin; and if they recognized Hank Locklin at all, it was only for a minute.

No, it was Bakersfield that the true music lovers latched onto.  And here is Wynn Stewart, starting it all off:





1961 dropped a couple of monstrous hits on us.   

Willie, in essence, sold this song to the highest bidder.  And luckily, Faron Young was the winner of the lottery.

Willie's song was great, but if not for Faron's my-eye-eyen'd , the song would have been rather pedestrian.  Clever, sure.  But not heart-tugging.  Faron did that.



Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard (bow down before them) wrote this next song for Patsy Cline.

I don't know what can be said about Patsy Cline that hasn't already been said.  I say, just watch and listen:



Sure, 1962 may have been the year that Hank Snow created a hit with a song that I, in a fit of utter boredom, memorized the words to:



But let's face it:  1962 was Patsy's year.  

This song, naturally, is at the top of my list of the Twenty Best Country Songs of All Time.  And here's Willie again.  I bet he didn't auction off this song, and if he did, he was a blithering idiot.





1963 was rather ripe with country hits.  There was Ring of Fire, of course; written by June Carter and Merle Travis.  There was Abilene, recorded by a guy who deigned to call himself George Hamilton IV (the first time I learned about Roman numerals).  

There was this, and I dare you to not include it on your top twenty list:



I've decided to throw out my predetermined format and post a bunch of 1963 songs, because, speaking of ripe, 1963 in country music is the essence of ripe.  

Here is Skeeter Davis:



I had absolutely no idea who Ned Miller was; never even saw a picture of him; but my dad loved this song.  I'm guessing Ned was a recluse, which is fine, and completely acceptable to me.  Even if he was in his basement, recording this song on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, that doesn't negate the fact that this was a huge hit in 1963; and mostly, it doesn't negate the fact that Dad loved it:



Dave Dudley had a hit with a song that he had absolutely no idea would become an alt-country lover's guilty pleasure, when re-recorded by Steve Earle in the eighties.  No, Dave was an innocent traveling musician when he did this:



I could go on (and on and on and on) about the year 1963 in country music. I have no idea why everything went BLAM! that year.  But it did.

Be that as it may, 1963, for me, is represented by Bobby Bare (and Mel Tillis) with this (and thank you, my good friend Alice, for teaching me how to play this intro on my guitar):



I'm plum exhausted, and exhilarated, from enumerating just the first four years of the sixties, so I think it's time to take a breather.

1964 will come later (and I'm thinking there will be a whole lot of Buck Owens and a bunch of Loretta Lynn; but who knows?  I may surprise myself.) 

Recalling the nineteen sixties in country music is exhilarating for me.

Maybe you had to be there.

 













 

 


 




 

Yet More Great Country Artists from the Seventies ~ Faron Young

I don't know how I talked my dad into driving 100 miles to the State Fair to see Faron Young in concert.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen, I was barely even talking to my parents.  I was a sullen teenager with a giant chip on my shoulder.  I don't clearly remember those years, but I do remember being perpetually mad at my mom and dad for something they did, or something they didn't do, or just because.  They needn't have taken it personally, though.  I was mad at everything, including myself. 

Teenaged girls are the worst.  Maybe it's all those hormones.  I have sons.  My sons were nothing compared to me at the same age.  I don't know how my parents refrained from killing me.  I remember a lot of slamming doors (by me).  That was always a favorite.  Those hollow wooden doors would make just the right "crack!", with a delicious echo.  They were the punctuation on a sentence that I never uttered.

It's not that my parents did anything to me.  They just were.  They were perfectly fine people.  Although unreasonable.  At least my mom.  At least to me.  Then. 

But I must have managed to utter a sentence, at least, to my dad, which most likely contained the words, "please, please!" in it, because, you see, Faron Young, at one time, was my very favorite singer.

I don't even know why my dad agreed to the whole scheme, because, while he was a music lover, he never expressed any particular love of Faron Young's music, nor did my mom.  My mom and dad liked whatever they heard on the radio.  They weren't buying records in those days.  They listened to the radio in the car.

I, however, had my component stereo system, purchased at JC Penney, with my own earnings.  I don't think it was cheap, either.  I think it cost about $100.00.  Bear in mind, I was fifteen-ish, and this was the early 1970's.  $100.00 was a lot of moolah to me.

My "sound system" had those detachable speakers, that I could separate within the room space, for maximum sound quality.  It had a turntable.  It had AM/FM radio.  I also had a reel-to-reel tape recorder that I'd bought earlier for, I'll say, about $40.00, so I was constantly recording stuff off the radio, too.

I listened to WHO from Des Moines, Iowa, with Mike Hoyer, "from coast to coast, border to border, and then some".  I sometimes listened to Ralph Emery on WSM out of Nashville, when I could actually get the signal.  I listened to Bill Mack out of Fort Worth, Texas.  WBAP.

And I heard a lot of songs I liked by Faron Young.

Faron had a storied history in the music business.  He started out in the 1950's, on Capitol Records.  He was best friends with Hank Williams.  Faron's stories are legendary in Nashville.

Willie talked him into "Hello Walls" one night at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.  Faron thought it was corny.  He kidded Willie about "hello lamp, hello table", etc.  Willie and Faron, though, laughed all the way to the bank.  "Hello Walls" is likely the song that Faron will be remembered by.

By the late sixties, early seventies, Faron had moved on to Mercury Records.  He had a new producer, the renowned Jerry Kennedy.  And he had a bunch of great songs.

Do you know a bar band that hasn't done this song?



This song was written by Jeannie Seely:



Faron had been in a car accident shortly before he recorded this next song.  (Don't ask ~ okay, yea, there was drinking involved ~ there was always drinking involved with Faron Young).  He ended up with a lacerated tongue, and still had to go into the studio to record the song.  He joked about it later ~ saying that he sang the song like Sylvester the Cat.  And on the record, one can definitely hear him singing, "Thhep attthide".  But it's still great, regardleth:



There was a bit of Dean Martin in Faron.  And yet, his voice is unmistakably country.  I think a country voice is an intangible, but you know it when you hear it.  Faron was from Shreveport, Louisiana, after all.  It was hard to not sound country.   I don't think it was an affectation, and if it was, then everybody was copying Faron, considering he'd been around for a long while, but he sang his words much like Marty Robbins.  "To-noight" for "Tonight".  "Toime" for "time".



Faron also recorded a song by a young, unknown songwriter, named Kris Kristofferson.  Kris was sweeping floors, and writing songs, and getting nowhere.  People think Johnny Cash launched Kris's career.  I beg to differ:



Nobody, except Faron Young geeks, will remember "(I've Got) Precious Memories".  I, of course, am raising my hand, because, after all, that was the title of the album, and yes, I have it.  Some, however, may remember, "I Just Came To Get My Baby", mostly because George Strait covered it.  Yes, George Strait covered Faron Young.



I was not surprised to find that there is no performance video of my very, absolute favorite, Faron Young recording.   No, it wasn't a number one song.  It was a number four.  Maybe, I guess, other people didn't love it like I did, so that's why there is no YouTube performance video.

I remember the first time I heard the single.  Ralph Emery played it.  I swooned over it.  I just wanted to hear it again.  But, alas, this was AM radio.  It would come around again when it came around again.

Tom T. Hall wrote the song.  Tom ("no chorus") T. Hall.  For not writing a chorus, I think this was a damn good song.  Or, at least, it was, after Faron got hold of it:



Alas, my trip to the State Fair and to the Faron Young concert was sort of a letdown.

Faron, you see, was a drinker.  And I think (I'm conjecturing) that he was kind of bored.  So, his live performances were silly; a joke that nobody was in on.  He couldn't seem to get through a song without breaking out in the giggles.  That's all well and good, if you're Marty Robbins. I saw Marty Robbins in concert, and while he was semi-silly, he made sure to include the audience in the joke.  Faron didn't. 

So, I went home in the back seat of the car, sort of embarrassed that I'd cajoled my dad into driving all those miles; knowing that he and my mom were thinking, well, this was time well wasted.

I went back to my Faron records and to WSM radio, and to Bill Mack, and to Mike Hoyer.

I never held it against Faron.  I just chalked the whole concert up to a (slightly seamy) slice of life.

And, later, my dad became somewhat enamored of this song, which, aside from "Hello Walls", became Faron's biggest hit.  And, to be honest, I don't like it that much.  I can't tell you why (as the Eagles said).  Maybe I just like the "twin fiddles Faron"; not the "cheesy strings Faron".

But here is "Four In The Mornin'":



I'm not, however, going to just leave it here.

As I said, Faron started out in the nineteen fifties.  And he had some great records, even if I obviously heard them as oldies.

This is one that he re-recorded, thankfully, in the seventies, because I would have known nothing about it, if he hadn't.



If you're ever looking for a great country karaoke song, you could not go wrong with this next song.  Connie Smith recorded it, and that's good enough for me.  And it's a good song!



Much as my dad liked, "Four In The Mornin'", if we're going to nominate one song as Faron Young's best (or at least, "best known"), we have to choose this one, written by Willie:



Faron Young's life ended wrongfully.  He killed himself with a shotgun.  I understand he was in ill health.  But I also understand how the music industry tossed aside the legends, unless their name was Johnny Cash.

The Country Music Hall of Fame, in its benevolence, elected Faron to the Hall of Fame after he died.  Would that they had had the foresight to elect him while he was still around to accept.

I was visiting my mom during the CMA Awards that year.  We had the TV on, and my mom said to me, "I bet that makes you feel good, that Faron Young's been inducted into the Hall of Fame".  She actually remembered that the geeky teenager, the belligerent one, had once worshiped Faron Young.  My dad was, well, not gone, but his being was gone.  But my mom remembered.

I mumbled something about, "yes, he was a great artist", but I was mourning, and I couldn't bring myself to share that.

How could I put into words what Faron's music meant to me? 

Even now, today, when I watch these videos, I'm transformed.  It's a combination of a bunch of things.  My dad, driving those hundred miles, in his white Ford LTD, just to satisfy a geeky teenager's longing to see her idol.  A selfless act, for a daughter who was self-absorbed, self-centered; self-indulgent.

My dad, and Faron, somehow, are intertwined in my memory.

I leave the topic of the great artists of the nineteen seventies here.  I have no more to say about that.

Making Life Simpler

Well, that's rather a misnomer, isn't it? Life is never simple.

I am of a mind, though, that life would be simpler without so much "stuff" to clutter it up.

I'm not certain, but the evidence tells me that, when I was in my twenties, I pretty much saved everything. That was brought home to me recently when my oldest son delivered about six or seven boxes of junk, once belonging to me, that he had been storing in his garage. Yes, junk.

I've been on a remodeling kick of late, so in conjunction with that, I needed to go through those boxes, to see if per chance there might be something I'd actually want.

Well, here's what was in those boxes of "treasures". About 50 picture frames of various sizes (I've always been a sucker for picture frames; don't ask me why); some random photos of people I couldn't pick out of a lineup if my life depended on it; a copy of Life Magazine, "The Year In Pictures, 1986"; three sizes of embroidery hoops, along with a couple packages of unfinished cross-stitch projects; a few of those cheesy CD's ~ you know, "The Best Of...", which were actually re-recordings of songs that you really loved in their original form, but you don't so much love the re-doing of them, twenty years after the fact. A copy of National Geographic from March, 1987; the cover story titled, "North Dakota ~ Tough Times on the Prairie". Guess we can't say that now, can we??

A microphone that I think was part of my reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I haven't a clue where that is, but I would kind of like to have that. A super-8 movie camera and projector. That's cool and all, but what I am really searching for are the actual super-8 films that I shot of my kids when they were little. A movie projector without movies is sort of worthless. I will find those movies; I think they're in the back of our closet somewhere. I'll be transferring those to DVD, just as soon as I can pinpoint their location; I'm thinking in two to three years, at the most.

An instamatic camera inside its very own faux-leather carrying case with the initials CJL pasted on the back of it. AND with a film still inside it! I'm giving that back to my son, and I hope he gets the film developed. That sort of mystery is just the kind of thing that I find ultimately cool.

Some sleeves of baseball cards, all from the Minnesota Twins, circa 1987 (their championship year). I'm sincerely hoping that these belong to my son, because I don't remember being dorky enough to collect baseball cards back then, even though I was sort of a Twins fanatic in those years.

Record albums. A whole lot of record albums. I thought my son had given me all of them awhile back. Apparently not.

That's the one thing that brought a lump to my throat. Why? Well, the thing is, when I was about 16 or 17 years old, I couldn't just buy a record album on my Visa card (cuz, you know, I didn't have one, and frankly, in 1971 - 1972, Visa cards didn't actually exist).

No, I had to save up my pennies to buy an album, and I was only making seventy-five cents an hour, so you do the math.

So, I pretty much wore out those albums. I'd study the covers. In fact, I drew facsimiles of some of them (I was into drawing back then; a hobby I abandoned shortly thereafter).

So, those albums, when I saw them again, brought back a ton of memories for me. They took me back to that room, that component stereo system that I saved and saved to buy. The fact that I couldn't really sing along with the songs on those albums without disturbing whoever might be lodging in the room next door. But I really, really wanted to sing along, so it was a conundrum.

It wasn't even so much the songs on those albums. It was the albums themselves.

So, I thought I would post some pictures of those albums. Just because. The flash sort of obscures some of the pictures, but I still like them. And these, by the way, are Part II. I got the first box of albums awhile back, and I think I will post pictures of those later.

These are some that hold a whole bunch of memories for me..

It seems from these photos that I was a huge Dolly Parton fan. Not necessarily. But it was the late sixties/early seventies, and you couldn't turn around without bumping into Porter and Dolly. Seriously. Porter by himself. Dolly on her own. Porter and Dolly, singing some of Dolly's scribbles. We were all sort of relieved, frankly, in 1973, when Conway and Loretta decided to get together, just for the variety, if nothing else.

It was basically Porter & Dolly, or the Statler Brothers. That was 1970 through 1972, in a nutshell.

I can't explain it, but seeing those album covers kind of stabs at my heart. I guess you had to be there.

So, simplifying my life involves purging superfluous stuff, and stuff that at one time meant something to me, but just doesn't anymore.

The things I have on display in my computer room now are, pictures of family, my dad's AA book and his watch, a letter from my mom, pictures of people and things that hold a special place in my heart, and some funny stuff ~ cartoons ~ because we need to remember that life, and we, are sort of ridiculous.

And what do we need, other than the people we love, and the music we love?

I think that's about it.