Good People

I'm not as religious as I once was. Or maybe I'm more religious than I once was. See, when I was a pre-teen, I was lost and searching hard for some thread of deliverance. Raised a Catholic, I loved the rituals of the church -- the stations of the cross at Lenten time, when the priest, followed by his two altar boys, would stop at each statuette along his path and say a solemn prayer. I didn't exactly grasp the meaning, but it was such an august procession that it had to have deep significance. I prayed hard during that ceremony, and that couldn't have hurt, right? The Catholic mass also featured the priest swinging sensers of incense, which smelled "holy". Dipping one's fingers in a font of holy water and making the sign of the cross, and genuflecting before entering the church pew, seemed somber and sanctified.

The rituals of the church were sublime, but the incessant scolding didn't strike me as God-like. Silly transgressions, like eating meat on Friday, would damn me to hell. Taking communion without first slipping inside the dark airless chamber to confess my "sins" to some guy would also send me to the fiery depths. Poor babies who died before being baptized would be sentenced to a place called purgatory. And they didn't even get the chance to do anything wrong.

I hope the church doesn't preach that kind of nonsense anymore. I don't know, because I stopped attending mass sometime around age eighteen. I think confession was my line in the sand. I never ever thought it was right, even as an eight-year-old. I can understand talking to someone and getting some life counsel, but that whole recitation of made-up sins was pointless. And who were these "priests" anyway? They were cloistered and had no inkling of real life.

I needed someone to help me, and all the embroidered robes in the world weren't going to quiet my troubles.

Those who "raised" me weren't actually my parents. I had a few pseudo-parents; whomever was available and offered something I needed to learn -- my sister-in-law was one. People who worked for my parents. My friend's mom. Perhaps a teacher or two.

One sundown July evening my sister-in-law was manning the motel office when a Scottish couple with three redheaded kids checked in. I was eleven or twelve at the time, and lazing about, observing everyday life. The man asked about available babysitters. He and his wife wanted to have a nice dinner out. I wasn't a natural babysitter -- I despised it, actually. I don't know why everybody thinks pre-teen girls are natural baby-slingers. Is that supposed to be an innate talent? That twilight, however, I popped up off the sofa and proclaimed that I would be happy to babysit. Frankly, I was entranced by the couple's accent, and perhaps wanted to experience something "foreign".

I have no idea where my mom and dad were; why neither of them were working and why they had indentured my new sister-in-law to cover for them. My educated guess is that Dad was drunk in a bar and my mom had consumed a couple of tranquilizers and was blissfully snoring away in her bed. This was de riguer, so I didn't waste any brain cells contemplating it.

Regardless, I tromped over to room 33 at six p.m. and commenced to wrangle and entertain three bouncing tow-heads.

After an hour or so, they all drifted off to slumber and I clicked on the TV and perused the three available channels. My best option was a Billy Graham crusade.

That night, what Reverend Graham was saying made me sit up straight. He said things like, "God loves you". That was a new concept! Here I'd thought God had a checklist and made tick marks next to every task I'd failed at. The reverend said something about loving everybody or something, and that sinners were lambs of God. And that God satisfies every longing of our hearts.

Billy Graham was clearly an honest man. I had long ago cultivated an excellent BS detector, and this guy was honest and pure. And he made me feel like I was a worthwhile person. This was new!

When the Scot parents returned later, I practically skipped out of the room and took three or four laps around the complex, greeting every stranger I encountered with a hearty "Hi!". I was not one to speak to strangers, but I suddenly felt light-footed, aloft on an imaginary breeze.

That feeling didn't linger, but the concept of God's love did.

I haven't forgotten.

There aren't too many really good people in this world.

Reverend Billy Graham was a really good person.

1993 (and Lari White)

In 1993 my career was finally on track. I'd dwelled in the bowels of part-time work since approximately 1979 -- retail, standing in high heels for approximately four hours a night; hospital work for which I wore a uniform of polyester white slacks and polyester cobalt blue tunics that needed to be washed and ironed on a board propped in the middle of my living room every other day, since I only possessed two pairs of each; before pinning on my white plastic name tag and heading off for an evening of clipboards and lab slips. Honestly, that hospital job was my all-time favorite, but it was a dead end. It wasn't like I was going to advance to a position as an M.D.

By 1990, I'd landed an insurance job, of which I had absolutely zero knowledge. Luckily for me, one of the people they'd chosen for the thirty-seven open positions dropped out, and I guess I was first runner-up. My only claim to fame was "medical terminology" knowledge. I guess that was good enough.

All thirty-seven of us rookies attended claims processing class in a cavernous room stocked with rows of CRT's, on the third floor of a downtown office building that had rooms for rent. Our trainers had flown in from Philadelphia, and they disdained us and weren't shy about sharing that view. We were rubes, after all -- rural western plains folk; simpletons.

The flock of us inhabited that windowless room for six long weeks. At one point in the midst of training, our overseers announced that three of us had been appointed as supervisors, but it wasn't too late -- we remaining castoffs could still apply to be assistant supervisors. I went for it -- what the heck -- what were they going to do, fire me for trying? I flamed out. So I was back to learning how to process routine eye exams, holding my arm in the air fruitlessly, hoping to get a simple question answered, and generally failing to accomplish that.

At ten o'clock and twelve, all of us would filter down the elevator to the concrete planters outdoors and smoke cigarettes. Those who were non-partakers would mill about until it was time to go back. My most vivid memory of those weeks was that I got to park in a winding, escalating parking garage, which sure as hell beat slopping through snow from the hospital exit through a frigid, wind-whipping January squall in order to rev my car's motor for ten minutes before it was sizzling enough to drive home.

Once our brand-spankin' new building was completed, we moved out of that stuffy room and  a couple of miles north, and by 1991 I'd finally landed that vaunted assistant supervisor position I was convinced I wanted. I think there must have been some sort of expansion -- no, I'm sure that was it -- and new supervisors were needed. As an "assistant", I had a leg up, so, yes, I for once and all got to be in charge.

Being in charge is just as awesome as one imagines it to be. I was born to be in charge. I was a benevolent leader, which did not sit well with The Big Cheese Woman, and she at one point threatened to fire me for having the utter nerve to bring donuts for my staff on a required Saturday overtime shift. But I (alas) outlasted her and in fact exacted my revenge by helping to get her fired. She was an evil, evil woman, and I relished watching her walk out the door of US Healthcare for the very last time with her two brown paper grocery bags of belongings. Karma was delectable.

Once The Evil Bitch was gone, life became sublime. Our staff had by then tripled and we had girls and women poring out of every hallway crevice. I had convinced our Pennsylvania overseers to promote two deserving women to the post of supervisor -- one had been my assistant. I believed then, and still do, that one should be promoted based on merit and not according to "who we like or don't like". That same bullshit that permeates every corner of corporate life.

Bumpkins that we were, all of us; young, old, and middle-aged; loved country music. And it was the nineties, when country music was exciting and relevatory. Artists like Tracy Lawrence, Carlene Carter, Clint Black, and Suzy Boguss pored out of our FM radios and our TV screens via CMT.

I remember my local DJ calling Lari White "LAW-ree White". Maybe that's how she preferred to be addressed. So when I purchased her album, "Lead Me Not", I always said (inside my head), LAW-ree White.

She was good -- we forget, maybe because her flame flared so quickly -- but we really shouldn't forget.

This is the song that will always be "Lari White" to me:

Hearing Lari White reminds me of sultry summer nights. Saffron street lights in the black night. Girls I used to know; Peg and Laurel and Lynette and Tracy.

And limousines in the night.

RIP, Lari White. You shouldn't have left us this soon.

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.

Ain't That A Shame

I will be the first to admit that good music existed before I realized there was such a thing as music. The fifties were before my time, but so were the forties, and I am a big band fan. I missed the roots of rock 'n roll -- my sisters experienced it. Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard...Fats Domino.

Little kids have weird fears. Low voices scared me. I remember my Mom and Dad had a '45 record recorded by Lawrence Welk's band (they were big Welk fans) -- I think it was called "Grandfather's Clock". The singer had a deep bass voice -- scared me to death. His voice reminded me of that man who hid behind the tree at night when I had to run out to the little house in back to go to the bathroom. (Oh yes, there was a man who hid out there, just waiting to grab little girls).

I was a flower girl in my cousin's wedding when I was three years old. My cousin's fiance scared me to death. He had big bushy eyebrows. When I would be over at my cousin's apartment and her fiance walked through the door, I would stare in horror at those eyebrows, afraid to take my eyes off them for fear they would attack me. And by the way, making a little kid be a flower girl sounds like a cute idea. She's essentially there as entertainment for the adults. "Ahh, isn't she cute? Oh look! She turned around and walked the wrong way down the aisle! Now she's plopped herself down on the altar steps! So sweet!"  Well, guess what? A three-year-old has no earthly idea what she's doing there and why exactly she's being made to perform. I initially bought into the idea of being a flower girl, because I liked flowers. Unfortunately, the experience didn't live up to its hype. I don't recommend it. And then you have the requisite photo session after the wedding, when you're cranky and all you want to do is take a nap. And Mom's no help, because she's just praying you don't embarrass her. Mom refuses to even claim you as her own.

This is a roundabout way of saying that Fats Domino's voice scared the little kid that was me.

My sisters had this single, which I now acknowledge, especially after finding that Richie Cunningham favored it, is a really good song:

I later caught up with the roots artists. Sometimes I found them when country artists would re-record their hits. I think Hank Williams, Junior did this song:

Fats, of course, had other hit songs, like this one:

And this one:

And this:

The last time I gave a thought to Fats Domino was during Hurricane Katrina, when newscasters announced that he was "missing". I thought, oh, that poor old man. He was later found and all was well. At some point, a bunch of artists got together and recorded a tribute album and I bought it. It introduced me, or reintroduced me, to some great songs. And I was no longer scared. Of course, I was older by then, no longer afraid of bushy eyebrows and men laying in wait behind trees.

I believe Fats Domino was a humble man who stayed true to his roots. 

And he made some awesome, pioneering music. 

I'm glad I finally caught up with it.

Don Williams

Readers of this blog know that the nineteen seventies were not my favorite musical era. Regardless, the seventies were rather a momentous time of my life. I graduated from high school, got my first "real" job, got married, and most of all, gave birth to both of my children. It's unfortunate that my soundtrack of the decade is so lackluster.

Don Williams was one of those singers who was always "there" -- there on the radio, there occasionally on '45's. In the world of country music in the seventies, Don Williams was an anomaly. I like my music kickin'. Number one on my list is a good beat. Add to that some two-part harmony. Fiddles are always good, steel guitar is a given. I love a good piano. Those things were not, for the most part, present in the country music of the decade. I wasn't a big acoustic fan. Willie's "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain" was okay. I didn't rush right out to buy the single.

Then there was Don Williams.

Before Waylon ever got hold of it, Don recorded this song. And to me, it's the superior version:

Don was like your favorite uncle -- not the loud, brash one who was too fond of hugs; but the quiet one you ran to when you skinned your knee, because he'd soothe you; dry your tears.

I think I purchased a total of two singles by Don Williams in my life. It wasn't that I didn't like him or that I didn't have eighty-nine cents to spend. Unlike my mom, however, I didn't pick up a '45 just because it was listed on the chart pasted to the end cap of the Woolworth's aisle. I was choosy. I was never one to buy mass quantities of music just because. Perhaps it was a holdover from my days as a girl when singles cost an insane one dollar and it took me a couple of months to save up that much money. My choice was thus very important. I had to be particular. I guess that's why Don got beaten out by others, even when my monetary circumstances became less dire.

The first version of "Tulsa Time" I heard was the one recorded by Don Williams. It was a departure for him -- a song with an actual beat! Later I heard the Eric Clapton recording and thought, wow, am I lame -- it's an Eric Clapton song! Actually, it wasn't. Don recorded it first. Eric liked Don Williams so much, he decided to do his own rendition.

That was the first Don Williams single I purchased.

As the nineteen seventies faded away, never to be remembered for anything musically other than disco and Urban Cowboy, Don recorded my favorite, and the second Williams single I plunked down my pennies for:

 

Looking back, there's something to be said for the quiet music. I wish I could say that in my old age I've become a fan of Mantovani, but I still like a good beat. Nevertheless, I have learned to appreciate each song for what it is and to find value..and yes, warmth, in Don Williams' music.

Rest in peace, Don Williams. Thank you for being our favorite uncle.

Still On The Line

In the late sixties, FM radio suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It's hard to fathom now, but back then, AM radio ruled, static and all. AM radio was Top 40 -- if one waited a few brief minutes, she would be sure to hear "Kicks" by Paul Revere and the Raiders or even better, "The Letter" by the Box Tops. It was guaranteed. The Top Ten Countdown was the highlight of a preteen's Saturday night.

FM was "experimental". Sure, it had a nice deep bass sound, but no one knew quite what to do with it. Nobody was actually listening. Local disc jockeys, as was their wont, didn't particularly care for the genre of music they'd been hired to spin. Thus (since no one was listening anyway) the "country" DJ's chose to skirt the outer rims of country music. I was thirteen and ensconced in a closet-sized bedroom I shared with my little brother and sister, who were thankfully never there, so in the evenings I'd click the button on my newfangled AM/FM radio to the FM band and be subjected to "country" such as "Me and Paul" by a guy whose voice I hated -- Willie Nelson -- and to the sugary-sweet strings of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix"; one of the worst songs ever written (thanks, Jimmy Webb!). Because I despised that song so much, I developed a burning hatred for Glen Campbell. I refused to even admit to myself that "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston" were tunes worthy of a cursory listen. I knew nothing of Glen Campbell, other than that he'd suddenly appeared out of nowhere and that he recorded crappy songs.  Honestly, hearing a Glen Campbell song caused me to grind my teeth.

Then he had that summer fill-in show for the Smothers Brothers. He was hokily earnest. "Hi!! I'm Glen CAMPBELL!" Well, yee-haw. His chubby cheeks had a rubish pink hue. He was far too enthusiastic for someone who could croon drivel like "By The Time I Get To Phoenix". Naturally, I watched the show. We had the Big Three networks; that's it. It was either watch the crumbs of "country" music or turn the TV off; and we couldn't turn the TV off -- we were children of the sixties, after all.

I begrudgingly admitted I liked this one (written by John Hartford):

It wasn't until decades later that I learned Glen had been a stellar member of the Wrecking Crew, and had played on all the sixties songs I worshiped.  Who knew? This guy? This geeky hayseed?

The sixties rolled on into the seventies. Glen Campbell turned into another "oldies" act in my mind. I'd moved on from my bunk-bedded bedroom and was all "grown up"; married and desperate for decent music that I scratched and clawed to unearth.  There were stories about Glen and Tanya Tucker. Tabloid stories. It was all tawdry -- the teenage country princess and the dirty old man. Glen was someone whose time had come and gone. It was the mid-seventies when this next single hit the airwaves. It was a curious song; sort of bittersweet, but possessed of a voice that conjured something deep in the recesses of my brain; a voice sweetly familiar:

Suddenly Glen Campbell was everywhere:

Suddenly I was remembering things I liked about Glen Campbell, like this:

Then I forgot about him.

Life goes on and we get older. We shed the things that once mattered, because there are new things.

My dad died from Alzheimer's Disease in 2001. I lived miles away and I didn't see my dad except for that one last time when he was still speaking -- albeit to his imaginary friend -- but that was okay with me. I wish now that I'd had the chance to rub his arm when he was bedridden in the nursing home, at the end. He wouldn't have known me, but I would have known him. My dad didn't have any muscle-memory skills except the ability to speak French. He wasn't a guitar virtuoso. Learning that Glen Campbell had Alzheimer's hit me harder than I expected. I wanted to feel that the essence of Glen still remained, if only for a little while, so I bought "Ghost On The Canvas" and it made me cry, as I thought it would -- although the album was far better than the sorrow I wanted to wallow in.

If I could travel back in time, I would sit with my dad every day, for every one of his last days. I wouldn't care that he didn't know me -- I knew him. In the last dream I had of my dad, he was young - fifty-ish maybe; vigorous; traversing a long hallway wearing his ubiquitous short-sleeved white dress shirt, on his way to a hotel banquet room to find his friends and acquaintances. He passed right by me; didn't see me. I called out to him but he didn't even take a backward glance. My dad didn't have any backward glances at the end. There were no backward glances to take.

I watched the documentary, I'll Be Me, again the other night. I'll probably watch it again.

Oh, and by the way, thanks, Jimmy Webb. I actually do like these songs: 

Bye, Glen.

Say "hi" to my dad.

Last Christmas

Rest in peace, George Michael.

CMA at 50 - 1987...and Holly Dunn

Holly Dunn passed away this past Monday, November 14. She was 59; younger than me. Those things shouldn't happen.

I liked Holly's recordings -- she was a soprano, whereas I was always more drawn to more earthy voices like Patsy Cline's -- but Holly Dunn was country and that's what mattered. I've always liked my country to be...well, country...call me crazy; and 1987 was that kind of year. Holly fit right in.

At the CMA's that year, Holly won the Horizon Award, the award given to best new artist. She deserved it.

Holly wrote, produced, and performed her own songs, which was, in 1987, let's say unusual. As a pseudo-songwriter, I know how monumental that is.

“I think this gives me a real legitimacy, a genuineness,” she told The Associated Press in 1990. “I’m not just up there standing where they tell me to stand, singing what they tell me to sing.”  (source)

In 2003 Holly retired from recording, just like that. She said that country no longer wanted what she had to offer, and she was right. Country music gave up the ghost somewhere around 2001 and it's never come back. I once thought it would -- everything being cyclical -- but I was wrong. It never came back. Nineteen eighty-seven was a watershed year. Let's revisit it...

Horizon Award

T. Graham Brown

The O'Kanes

Restless Heart

Sweethearts of the Rodeo

Holly Dunn 

Female Vocalist of the Year

Emmylou Harris

Kathy Mattea

Rosanne Cash

Dolly Parton

Reba McEntire

There was no denying that the late eighties was Reba's time. It was before she went off on her costume-changing frenzy (although I never actually witnessed it in concert, it made all the popular publications, like People Magazine) and while she still had the frizzy perm and an iota of country in her blood. Like this:

If I'd still been a CMA member in 1987, though, I would have voted for this:

You tell me which song holds up better. It's not even a fair contest.

Male Vocalist of the Year

George Strait

Randy Travis

George Jones

Ricky Skaggs

Hank Williams, Jr.

I'm not going to quibble with this one, although my heart lies with George. Randy Travis was and is a voice beyond measure.

Single of the Year
The Right Left Hand - George Jones (I have no recollection whatsoever of this song)
Walk The Way The Wind Blows - Kathy Mattea
All My Ex's Live In Texas - George Strait
Forever And Ever, Amen - Randy Travis
Can't Stop My Heart From Lovin' You - The O'Kanes

Nineteen eighty-seven was a great year! I'd forgotten how good it was. In the interest of diversity and fairness, I'm going to include one of the singles that didn't win:

Song of the Year (award to the songwriter)
Forever And Ever, Amen - Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz
All My Ex's Live In Texas - Lyndia Shafer and Sanger D. Shafer
Can't Stop My Heart From Lovin' You - Kieran Kane and Jamie O'Hara
Daddy's Hands - Holly Dunn
On The Other Hand - Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz

To be different, here's:

Vocal Group of the Year
Asleep At The Wheel
Exile
Restless Heart
Alabama
The Judds

This is a tough category. I would have given it to The Judds in 1985, and maybe they did win it then. I don't have photographic memory! (A-Ha! They did! I just checked!)  I love The Judds, especially for their early hits, but sadly, I find that Restless Heart never won the vocal group of the year award. That's shameful. Since they never won, I guess I can pick any song, from any year, I want. I pick this one:

Randy Travis won Album of the Year (naturally); fiddler Johnny Gimble was Instrumentalist of the Year; Vocal Duo of the Year was a bust (for the record, it was Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White); the Music Video of the Year was "My Name is Bocephus" by Hank Williams, Jr.; which leads me to the strangest award of the night:

Entertainer of the Year
The Judds
Reba McEntire
George Strait
Randy Travis
Hank Williams, Jr.

I'm not sure what happened. Perhaps it was a nod to an era that was ending. I'm not proud of it, but the only concert I ever walked out on was Hank's. I liked him once; thus, I bought a ticket to see him. This, unfortunately, was the time when Junior decided to "become his own man". The people who liked Lynryd Skynyrd, I'm sure, loved this concert. I hated it. Hank's thing was writing and singing songs about...Hank. Listen to any of his songs, and they're all egocentric. All good, if you like that sort of thing.

I checked Hank's discography, trying to discern which record, exactly, earned him the award. I'm truly perplexed. So, I'm just going to guess this one...

So, 1987 was a tremendous year in country music -- not necessarily a tremendous year for the CMA's. They got some things wrong and some things right. But I'm sure it was hard, with so much talent to pick from.

And God bless you, Holly Dunn. Thank you for the music.

Curly Putman

Curly Putman died Sunday.

His name might not be familiar to you, but it certainly is to me. Putman was a songwriter extraordinaire. 

I suppose Curly Putman first entered my consciousness the same way all behind-the-scenes guys did for me in the sixties -- from reading the backs of album covers. I obviously wasn't a songwriter then, but I was fascinated to learn who wrote the songs I liked best. If they wrote at least two of my favorites (I had kind of a low bar) they were "good". Naturally, like most of my country music discoveries, I first found Curly's name on the back of a Tammy Wynette album. He was co-writer, with Bobby Braddock, of this:

And he wrote this one, again featuring Tammy Wynette, with David Houston (sorry, no David Houston live videos exist, apparently):

I just posted this video last week, and here I am again! I mistakenly thought Dolly wrote the song -- I hate when I mess up like that.

Give credit where credit is due:

Tanya Tucker was a revelation to me, at thirteen, because she was thirteen -- and I didn't do anything except go to school and play records, while she made records. Life wasn't fair. I digress, though. Curly wrote this song:

You know me; I like to throw in a few obscure songs every now and then just to flummox everyone. Actually, no, I like to relive songs that I like and haven't heard in decades. Nobody seems to remember Charlie Rich (I do). Here's another Curly Putman song, sung by Charlie:

Songwriters never know which songs will strike a chord. And how could we? We love our babies; we think they're cute as a button, while strangers take one glance and turn their heads away. Instead, they fixate on the mangy cat balled up in the corner of the living room, huddled under the end table, its fur askew. The cat we picked up at the shelter on a whim because we felt sorry for it. The cat that's howling out this melody:

Speaking of ugly children: this song isn't actually a homely child; it's just not the best country song ever, although many think it is (they're wrong). But like the Green Green Grass of Home, it will live forever, and a songwriter will gladly live with that.

Curly, I'm guessing, wouldn't have cited this as his favorite composition (I'd love to know which one he thought was his best), but ten million fans speak louder than pride, or something.

Here is George Jones:

Curly wrote more than two of my favorite songs, so that makes him a great songwriter. One great song makes one a great songwriter. 

Curly Putman cleared that bar easily.







 

Bobby Vee

Robert Veline was born in Fargo, North Dakota. That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but we Dakotans don't have a lot of artists we can brag about.

My musical memories go back a long way, but frankly Bobby Vee was my older sisters' teen heartthrob, not mine. Nevertheless, when I was a young child I was certainly exposed to his music, by way of 45 RPM records spun on what we called then a "record player". I of course didn't know the story of how the day after the music died, when Buddy Holly and his fellow winter dance party members were supposed to perform a show in Moorhead, Minnesota, but tragically perished in a frozen field in Iowa, fifteen-year-old Bobby stepped up to the mic after a call went out for local talent to fill the bill. I didn't know that this last-minute fill-in led to a recording contract with Liberty Records. I didn't know that a guy named Robert Zimmerman played sloppy piano in Vee's band and called himself Elston Gunn. Elston later changed his name to Bob Dylan. In 2013 Dylan announced during one of his sets, “I’ve played with everybody from Mick Jagger to Madonna, but the most beautiful person I’ve ever been on stage with is Bobby Vee."

I saw Bobby Vee once in concert. Well, "concert" is kind of a stretch. It was the nineteen seventies, and a local nightclub; a tiny basement bar, really, would book national acts, mostly those who were ten years or so past their charting days. I didn't have kids yet, so I could afford the luxury of catching a show on a Friday night. I saw the Vogues and others I honestly can't remember, but I do remember Bobby Vee. He was playing in a dank cellar, but his personality sparkled. One would swear he was actually having fun, and I think he was. I think he loved performing.

The late fifties/early sixties were a time in music I have trouble relating to. Everything was tightly controlled -- artists were told what songs they'd record and those songs were manufactured somewhere in a secret song factory by writers who knew how to connect the right dots to spew out a hit. The only distinction, to my mind, is that some artists were better than others. If Fabian (I think his name was) had recorded the same songs that Bobby Vee ultimately lent his voice to, teenage girls wouldn't have screamed quite so loud. Talent talks.

Some of Bobby's hits struck me as kind of lame; cheesy. Like:

In Bobby's defense, the background girl singers pretty much ruined the recording.

However, he had some GOOD recordings. Like this one:

And this one:

This: 

As a kid, I recoiled from this song, simply because of its title. I was steeped in Wednesday catechism, so anything referencing the devil was bad; evil. But this is a good song. Listen:

It may sound weird, but Bobby's phrasing is quintessential North Dakotan. It sounds like home. Every place no doubt has its own sound and one only recognizes it if they're from that place. Listening to him sing, I could pick Bobby Vee out as a Dakotan even if I didn't know he was one. Maybe that's the pull. I really like him because he was a home boy.

Bobby was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2011. Alzheimer's is a son of a bitch -- it robs a person of their "self". It robs their families, too. My dad died from Alzheimer's. My dad was a unique soul. And then, just like that, Dad as we knew him was gone.

So, I have a couple of connections to Bobby Vee -- North Dakota and the sad descent of a cruel ruin.

Bobby Vee, nee Robert Veline, passed away on October 24, 2016. He was seventy-three years of age. I agree with Dylan: He was a beautiful person.

Ned Miller

My dad liked Ned Miller. I think Mr. Miller only had two hit songs, but my dad was on board with both of them.

I read in the New York Times this week that Mr. Miller passed away. I generally only read the New York Times for their political reporting, but one thing the paper does well is recognize those who've left us, people we forgot we even knew.

The albeit brief obituary of Ned Miller is interesting, in that it seems the man had such bad stage fright that he rarely performed in front of an audience. Still, his recordings managed to reach the top of the charts.

As testament to Mr. Miller's shyness, I can find no performance videos on YouTube. I did, however, find Ricky Van Shelton's version of From A Jack To A King, which introduced the song to a new crop of fans in the nineteen eighties. My dad still preferred the 1962 original.

I forgot how much I love that thumping bass and four-four shuffle beat. Ahh, it's a country lover's dream. No wonder Dad loved the song.

Even though there are no performance videos from Ned Miller, it's only right to include the man himself singing his own song:

It's funny how long-term memory works. I'd completely forgotten both of these songs, but I could sing along with both of them and I remembered all the words. Dad taught me well.

Nobody younger than me would recognize either of these songs unless they're big Ricky Van Shelton fans, but that's my job here:  cataloguing the past.

And I kind of owe it to my dad.

Rest in peace, Ned Miller. Thanks for making my dad happy.

Gut Punched

I was driving home from doing some errands last Saturday and "Delirious" came on the oldies station. I cranked it up. As the song played, I thought how happy Prince's music made me feel. "Delirious" has a lot going on in it. It's definitely rock and funk, but there's also some scatting and maybe a bit of jazz. I also get a kick out of how Prince pronounces "deliri-OHS". Then my mind clicked on Michael Jackson and how both he and Prince reached the peak of their fame around the same time. I thought it was rather unfair how Jackson was labeled a genius, yet Prince never was. I thought, well, Michael Jackson died young because his life was so messed up, so there was something to say for being "normal", because Prince was still alive and still creating.

I don't believe in prescience. I wasn't thinking about Merle Haggard right before he died. I chalk the whole episode in the car up to a weird coincidence. Yesterday I was half-listening to a news channel through my ear buds as I worked, and the host announced that there was a report of a death at Paisley Park. My stomach dropped.

I am not a Minnesotan -- I live in Minnesota, but I'm not from here, The people I work with are Minnesotans, and wow, the grief. Everyone in my office had to get up out of their chairs and go find someone, someone to help them sort out the news. My cubicle neighbor's sister went to high school with Prince. Minneapolis is a big, yet small town. Minnesotans claimed Prince, sheltered him. They were proud of the fact that the local boy who hit it big didn't take leave for LA or some other bigshot city. Prince stayed, he went to local clubs, he sometimes gave impromptu performances at those clubs and sometimes he just sat in the audience and enjoyed the show -- you know, like a real person would. Last night there was a street party in front of First Avenue, the club where Prince got his start. Thousands spilled into the street and danced and sang Prince songs. They had a good time -- just like Prince always urged people to do, through his music. He had to be a joyous man -- just listen to his songs. He wasn't filled with angst. Besides, angst is over-rated. Life should be joyous. It usually isn't, but maybe that's where Prince came in. He brought us something we were sorely missing.

This is my first post in which I can't share video of the artist. Oh, there are a few performance videos out there, those with fellow musicians, but Prince was very firm that he would control his music, and so YouTube doesn't have any of the real stuff. I think I even complained about that once in a post, that he shouldn't be so stingy -- he should share his creations with us. I'm okay with his decision now. Yes, I'd love to watch some of his work, but I can still listen.

Somebody tweeted something about how people shouldn't always try to relate an artist who's passed away with themselves. Well, why wouldn't we? Isn't that what music does? Plays the soundtrack of our lives? So, I am going to relate Prince's music to my life. I'm obviously not in the target demographic for his music. I wasn't a teenager in the eighties, but I did have teenagers, and thus MTV was a big presence in our home. You know how much I love eighties rock. Prince was a huge part of that. I bought the Purple Rain album (yes, album) and "When Doves Cry" has always touched me. I, even at my advanced age, thought Prince was cool. And who wouldn't? He was cool. He was unique. When one of his music videos came on the tube, one couldn't take their eyes off the screen. I also appreciated that he didn't seem like a jerk -- like he was condescending to perform for us little people. No, he just loved what he was doing and he wanted us all to join him.

I love the following Prince tracks:

• When Doves Cry
• Purple Rain
• Raspberry Beret
• 1999
• Let's Go Crazy
• Delirious
• and others I can't think of at the moment

I also really like this particular song that he wrote:

And, of course, this video played nonstop on MTV:

  

So, I guess I got to include a couple of music videos after all.

My home is a scant seventeen miles from Paisley Park. Thousands of people tonight are there paying tribute. I would never go. I don't want more sadness; I'm already feeling that enough. I would have gone to the street party, though, if I wasn't embarrassingly old.

But here are a few pictures of how my new hometown paid tribute to their hometown boy:












Shoot, we're going to miss you, Prince. Too, too soon.

Too soon.

Merle

Tonight I listened to some Merle Haggard songs. And I sang along. And I cried. 

I didn't want to ever have to write this. I've written a lot of goodbyes on this blog; some were pretty tough to get through. This one is the toughest. You see, Merle has always been with me. He's tied up in a box with some other people I've had to say goodbye to -- my best friend, my mom, the me that used to be.

I've read a bunch of articles this week about Merle. Some got it right; some just wanted to say something that would appeal to those who barely knew him. Tonight, this is about him and me. 

I was the new kid in a new town, a new school; the strange outcast who was too shy to make friends. And then I found one. I think she actually found me. I was a music geek, but my music was the Monkees and the Box Tops. Hers was some new guy named Waylon Jennings and somebody else named Bobby Bare. She was a country singer -- in a band, no less -- at age eleven. The only thing I knew about country music were my parents' two LP's, one by Buck Owens and one by Ray Price, from around 1963. Sure, I liked those albums. When you're a kid and purchased music is scarce, you listen to whatever's handy. But when I got my little transistor radio, I tuned it to the Top Forty. That tiny radio was sort of my lifeline, especially after moving to a new town that wasn't even a town like I thought it would be, but an industrial strip of land between two towns. Top Forty radio was my salve. 

And then I met Alice and she made it clear that she wasn't one of the mindless pre-teen dolts who worshiped Strawberry Alarm Clock. She knew what she liked and that was that. And she didn't care that it wasn't "cool".  So, I, too, decided I liked country music. I didn't know anything about it, but I was keen to learn. The first country album I bought was by Waylon Jennings, and then I think I picked up one by another new guy, Charley Pride. 

Together, she and I discovered Merle Haggard. This was when I finally understood what all the country music fuss was about. This guy was different. This guy was brash. His guitar twanged even twangier than Buck Owens', and his songs actually said something. It didn't hurt that he was cute, as we were wont to describe men at our ripe age.

After playing Merle's album over and over and over, I was determined I was going to buy a guitar. Alice said she'd teach me how to play. So I saved up my...allowance or tips or however I acquired money...and I finally forked over twenty-five dollars for the red Stella guitar that I'd admired in Dahmer's Music's window for what seemed like forever. Alice came over every Saturday and showed me the different chords. My fingers stung like bee stings, but I finally developed enough callouses to be able to chord along with "Swinging Doors" and "Sing Me Back Home". Shoot, Alice even taught me how to play the lead part in "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" -- the only actual fingering I've ever...and since...been able to play. And I'd play along with Merle's records for hours.

The very first song I ever wrote had these lines:

1967, you taught me how to play

All those Merle Haggard songs

Man, he had a way

It wasn't until I tried songwriting years later that I understood how deceptively simple Merle's songs were. Most of them had three chords -- four at the most. "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down" has only two chords! And yet he still managed to say something, with so little. I can't do that. Hardly anyone can.

As time went on (and time seemed so much longer then), I bought a JC Penney tape machine so I could play and sing songs and rewind the tape to hear how "great" my performance was. I was possessed. At sixteen, I graduated to a top-of-the-line one hundred dollar reel to reel recorder, and the first thing I recorded was a three-part harmony version of "Silver Wings" (by bouncing the tracks). I sort of wish I could find that tape now, because as I remember it, I sang the hell out of that song. 

"The Best Of Merle Haggard", with its fold-out cover, was my music bible. After that, I blithely followed every turn in Merle's road, because I knew I could count on him. I loved him. 

Nineteen sixty-eight was the nadir. My autobiography (now out of print, but since they're my words, I guess I can quote them) devotes a whole chapter to a seminal moment in my young life:

In the fall of 1968, Merle was coming to town to put on a concert!

After all the semi-to-not-even-semi-famous acts Alice and I had seen live; artists who only played the little-town circuit, because either everyone had long ago forgotten them, or nobody even knew their names yet; after all our dreamy wishing that we could have the chance to see Merle Haggard just once in our (so far, pretty short) lives; finally!

Alice and I made sure we were first in line at the box office; waiting, waiting; in an inexplicably short clutch of way older people; some probably as old as forty! until the bored fat ticket guy walked up to his little booth with a Styrofoam cup of coffee and flipped up the metal screen.

“You girls like Merle Haggard, huh?”

 Yea. Uh huh.

“Well, there ya go, little missies”, his sweaty paw sweeping the tickets in front of Alice’s face, as if expecting her to run her fingers across his meaty palm. Old dudes should leave little kids alone.

There were other people on the bill, too – that new guy, Charley Pride. That old guy, Freddie Hart, who hadn’t even had a somewhat hit by 1968. By the time 1971 rolled around, though, Freddie scored a monster hit; and Alice and I knew him when!

The day of the concert, Alice rode the bus home with me, because we'd arranged to leave from my place to go to the show.

We straggled into the motel office, and Mom whispered to me, "Guess who just checked in!"

Mom was perplexingly giddy. I was oblivious; unable to put the obvious two and two together.

Mom whipped the registration card out of its slot and waved it in front of our faces. Damn! It was Merle Haggard!

Merle Haggard was staying at my place!
Alice and I stared at each other; frozen in space; overwhelmed with…perhaps… the vapors, although neither of us actually fainted.

What would we do? This new knowledge obviously required some action on our part. A girl can’t just walk in her front door, have her mom tell her that the greatest, cutest artist of all time was their new house guest, and then nonchalantly whip out her life science book and start studying for a quiz.

So, what did Alice and I do? We stalked Merle Haggard.

It was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Neither Merle nor we had anyplace we needed to be for awhile.

Merle and Bonnie weren’t staying in the main (old) section of the motel. They were in room number twenty-seven; a few doors down from my big brother’s old room.

No offense to Mom, but room 27 wasn’t exactly the crème de la crème of MF Motel rooms; but Mom was probably suffering from the vapors, too. Mom had always been star struck. We’d had a few formerly famous singers stay with us. They’d always, sadly, traveled alone. They did one-night stands in local bars, backed by a local pick-up band. Stars whose last (and only) hit record happened in 1959. Merle was a whole, different, high-rise story.

Had I been casually minding the office and looked up to see Merle Haggard alighting my doorway, I most likely would have stared, slack-jawed, and said something completely inappropriate, like, “What are you doing here?” Then I, too, like Mom, would have grabbed the first room key my fingers could locate; never taking my eyes off Merle, and the key would have slipped out of my hand and sailed up and hit him in the face. At which point, I would have rounded the corner of the check-in desk and begin patting Merle on the face, repeating how very sorry I was, and did he maybe want to lie down, and should I get him a glass of ice water?

And then I would have killed myself out of sheer humiliation.

On second thought, Mom handled things much better than I ever could.

Since the newer section of the motel consisted of one long curvy rectangle, Alice and I commenced to walking around and around and around the complex, slowing down each time we approached their room. Giggling; making nonsensical conversation; conversing about country music, because there were no doubt things that Merle needed to learn about the music industry from…two eighth grade schoolgirls.

No one in room twenty-seven stirred; as much as we unwittingly tried to annoy them.

Alice and I skulked back to my room.

“I have an idea!” I light-bulbed.

“Let’s get out my battery-operated record player! I’ll grab the 45 of “Mama Tried”; we’ll go outside, down the little hill opposite Merle’s room, and play it!”

And thus we did.

We set the player on a tree stump. We played it. Several times.

The battery, in fact, started to wind down. Merle was singing fine, and suddenly, his voice dipped; began sounding woozy. “Mama tried to….rai-eeh….ssse….meeeee bettt-er….”. Then, all of a sudden, he started singing really fast and high; like a chipmunk.

Merle never mentioned this unfortunate incident in his memoirs. Perhaps scenes like these were de rigueur for him. I would say that he peered out from behind the curtains of his room; petrified; but had the curtains moved a flick, Alice and I would have seen it.

However, Merle was not simply an apparition. At a point when I finally realized I had to flip the case down on my Eveready battery-deficient music player, he suddenly appeared!

There he stood, outside his room, holding his little fox terrier on a leash!

We never made eye contact. I’m sure Merle thought better of offering us any encouragement. Would we barge into his room? Offer to share a bottle of Coke? Start listing all our favorite Merle Haggard songs? Start singing them to him? No doubt Merle didn’t want to take that bet, and no doubt he would have lost. We would have done that. There is absolutely not a shred of doubt in my mind.  

So, alas, after we realized that the two of us “new friends” were going to remain strangers, the time neared for us to get ready for the show. The concert started at 8:00. We got there around 6:00. Of course we snagged front-row seats.

After Charley and Freddie and the others finished their sets, Merle took the stage. He did all his hit songs; Bonnie singing backup. Merle did his impersonations of Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, Hank Snow, and Johnny Cash.
He gazed out upon the front row, and HE SMILED AT ME!
It had never once happened to me in my life, but now everything suddenly went black.

After the show, Alice and I went around to collect autographs.

Freddie Hart wrote, "To Shelly, a little doll". Freddie said to us, "Didn't I see you girls walking around the motel?"  So, we weren’t invisible! Somebody actually noticed! After all our hard work! Honestly, we were almost impossible to miss, considering. Which leads me to believe that Merle really had been spooked.

I, therefore, after 45 years, would like to apologize to Merle Haggard. We were harmless. Really.
It wasn’t too much time later that Merle recorded, "Today I Started Loving You Again". I read once that when he was writing the song, Bonnie told him to lose the second verse. In my mind, Merle is writing that song in room number 27 at the Modern Frontier Motel; trying his best to block out the antics of two deranged school girls; Bonnie leaning over him, giving him advice. I'm pretty sure that's not true, but that's the story I choose to tell, to myself.

Merle doesn’t know it, but he shoulders a heavy burden for me. I learned to play the guitar by strumming Merle Haggard songs. The world I shared with Alice is bundled up in a pretty baby blue bow fashioned out of Merle Haggard songs.

Little does he know.       

And, no, I really am not crazy.

Alice passed away in 2000. We hadn't talked for a long time. When my son called to give me the news, I was nonchalant. 

Then I fell apart. 

My husband had been nagging me -- "You can write a song; just try." I said I couldn't. That's not how I wrote -- not in verse, for God's sake. After that phone call, I settled into the chair in my room and stared at my guitar in the corner.  I thought about Alice and I thought about Merle, and I paced over and grabbed that guitar and the words tumbled out. 

My dad and my mom died a year later. 

I could no longer listen to Merle, because the sadness was too much.

Merle did some concerts -- he toured with Willie Nelson and he toured with with Kris Kristofferson -- and I passed up all my chances to see him. I didn't say it out loud, but I wanted to remember Merle the way I wanted to remember him.

I was right. I'm glad I didn't go. 

I wanted to remember nineteen sixty-eight. 

I listened to "Sing Me Back Home" tonight. 

And I cried.

I don't know if I'll get over it. I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to a Merle Haggard song the same way again. There are too many memories; too many goodbyes. 

This one hurts, more than I am able to acknowledge. 

This one breaks my heart...again.