Showing posts with label porter and dolly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label porter and dolly. Show all posts

Saturday, May 11, 2019

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.



Saturday, May 6, 2017

Best Country Albums - Part 2


Since my last post, I've thought about other "Best" albums and wondered if there were any from an era other than the nineteen eighties. I've determined that eras are rather unfair. After all, as I've noted before, country albums were once simply a collection of one or two hit tracks combined with cover songs. I don't know if producers were lazy or they suffered from "we've always done it this way" disease. Most likely it was because country fans bought singles and albums were an afterthought -- a  way to put a pretty cover (in the case of female artists) on the rack and convince shoppers to buy the ninety-eight-cent '45 of "I Don't Wanna Play House". I bought a lot of Greatest Hits albums way back when, because other LP's were disappointing. A few artists pushed back -- mostly artists from Bakersfield. Some Nashville acts, too, transcended the status quo. Not many.

I've thought about how I even knew that certain albums existed at the time, and I realize it was because of WHO radio and Mike Hoyer. Mike was the overnight DJ on WHO in Des Moines, Iowa; and around two a.m. he'd slap an album on his turntable and play it all the way through. Touring acts would also show up in Mike's studio and perform songs live. In the sixties, it was Mike Hoyer and Ralph Emery on WSM who were the keepers of the country flame. And Bill Mack on WBAP in Fort Worth. Those three. That's all. My radio signal rarely caught WSM and I'd lie awake until three a.m. to try to catch WBAP. WHO, though, always came through loud and clear. That's how I knew what was what with real country.

All that said, I've decided to isolate "best" albums by the times in which they were recorded.

The Sixties

Ten years in country music is a long-ass mile. A lot changed in the sixties. Are we talking 1961 and Jimmy Dean or 1969 and Conway and Loretta? The sixties should actually be divided into the almost fifties/early sixties and the Merle Haggard slash Dolly Parton era. Nevertheless, here are some albums that were most likely the "best" of that time.



Here's the only video I could find, but trust me, this album was a cornucopia of superb country (I mean "country") songs:







Burning Memories is definitely a "best". Ray Price's album is one of my very, very favorites. I'm guessing it was released in 1965, smack dab in the middle of the schizophrenic sounds that assaulted our tender ears. Ray's smooth tenor was a soothing balm. And yet it tore at our hearts. I can find no live performances of any of the awesome tracks from this album, but give this a listen:



There was a time when we cheered live albums. Why? Maybe because Nashville sucked the soul out of every song it deemed to record and live albums were real life.

This live album was real:


Merle did impersonations and Bonnie flubbed the lyrics to her song and Merle said, "that's all right".

Merle live:


In the fifties, Patsy Cline and Faron Young and some other country stars performed at Carnegie Hall. That was considered curious. Apparently New Yorkers were too snobbish to listen to country music. Most were and are. That concert was most likely viewed as a novelty; something for the sophisticates to giggle about the next day. I don't know that any live recording exists of that concert. I personally would have loved it -- but I'm from the Midwest, after all.

About ten years later Buck Owens took a chance and showed up at Carnegie Hall with his Buckaroos. It's impossible to understate the importance of Buck Owens to country music in the sixties. There were two competing factions -- the "Nashville Sound", watered down "listen to us -- we're really not country!" and Bakersfield. Bakersfield won. One could argue that if not for Buck Owens, there wouldn't have been a Merle Haggard. It's been posited that Buck stole his songs from unknown songwriters. I don't know the truth. Regardless, Buck Owens' claim to fame is that he created a "sound". Crunchy telecasters, drums not buried; not muffled. Drums keeping the beat as they should, for the two-stepping couples in the honky tonks. Heavy on the steel, thank you. Alcohol and tears go hand in hand, and nothing cries like a steel guitar.

Here is "the sound", from the Carnegie Hall album:


Before I finish out the best of the sixties, here is one album that I would consider a "best".

Lynn Anderson, before she scooted on over to Columbia Records, recorded on a little-known label called Chart. One could argue that the move to Columbia was the best thing that ever happened to Lynn. After all, that's the label on which she recorded Rose Garden. I would postulate that in the move Lynn lost her soul. In the sixties I wished I could sing like Lynn Anderson. She sang like an angel. Her new husband, Glenn Sutton, may have been chart-savvy, but he never brought out the best in Lynn's voice. 

This was her best:



Here is a sampling:




The Seventies

I seriously thought this was a sixties album. Well, it was on the cusp, released in 1970. Country duos began seriously with Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton. They set off a whole seventies trend -- Conway and Loretta, Mel Tillis and Sherry Bryce, Hank Williams, Jr. and Lois Johnson. Suddenly duets were hot.

This duet album was the best:



This album had so many good songs, it's difficult to pick just one. YouTube has made it easy for me, however. There are only a couple of videos available. Here is one:


Ronnie Milsap was a product of the seventies, and he was huge. I saw Ronnie in concert with a couple of other artists I don't remember. That's how he dominated. Take a great singer, add some great country songs, stir in some piano and a whole lot of soul, and you have Ronnie Milsap.







Gary Stewart entered the country scene like a tornado. Who was this guy, and where did he come from? Suddenly he was just there. New country artists were rare. Country music was a continuum. George Jones had "The Race Is On" and then he morphed to "A Good Year for the Roses". Faron Young could never do better than "Hello Walls" and then he found a new producer at Mercury Records and soared, with songs like "Wine Me Up". But they'd always been there. I only vaguely remember the first recording by Merle Haggard, but it seemed he'd always been around. In the seventies new artists, brand-spankin' new, just showed up. All I had available to me was my radio. There was no YouTube or Pandora. Country TV was Hee Haw, if we could stand it. No Nashville Now. No CMT. 

And suddenly there was this guy:


Gary Stewart's story is a sad one. I prefer to remember his music:


Things that should not be forgotten are. It took a guy from New Jersey to remind Nashville what country music was all about. I was so parched for good music in the seventies, it was a revelation to find someone good. Really good. Eddie Rabbitt, like Gary Stewart, died young. But damn! We should not forget either of them. And Eddie? Well, if you love a rainy night or you're driving your life away, thank him.



Rocky Mountain Music was far above anything any country artist released in that seventieth decade.


And there you have it -- the sixties and seventies "best", wrapped up in one lonely blog post.  

I liked seeing Eddie and Gary and Porter and Ray again. Old friends. 

I miss them.




Saturday, November 5, 2016

CMA 50 - A Look Back - 1968


The first year the CMA Awards were televised was 1968. NBC broadcast the show and Kraft was its sponsor. It used to be that October was country music month -- it was decreed throughout promos for the show:  "October is country music month." Today country music month is...ehh, whenever. 

The commercials between the performances and the award-handing featured a honey-voiced announcer extolling the fun, warm family desserts one could make with Kraft caramels. Ahh, caramel apples, crackly leaves of burnished orange dusting the sidewalks, the kids skipping home from school, greeted at the door with a tender hug from Mom.

Dad nursing a whiskey sour in his easy chair; Mom, her arms crossed, nursing time-worn resentments. The kids huddled in their rooms cranking their radios up loud to muffle the inevitable screaming match to come.

Oh, maybe that was just my house. 

Is it any wonder I wrapped my head and arms around the CMA's?

Before 1968, the only awards shows on TV were the Emmys and the Oscars. Today, pick a week and you'll find one or two statuette grabfests to suit your tastes. "Winning an award" is a mundane exercise. Shoot, I bet I've even won an award for something and I don't even know it (I'm thinking I probably sent my "representative" to scoop it up for me.)

Forty-eight years of televised CMA's has wrought some changes. There's no longer a category for Comedian of the Year or Instrumental Group. Vocal Group used to encompass not only groups but duos. Frankly there weren't that many vocal groups making records in 1968.

And we (okay, I) think today's music reeks? Take a gander at the nominees (and winners) of the various awards in '68:

Album of the Year
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Glen Campbell
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette
Gentle on My Mind - Glen Campbell
The Best of Merle Haggard - Merle Haggard

Female Vocalist of the Year
Tammy Wynette
Lynn Anderson
Loretta Lynn
Dolly Parton
Jeannie C. Riley 

Male Vocalist of the Year
Glen Campbell
Eddy Arnold
Johnny Cash
Merle Haggard
Charley Pride

Single of the Year
Harper Valley PTA - Jeannie C. Riley
By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Glen Campbell
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette
Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash
Honey - Bobby Goldsboro

Song of the Year
Honey - Bobby Russell (sorry, but one of the worst songs ever written)
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman
Harper Valley PTA - Tom T. Hall
Little Green Apples - Bobby Russell (Is this guy gunning for the title of worst songwriter ever?)
Skip a Rope - Glen Douglas Tubb and Bobby Moran 

Vocal Group of the Year
Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton
The Stoneman Family
Archie Campbell and Lorene Mann (?)
Bill Anderson and Jan Howard
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash

Entertainer of the Year
Glen Campbell
Eddy Arnold
Johnny Cash
Merle Haggard
Charley Pride 

FYI - the Instrumental Group of the Year was the Buckaroos (richly deserved) and the Comedian of the Year, if anyone cares, was Ben Colder (I guess you had to be there).

So, if we're (okay I'm) appalled by Beyonce performing on the 50th anniversary show, in 1968 we were appalled (appalled!) by Glen Campbell, who wasn't country, walking away with the biggest awards of the night.

I like Glen Campbell a whole lot -- now. I think Glen Campbell is a national treasure. That doesn't negate the fact that By The Time I Get To Phoenix wasn't country. It was...I don't know...easy listening, I guess. It sucked.

And don't even get me started on that musical blemish, "Honey". Oh. My. God. Horrible, horrible song.

Hindsight, though, is omniscient. Of course we know now that Tammy and Merle and...I guess that's about it from the above list...are majestic. Merle would have his day, and his arms full of awards, in 1970. Tammy started a long run in '68 that flowed into subsequent years. Porter and Dolly were royalty -- Dolly still is.

But if you can stand the cringe-worthiness, let's take a close look back, shall we?


(She was kinda dumb and kinda smart.)



For pure kitsch:



Here's some royalty:


Not to give 2016 short shrift, here's, I'm guessing, the best performance of the night:


Forty-eight years. A lot has changed and a lot hasn't. Talent is talent. The cool thing of the moment isn't cool at all.

I've suddenly got a craving for some Kraft caramels.