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The Nashville Sound

The Nashville Sound came into being in the mid-fifties and had by the late 1960s successfully overtaken the “honky tonk” sub-genre that had up till then dominated radio airplay, and was seen as rough and ready music, perhaps we could call it roughneck country and still be able to show our faces on the streets of Bakersfield. Record companies considered it too raw for radio, and I suppose in the way “true” or what they call “free” jazz is seen as a totally different animal to smooth jazz, The Nashville Sound became the smoother, more acceptable and certainly more commercial and saleable face of country music, with artists like Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Don Gibson and later on, the King himself, Elvis Presley. He, of course, would be more linked with the rockabilly sound, but as already explained above, this itself was an offshoot of country, or indeed, hillbilly music.

The Bakersfield Sound

But the Nashville Sound artists didn’t have it all their own way. In the late sixties a new sound began to emerge, latching on to the newborn rock and roll, and bringing in significant changes with the widespread use of electric instruments. Some of the Bakersfield Sound’s biggest stars were Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Jean Shephard, Tommy Collins and Freddie Hart. Later on, and crossing genre divides somewhat, the Bakersfield Sound was carried on by classic rock bands such as The Grateful Dead, The Byrds and Creedence Clearwater Revival, who would, with many others, including Bob Dylan, create a new sub-genre: Country Rock. The Bakersfield Sound was also responsible for the sudden growth of guitar shops in the area as the West Coast Sound, as it was to be known, took such influences later from the Bakersfield Sound.

The Next Wave of the Nashville Sound - Countrypolitan

In a way that seems perhaps to mirror the later attack of punk rock on progressive rock, or even I guess rock and roll on the mainstream bands of the time, the Bakersfield Sound was a direct reaction to the new incarnation of its smoother rival, the Nashville Sound, which by now had morphed into what became known as Countrypolitan, using full orchestras, lush arrangements and vocal choirs, and targeting the more mature and refined audience. With the deaths of two of the biggest stars in the Nashville Sound, Patsy Cline in 1963 and Jim Reeves the following year, the Bakersfield Sound had begun to gain ground, but Countrypolitan fought back and eventually dominated with artists such as Glenn Campbell, Charley Pride, Charlie Rich, Lynne Anderson, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. This would basically set the scene for what would become a kind of crossover to pop in the 1970s, as country artists would have hits outside of the country charts. Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” and Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” are still remembered today, even by those who have no interest in country music, and have become music, rather than just country standards.

Country Rock

As mentioned above, artists like The Byrds and the Dead, Creedence and Bob Dylan began to take country influences into their music, mostly if not all from the harder-edged, rawer Bakersfield Sound, and in fact it was Dylan who eschewed the zeitgeist of the time, hippie psychedelia and experimentation, and instead went back to rock’s basic roots, heading to Nashville to record his album Blonde on Blonde. Quickly followed by The Byrds, this engendered a rush by other bands to follow suit, and artists like Linda Ronstadt, The Eagles The Doobie Brothers and Emmylou Harris began also fusing the two genres, until country rock was a thing. Later this would also give way to Southern Rock/Southern Boogie, but that might just be a sub-genre bridge too far; we’ll have to see. Certainly “Sweet Home Alabama” is a very country-influenced song, but whether we want to step over the state line and start blurring the distinction too much I have yet to decide, at least insofar as my own writing goes.

Fourth Generation

As the 1970s hit so too did country pop, which is still with us today, although in a more polished and some would say more soulless form, this derived of course from the original Nashville Sound and Countrypolitan, while the Bakersfield Sound gave us outlaw country, of which the two main stars to emerge were to be Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Punk got in on the act too, as cowpunk resulted in bands like Jason and the Scorchers and The Long Ryders, while John Denver rose to fame in 1972 with a soft, crooning kind of music perhaps harking back to the old “cowboy songs” of Gene Autry et al. Then disco tried to claim country in 1980, but neo disco country was shot in the head by artists such as George Strait, Ricky Skaggs and Randy Travis pioneered Neotraditional country, who were determined to take country back to its roots, idolising the likes of Hank Williams and George Jones.

The 1970s and 1980s were the heyday of country pop, when artists like Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton had hits on both sides of the country divide, and others like Juice Newton, Willie Nelson and Crystal Gayle scored serious points on the mainstream charts, most hitting the top five or ten with their releases. John Denver was a major figure in country pop, as was Olivia Newton-John, possibly (though unconfirmed by me) the first act from Australia to break into the American country scene, in fact winning the Country Music Association’s award for Female Vocalist of the Year in 1975, something that irked traditional country artists like George Strait and Tammy Wynette. There was, however, no stopping the march of musical progress, whether it was seen by Strait and his cohorts as a march backwards, or by Parton et al as vindicating their talent and introducing them to a new audience.

Bands hailing from the state of Oklahoma became known as Red Dirt, due to the colour of the soil found at Stillwater, OK. Incidentally, Oklahoma was also the home of Western Swing and the Tulsa Sound. The main thing about Red Dirt seems to have been the breadth of different sounds, the experimentation and the supposed impossibility of pinning it down to one style. In some ways, it’s been likened to indie music, in others punk. Or to put it in the words of one Stillwater resident, singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave: "It's kind of hard to put into words, but if you ever drive down on the (Mississippi) Delta, you can almost hear that blues sound," he explains. "Go to New Orleans, and you can almost hear the Dixieland jazz. Go to San Francisco, and you get that psychedelic-music vibe. You hear the Red Dirt sound when you go through Stillwater. It has to do with the spirit of the people. There's something different about them. They're not Texans, they're Okies, and I think the whole Red Dirt sound is just as important to American musicology as the San Francisco Sound or any of the rest. It's distinctly its own thing."

Bands linked with red dirt include Moses, The Great Divide, No Justice, Red Dirt Rangers and Bob Childers, the latter of whom is seen as the father of the sub-genre. Some describe it simply as country music with attitude while others believe it’s impossible to describe properly. Red dirt contains elements of Americana, folk and the later alt-country.

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Fifth Generation

This seems to be split mostly between neotraditional acts such as Randy Travis and Alan Jackson, and the new emerging sub-genre of stadium rock in country music, typified by the likes of Garth Brooks and The Dixie Chicks. The extension of FM radio signals to city and suburban areas meant that the country music stations, who had been up until now broadcasting on AM, mostly or only in rural areas, were now able to reach the cities, and this allowed more people than ever to hear country music. Allied to this was the abandonment by many stations of their former “muzak” format to embrace country. Of course, this wider availability of country music did also mean that the rougher, rawer sound of the past decade was no longer feasible for radio or for record sales, and accordingly production became more polished and tended more to target the pop and casual audience, rather than appeal to the die-hard country fan.

With the arrival of country stadium rock, not only were records by country artists selling well in the mainstream, the whole profile of country music had risen and acts such as Brooks could command top dollar for their tickets. Conversely, artists were expected to provide value for money, leading to the perhaps rather silly sight of old Garth flying around on a highwire on stage like some latter-day country version of Peter Pan! Other artists such as Travis Tritt, Clint Black and Toby Keith became very popular in this generation, as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s. Female artists, who had been somewhat restricted to the likes of Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, Emmylou Harris and Tammy Wynette in the previous decade, began to come into their own, with Reba McIntyre, Shania Twain and Faith Hill all having Platinum albums.

On the other side of the coin, the 1990s saw the rise of Alt-Country (literally, alternative country) as bands lashed back against the established order and the new wave of pop country artists, incorporating elements of punk and alternative rock in their sound. Building a little on the idea of outlaw country, and pushing the boundaries thereof, bands like Bright Eyes, Jason and the Scorchers, Lucinda Williams, Drive-by Truckers, Old 97s and Steve Earle looked more to the music of old hands such as Woodie Guthrie, Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt for their inspiration. Cowpunk bands such as Lone Justice and the Long Ryders were also part of the alt-country scene. Perhaps vindicating the “alt” tag in their new sub-genre, these bands were largely ignored by the mostly conservative established country radio stations and got little airplay, but became known to listeners through soundtracks to movies, and the breakout of artists such as Earle and Ryan Adams into the mainstream, where they could no longer be ignored.

Sixth Generation

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, though artists still play and thrive at the likes of outlaw country and neotraditionalist venues and clubs, the genre itself has been watered down to such an extent that we have pop playing a far greater role in the music of country artists, so that your Taylor Swifts and Carrie Underwoods are often cited by people who “think they know country”, while Faith Hill, despite being married to country star Tim McGraw, can really only claim the most tenuous link to the genre through her mostly pop-oriented songs, as can Shania and others. Such sub-genres as the godawful Bro Country have risen, marrying the worst of pop/boyband tropes with the most inoffensive country strains, drinking songs and questionable attitude towards women, with more emphasis on love of trucks, especially pickups, than girlfriends, resulting in a coupling that should really be seeking divorce right now.

For better or worse, many, even most artists, whatever their genre (with the exception - mostly - of hip-hop, and one would assume this is more due to a racial disparity - country being traditionally, and mostly still, seen as “music for whites”) have tended to dabble in country music. Richard Marx included five country songs on his album Days of Avalon, while Bon Jovi’s Lost Highway album was reviled by many fans and critics as being “too country”. Other pop artists have successfully (commercially at least, if not always aesthetically) mixed country with their pop tunes and have made a bundle and created a huge following. We’ve already mentioned Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, but there have been tons of others: Kelly Clarkson, Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, The Shires… the list goes on and on, some better than others, some more country and some more pop. Shania Twain and Melissa Etheridge continue to enjoy mass appeal, and nearly everyone loves Dolly and knows a song or two.

It would be unfair, unkind and wrong to say that The 9/11 attacks were a godsend to country music, but there’s no denying that they helped bring the more traditional values of country - nationalism, god-fearing, patriotism and fighting back - to the fore again, and very much into the mainstream. Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Ryan Adams, Trace Adkins, even the largely-forgotten Charlie Daniels, remembered by most for that one song, all stood up to the terrorists as country music came together and shook its collective fist in the direction of - well, wherever the terrorists lived, they guessed. Or down towards Satan in Hell. Who cared? They were showing Al Quada, and the world at large, that while you certainly don’t mess with Texas, you do not fuck with the United States. Naturally, such patriotic fervour was laughed at by the terrorists but did not do any harm to the artists' often-flagging record sales, just sayin'.

Of course, though country music as a genre began in the USA it has since spread far and wide, with even the stupid Irish getting in on the act (believe me, you do NOT want to hear an Irish country song! Not unless you have medical insurance, cos you’ll need to have your ears amputated) and countries as diverse as Germany and India, the Philippines and even Iran! However this is not intended to be a detailed, blow-by-blow, country-by-country chronological history of country music, and is merely presented here as a basic guide, so that ignorant people like me, who know, or knew until I began researching and listening to it, next to nothing about country music can get a decent grounding in what it’s all about, how it began and how wide and varied the breadth of music is.

If nothing else has come out of my research (and it definitely has) then I’ve learned that country music is not all about pig farmers playing banjos and sitting around singing about tractors and women, the Dust Bowl and how times used to be better. It’s got a long and varied history, and it deserves some damn respect.

Through this journal, that's what I hope and intend it will get.

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Chapter I: Go Tell it on the Mountain:
The Courtship of Country Music

“All of American music comes from the same place, it's just sort of where it ends up, and country music is one of the destinations.” - Ketch Secor, Old Crow Medicine Show

There are probably few if any music genres made up of so many different types of music as country music. Note, I don’t mean it has a lot of sub-genres - it does, like most other music genres - but nearly every other genre has come into being as the fusion of one, two or maybe three other types of broadly similar music. Country is, well, different. It would have to be, being, as I mentioned at the start, one of the oldest surviving forms of music. Among the many and varied traditions that went together to give a sort of birth to what we now know as country music were Appalachian music, Folk music, Blues, Old Time music, Cajun, Creole, Western Music, Celtic, Singing Cowboys, Corrido, Ranchera, French Folk music, Norteno, Folk music of the British Isles, Africa-American music and of course Gospel music. Not all of these genres of music are always present in country music, but each of them has and mostly continues to have an influence on the genre.

A question usually asked of any genre of music is where did it begin, where did it come from and who, for want of a better word, invented it? Who can we look back to and say that he, she or they is or are the father/mother, godfather/mother or grandfather/grandmother of the music? In some genres, this isn’t hard to ascertain. Most people will agree that Deep Purple and Black Sabbath are the godfathers of heavy metal, Genesis, ELP and Yes are among the progenitors of progressive rock, and The New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols invented punk rock. It’s harder to find a common source for jazz or classical, and the further back you go into the music’s origins the murkier those origins become, making it very difficult to assign the title of “first” or “creator” of the music style.

With country music it’s even harder, mostly due to the wide range of influences that came to bear from the 1920s on to coalesce into the country music we have today, broadly speaking. Rather than try to answer the rather impossible question then, the question without a true answer, it’s probably best to look back to the beginnings of the genre, by examining the many types of music that lent something of themselves to the formation of country music.


Appalachian music

For those, like me, who aren’t American and for whom the word means pretty much nothing, Appalachia is an area in the eastern United States, basically running from Upstate New York down to Alabama and Georgia, and it was to here that settlers from Britain, Northern Ireland and Scotland arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and like any immigrants they brought with them music to remind them of home, and maintain a link to the old country. Mostly these were ballads, sung acapella, more stories in song format than anything else, and obviously very heavily dependent on the lyrical matter, as they were listened to primarily for the story they told and not necessarily for the cadences - or indeed skill - of the singer. Ballads could be (and still are, to some extent, at least here) sung by people who had no idea of rhythm or melody and who could, to be completely fair to them, be described as being unable to carry a tune in a bucket. Rather like me. But that wasn't important. The story was the thing, and nobody cared if you could sing, for who can’t talk, and while there were of course people with highly musical voices who were a joy to hear and listen to, any old sod down the local crooning in a totally off-tune way about the fields back home would be listened to, and joined in with, probably by a crowd of people who would have similar difficulty transporting a tune in a metal canister.

It didn’t matter.

But then there was the music, and that was a separate thing. Reels and jigs were made to be danced to, and the instrument folk usually danced to when these were played was the fiddle. Fiddles were quick, lively and actually took skill to play, so a fiddler at say a barn dance or other gathering was always welcome, and possibly paid well for his time, possibly with liquid refreshment or tobacco.

Another thing immigrants bring with them generally is their worship, their faith, their religion, and a form of singing called “lining out” (which sounds like something a rugby team would do, and also brings to mind the later horrors of line dancing!) involved one person singing a line from a psalm or hymn, and the rest, the congregation, responding in chorus. Sounds a lot like the chants of the monks to me, popular (well, about the only real music available) back in the times before the Renaissance.

The New World ballad became popular, both as a music form and as a way to disseminate news of events, which would be written up in song and then distributed and sung, perhaps a more sophisticated and inclusive version of the old town crier in medieval Europe. Given how endemic to country music it became, it might surprise you to learn (it did me anyway) that it was African-American slaves who first brought the banjo to the Appalachians, their playing influencing some of the greats of the era. This also led to the beginning of blues music, which rapidly spread throughout America but always was, and more or less always has been, seen as “black music”, so much so that when white men attempted it - often very successfully - their music was usually labelled as “white blues”, to distinguish it from the original (and seen as better) and also, perhaps, to note that this was a form of what might later qualify as cultural appropriation. Blues was supposed to be the music of the oppressed black community, slaves and then even as free men, still second-class citizens. It’s probably a truism that nobody can play the blues like a black man.

As string bands began to form, instruments such as the guitar, mandolin, spoons, washboard and others began to appear in the Appalachians, as well as the fretted dulcimer and the autoharp. A string band was and is a music ensemble, made up exclusively of stringed instruments and whose prevalence would eventually give way to the very popular sub-genre of country music called bluegrass. Most of the instruments above need little or no explanation, but some do. So here they are.

Spoons

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But to play the spoons takes energy, skill and dexterity. You’ll probably not be surprised to learn that they’re a percussion instrument, or even accompaniment - I don’t recall ever seeing Concerto in A Minor for Spoons or Rhapsody on a Theme of Spoons. They’re not what you’d call musical. You can play them solo but they’re not going to sound like much more than they are, which is, well, two spoons banging against each other, but when used to accompany say a fiddle or accordion or harmonica, or multiple instruments, they can sound very impressive. I would imagine you also need something of a high pain threshold, as the spoons are typically hit against the leg, arm, hand or other part of the body, and while they’re obviously not hit hard, they are hit repeatedly, so that I expect it must hurt a little after a while. Contrary to public belief though, this is not from where we get the expression “he’s a real spoon, isn’t he?”

Autoharp

Autoharps come from the zither family of stringed instruments, and are basically a portable harp with bars that mute all strings except those needed to make that chord. Originally conceived to be played lying flat - rather like the later steel guitar - one hand would pluck the strings while the other worked the chord buttons.


Fretted Dulcimer

Unrelated to the hammered dulcimer (but then, you knew that, didn’t you?), this one does not go out and get drunk at all. It has acquired various nicknames, some of them quite charming, such as the Kentucky dulcimer (are you sure it doesn’t get drunk?), the harmony box, the hog fiddle and the hilariously prosaic the music box. Again, it is or was intended to be played flat, either on the lap or on a table, and the strings plucked, which again - and this may be way off but it sounds right to me - makes me think of this as some distant ancestor of one of country’s most popular and enduring instruments, the lap steel guitar.


Washboard

Yeah, you’ve probably seen this in either some old cowboy movie, cartoon or episode of the Grand Ole Opry. Originally developed as, well, a board for washing clothes, it became defunct after mechanical washing machines became available and is another thing we have to thank our black brothers for, as it was again slaves who brought the musical version of the washboard to America, through a style of African dance called “hamboning” (and no doubt thought savage and pagan by us civilised folks) and can be played in many ways and styles but is generally a rhythm or percussion instrument. It became popular through the formation of jug bands, which emerged in the early 1920s. Jug bands are bands which employ washboards, spoons and, um, jugs to make their music.

Washtub Bass

It’s exactly what it sounds like. A washing tub, used as a resonator, is attached to a long, usually single-stringed instrument. This, too, originates in Africa, in instruments such as the ground bow and the ang-bindi. It’s another instrument that often found its way into jug bands, and was also called the gut-bucket bass or the gas-tank bass.

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I: Pioneers on the Dusty Road: The Men and Women Who Helped Create Country Music

Invisible Men and Women: The Myth of the Mountain Whites

Given that the settlers mentioned earlier all came from the British Isles, it will possibly come as no terrible surprise to hear that they believed themselves, and the region they colonised, the Appalachians - especially the mountains - racially pure. And so, despite the fact that there were African-American people living there, and also despite the fact that much of the style and format that goes to make up Appalachian music comes from their black brothers (to say nothing of, as already mentioned, the introduction of the banjo, guitar and other instruments they had never heard of), the history of Appalachian music - written, of course, by white men - traditionally ignored the role of the black musicians in its creation and development. With a sort of Trumpian blindness, it seems, these white immigrants failed to see or refused to see any faces that were not the same colour as theirs, leading to historians for decades calling the Appalachian settlers “the mountain whites”, and assuming, or believing, or reporting that all the music coming out of that region was made by white men.

And we obviously have to address that, so I’ve dug around to see what names history - if only recent history - has unearthed within the black music community of the Appalachians that I can talk about. It’s quite possible that some of these men and women may not necessarily have had much of, or indeed any impact on country music, but even so, as they’ve been ignored and pushed aside like a dirty secret for most of the twentieth century, I feel it’s important that we acknowledge their work, catalogue their efforts and afford them the respect of at least admitting they existed.

J.C. Staggers (1898 - 1984)

Jacob “Jake” C. Staggers was born in Oconee County, South Carolina and learned to play home-made banjos made from tin pots and animal skins at the tender age of ten years. In this he was assisted by his older brother Hansell, a friend called Jesse Godine and a friendly white man called Garnett Spencer. He played at dances and, perhaps reflecting both the different times and the nature of the Deep South, um, hog killings and corn shuckings, whatever they were. Something to do with harvest I guess. In addition to dance tunes, he also played railroad songs, gospel or spirituals and blues - though technically he more or less helped invent the blues, so his songs are described as pre-blues. He is credited (eventually) with introducing the banjo to the white Appalachian community, and is also described, as I say, as being one of the banjo players who helped develop the blues. Much of the information given about him is noted as being “estimated”, probably referring to the lack of real interest in blacks by the state census board and such institutions.

His legacy survived in the playing of the (white) “Minstrel of the Appalachians”, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who recorded his “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad”, but changed the lyric slightly to refer to the assassination of President James Garfield.


Lesley “Elsey” Riddle (1905 - 1980)

One of the few black musicians whom Appalachian historians will - grudgingly - admit played a part in the scene, Riddle actually did much more than that. A man who had every reason to play the blues, he lost his lower right leg below the knee at the age of 22, and while recovering learned to play the guitar. He developed his own innovative style of picking and slide guitar, and began playing with other musicians such as Harry Gay, John Henry Lyons, Steve Tarter and Brownie McGhee. One year after his accident (and therefore, having only been playing the guitar at best for twelve months), Riddle met the founder of one of country music’s first true superstars, the Carter Family Band. He and A.P. Carter began a song-collecting trip around Virginia, Riddle having the ability to memorise any melody, while Carter wrote down the lyrics.

His guitar technique was picked up by Maybelle Carter, and incorporated into her playing, but after marrying and moving to New York in 1942 Riddle retired from music. He was however coaxed back in 1965 by legendary folk musician Mike Seeger (half-brother of Pete) and they played together for the next thirteen years. Riddle died in 1980, but his memory is kept alive by a special festival held in his hometown of Burnsville, N.C., called the Riddlefest.

Walter “Brownie” McGhee (1915 - 1996)

Another with the right to sings the blues, Brownie was stricken with the dreaded polio when he was only four, leading to his brother, Granville “Sticks”, having to push him around in a cart as the polio incapacitated his leg. They both got their interest in music from their father, who played guitar and sang in addition to his job as factory worker, while Brownie’s uncle made him his first guitar out of a tin box and a board. As a youngster, Brownie was involved with the local gospel group, and taught himself to play guitar, banjo, ukulele and piano. Surgery to correct the polio was successful and he was able to walk again.

Brownie became a travelling musician at age 22 and joined the Rabbits Foot Minstrels, a touring company, where he met Blind Boy Fuller, who was to have such an effect upon him. He later went on to record and then meet Sonny Terry, harmonica player for the now-deceased Fuller, in 1942 in New York, and the two teamed up, playing music right up to 1980. McGhee also went on to have a small but successful career in film and TV, and both he and Sonny were presented with National Heritage Fellowships in 1982. Brownie died in 1996, ten years after Sonny had passed on.



Granville “Sticks” McGhee (1918 - 1961)

Older brother, as related above, to Brownie McGhee, Granville acquired his sobriquet from his having to push his brother around in a cart, and also taught himself to play the guitar. In 1942, when his little brother was having his fateful meeting with Sonny Terry in New York, Sticks signed up to go fight Hitler and the Japs, but kept his hand in by playing guitar when he had a moment. On his discharge after the war, his path again diverged from that of his brother, though it still led in a musical direction. Sticks went for more out-and-out rock and roll, which was becoming very popular by then, writing the song “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” (huh?) which seems to me, given the time, surely the first song ever to use the word motherfucker?

Drinkin’ that mess is our delight,
And when we get drunk, start fightin’ all night.
Knockin’ out windows and tearin’ down doors,
Drinkin’ half-gallons and callin’ for more.
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Drinkin’ wine motherfucker, drinkin’ wine!
Goddam!
Pass that bottle to me!"

Setting the stage for later hip-hop, perhaps? Another way the two brothers differed is that Sticks only had a very moderately successful career, cutting records but having no hits to speak of. His “Drinking Wine” (no I’m not going to say it again, damn you) did reach number two in the charts, but in a very much modified version, presumably motherfucker-less, and not until 1949. He too met Terry later in life and recorded with him, but his musical career, as such, was spent moving from label to label, and he never really made any money from his music. He died in 1961.

Interestingly (or not) both brothers died from cancer.

Blind Willie Walker (1896 - 1933)

Sadly very little has been written about him (and almost nothing recorded) apart from the rather obvious fact that he was blind, from birth, and that he died very young (only 37 years old) possibly from syphilis. He was respected as one of the best guitar players ever in South Carolina, so fast and intricate his playing that many other guitarists of the era would not even attempt to try to emulate it.


Reverend Gary Davis (1896 - 1962)

Another blind guitar player (guess there were a lot of children born blind in those days), Gary could count himself lucky, as he was only one of two children out of eight who survived in his family. I couldn’t say, and I wouldn’t presume to, but perhaps his parents were disappointed or even angry he survived when six others died (any of whom might have been sighted, who knows?) - at any rate, it seems parental love was not at a premium in his household, and he is said to have been mistreated by his mother before his father decided to offload him on a relative, Gary’s grandmother. Whether justice or not, Gary’s father was shot when he, Gary, was aged ten, by the sheriff (one can only assume in the commission of a robbery or something, or maybe just for being black).

His conversion to Christianity in 1933 was probably the best and the worst thing that ever happened to him. Ordained as a Baptist minister (the sobriquet was not just affected, he really was a reverend, and a practicing one) he, like most converts, took his religion seriously, and as a result refused to play “the devil’s music”, ie blues. This was unfortunate, as he has been called one of the most accomplished and influential guitar players in America, cited by people like Dylan and The Grateful Dead among many others. But he stuck to “spirituals”, and though he taught Blind Boy Fuller how to play, he refused to record or perform on stage any blues tunes.

I guess luckily for him, gospel or worship music was at least as popular as blues in America, especially the South, and he made a good living sticking with “God’s music”. He would later claim that God had taken his sight but replaced it with something even better, the ability to play music and pay tribute to his glory. But it wasn’t an easy road, and he spent years busking, begging and preaching on street corners, perfecting the art of the showman, doing things with his guitar others had never even dreamed of, such as using it as a percussion instrument, making it sound like a brass band, and in addition shouting out rapturous epithets and praise to God. It’s said he made an interesting, even mesmerising show.

Songs of his covered in later years by people as diverse as Peter, Paul and Mary and The Stones earned him enough royalties to buy himself a house and get off the streets, and he was a major attraction in the folk revival of the sixties. He died of a heart attack in 1972, aged 66.

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ribbons

Excellent write-ups usual, TH. You've managed to do a great job here of summarizing a genre with a very rich and diverse history.

Reading this has been somewhat of a trip down memory lane for me, as I was raised heavily indoctrinated into Country music by my mother - who was a Southerner transplanted to the Northeast by way of marrying my father. The likes of Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette (a deep vocal influence on my mother, who was a good singer), George Jones, Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Jimmie Rodgers, Porter Wagoner, Glen Campbell, and many others were constantly played in our home. I think more than anything else I gained an appreciation of the instrumentation in Country music (Telecasters and pedal steel!) and also its many fine vocalists.

Trollheart

Hey, real glad you're readin' the words I'm-a writin' here, little lady! Or something.

I'm nothing like you: there was no country music played in my house - all old 30s/40s Perry Como/Bing Crosby/Matt Munroe kind of stuff. Literally 78 records, and only brought down from the attic at Christmas in a vain attempt by my waste of skin father to try to make up for the abuse of the rest of the year. We had the radio, but at the time it was the national one only, and so you had Irish artists, trad, showbands (shiver) and various pop artists, nothing you could really identify with. Once I got my own radio (which I won for having a piece published in a comic) Radio Luxembourg was my saviour.

But I was totally ignorant of country music, and laughed at it well up to, well, almost my mid-forties I guess. It's only recently that I've been giving it more of a chance. I think my gateway into it was Nanci Griffith, who I grew to love, then for harder fare, Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam, but I really have a lot to learn about country, which is why I started writing this.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

ribbons

I'm a-readin', pardner. I may not have much to say, but I'm always a-readin'. And hey, I liked that Nanci Griffith track on first listen - I've never heard her before, but really like her rhythmic style. Will have to seek out more from her.

As if that could ever be made up for. I wish I could somehow reverse time and take that pain away from you.

There, that's better! No surprise you won the radio for something you wrote.

Trollheart

Okay then, take your partner by the hand (unless they have a restraining order against you, in which case don't push it) and let's do this thing!

I: Nickel Dreams: From Austin to Nashville - The Light Beyond the Woods

Though born in Seguin, it was in the much larger city of Austin, to which her parents moved when she was young, that first gave a young Nanci Griffith her first real experience of country and folk music. Her father, known for singing in a barbershop quartet, took her to see the legendary Townes Van Zandt, and folk singer Carolyn Hester, who recognised talent in the young girl and encouraged her to consider music as a career. Her parents split when she was only seven, but Nanci was already performing in coffee houses with material she had written herself at twelve years of age. However at this time, the early sixties, there weren’t many women making it in country music, and those who were had been long established, so after graduating from Austin University of Texas with a degree in education, Nanci became a kindergarten teacher, and though she would never have children of her own, her love of them would come through strongly in many of her songs.

Teaching was her job and brought in the money, a steadier - and some might say, more respectable for a woman - job than being a singer, but she did not give up her dream of one day being a musician, playing bars and coffee houses after school in the evenings. Through these sessions she met other rising stars such as Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams, as well as Eric Taylor, whom she married in 1976. Two years later all her hard work paid off when she won the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Competition, which allowed her to give up her teaching job and pursue music as a fulltime career. It also brought her to the attention of Philo Records, for whom she would record her first two albums.



There’s a Light Beyond These Woods (1978)

It’s fair to say Nanci didn’t exactly blow the worlds of country or folk away with this initial offering. In fact, it wouldn’t be till her third album that she would make her proper commercial breakthrough, and it would take another two before she would have a bona fide hit, ironically not a song written by her. This debut album shows more of the folk than the country about her, but then Nanci had apparently always referred to her music as “folkabilly”, which, while it sounds a rather rude reference to bestiality, is a way I guess of fusing her love of folk and "hillbilly", or country music, the former mostly giving way to the latter as her career progressed and developed.

It’s a soft acoustic opener as “I Remember Joe” introduces us to her first self-penned song with the strong, powerful yet gentle vocal we would come to recognise and love. Sounds like Jew’s harp, though none is credited. Good fiddle from, well, it doesn’t say, but the mandolin from Rick West is really nice. Plenty of backing vocals, and it’s a decent start before she tones things down with “Alabama Soft Spoken Blues”, which reminds me of her later “Ghost in the Music”, to an extent. The piano from Richard Cooper adds a lovely sort of sighing little backdrop to the melody here. The contrast, or if you like, versatility in her songwriting is shown here, as she moves from a basic toe-tapper to a reflective ballad with ease. This is the only track on the album where she shares songwriting credit, here with Maggie Graham (is this the Mary-Margaret mentioned in the title track? Not sure but in that song she does call her Maggie, so maybe).

Upping the tempo slightly then for “Michael’s Song”, nice soft breezy feel to it with a cool little bit of dobro I think, but you’d have to be honest and say that this far nothing has really stood out, and “Song for Remembered Heroes”, with its picked guitar intro rising into the vocal is another reflective composition which really showcases her young voice, clear and confident even at only age twenty-five, but I think it’s possible that a failing of these songs is that they’re all sort of low-key and it’s hard to really grab a hold of anything in any of them. There’s nothing that really stands out, not to me. The cello here is really nice too, and they’re not by any means bad songs, but even so, it’s not hard to see why this album failed to catch anyone’s interest. It’s having problems keeping mine, and I’m a big fan of hers.

“West Texas Sun” is another that sort of sighs or shimmers into the tune, Nanci’s voice not rising too much above it, and it certainly suits the acoustic nature of most of the music here, but I would like to hear her kick it up a little, as I know from experience she can do. It might be unfair and unkind to say so, but the overall impression this album is giving me so far is of a record to fall gently asleep to, and that’s not how I see her music, but I guess she was learning her trade, maybe testing the waters. Not every debut can set the world on fire, and she is relatively young here. The title is the only one that really gives me any hope, with its autobiographical style, looking back through her life (even though she’s, as I say, only really beginning it here), talking about her old boyfriend who died when she was at high school and then tracing her own life after that tragedy. If any song on the album points the way to her future fame, I think this is it. It’s of course like every other song here a bittersweet ballad style, though with a bit more punch about it, and definitely the standout, but there’s just something a little different about it for me; it sounds a little more mature, and rising into the country genre more than the folk.

Speaking of country, “Dollar Matinee” is another which begins to head more in that direction, with a honky-tonk piano but annoyingly it’s sung by her husband, Eric Taylor, also written by him, so I couldn’t count it as one of her songs. I don’t even hear her contributing backing vocals here, she doesn’t duet with him, so you have to ask what the hell is it doing here? Let Taylor put it on one of his own albums. Meh. It’s also, to be fair, a pretty poor country song and for me a black mark against this album, which really couldn’t afford too many more. Not very encouraging either that the next one, the penultimate track, is a cover too, this of Bruce Carlson’s “Montana Backroads”, and even at that it’s so different to the previous track that it only brings into sharp relief the disparity between it and the rest of the album. I wonder if Taylor had demanded he have a song on her debut? If so, pretty selfish, and a bad idea if it was hers.

There’s not a lot to recover from, but Taylor has really pissed me off and I can’t see this ending any better than I had expected it to, and that wasn’t much. The banjo is nice and lively, but the song itself is not much to get excited about, and we end on “John Philip Griffith”, which seems to reference her late boyfriend again, and it seems he would crop up a lot in future songs, though I have to admit I don’t remember this being the case.

TRACK LISTING

I Remember Joe
Alabama Soft Spoken Blues
Michael’s Song
Song for Remembered Heroes
West Texas Sun
There’s a Light Beyond These Woods (Mary Margaret)
Dollar Matinee
Montana Backroads
John Philip Griffith

I suppose you can’t be too hard on her when this is her first outing, but I have to admit this is quite poor. I’m disappointed, and even though I’m pretty sure I must have heard this before (I certainly know the title track) I don’t remember any of it. I wonder did I hear it? Surely I would not have been so surprised/annoyed by Eric Taylor’s song if I had? Perhaps that title track appears on another album later in her career… ah! There we go. It’s the closing track on Lone Star State of Mind. No wonder I remember it, but not this album. Well, sadly I have to say I don’t seem to have missed much. Nevertheless, for Nanci I’m sure it was a big deal: her first proper album, and a few years and two albums later she would be on her way. Can’t see anyone spinning this though, or even owning it, unless they’re a real completist. Not a good place to start your exploration of her music.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018