Yes - post # 843 on page 14. Part of my description was - “... a stunning video in which the camera lingered unflinchingly on the Cash's weathered face. …”. The entire Cash instalment goes from posts 338 to 345.
Country Music
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Yes - post # 843 on page 14. Part of my description was - “... a stunning video in which the camera lingered unflinchingly on the Cash's weathered face. …”. The entire Cash instalment goes from posts 338 to 345.
- Apr 11, 2015
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I posted this in the Covers Thread. It makes an interesting comparison on how a song can be interpreted.
Both the original and the cover offer outstanding interpretations of Trent Reznor’s song that are emotional and wonderful.
Life from the view of a young man and how he see's his future.
From an old man looking back on his life as he approaches the end of his life.
Just leaving an updated index before I fly off today. The last index, posted in mid-March said “We're now up to about 1978 …” - now 4 months and 7 additional artists later, we’re still stuck in around 1978 (roughly based upon when an artist breaks through to sustained prominence/stardom), and as I'm now being sent off for a month to Germany, Austria and France, I've updated the index to the history, including the sub-genre types of each artist or group. You can use this as a guide to peruse any artist or country sub-genre at your leisure (and I've covered far more artists than I ever intended to when the lockdown inspired me to do this).
Name, Post/s number, State of origin, Key to sub-genre.
TF = Traditional and/or folk country (as established by Vernon Dalhart, The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers)
TC = Traditional Country but without the folk influence.
G = Gospel
WC = Western Cowboy or trail songs
WM = Western movie music
WS = Western Swing
HT = Honky Tonk (baroom "adult" music - usually about breakups, heartaches, drinking, cheating etc) that generally appealed to the rural and working class base.
BG = Bluegrass (usually traditionally acoustic using traditional instruments including banjo and slap bass)
RR = Rockabilly and/or rock'n'roll (rockabilly generally retaining a more country flavour than straight out R&R) that in the 1950's was generally confined to the youth, mostly teenage base. Also the later rock influence in country music, especially in the Outlaw era.
NS = Nashville Sound, a more sophisticated 'pop country' sound than honky tonk, deliberately appealing to a mass suburban, more middle class audience, thus expanding the country music market.
CP = Countrypolitan, an even more refined “Nashville Sound”, with smooth vocals and instrumentals, sometimes including soul or jazz influences.
CB = Country Ballad, e.g. Marty Robbins' 'El Paso' and Johnny Hortons 'Battle of New Orleans', popular in the late fifties to early sixties.
PC = Pop Country. Lighter pop/rock sound appealing to beyond the traditional country market to middle clas suburbia, with Sonny James and particularly Glenn Campbell as breakthrough artists.
TM = Tex/Mex aka Tejano - traditional Mexican, esp North Mexican Norteno and South Texas European influence - including use of mixed English & Spanish lyrics and accordions.
OC = Music associated with the Outlaw era of the mid to late seventies, often with a heavier Country rock influenced sound.
UC = 1980’s Country Pop sound developed by Mickey Gilley
GW = Gulf & Western Laidback Island sound with Calypso and/or Reggae influence, developed by Jimmy Buffett. Also called ‘Trop Rock’.
Vernon Dalhart 114-115 Texas TF
The Carter Family 117-119 Virginia TF, G
Jimmie Rodgers 120-122 Mississippi TF, HT
Sons of the Pioneers 123-124 California WC, WM
Gene Autry 125-126 Texas WC, WM
Bob Wills &
The Texas Playboys 132-140 Texas WS
Roy Acuff 147-149 Tennessee TF, G
Jimmie Davis 150-153 Louisiana TF
Roy Rogers 154-157 Ohio WC, WM
Elton Britt 159-160 Arkansas WC, TF
Ernest Tubb 161-165 Texas HT
Milton Brown 163 Texas WS
Al Dexter 166-168 Texas HT
Spade Cooley 169-171 Oklahoma WS
Tex Williams 172 Illinois WS
Red Foley 173 & 176-178 Kentucky TF, HT, RR, G
Tex Ritter 179-180 Texas TF, HT, WM
Bill Monroe &
The Bluegrass Boys 181-183 Kentucky BG
Merle Travis 184-186 Kentucky HT, TF
The Stanley Brothers 187-188 Virginia BG
Eddy Arnold 189-191 Tennessee TF, HT, NS, WC
Flatt & Scruggs 194-195 Tennessee BG
Tenessee Ernie Ford 196-197 Tennessee TF, RR
Moon Mullican 198-199 Texas HT, RR
Hank Snow 202-204 Novia Scotia (Can) TF, HT
Hank Williams 205-214 Alabama HT, TF, RR, G
Lefty Frizzell 216-219 Texas HT, TF
Mother Maybelle &
The Carter Sisters 222 Virginia TF, G
Anita Carter 225-232 Virginia TF
Carl Smith 233-234 Tennessee HT, RR
Hank Thompson 235-237 Texas WS, HT, RR
Kitty Wells 238-239 Tennessee HT
Webb Pierce 240-250 Louisiana HT, RR
Jean Shepard 251 Oklahoma HT
Slim Whitman 252-254 Texas WT
Frankie Laine 255-256 Illinois WM
Faron Young 261-262 & 266 Louisiana HT, TF
Ray Price 269-275 Texas HT, TF, NS
Elvis Presley 278-286 Alabama RR, TF, G
Carl Perkins 287-291 Tennessee RR, TF
The Louvin Brothers 294-295 Tennessee TF, G
Johnny Horton 296 & 301 & 308 California. HT, RR, CB
Sanford Clark 311-313 Arizona RR, WT
Marty Robbins 325-330 & 335 Arizona HT, RR, TF, WC, CB, WS, NS, G
Johnny Cash 338-345 Arkansas RR, HT, TF, CB, WT, NS, G
Charlie Feathers 346-348 Tennessee RR
Jerry Lee Lewis 349-352 & 365-367 Louisiana RR, HT, TF, G
Chet Atkins 353-356 Tennessee - world class guitarist and producer of NS
Ferlin Husky 362-364 Missouri NS, G
The Browns 368-369 Arkansas TF, G
Jim Ed Brown 371-372 Arkansas TF, HT
Helen Cornelius 372 Missouri TF, HT
Bobby Helms 377 Indiana RR, TF
Hank Locklin 378-379 Florida HT, TF
Jim Reeves 383-386 Texas NS
Patsy Cline 387-389 Virginia NS
Cowboy Copas 390 Oklahoma TF
The Everly Bros 393-399 Illinois RR, TF
Don Gibson 400-404 North Carolina HT
George Jones 405-412 Texas HT, TF
Western movie themes to 1962 416-419 WM
Leroy Van Dyke 423-424 Missouri RR, HT, TF
Jimmy Dean 428-429 Texas RR, TF, CB, NS
Porter Wagoner 430-432 Missouri TF, G
Roy Drusky 433-434 Georgia NS, TF
Claude King 440-441 Louisiana CB, WC, TF, HT
Ray Charles 443-445 Georgia Soul country
Skeeter Davis 446-448 Kentucky NS, TF
Bill Anderson 449-452 South Carolina TF, NS, BG, G
Bakersfield Sound 455 HT
Buck Owens 456-463 Texas HT
Bobby Bare 464-468 Ohio TF, HT, OC
Nat King Cole 469 Alabama pop country influencer
Sonny James 474-478 Alabama NS PC (influenced by Nat King Cole)
Roger Miller 479-482 Texas TF
Connie Smith 483-486 Indiana NS, TF, G
David Houston 487-488 Louisiana HT, NS
Loretta Lynn 489-493 Kentucky TF, HT
Jack Greene 494-495 Tennessee TF, NS
Merle Haggard 497-502 California TF, HT
Tammy Wynette 503-506 Mississippi TF, HT
Glen Campbell 507-509 Arkansas TF, PC
Charley Pride 510-513 Mississippi NS, PC
Conway Twitty 514-520 Mississippi RR, NS, PC
Western Movie Themes 1964-1970 521-524
Bobby Gentry 531-535 Mississippi TF, PC
Jeannie Riley 537-540 Texas PC, G
Tom T. Hall 543-550 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Townes Van Zandt 551-555 Texas TF,
Gram Parsons 560-570 Florida HT, TF
Lynn Anderson 573-575 North Dakota, TF, PC, BG, WC, G
Dolly Parton 581-607 Tennessee TF, PC, BG, WC, HT, CB, G
Tom T Hall 611-617 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Freddie Hart 622-625 Alabama TF, PC, G
Mal Street 627-631 Tennessee HT, TF
Donna Fargo 647 North Carolina PC
Mel Tillis 648-657 Florida RR, HT, TF, PC, OC
Kris Kristofferson 661-667 Texas TF, NS, HT, PC, RR, G, OC
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band California 674-680 TF, BG, RR
John Prine Illinois 685-691+695 TF, CB
Gordon Lightfoot Ontario 696-702 TF, CB, PC
Charlie Rich Arkansas 706-70. RR, CP, G
Johnny Rodriguez Texas 713-716 TM, HT,
Billy “Crash” Craddock North Carolina 721-723. RR, PC, TC
Ronnie Milsap North Carolina 732-737 PC, HT
Olivia Newton John UK/Australia 738-741 PC
John Denver New Mexico 744-748 PC, TF
Don Williams Texas 757-759 TC, TF, CP
Freddy Fender Texas 764-766 TM, CP, PC
Pussycat, Netherlands, 771 PC
Outlaw Artists outline
Billy Joe Shaver Texas 773 OC
Waylon Jennings Texas 774-781 TC, HT, NS, RR, OC
Willie Nelson Texas 782-793 TF, TC, G, WC, CB, HT, RR, OC
Hank Williams Jr Louis 800-807 TC, HT, NS, RR, OC
Johnny Paycheck Ohio 815-821 TC, HT, NS, OC
Sammi Smith Okla 822-823 NS, TC, OC
Tanya Tucker Texas 824-828 TC, NS, RR, OC
David Allan Coe Ohio 830-836 TC, HT, RR, OC
Gary Stewart Florida 840-842 HT, TC, OC
Jerry Jeff Walker NY 844-847 OC, TF, GW
Guy Clark Texas Texas 848-856 TF, OC, TC
Emmylou Harris Alab 860-873 TF, TC, OC, RR
Linda Ronstadt Ariz 889-893 TC, RR
Crystal Gayle Ken 897-902 PC, NS, TC
Mickey Gilley Miss 907-909 UC, PC, TC
Jimmy Buffett Alab 911-924 GW, TC, PC, RR
Name, Post/s number, State of origin, Key to sub-genre.
TF = Traditional and/or folk country (as established by Vernon Dalhart, The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers)
TC = Traditional Country but without the folk influence.
G = Gospel
WC = Western Cowboy or trail songs
WM = Western movie music
WS = Western Swing
HT = Honky Tonk (baroom "adult" music - usually about breakups, heartaches, drinking, cheating etc) that generally appealed to the rural and working class base.
BG = Bluegrass (usually traditionally acoustic using traditional instruments including banjo and slap bass)
RR = Rockabilly and/or rock'n'roll (rockabilly generally retaining a more country flavour than straight out R&R) that in the 1950's was generally confined to the youth, mostly teenage base. Also the later rock influence in country music, especially in the Outlaw era.
NS = Nashville Sound, a more sophisticated 'pop country' sound than honky tonk, deliberately appealing to a mass suburban, more middle class audience, thus expanding the country music market.
CP = Countrypolitan, an even more refined “Nashville Sound”, with smooth vocals and instrumentals, sometimes including soul or jazz influences.
CB = Country Ballad, e.g. Marty Robbins' 'El Paso' and Johnny Hortons 'Battle of New Orleans', popular in the late fifties to early sixties.
PC = Pop Country. Lighter pop/rock sound appealing to beyond the traditional country market to middle clas suburbia, with Sonny James and particularly Glenn Campbell as breakthrough artists.
TM = Tex/Mex aka Tejano - traditional Mexican, esp North Mexican Norteno and South Texas European influence - including use of mixed English & Spanish lyrics and accordions.
OC = Music associated with the Outlaw era of the mid to late seventies, often with a heavier Country rock influenced sound.
UC = 1980’s Country Pop sound developed by Mickey Gilley
GW = Gulf & Western Laidback Island sound with Calypso and/or Reggae influence, developed by Jimmy Buffett. Also called ‘Trop Rock’.
Vernon Dalhart 114-115 Texas TF
The Carter Family 117-119 Virginia TF, G
Jimmie Rodgers 120-122 Mississippi TF, HT
Sons of the Pioneers 123-124 California WC, WM
Gene Autry 125-126 Texas WC, WM
Bob Wills &
The Texas Playboys 132-140 Texas WS
Roy Acuff 147-149 Tennessee TF, G
Jimmie Davis 150-153 Louisiana TF
Roy Rogers 154-157 Ohio WC, WM
Elton Britt 159-160 Arkansas WC, TF
Ernest Tubb 161-165 Texas HT
Milton Brown 163 Texas WS
Al Dexter 166-168 Texas HT
Spade Cooley 169-171 Oklahoma WS
Tex Williams 172 Illinois WS
Red Foley 173 & 176-178 Kentucky TF, HT, RR, G
Tex Ritter 179-180 Texas TF, HT, WM
Bill Monroe &
The Bluegrass Boys 181-183 Kentucky BG
Merle Travis 184-186 Kentucky HT, TF
The Stanley Brothers 187-188 Virginia BG
Eddy Arnold 189-191 Tennessee TF, HT, NS, WC
Flatt & Scruggs 194-195 Tennessee BG
Tenessee Ernie Ford 196-197 Tennessee TF, RR
Moon Mullican 198-199 Texas HT, RR
Hank Snow 202-204 Novia Scotia (Can) TF, HT
Hank Williams 205-214 Alabama HT, TF, RR, G
Lefty Frizzell 216-219 Texas HT, TF
Mother Maybelle &
The Carter Sisters 222 Virginia TF, G
Anita Carter 225-232 Virginia TF
Carl Smith 233-234 Tennessee HT, RR
Hank Thompson 235-237 Texas WS, HT, RR
Kitty Wells 238-239 Tennessee HT
Webb Pierce 240-250 Louisiana HT, RR
Jean Shepard 251 Oklahoma HT
Slim Whitman 252-254 Texas WT
Frankie Laine 255-256 Illinois WM
Faron Young 261-262 & 266 Louisiana HT, TF
Ray Price 269-275 Texas HT, TF, NS
Elvis Presley 278-286 Alabama RR, TF, G
Carl Perkins 287-291 Tennessee RR, TF
The Louvin Brothers 294-295 Tennessee TF, G
Johnny Horton 296 & 301 & 308 California. HT, RR, CB
Sanford Clark 311-313 Arizona RR, WT
Marty Robbins 325-330 & 335 Arizona HT, RR, TF, WC, CB, WS, NS, G
Johnny Cash 338-345 Arkansas RR, HT, TF, CB, WT, NS, G
Charlie Feathers 346-348 Tennessee RR
Jerry Lee Lewis 349-352 & 365-367 Louisiana RR, HT, TF, G
Chet Atkins 353-356 Tennessee - world class guitarist and producer of NS
Ferlin Husky 362-364 Missouri NS, G
The Browns 368-369 Arkansas TF, G
Jim Ed Brown 371-372 Arkansas TF, HT
Helen Cornelius 372 Missouri TF, HT
Bobby Helms 377 Indiana RR, TF
Hank Locklin 378-379 Florida HT, TF
Jim Reeves 383-386 Texas NS
Patsy Cline 387-389 Virginia NS
Cowboy Copas 390 Oklahoma TF
The Everly Bros 393-399 Illinois RR, TF
Don Gibson 400-404 North Carolina HT
George Jones 405-412 Texas HT, TF
Western movie themes to 1962 416-419 WM
Leroy Van Dyke 423-424 Missouri RR, HT, TF
Jimmy Dean 428-429 Texas RR, TF, CB, NS
Porter Wagoner 430-432 Missouri TF, G
Roy Drusky 433-434 Georgia NS, TF
Claude King 440-441 Louisiana CB, WC, TF, HT
Ray Charles 443-445 Georgia Soul country
Skeeter Davis 446-448 Kentucky NS, TF
Bill Anderson 449-452 South Carolina TF, NS, BG, G
Bakersfield Sound 455 HT
Buck Owens 456-463 Texas HT
Bobby Bare 464-468 Ohio TF, HT, OC
Nat King Cole 469 Alabama pop country influencer
Sonny James 474-478 Alabama NS PC (influenced by Nat King Cole)
Roger Miller 479-482 Texas TF
Connie Smith 483-486 Indiana NS, TF, G
David Houston 487-488 Louisiana HT, NS
Loretta Lynn 489-493 Kentucky TF, HT
Jack Greene 494-495 Tennessee TF, NS
Merle Haggard 497-502 California TF, HT
Tammy Wynette 503-506 Mississippi TF, HT
Glen Campbell 507-509 Arkansas TF, PC
Charley Pride 510-513 Mississippi NS, PC
Conway Twitty 514-520 Mississippi RR, NS, PC
Western Movie Themes 1964-1970 521-524
Bobby Gentry 531-535 Mississippi TF, PC
Jeannie Riley 537-540 Texas PC, G
Tom T. Hall 543-550 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Townes Van Zandt 551-555 Texas TF,
Gram Parsons 560-570 Florida HT, TF
Lynn Anderson 573-575 North Dakota, TF, PC, BG, WC, G
Dolly Parton 581-607 Tennessee TF, PC, BG, WC, HT, CB, G
Tom T Hall 611-617 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Freddie Hart 622-625 Alabama TF, PC, G
Mal Street 627-631 Tennessee HT, TF
Donna Fargo 647 North Carolina PC
Mel Tillis 648-657 Florida RR, HT, TF, PC, OC
Kris Kristofferson 661-667 Texas TF, NS, HT, PC, RR, G, OC
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band California 674-680 TF, BG, RR
John Prine Illinois 685-691+695 TF, CB
Gordon Lightfoot Ontario 696-702 TF, CB, PC
Charlie Rich Arkansas 706-70. RR, CP, G
Johnny Rodriguez Texas 713-716 TM, HT,
Billy “Crash” Craddock North Carolina 721-723. RR, PC, TC
Ronnie Milsap North Carolina 732-737 PC, HT
Olivia Newton John UK/Australia 738-741 PC
John Denver New Mexico 744-748 PC, TF
Don Williams Texas 757-759 TC, TF, CP
Freddy Fender Texas 764-766 TM, CP, PC
Pussycat, Netherlands, 771 PC
Outlaw Artists outline
Billy Joe Shaver Texas 773 OC
Waylon Jennings Texas 774-781 TC, HT, NS, RR, OC
Willie Nelson Texas 782-793 TF, TC, G, WC, CB, HT, RR, OC
Hank Williams Jr Louis 800-807 TC, HT, NS, RR, OC
Johnny Paycheck Ohio 815-821 TC, HT, NS, OC
Sammi Smith Okla 822-823 NS, TC, OC
Tanya Tucker Texas 824-828 TC, NS, RR, OC
David Allan Coe Ohio 830-836 TC, HT, RR, OC
Gary Stewart Florida 840-842 HT, TC, OC
Jerry Jeff Walker NY 844-847 OC, TF, GW
Guy Clark Texas Texas 848-856 TF, OC, TC
Emmylou Harris Alab 860-873 TF, TC, OC, RR
Linda Ronstadt Ariz 889-893 TC, RR
Crystal Gayle Ken 897-902 PC, NS, TC
Mickey Gilley Miss 907-909 UC, PC, TC
Jimmy Buffett Alab 911-924 GW, TC, PC, RR
That's pretty comprehensive - well done, great work!
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The Biscuit Eaters - The Bass player has a big sound.
I’m back from my weeks in Germany and France (where the weather was wetter and scarcely any warmer than mid-winter Melbourne), ready to resume the history series before my next required departure in a week. Today’s artist ain’t one for the country purists, for he not only blurred the lines between country and pop, he all but obliterated them. Though a name recognised by everyone, many dismiss him as the king of the schmaltzy soft country-rock love ballad (and my history bit won’t exclude examples of this) or for the cheesy stage act with Dolly Parton on multiple concert tours. But before the Texan (and like most in this history series, from a poor family), found sustained chart-topping success as a mainstream artist, he spent years honing his all-round skills playing blues, jazz, folk and highly idiosyncratic rock and roll. He went on to sell more than 120 million albums over a 65-year career - and one of the all-time country classics, a song placed into most Top 10 list of greatest country songs.
Kenneth Rogers was born in Houston in 1938. The 4th of 8 children, he grew up in ”the projects” (equivalent to our old Housing Commission flats), built for low income families in Houston’s poorest suburb. His alcoholic father was an itinerant carpenter when sober, his mother a nurse’s assistant. Rogers’ brother, Roy, recalled their financial struggles - “We were poor, there’s no doubt about that. We struggled, you know, but we had faith that we would make it through“. Kenny himself recalled that from a very early age, he “… was acutely aware his life in the projects wasn’t like just a few blocks over where somebody has a nice sprinkler system and a lawn. You don’t have that in the projects“.However, the projects in the optimistic post war 1950’s era, though poor, weren’t the drug soaked, violent crime addled dumpsters of despair you find today. Kenny’s sister Sandy recalled that everyone in their neighbourhood formed a community in which “everybody got along” and “everybody knew everybody”.
Young Kenneth grew up surrounded by music - “When I was a kid my mom used to listen to hard-core country music – Hank Williams (posts # 205-214), Hank Thompson (# 235-237) and Hank Locklin (# 378-379). My father played fiddle, and all his brothers and sisters played instruments. They would all get on the front porch and play, and all the family would sit out in the yard.” As a boy, he loved to sing and did so in local church choirs and glee clubs. Growing into a tall, handsome teen, working as a restaurant busboy, he earned enough to buy a guitar. Soon he was singing in a doo-wop group called the Scholars - one of his bandmates was high school buddy Mickey Newbury. The group recorded a few songs that Kenny’s older brother, Lelan, who fortuitously worked for Decca Records, produced. Singing high and sweet, Kenneth Rogers - as he was still called then - had a local Houston hit in 1957 with a doo-wop song, ‘That Crazy Feeling’. So here is the 19 year old Kenneth Rogers with his first (albeit very minor) hit single -
Lelan promoted the record and it became a big enough hit in Houston to get Rogers his first invitation to American Bandstand. Its local success prompted the brothers to form their own label, Ken-Lee, but Rogers’ follow-up single ‘Jole Blon’ was unsuccessful. Rogers also recorded ‘For You Alone’ for the Carlton label as Kenny Rogers. When Lelan managed their mutual friend, Mickey Gilley (#907-909), Rogers played bass on his 1960 single ‘Is It Wrong?’. Lelan went on to found the record label International Artists and produce the first psychedelic rock recording with the seminal Austin band 13th Floor Elevators.
By 1960, Rogers, in his first (but far from last) change in musical direction, was playing bass and singing in a trio with the blind jazz pianist and vocalist Bobby Doyle. The group went on to perform jazz and blues standards across the nation and accompanied performers like Liza Minnelli and Tony Bennett. The trio worked hard and long, sometimes playing 12 hours a day - happy hour gigs, then nightclub gigs, then after-hours gigs. From those experiences, Rogers learned to play and sing just about anything. He performed with Doyle until they disbanded in 1965. In 1966, a jazzy rock single Rogers recorded for Mercury Records, called ’Here's That Rainy Day‘, flopped. Rogers also worked as a producer, writer and session musician for other performers, including country artists Mickey Gilley and Eddy Arnold.but by then he had caught the attention of the well-scrubbed and popular folk-pop group the New Christy Minstrels, who were looking for a bass player who could sing the high notes.
Rogers was only in the group for a year. By 1967’s Summer of Love, Rogers and other accomplished members of the band felt stifled by the narrow middle-of-the-road folksy pop of the Christy Minstrels and left to form the decidedly more groovy, downright psychedelic combo The First Edition. Rogers played bass and sang lead on their 1968 bad-acid-trip anthem, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” - written by Rogers’ childhood friend Mickey Newbury. For all of the softer material Rogers produced in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, it’s easy to overlook the fact he knew how to rock.
With the First Edition, Rogers got in on the psychedelic craze of the late 1960’s (that actually started in Austin, Texas before San Francisco), turning the song about dropping acid into a swirling, hallucinatory masterpiece. Producer, Mike Post, gathered some of the top studio musicians in the area, including Glen Campbell and Hal Blaine, to do the backing and used tricks innovated by The Beatles, like phasing and backward mastering, to give the song the trippy feel that was popular at the time. Kicked off by some coiling backwards guitar courtesy of Glen Campbell, it rushes in with those watery “yeah” vocals, stuttering, funky drums, and doubled-up stabs of organ and electric guitar - fitting accompaniment for a bad, bad trip where a numb-sounding Rogers “saw so much I broke my mind“. The song shot up to # 5 on the pop chart. Jimmy Hendrix later proclaimed it as his ”all-time favourite song”. It later wound up accompanying a sublimely strange dream sequence in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. This later live version is from a 1972 TV appearance -
“… I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then i followed it in / I watched myself crawlin' out as i was a-crawlin' in /
I got up so tight i couldn't unwind / I saw so much i broke my mind …” -
With the major success of the First Edition psychedelic rock sound, Kenny Rogers, with his long hair, beard and one ear ring, was, albeit very briefly, seen a leading light of the counter-culture. But in truth, this wasn’t the real him at all - Rogers was never comfortable in the rock and roll counterculture. For one thing, just like Bruce Springsteen, who also had an alcoholic father, Rogers never drank or took drugs, never took up the counter-culture lifestyle or beliefs. He was just an all-round talented musician from a poor background, trying to make a good living by making music that sells - and psychedelic rock just happened to be a good seller at that point in time. But Rogers and others in the First Edition, had roots in country and “regular” rock and soon incorporated these elements in their sound, Rogers later recalling - “It was kind of a country-rock group. If you look back at it historically, we were one of the first to fuse those elements. We had ‘I Just Dropped In‘, which was almost acid-rock and we were travelling with Pink Floyd and groups like that, yet we also had hit songs like ‘But You Know I Love You’, ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town‘ and Reuben James’, which were really just big country records”.
By the time the group morphed into Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, he had a little gray in his beard and looked older and squarer than the kids vibing to the band. So, mixing up there sound from psychedelic rock to rock to all-out country, the First Edition had their second Top 20 hit on the pop chart with the decidedly pop country based sound of ’But You Know I Loved You’, written by Mike Settle. Rogers and the First Edition recorded and released it in 1969 as a single from their album, “The First Edition ’69” and peaked number 19 on the U.S. pop chart and # 11 in Canada -
Kenny Rogers and the First Edition’s (as the group was now called) country affinities really came through loud and clear with the Mel Tillis (# 648-657) written ’Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’, released in 1969 in the midst of the Vietnam War. It peaked at # 6 on both the pop and AC charts and became Rogers' first country chart entry, albeit at a modest # 39. It did even better in Canada, reaching # 4 on the pop chart, # 2 on the country chart and #1 on the AC chart. It went on to become a staple of Rogers’ hit catalog and live shows. The gut-churning narrative (actually derived from a Korean War-era story) centres on a soldier who loses his legs in battle and returns home to find that his wife would prefer to go out on the town and hook up with other men, adding a layer of psychological pain to his physical wounds. For as upbeat - almost jaunty - an arrangement as it is, Rogers vocals imbues “Ruby” with an unmistakable ache as he pleads for his love to stay and keep him company. When she refuses and slams the door, his darkness and despair turns to anger and rage that bubbles up inside him -
“… If I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground …” -
Also from the ”Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’ album, ‘Rueben James’ also had cross-over appeal, reaching # 26 on the pop chart and # 49 on the country chart (there was obviously some resistance by many country purists to accepting Rogers and the First Edition as being any sort of genuine country). Again, they did even better in Canada - # 9 on the pop chart, # 12 on the country chart. In the song, the protagonist recalls a man who lived in Madison County and was a coloured sharecropper (thus the lowest of the socio-economic low). Although he was treated unfairly and blamed for everything that went wrong in the county, the protagonist still loves Reuben James and remembers him with affection, as the one person who didn’t turn his back on an unwanted child. Even though Reuben James was buried in a simple pine box, with only a preacher, the singer and the rain as mourners, he continues to keep Reuben James alive in his mind and in his song -
“… Flora Grey / The gossip of Madison County died with child / And although your skin was black /
You were the one that didn't turn your back / On the hungry white child with no name, Reuben James …”
Rogers was initially reluctant to record “Rueben James”, finally giving in to song-writer Alex Harvey’s pestering. But it became one of his favourites and 5 years after The First Edition had disbanded, he re-recorded it and included it on his 1980 “Greatest Hits” album.
After reaching their commercial zenith in the early 1970’s, making numerous TV appearances including hosting the series Rollin’ from 1971 to 1973 and also 3 appearances on The Johnny Cash Show, declining sales, new musical trends and creative differences eventually undermined the band. In late 1974, the First Edition made a last-ditch effort to jumpstart their domestic careers. They filmed a TV movie called “The Dream Makers,” a drama about the music business. Kenny Rogers and The First Edition played the group Catweazel for a small role, with only Rogers and Jones speaking any major lines. However, despite the film giving them an opportunity to perform their recent songs, the exposure didn’t halt their decline. Rogers began his career as a solo act in 1975 (though he hadn’t yet got his own band) and they mutually decided to disband in 1976.
Rogers was left without a band or a recording contract and hardly any money - but, at age 37, he had a fine singing voice, was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist on guitar and fiddle and had already chalked up 18 years of experience in various genres of the music business. What comes next will be described tomorro.
Kenneth Rogers was born in Houston in 1938. The 4th of 8 children, he grew up in ”the projects” (equivalent to our old Housing Commission flats), built for low income families in Houston’s poorest suburb. His alcoholic father was an itinerant carpenter when sober, his mother a nurse’s assistant. Rogers’ brother, Roy, recalled their financial struggles - “We were poor, there’s no doubt about that. We struggled, you know, but we had faith that we would make it through“. Kenny himself recalled that from a very early age, he “… was acutely aware his life in the projects wasn’t like just a few blocks over where somebody has a nice sprinkler system and a lawn. You don’t have that in the projects“.However, the projects in the optimistic post war 1950’s era, though poor, weren’t the drug soaked, violent crime addled dumpsters of despair you find today. Kenny’s sister Sandy recalled that everyone in their neighbourhood formed a community in which “everybody got along” and “everybody knew everybody”.
Young Kenneth grew up surrounded by music - “When I was a kid my mom used to listen to hard-core country music – Hank Williams (posts # 205-214), Hank Thompson (# 235-237) and Hank Locklin (# 378-379). My father played fiddle, and all his brothers and sisters played instruments. They would all get on the front porch and play, and all the family would sit out in the yard.” As a boy, he loved to sing and did so in local church choirs and glee clubs. Growing into a tall, handsome teen, working as a restaurant busboy, he earned enough to buy a guitar. Soon he was singing in a doo-wop group called the Scholars - one of his bandmates was high school buddy Mickey Newbury. The group recorded a few songs that Kenny’s older brother, Lelan, who fortuitously worked for Decca Records, produced. Singing high and sweet, Kenneth Rogers - as he was still called then - had a local Houston hit in 1957 with a doo-wop song, ‘That Crazy Feeling’. So here is the 19 year old Kenneth Rogers with his first (albeit very minor) hit single -
Lelan promoted the record and it became a big enough hit in Houston to get Rogers his first invitation to American Bandstand. Its local success prompted the brothers to form their own label, Ken-Lee, but Rogers’ follow-up single ‘Jole Blon’ was unsuccessful. Rogers also recorded ‘For You Alone’ for the Carlton label as Kenny Rogers. When Lelan managed their mutual friend, Mickey Gilley (#907-909), Rogers played bass on his 1960 single ‘Is It Wrong?’. Lelan went on to found the record label International Artists and produce the first psychedelic rock recording with the seminal Austin band 13th Floor Elevators.
By 1960, Rogers, in his first (but far from last) change in musical direction, was playing bass and singing in a trio with the blind jazz pianist and vocalist Bobby Doyle. The group went on to perform jazz and blues standards across the nation and accompanied performers like Liza Minnelli and Tony Bennett. The trio worked hard and long, sometimes playing 12 hours a day - happy hour gigs, then nightclub gigs, then after-hours gigs. From those experiences, Rogers learned to play and sing just about anything. He performed with Doyle until they disbanded in 1965. In 1966, a jazzy rock single Rogers recorded for Mercury Records, called ’Here's That Rainy Day‘, flopped. Rogers also worked as a producer, writer and session musician for other performers, including country artists Mickey Gilley and Eddy Arnold.but by then he had caught the attention of the well-scrubbed and popular folk-pop group the New Christy Minstrels, who were looking for a bass player who could sing the high notes.
Rogers was only in the group for a year. By 1967’s Summer of Love, Rogers and other accomplished members of the band felt stifled by the narrow middle-of-the-road folksy pop of the Christy Minstrels and left to form the decidedly more groovy, downright psychedelic combo The First Edition. Rogers played bass and sang lead on their 1968 bad-acid-trip anthem, “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” - written by Rogers’ childhood friend Mickey Newbury. For all of the softer material Rogers produced in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, it’s easy to overlook the fact he knew how to rock.
With the First Edition, Rogers got in on the psychedelic craze of the late 1960’s (that actually started in Austin, Texas before San Francisco), turning the song about dropping acid into a swirling, hallucinatory masterpiece. Producer, Mike Post, gathered some of the top studio musicians in the area, including Glen Campbell and Hal Blaine, to do the backing and used tricks innovated by The Beatles, like phasing and backward mastering, to give the song the trippy feel that was popular at the time. Kicked off by some coiling backwards guitar courtesy of Glen Campbell, it rushes in with those watery “yeah” vocals, stuttering, funky drums, and doubled-up stabs of organ and electric guitar - fitting accompaniment for a bad, bad trip where a numb-sounding Rogers “saw so much I broke my mind“. The song shot up to # 5 on the pop chart. Jimmy Hendrix later proclaimed it as his ”all-time favourite song”. It later wound up accompanying a sublimely strange dream sequence in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. This later live version is from a 1972 TV appearance -
“… I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then i followed it in / I watched myself crawlin' out as i was a-crawlin' in /
I got up so tight i couldn't unwind / I saw so much i broke my mind …” -
With the major success of the First Edition psychedelic rock sound, Kenny Rogers, with his long hair, beard and one ear ring, was, albeit very briefly, seen a leading light of the counter-culture. But in truth, this wasn’t the real him at all - Rogers was never comfortable in the rock and roll counterculture. For one thing, just like Bruce Springsteen, who also had an alcoholic father, Rogers never drank or took drugs, never took up the counter-culture lifestyle or beliefs. He was just an all-round talented musician from a poor background, trying to make a good living by making music that sells - and psychedelic rock just happened to be a good seller at that point in time. But Rogers and others in the First Edition, had roots in country and “regular” rock and soon incorporated these elements in their sound, Rogers later recalling - “It was kind of a country-rock group. If you look back at it historically, we were one of the first to fuse those elements. We had ‘I Just Dropped In‘, which was almost acid-rock and we were travelling with Pink Floyd and groups like that, yet we also had hit songs like ‘But You Know I Love You’, ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town‘ and Reuben James’, which were really just big country records”.
By the time the group morphed into Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, he had a little gray in his beard and looked older and squarer than the kids vibing to the band. So, mixing up there sound from psychedelic rock to rock to all-out country, the First Edition had their second Top 20 hit on the pop chart with the decidedly pop country based sound of ’But You Know I Loved You’, written by Mike Settle. Rogers and the First Edition recorded and released it in 1969 as a single from their album, “The First Edition ’69” and peaked number 19 on the U.S. pop chart and # 11 in Canada -
Kenny Rogers and the First Edition’s (as the group was now called) country affinities really came through loud and clear with the Mel Tillis (# 648-657) written ’Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’, released in 1969 in the midst of the Vietnam War. It peaked at # 6 on both the pop and AC charts and became Rogers' first country chart entry, albeit at a modest # 39. It did even better in Canada, reaching # 4 on the pop chart, # 2 on the country chart and #1 on the AC chart. It went on to become a staple of Rogers’ hit catalog and live shows. The gut-churning narrative (actually derived from a Korean War-era story) centres on a soldier who loses his legs in battle and returns home to find that his wife would prefer to go out on the town and hook up with other men, adding a layer of psychological pain to his physical wounds. For as upbeat - almost jaunty - an arrangement as it is, Rogers vocals imbues “Ruby” with an unmistakable ache as he pleads for his love to stay and keep him company. When she refuses and slams the door, his darkness and despair turns to anger and rage that bubbles up inside him -
“… If I could move I’d get my gun and put her in the ground …” -
Also from the ”Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town’ album, ‘Rueben James’ also had cross-over appeal, reaching # 26 on the pop chart and # 49 on the country chart (there was obviously some resistance by many country purists to accepting Rogers and the First Edition as being any sort of genuine country). Again, they did even better in Canada - # 9 on the pop chart, # 12 on the country chart. In the song, the protagonist recalls a man who lived in Madison County and was a coloured sharecropper (thus the lowest of the socio-economic low). Although he was treated unfairly and blamed for everything that went wrong in the county, the protagonist still loves Reuben James and remembers him with affection, as the one person who didn’t turn his back on an unwanted child. Even though Reuben James was buried in a simple pine box, with only a preacher, the singer and the rain as mourners, he continues to keep Reuben James alive in his mind and in his song -
“… Flora Grey / The gossip of Madison County died with child / And although your skin was black /
You were the one that didn't turn your back / On the hungry white child with no name, Reuben James …”
Rogers was initially reluctant to record “Rueben James”, finally giving in to song-writer Alex Harvey’s pestering. But it became one of his favourites and 5 years after The First Edition had disbanded, he re-recorded it and included it on his 1980 “Greatest Hits” album.
After reaching their commercial zenith in the early 1970’s, making numerous TV appearances including hosting the series Rollin’ from 1971 to 1973 and also 3 appearances on The Johnny Cash Show, declining sales, new musical trends and creative differences eventually undermined the band. In late 1974, the First Edition made a last-ditch effort to jumpstart their domestic careers. They filmed a TV movie called “The Dream Makers,” a drama about the music business. Kenny Rogers and The First Edition played the group Catweazel for a small role, with only Rogers and Jones speaking any major lines. However, despite the film giving them an opportunity to perform their recent songs, the exposure didn’t halt their decline. Rogers began his career as a solo act in 1975 (though he hadn’t yet got his own band) and they mutually decided to disband in 1976.
Rogers was left without a band or a recording contract and hardly any money - but, at age 37, he had a fine singing voice, was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist on guitar and fiddle and had already chalked up 18 years of experience in various genres of the music business. What comes next will be described tomorro.
We left off yesterday in 1975 with the break-up of Kenny Rogers and The First Edition. Rogers described that period as the low point of his career - "For five or six months I just sat around and thought”. His thinking, however, served a purpose, making him “… realise there's a new hit rock group or pop singer every five minutes, but with country music, you have one hit and those people love you forever...". So Rogers finally shook off his lethargy, headed for Nashville, changed his stage image (he lost his ear ring for one thing, while his hair took on a distinct silver) and began recording straight-up country, later recalling - "Emotionally, it was like coming home". Rogers, who, of course, came to Nashville not as an unknown but with a relatively high profile as the former lead singer and star of The First Edition, signed a solo deal with United Artists.
Fortified by the success of the crusading outlaws and mainstream acceptance of Dolly Parton (# 581-607), Emmylou Harris (# 860-873) and Linda Ronstadt (# 889-893), Rogers, ever mindful (just like so many others in this history) of what it was like to be poor, resolved to jump on the commercial bandwagon. Rogers recalled - “Charlie Rich (# 706-711) was the big artist at the time, and he was singing love songs. What happened? Larry Butler came along and said I could be doing the same, and I thought: ‘Yeah, I could be comfortable with doing that. I'm not comfortable with doing hoe-down music, but I’m comfortable with sophisticated, contemporary country, that’s a niche I could be happy in’. And we had tremendous success. Larry really was a life saver for me”. So it was that producer Larry Butler and Rogers began a partnership that would last 4 highly productive and lucrative years.
So in late 1975, Rogers solo career launch got off to a relatively slow start with the album “Love Lifted Me“, which reached just an OK # 28 - no doubt many country music purists were still sceptical about Kenny’s country credential, given his diverse musical background. The title track, however, did manage - just - to crack the Top 20 in early 1976. as a single. Rogers transformed the 1912 gospel hymn ‘Love Lifted Me’ into a piano-driven country gospel belter, full backing choir and all. Rogers' version kept the original refrain but rewrote the verses from a secular viewpoint. It’s superb arrangement and strong vocal comes from a man destined to be a star -
When his self-titled second solo album was released in 1976, it fully connectEd with the country market, topping the chart, reaching # 1. What’s more, the single ‘Lucille’ became a worldwide hit, not only becoming Rogers’ first # 1 single but also crossing over to reach # 5 on the pop chart and # 10 on the AC chart. In Canada, it swept all the way to # 1 on all 3 charts, while it also scored worldwide, going to # 7 in Australia, # 2 in NZ and all the way to # 1 in the UK as Rogers turned 9 simple words into one of the most easily identifiable country-song choruses of the 20th century - “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille”. Rogers soberly narrates the Toledo barroom saga of a married-but-miserable couple who separately drown their sorrows, before confronting each other, with the narrator uneasily stuck in the middle. The husband gone, Rogers and Lucille head for a hotel room, but he calls off their tryst as the husband’s pitiful words reverberate in his head, having already observed how Lucille made this quivering mountain of a man “… look small …”. This is pure country, a song for the barroom and honky tonk, a plaintive singalong chorus, great stuff - and Rogers delivery made this pure country song into a mainstream hit. It also served a template for his greatest song, still to come -
After years of toiling in various groups, to varying degrees of success and failure, Rogers was fast, at age 38, becoming a huge solo star by the time he released his third solo album in 1977. Its title song and lead single was a classic cheating song about a clandestine couple who are "… daytime friends and nighttime lovers …”, despite the fact that he is her husband's best friend. ’Daytime Friends’ became Rogers' 2nd # 1 hit.
Actually, for me the best part of the song is the build up to the chorus, in which the song starts as a promising honky tonk cheating story-song. Then the catchy pop-country chorus juts in, dissolving the barroom atmosphere as Roger’s jovial vocal approach tricks the listener into sing-along territory. Do they realise what they are singing along to? - clouded judgments, guilty partners and secret rendezvous. So the start seems to promise a honky tonk cheating song but the chorus is pure pop-country - and Kenny and producer Larry Butler knew what they were doing, the catchy pop-country chorus appealing to a wider market than pure honky tonk would provide, sending it all the way to # 1 in the U.S. and Canada -
“… Lord, it hurts her doing this again / He's the best friend that her husband ever knew /
When she's lonely, he's more than just a friend / He's the one she longs to give her body to …” -
’Sweet Music Man‘ is a rarity among Rogers' hits in that he wrote it himself - and its high quality makes me wonder why he didn’t write more. Rogers sat by Jessi Colter on a plane flight, and her laments about the trials she was going through with her badly behaving husband, Waylon Jennings (which I wrote about in post # 780), inspired Rogers to write the story of a fading (and cheating) singer trying to hold onto glory. The song about a woman in love with a philandering musician who treated her badly but sang seductive love songs beautifully that still swayed her, has since been covered by many artists including Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Dottie West, Billie Jo Spears and, ironically, Jennings himself (and perhaps he took notice of the lyrics as he cleaned up his act, getting off cocaine and ending his earlier wicked ways). Jennings version was very good, as you would expect, but Rogers' remains the definitive version, despite only reaching # 9 in 1977 - his worst performed single with United Artists (though Canada, showing better judgement or maturity, sent it all the way to # 1 in both the country and AC charts), It’s now well recognised as one of Rogers’ most enduring songs and certainly the best of the too few Rogers himself penned -
“… So sing your song sad music man / You're makin' your living doing one night stands / They're through with you /
They don't need you / You're still a hell of a singer but a broken man / But you'll keep on lookin' for one last fan to sing to…”
Any song that has the opening line - “Show me a bar with a good-lookin’ woman / Then just get out of the way…” has my immediate attention and approval! 'Love or Something Like It' was Kenny's only # 1 hit where he was listed as a co-writer. The experimentation between traditional country and Jimmy Buffet style island bop is a unique one for him, but it's infectiously fun and free. It’s not at all hard to imagine Kenny Rogers, who was married 5 times (more on that below), penning the opening line. It’s more surprising that, alongside his longtime bandmate Steve Glassmeyer and producer Larry Butler, Rogers managed to make this memoir of a barroom lothario, telling a few truths about a night out on the hunt, so charming. With its calypso lilt and earthy bassline, the song sounds and feels different than most of Rogers’ hits. It became his third #1 in the U.S. and fourth in Canada in 1978.) The chorus’ centerpiece - “… It’s cheap but it ain’t free …” adds a perfect sour note of reality to the otherwise upbeat ode to the available smorgasbord on offer at a good bar or honky tonk -
“…That's when I ask her / My place or your place? / I hope I'm not out of line /
I asked the wrong thing with just the right women this time / She knew a hotel /
She even had a name we could sign / Oh, the cheaper the grapes are /The sweeter the taste of the wine …” -
That’s all the music for today as we leave Rogers off in 1978 with him riding high in his 40th year, having climbed from minor celebrity just 2 years previous to the top of the country tree, having a worldwide hit and even doing well in the pop charts. He was also into his third of his five marriages.
Last week, flying back from Paris, I watched a TV series on American tycoon dynasties - the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, JP Morgan, Henry Ford, John Paul Getty and thé like, and while it outlined their enormous success in business, it also showed their failures in marriage and family life as they focused solely on building their business empires, growing their wealth and trampling their competition - at the price of neglecting such minor irritants such as wives and children. This theme reminded me a lot of so many country artists in this history series who had multiple marriages - and Kenny Rogers is, by his own admissio, a perfect example.
I’ll let Kenny‘s own words explain it - “Music, at least for me, is like a mistress … and she’s a difficult mistress for a wife to compete with. When I became driven and selfish, I was so intent to follow my life that it cost me. I was gone so much from some of my marriages that there was a disconnect”. He acknowledged the mistakes he made with his former lovers -“This may seem like an absurd statement, but every woman I married, I really loved when I married her … and I don’t blame them for the marriage falling apart. I blame myself and my chosen field of music. That’s why I say that music is a mistress because you can’t wait to get out there to it, and usually, the mistress wins in a situation like that. That’s kind of what happened to me”. He jokingly added, “Hey, you can’t say I’m afraid of commitment … I’ve been married five times.”
Kenny tied the knot for the first time in 1958 when he was just 19 years old (a typical marriage age in the South at the time), but, under heavy pressure from his wife’s parents who didn’t approve of Rogers pursuing a career in music, called it quits in 1960 - not before they welcomed the singer’s first daughter, Carole. Kenny married again just months later in 1960, aged 22, but this also lasted just 3 years. Kenny married his third wife, Margo, in 1964 and had his second child, Kenny Jr. While the marriage ended in divorce in 1976, Rogers later praised Margo for their incredible years together - “So then I met this girl and that was a really exciting relationship, which lasted 12 years, and out of it we had a son. In fact, the first nine years were as good as it gets, and it was only the last few that got ugly. I was touring a lot and that is part of what killed the marriage”.
Kenny married his fourth wife, Marianne Gordon in 1977. Kenny and the Rosemary’s Baby actress were married for nearly two decades and welcomed Kenny’s third child, son Chris, in 1982. The rest I’ll leave until later. Tomorrow will cover the peak of Kenny Rogers’ career - including his all-time signature song.
Fortified by the success of the crusading outlaws and mainstream acceptance of Dolly Parton (# 581-607), Emmylou Harris (# 860-873) and Linda Ronstadt (# 889-893), Rogers, ever mindful (just like so many others in this history) of what it was like to be poor, resolved to jump on the commercial bandwagon. Rogers recalled - “Charlie Rich (# 706-711) was the big artist at the time, and he was singing love songs. What happened? Larry Butler came along and said I could be doing the same, and I thought: ‘Yeah, I could be comfortable with doing that. I'm not comfortable with doing hoe-down music, but I’m comfortable with sophisticated, contemporary country, that’s a niche I could be happy in’. And we had tremendous success. Larry really was a life saver for me”. So it was that producer Larry Butler and Rogers began a partnership that would last 4 highly productive and lucrative years.
So in late 1975, Rogers solo career launch got off to a relatively slow start with the album “Love Lifted Me“, which reached just an OK # 28 - no doubt many country music purists were still sceptical about Kenny’s country credential, given his diverse musical background. The title track, however, did manage - just - to crack the Top 20 in early 1976. as a single. Rogers transformed the 1912 gospel hymn ‘Love Lifted Me’ into a piano-driven country gospel belter, full backing choir and all. Rogers' version kept the original refrain but rewrote the verses from a secular viewpoint. It’s superb arrangement and strong vocal comes from a man destined to be a star -
When his self-titled second solo album was released in 1976, it fully connectEd with the country market, topping the chart, reaching # 1. What’s more, the single ‘Lucille’ became a worldwide hit, not only becoming Rogers’ first # 1 single but also crossing over to reach # 5 on the pop chart and # 10 on the AC chart. In Canada, it swept all the way to # 1 on all 3 charts, while it also scored worldwide, going to # 7 in Australia, # 2 in NZ and all the way to # 1 in the UK as Rogers turned 9 simple words into one of the most easily identifiable country-song choruses of the 20th century - “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille”. Rogers soberly narrates the Toledo barroom saga of a married-but-miserable couple who separately drown their sorrows, before confronting each other, with the narrator uneasily stuck in the middle. The husband gone, Rogers and Lucille head for a hotel room, but he calls off their tryst as the husband’s pitiful words reverberate in his head, having already observed how Lucille made this quivering mountain of a man “… look small …”. This is pure country, a song for the barroom and honky tonk, a plaintive singalong chorus, great stuff - and Rogers delivery made this pure country song into a mainstream hit. It also served a template for his greatest song, still to come -
After years of toiling in various groups, to varying degrees of success and failure, Rogers was fast, at age 38, becoming a huge solo star by the time he released his third solo album in 1977. Its title song and lead single was a classic cheating song about a clandestine couple who are "… daytime friends and nighttime lovers …”, despite the fact that he is her husband's best friend. ’Daytime Friends’ became Rogers' 2nd # 1 hit.
Actually, for me the best part of the song is the build up to the chorus, in which the song starts as a promising honky tonk cheating story-song. Then the catchy pop-country chorus juts in, dissolving the barroom atmosphere as Roger’s jovial vocal approach tricks the listener into sing-along territory. Do they realise what they are singing along to? - clouded judgments, guilty partners and secret rendezvous. So the start seems to promise a honky tonk cheating song but the chorus is pure pop-country - and Kenny and producer Larry Butler knew what they were doing, the catchy pop-country chorus appealing to a wider market than pure honky tonk would provide, sending it all the way to # 1 in the U.S. and Canada -
“… Lord, it hurts her doing this again / He's the best friend that her husband ever knew /
When she's lonely, he's more than just a friend / He's the one she longs to give her body to …” -
’Sweet Music Man‘ is a rarity among Rogers' hits in that he wrote it himself - and its high quality makes me wonder why he didn’t write more. Rogers sat by Jessi Colter on a plane flight, and her laments about the trials she was going through with her badly behaving husband, Waylon Jennings (which I wrote about in post # 780), inspired Rogers to write the story of a fading (and cheating) singer trying to hold onto glory. The song about a woman in love with a philandering musician who treated her badly but sang seductive love songs beautifully that still swayed her, has since been covered by many artists including Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Dottie West, Billie Jo Spears and, ironically, Jennings himself (and perhaps he took notice of the lyrics as he cleaned up his act, getting off cocaine and ending his earlier wicked ways). Jennings version was very good, as you would expect, but Rogers' remains the definitive version, despite only reaching # 9 in 1977 - his worst performed single with United Artists (though Canada, showing better judgement or maturity, sent it all the way to # 1 in both the country and AC charts), It’s now well recognised as one of Rogers’ most enduring songs and certainly the best of the too few Rogers himself penned -
“… So sing your song sad music man / You're makin' your living doing one night stands / They're through with you /
They don't need you / You're still a hell of a singer but a broken man / But you'll keep on lookin' for one last fan to sing to…”
Any song that has the opening line - “Show me a bar with a good-lookin’ woman / Then just get out of the way…” has my immediate attention and approval! 'Love or Something Like It' was Kenny's only # 1 hit where he was listed as a co-writer. The experimentation between traditional country and Jimmy Buffet style island bop is a unique one for him, but it's infectiously fun and free. It’s not at all hard to imagine Kenny Rogers, who was married 5 times (more on that below), penning the opening line. It’s more surprising that, alongside his longtime bandmate Steve Glassmeyer and producer Larry Butler, Rogers managed to make this memoir of a barroom lothario, telling a few truths about a night out on the hunt, so charming. With its calypso lilt and earthy bassline, the song sounds and feels different than most of Rogers’ hits. It became his third #1 in the U.S. and fourth in Canada in 1978.) The chorus’ centerpiece - “… It’s cheap but it ain’t free …” adds a perfect sour note of reality to the otherwise upbeat ode to the available smorgasbord on offer at a good bar or honky tonk -
“…That's when I ask her / My place or your place? / I hope I'm not out of line /
I asked the wrong thing with just the right women this time / She knew a hotel /
She even had a name we could sign / Oh, the cheaper the grapes are /The sweeter the taste of the wine …” -
That’s all the music for today as we leave Rogers off in 1978 with him riding high in his 40th year, having climbed from minor celebrity just 2 years previous to the top of the country tree, having a worldwide hit and even doing well in the pop charts. He was also into his third of his five marriages.
Last week, flying back from Paris, I watched a TV series on American tycoon dynasties - the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, JP Morgan, Henry Ford, John Paul Getty and thé like, and while it outlined their enormous success in business, it also showed their failures in marriage and family life as they focused solely on building their business empires, growing their wealth and trampling their competition - at the price of neglecting such minor irritants such as wives and children. This theme reminded me a lot of so many country artists in this history series who had multiple marriages - and Kenny Rogers is, by his own admissio, a perfect example.
I’ll let Kenny‘s own words explain it - “Music, at least for me, is like a mistress … and she’s a difficult mistress for a wife to compete with. When I became driven and selfish, I was so intent to follow my life that it cost me. I was gone so much from some of my marriages that there was a disconnect”. He acknowledged the mistakes he made with his former lovers -“This may seem like an absurd statement, but every woman I married, I really loved when I married her … and I don’t blame them for the marriage falling apart. I blame myself and my chosen field of music. That’s why I say that music is a mistress because you can’t wait to get out there to it, and usually, the mistress wins in a situation like that. That’s kind of what happened to me”. He jokingly added, “Hey, you can’t say I’m afraid of commitment … I’ve been married five times.”
Kenny tied the knot for the first time in 1958 when he was just 19 years old (a typical marriage age in the South at the time), but, under heavy pressure from his wife’s parents who didn’t approve of Rogers pursuing a career in music, called it quits in 1960 - not before they welcomed the singer’s first daughter, Carole. Kenny married again just months later in 1960, aged 22, but this also lasted just 3 years. Kenny married his third wife, Margo, in 1964 and had his second child, Kenny Jr. While the marriage ended in divorce in 1976, Rogers later praised Margo for their incredible years together - “So then I met this girl and that was a really exciting relationship, which lasted 12 years, and out of it we had a son. In fact, the first nine years were as good as it gets, and it was only the last few that got ugly. I was touring a lot and that is part of what killed the marriage”.
Kenny married his fourth wife, Marianne Gordon in 1977. Kenny and the Rosemary’s Baby actress were married for nearly two decades and welcomed Kenny’s third child, son Chris, in 1982. The rest I’ll leave until later. Tomorrow will cover the peak of Kenny Rogers’ career - including his all-time signature song.
During the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, after the end of the Outlaw era, much of country radio was dominated either by urban cowboy (see Mickey Gilley, # 907-909) or pop-country in the vein of Kenny Rogers' own singles. With the help of producer Larry Butler, he devised an accessible, radio-ready, and immaculately crafted take on country-pop that leaned toward adult contemporary pop, not country. Between 1978 and 1980, he had five straight # 1 country singles, starting with ’Love or Something Like It’, that concluded yesterday’s music offering. But Rogers’ songs also charted very highly in both the pop and AC charts. Now let’s get stuck straight into his music again, starting from his now most enduring hit, an all-time classic from 1978
You know the song, and you certainly know the chorus. If you’ve been in a bar or honky tonk anytime in the past four decades, you’ve probably sang it more than a few times. Rogers wasn’t the first to record the epic tale - that was Bobby Bare in 1976, followed in close succession by its songwriter Don Schlitz, then Johnny Cash. But what Kenny Rogers did with “The Gambler” would transform and transcend his efforts as a recording artist, laying the groundwork for a series of TV films in which he starred as Old West card player Brady Hawkes. Like ‘Lucille‘ before it, ‘The Gambler‘ is a story-song, but its bleak railroad-carriage on “a train bound to nowhere” setting proved more ethereal, even ominous, as the title character dispensed lifelong wisdom before shuffling off this mortal coil and, in gambling parlance, “breaking even” in the carriages’s gloomy darkness. Decades after the song topped the country chart and reached pop’s Top 20, it remained a key element of Rogers’ brand, often covered but never equalled. And it’s a safe bet it never will be.
The production is impeccable, and Rogers’ performance is understated enough to goad a million fans into exhorting each other to “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” - and even more importantly, to “know when to walk away, know wen to run”. Vital life words of wisdom right there in the chorus. It takes a pretty powerful song to completely define its singer, especially when that singer is someone who was already as familiar and established as Kenny Rogers. Nevertheless, Kenny is ‘The Gambler’ wise, benevolent, catchy as anything, making this one of the greatest ever country songs -
Released as the follow-up to ‘The Gambler’ in 1979, Rogers took American singer-songwriter Steve Gibb’s (not to be confused with Steve Gibb, son of Barry Gibb who Rogers later worked with) lyrics that pays tribute to the loyal woman behind a man still trying to make it in the music business. Larry Butler’s production and Rogers’ delivery brings a dramatic element to the song. ‘She Believes In Me‘ has the kind of chorus that sticks in your head even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard it before, which helps account for how this single became Rogers’ first AC # 1, in addition to once again topping the country chart in both the U.S. and Canada and also becoming a Top 5 pop hit, making it the biggest selling hit of his solo career to that point. It could hardly sound more different from ‘The Gambler‘ which it followed, but fans, embraced it nevertheless – particularly beyond the traditional bounds of the country music market - further evidence of Rogers’ versatility and broad appeal -
It was only natural that Rogers fitted so comfortably into the role of pop-country crooner. He never really cut it as the teenage idol - his music was always more adult oriented. He was a symbol not so much of sex and possibility, but of middle age experience, affluence and achievement. He strived to make the music palatable to the average middle-class urbanite. Producer Larry Butler surrounded him with strings, and at times he had to grapple haplessly with limp, dainty material like ‘You Decorated My Life’, but he found his market and, with Butler’s help he didn’t hesitate to exploit it. The results justified the effort, I guess - it was yet another cross-over triumph for Rogers, # 1 on the country chart (showing where the country market was at during this post Outlaw era), # 2 on the AC chart and # 7 on the pop chart while in Canada, it was another Rogers’ # 1 sweep of both the country and AC charts.
And with that paragraph, including my assessment of ‘You Decorated My life’ as limp and dainty, done, now comes a warning - remember in the first paragraph of the introduction to Kenny Rogers a few days back, I stated “… many dismiss him as the king of the schmaltzy soft country-rock love ballad (and my history bit won’t exclude examples of this)”. Well, it’s now time for the first outright example of such schmaltzy soft country-rock. It ain’t my sort of music and I’d bet the same applies for you, but this song was too successful - and as such, very much a part of the Kenny Rogers story - for me to exclude. You, however, may happily skip it - I readily understand if you do.
OK, it’s schmaltz, but from the raspy opening to the soaring chorus, Rogers gives this country (or should that be soft adult contemporary pop?) tune ’You Decorated My Life’ considerable depth with his always malleable baritone, tackling each lyric with conviction, making this something of a slow wedding dance staple -
“… But you could have heard a pin drop when Tommy locked the door…". The spoken-word lyric that induces chills on every single listen. This is Rogers at his storytelling best. He knows how to push and pull the listener along through a complicated narrative. You can feel the emotional tug of Tommy’s struggle in wanting to please his father, but the need to defend his Becky. Rogers’ cinematic 1979 ‘Coward of the County’, penned by Roger Bowling and Billy Ed Wheeler, has no right to be as funky as it is - half of the band seems to be playing it straight, while the bassist and guitar player apparently have other ideas. It belies the fact that it’s a pitch-black tale about a young pacifist who spends his life adhering to his father’s advice to turn the other cheek until the day when those Gatlin boys “took turns” (a polite, radio-friendly euphemism for rape that’s still jarring) with his girlfriend Becky. That’s when he learns to temper his father’s lessons with his own hard-won wisdom - “… sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”
Most top 10 hits don’t have a gang-rape scene (thankfully), but the momentum Rogers had after the success of ‘The Gambler‘ the year prior made attempting to recreate this song almost line for line (the melody is just a tinkered re-work and the underlying structure of the verses and chorus is the same as ‘The Gambler’) a no-brainer. Unsurprisingly, it worked. ‘Coward Of The County’ was an even bigger commercial success than ‘The Gambler‘, reaching # 3 on the pop chart in addition to naturally topping the country chart and a Top 5 AC chart hit. The song swept the world, with Rogers again making a clean sweep of # 1 in the Canadian pop, country and Ac charts and going all the way to # 1 in the UK and Ireland and reaching the Top 10 in Australia, The Netherlands, Switzerland and NZ and Top 20 in Germany and South Africa amongst others. This became one of Rogers’ most well known songs, as well as providing even more ammunition against those who questioned his country credibility. If you can make an entire movie from a 4 minute song (they did in 1981 with Rogers appearing in it as a preacher uncle) you’re onto something -
The song was also involved in a little controversy when the name ‘Gatlin’ was used as the perpetrators in the rape verse. However, Rogers apologised, insisted the reference was not about country music's Gatlin Brothers, and invited the 3 to open up some of his shows, and later he recorded with them.
Rogers was already a crossover success in early 1980 when he issued “Gideon”, an ambitious concept album that chronicled the life of a modern-day Texan cowboy named Gideon Tanner. Written at Rogers’ request by songwriter Kim Carnes - 2 years before she recorded ‘Bette Davis Eyes‘, “Gideon” cast Rogers as a cattle rustler with an eye for the ladies - and a wandering eye at that. “Gideon” was intended as a career-crystallising moment for Rogers, who hoped it would establish his reputation in a similar way as Willie Nelson’s seminal 1975 “Red Headed Stranger” album. Though it wasn’t quite, or even close, to that (though it still topped the country chart), “Gideon” did produce his 5th Top 10 pop entry single ’Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer’ which peaked at # 4, as well as reaching # 3 on the country and # 2 on the AC charts, spurring debate about just how to classify his music. Canada again did even better, going all the way to # 1 on both the country and AC charts and a # 3 pop hit in 1980.
A pop-country power ballad with no fairytale ending in sight, ’Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer’ finds two lovers facing a doomed future, their sadness and regret tinged with gritty resolve. It’s a convincing, relatively unadorned ballad that features Rogers’ reunion with Kim Carnes, who co-wrote all the songs on “Gideon”. The 2 had worked together back in the early 60s when they were just starting out, and their vocal chemistry allowed Rogers to stretch out and show off his skills for anyone who might have doubted his abilities as a powerhouse singer. While recording the song, Rogers and Kim Carnes sang facing each other with live musicians while Carnes had to improvise singing the melody in a different key than she had prepared to do when she came to the studio. Yet rarely have 2 singers been so beautifully matched - and so utterly heartbreaking. This was Rogers at his most serious as a singer - and a prelude to his power-ballads to come, showing his vocal strength and control that seemed to be increasing with age and experience -
In just over 4 years since teaming up with producer Larry Butler, Kenny Rogers had become a genuine entertainment super-star. Six of his last 7 solo albums had topped the country charts (the other had “only” tapped out at # 2, while he had also chalked up 7 # 1 singles (8 in Canada). But not only that, he had cracked the larger pop charts, with 5 reaching the Top 10 and his singles, aimed squarely at the adult market, also achieved 5 Top 5 AC hits (1 reaching # 1) while in Canada he had a remarkable 7 chart-topping AC hits with others at # 3 and # 6 (The Gambler). Yet despite all this immense success, Rogers, imbued with an underlying insecurity typical of an artist from a poor background who fears his position and wealth could all still dissipate, but also a seasoned pro who had seen many music trends come and go, sensed he needed to change - and how that change works outs, we will see tomorrow.
You know the song, and you certainly know the chorus. If you’ve been in a bar or honky tonk anytime in the past four decades, you’ve probably sang it more than a few times. Rogers wasn’t the first to record the epic tale - that was Bobby Bare in 1976, followed in close succession by its songwriter Don Schlitz, then Johnny Cash. But what Kenny Rogers did with “The Gambler” would transform and transcend his efforts as a recording artist, laying the groundwork for a series of TV films in which he starred as Old West card player Brady Hawkes. Like ‘Lucille‘ before it, ‘The Gambler‘ is a story-song, but its bleak railroad-carriage on “a train bound to nowhere” setting proved more ethereal, even ominous, as the title character dispensed lifelong wisdom before shuffling off this mortal coil and, in gambling parlance, “breaking even” in the carriages’s gloomy darkness. Decades after the song topped the country chart and reached pop’s Top 20, it remained a key element of Rogers’ brand, often covered but never equalled. And it’s a safe bet it never will be.
The production is impeccable, and Rogers’ performance is understated enough to goad a million fans into exhorting each other to “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” - and even more importantly, to “know when to walk away, know wen to run”. Vital life words of wisdom right there in the chorus. It takes a pretty powerful song to completely define its singer, especially when that singer is someone who was already as familiar and established as Kenny Rogers. Nevertheless, Kenny is ‘The Gambler’ wise, benevolent, catchy as anything, making this one of the greatest ever country songs -
Released as the follow-up to ‘The Gambler’ in 1979, Rogers took American singer-songwriter Steve Gibb’s (not to be confused with Steve Gibb, son of Barry Gibb who Rogers later worked with) lyrics that pays tribute to the loyal woman behind a man still trying to make it in the music business. Larry Butler’s production and Rogers’ delivery brings a dramatic element to the song. ‘She Believes In Me‘ has the kind of chorus that sticks in your head even if you don’t think you’ve ever heard it before, which helps account for how this single became Rogers’ first AC # 1, in addition to once again topping the country chart in both the U.S. and Canada and also becoming a Top 5 pop hit, making it the biggest selling hit of his solo career to that point. It could hardly sound more different from ‘The Gambler‘ which it followed, but fans, embraced it nevertheless – particularly beyond the traditional bounds of the country music market - further evidence of Rogers’ versatility and broad appeal -
It was only natural that Rogers fitted so comfortably into the role of pop-country crooner. He never really cut it as the teenage idol - his music was always more adult oriented. He was a symbol not so much of sex and possibility, but of middle age experience, affluence and achievement. He strived to make the music palatable to the average middle-class urbanite. Producer Larry Butler surrounded him with strings, and at times he had to grapple haplessly with limp, dainty material like ‘You Decorated My Life’, but he found his market and, with Butler’s help he didn’t hesitate to exploit it. The results justified the effort, I guess - it was yet another cross-over triumph for Rogers, # 1 on the country chart (showing where the country market was at during this post Outlaw era), # 2 on the AC chart and # 7 on the pop chart while in Canada, it was another Rogers’ # 1 sweep of both the country and AC charts.
And with that paragraph, including my assessment of ‘You Decorated My life’ as limp and dainty, done, now comes a warning - remember in the first paragraph of the introduction to Kenny Rogers a few days back, I stated “… many dismiss him as the king of the schmaltzy soft country-rock love ballad (and my history bit won’t exclude examples of this)”. Well, it’s now time for the first outright example of such schmaltzy soft country-rock. It ain’t my sort of music and I’d bet the same applies for you, but this song was too successful - and as such, very much a part of the Kenny Rogers story - for me to exclude. You, however, may happily skip it - I readily understand if you do.
OK, it’s schmaltz, but from the raspy opening to the soaring chorus, Rogers gives this country (or should that be soft adult contemporary pop?) tune ’You Decorated My Life’ considerable depth with his always malleable baritone, tackling each lyric with conviction, making this something of a slow wedding dance staple -
“… But you could have heard a pin drop when Tommy locked the door…". The spoken-word lyric that induces chills on every single listen. This is Rogers at his storytelling best. He knows how to push and pull the listener along through a complicated narrative. You can feel the emotional tug of Tommy’s struggle in wanting to please his father, but the need to defend his Becky. Rogers’ cinematic 1979 ‘Coward of the County’, penned by Roger Bowling and Billy Ed Wheeler, has no right to be as funky as it is - half of the band seems to be playing it straight, while the bassist and guitar player apparently have other ideas. It belies the fact that it’s a pitch-black tale about a young pacifist who spends his life adhering to his father’s advice to turn the other cheek until the day when those Gatlin boys “took turns” (a polite, radio-friendly euphemism for rape that’s still jarring) with his girlfriend Becky. That’s when he learns to temper his father’s lessons with his own hard-won wisdom - “… sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”
Most top 10 hits don’t have a gang-rape scene (thankfully), but the momentum Rogers had after the success of ‘The Gambler‘ the year prior made attempting to recreate this song almost line for line (the melody is just a tinkered re-work and the underlying structure of the verses and chorus is the same as ‘The Gambler’) a no-brainer. Unsurprisingly, it worked. ‘Coward Of The County’ was an even bigger commercial success than ‘The Gambler‘, reaching # 3 on the pop chart in addition to naturally topping the country chart and a Top 5 AC chart hit. The song swept the world, with Rogers again making a clean sweep of # 1 in the Canadian pop, country and Ac charts and going all the way to # 1 in the UK and Ireland and reaching the Top 10 in Australia, The Netherlands, Switzerland and NZ and Top 20 in Germany and South Africa amongst others. This became one of Rogers’ most well known songs, as well as providing even more ammunition against those who questioned his country credibility. If you can make an entire movie from a 4 minute song (they did in 1981 with Rogers appearing in it as a preacher uncle) you’re onto something -
The song was also involved in a little controversy when the name ‘Gatlin’ was used as the perpetrators in the rape verse. However, Rogers apologised, insisted the reference was not about country music's Gatlin Brothers, and invited the 3 to open up some of his shows, and later he recorded with them.
Rogers was already a crossover success in early 1980 when he issued “Gideon”, an ambitious concept album that chronicled the life of a modern-day Texan cowboy named Gideon Tanner. Written at Rogers’ request by songwriter Kim Carnes - 2 years before she recorded ‘Bette Davis Eyes‘, “Gideon” cast Rogers as a cattle rustler with an eye for the ladies - and a wandering eye at that. “Gideon” was intended as a career-crystallising moment for Rogers, who hoped it would establish his reputation in a similar way as Willie Nelson’s seminal 1975 “Red Headed Stranger” album. Though it wasn’t quite, or even close, to that (though it still topped the country chart), “Gideon” did produce his 5th Top 10 pop entry single ’Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer’ which peaked at # 4, as well as reaching # 3 on the country and # 2 on the AC charts, spurring debate about just how to classify his music. Canada again did even better, going all the way to # 1 on both the country and AC charts and a # 3 pop hit in 1980.
A pop-country power ballad with no fairytale ending in sight, ’Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer’ finds two lovers facing a doomed future, their sadness and regret tinged with gritty resolve. It’s a convincing, relatively unadorned ballad that features Rogers’ reunion with Kim Carnes, who co-wrote all the songs on “Gideon”. The 2 had worked together back in the early 60s when they were just starting out, and their vocal chemistry allowed Rogers to stretch out and show off his skills for anyone who might have doubted his abilities as a powerhouse singer. While recording the song, Rogers and Kim Carnes sang facing each other with live musicians while Carnes had to improvise singing the melody in a different key than she had prepared to do when she came to the studio. Yet rarely have 2 singers been so beautifully matched - and so utterly heartbreaking. This was Rogers at his most serious as a singer - and a prelude to his power-ballads to come, showing his vocal strength and control that seemed to be increasing with age and experience -
In just over 4 years since teaming up with producer Larry Butler, Kenny Rogers had become a genuine entertainment super-star. Six of his last 7 solo albums had topped the country charts (the other had “only” tapped out at # 2, while he had also chalked up 7 # 1 singles (8 in Canada). But not only that, he had cracked the larger pop charts, with 5 reaching the Top 10 and his singles, aimed squarely at the adult market, also achieved 5 Top 5 AC hits (1 reaching # 1) while in Canada he had a remarkable 7 chart-topping AC hits with others at # 3 and # 6 (The Gambler). Yet despite all this immense success, Rogers, imbued with an underlying insecurity typical of an artist from a poor background who fears his position and wealth could all still dissipate, but also a seasoned pro who had seen many music trends come and go, sensed he needed to change - and how that change works outs, we will see tomorrow.
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We’re back again in 1980, with Kenny Rogers looking for a change in his musical direction, despite having chalked up 7 # 1 hits (and 2 more in the Top 10), 5 of which also made the Pop Top 10, under the guidance of producer Larry Butler. He later explained - “After Larry Butler and I had done 6 or 7 albums, I went back and I listened to them and they were all beginning to like ‘She Believes In Me‘ and ‘The Gambler’, but the songs weren’t as strong. I knew I needed to make a move, to do something dramatic. One of my favourite albums of all time was the Ray Charles country album (posts # 443-445). So we got in touch with Lionel Riche. He cut r&b tracks and I sang country to them, and that’s how we started moving in that direction”.
Kenny and Lionel hit paydirt straight off the bat with ‘Lady’, a sophisticated country-soul ballad that spent 6 weeks at the top of the pop chart in 1981. Proving to be the perfect marriage of country and pop, Richie pitched the song idea to Rogers before he had even written the song. After Rogers approved the song, Ritchie had to finish the song quickly. The recording marked one of the first times that a song was placed on a ”Greatest Hits” album before it was ever released as a single prior.
There’s an alternate universe out there somewhere where Lionel Richie decides to keep ‘Lady‘ for himself and it launches the Commodores singer’s solo career into the stratosphere. But in this universe, Richie’s smouldering admission of desire and devotion went to a red-hot Rogers and became the crossover country singer’s biggest commercial success (and Richie still went on to his own super-stardom, climaxing with his performance at AAMI Stadium to celebrate Collingwood’s 2010 Premiership). This is one of the biggest hits of Rogers’ career and for a rightful reason - he was always at his best when he could create with a broad stroke. ‘Lady’ pays testament to his ability to blend country, pop, and R&B with successful results. It’s a soulful plea and a smoky demonstration of faithfulness; his voice eating up every one of Lionel Richie's words.
The song was enormous, staying atop the pop chart for 6 straight weeks and charting on not only topping the country and AC charts, but the soul chart as well. With this song, Rogers virtually obliterated the line between country and pop at the time. It cemented his status as a bona fide pop star as much as a country singer, and showed that Richie had more than enough talent to make it as a solo act himself - which he very soon did in spades. Built off a cascading minor-key piano melody, ‘Lady’ is the ideal balance of Rogers’ tough and tender sides, his voice cracking in all the right places but never once sounding feeble or uncertain about confessing his feelings. It swells up to a lush, pillowy production of sighing strings and languid electric guitars - all satin sheets and flickering candlelight. Country, pop and soul all merged together-
After the huge success Rogers enjoyed with Richie on ‘Lady’, Rogers allowed him to steer his musical fortunes with the album “Share Your Love”. Although the original plan was for Richie to write all the songs for the album, they agreed to accept songs they both liked for the album which had been written by others. ’I Don't Need You‘, written by Rick Christian, was one of those. Rogers described ’I Don't Need You’ as "...still to this day one of my favorite songs …" and it resulted in one of his finest vocal efforts, with Rogers vocals never better. Some critics rate ’I Don’t Need You’ as Rogers best vocal performance, or at least his most soulful - the fans certainly thought so, making this one another country and AC chart-topper and # 3 on the pop chart (and much the same success across all 3 charts in Canada) in 1981.
The lyrics can be interpreted as a relationship in which both partners are aware that they do not need each other, yet they continue to hold onto the idea of wanting each other. The song speaks to the complexities of relationships and how sometimes people can want something or someone that they don't necessarily need. The first verse sets the tone for the rest of the song, as Rogers states that he doesn't need friendship or the beauty of Spring. These things are typically seen as positive aspects of life, but the focus here is on what he doesn't need. He then goes on to say that he doesn't need love, affection, peace or harmony, which are important elements of a relationship. In the chorus, Rogers acknowledges that both he and his partner want the relationship to work, despite the fact that they don't need each other. This could be interpreted as a desperate plea to hold onto something that they both know might not be worth holding onto. The second verse continues this theme, as Rogers declares that he doesn't need to be held or put into a box by having children and that he doesn't need his partner's presence in his golden years. The final "Or do we?" at the end of the song leaves it open-ended, leaving listeners to ponder whether or not the desire to be together outweighs the knowledge that they don't need each other. Then again, I suspect the lyrics probably didn’t register with most, as it just “sounds” like a romantic ballad -
The fourth single from the Lionel Richie produced “Share Your Love” album is one of the greatest wedding/anniversary songs of all time in any genre of music in ’Through the Years‘, which predictively reached # 1 on the AC chart, but only got to # 5 on the country charts in both the U.S. and Canada and # 13 on the U.S. pop chart. Sure, there is a lot of schmaltz here, but, unlike yesterday’s offering, this, with Rogers and Ritchie working together, can be defended as being very highest quality schmaltz there is. ‘Through The Years’ looks back at a relationship, saying “… I'm so glad I stayed right here with you / through the years ...” So, it's one for the romantics amongst you -
On his 50th anniversary TV special, Rogers performed a version of the song with two of his closest friends, Lionel Richie and Dolly Parton, which also included archive footage of him working with both on various projects through the years.
’We've Got Tonite‘ was written by Bob Seger back in 1973. The song developed from an earlier Seger composition titled ’This Old House‘, which featured the same chords, although the earlier song had a slightly different melody. Seger overhauled ’This Old House’ into ’We've Got Tonite‘ the day after seeing the 1973 film The Sting, in a conversation between the Robert Redford character and a woman he is attracted to, who says - "I don't even know you". Redford's response - "You know me. It's two in the morning and I don't know nobody" caused an emotional response in Seger, hence the re-write. ’We've Got Tonite’ wasn’t recorded until 1976’s “Night Moves” album, but was left off as Seger felt it wasn’t a thematic fit. It finally appeared, 5 years after it was written and 2 years after its recording, on Seger’s 1978 ”Stranger in Town” album. Released as a single, it reached # 13 on the pop chart.
In 1983, Rogers recorded the song as a duet with Scottish pop star Sheena Easton and made it the title track of his album “We've Got Tonight”. Their collaboration was at the behest of the label chairman who hoped to restore Easton to chart ascendancy. Rogers stated - "I liked the idea of recording with Sheena. I thought the contrast in styles - I'm so throaty and she's so trained and pure - would really work well". Rogers himself phoned Easton to pitch their duet on December 23, 1982. The two singers then met up on Christmas Eve to rehearse the song with a piano, 6 days later going into the studio, with the completed track going to radio just 9 days later.
Rogers’ raspy voice made him a natural fit to cover Bob Seger’s 1970’s power ballad. But doing the song as a duet with Sheena Easton added a layer of adult-contemporary polish that once again drew fans from beyond country and rock worlds, taking the song to # 1 on the country , # 2 on the AC and # 6 on the pop chart, topping both the country and AC charts in Canada while reaching # 4 on the pop chart, and went world wide, reaching #11 in Australia, making it far more successful than Seger’s original version. Rogers percolates the song, warming it up for Easton to come in with her explosive vocals -
Due to the now massive runaway success of Lionel Ritchie’s own solo career, he was no longer available to produce Rogers music, so it was a case of looking around for someone else to work with, and it was Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, who were now on the downward slide from their own disco dominated career peak, who came on board to produce the 1983 “Eyes That See In The Dark” album. It spawned one massive hit and also answered a question - how do you make a bad song good? The answer? - just get Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton to sing it as a duet.
'Islands in the Stream' is one of those miracle songs - a piece so kitschy and melodically simple and with lyrics that seem to have been translated from English to Dutch then back to English again ... using Google Translate ..., it ought to be (and if not taken in the right spirit, can be) unbearable. And yet… it has that something (a bit like a so bad, it's actually good way). The key to the song is to ignore the ludicrous lyrics (but don't hesitate to sing along) and fully embrace all its schmaltz.
'Islands In The Stream' was written by the Bee Gees’ brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb, with a distinctly different vocalist in mind - Marvin Gaye - who quickly dismissed it as gosh. When Barry Gibb, as Rogers‘ new producer, pitched it to Rogers, it took a few failures before Dolly was brought in to carry the recording home. Rogers later recalled - “I’d sung that song for four days and I finally just told Barry, ‘I don’t even like this song anymore”. “And [Gibb] said ‘What we need is Dolly Parton". She just happened to be working downstairs, and although Parton and Rogers had only met briefly before the collaboration, she immediately agreed and their work together on 'Islands In The Stream' yielded a classic recording and a lifelong friendship.
'Islands In The Stream' was an unprecedented mega-hit in 1983,going #1 across all 3 country, pop and AC charts, the second time Parton and Rogers each accomplished that feat throughout their individual careers. It also swept to the top in all 3 charts in Canada, and was a huge worldwide hit , reaching 1 # in Australia and Austria, # 2 in Ireland, Norway and New Zealand, # 3 in Sweden, # 4 in The Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa and # 7 in the UK. The song, a superb chiaroscuro of Parton’s bubbly optimism and Rogers’ grainy realism, an easy post-disco monolith seemingly perfectly tailored to both Kenny and Dolly‘s particular take on pop-via-country. For this, I've deliberately chosen a live version - I challenge you to watch and listen to this - in the right spirit - without raising at least some sort of smile -
It also led to more collaborations and tours together - as well as rumours about their relationship due to their obvious on-stage chemistry, which both always insisted, no doubt rightly, as nothing more than a close friendship.
Rogers had become, along with his friend, Dolly Parton, the most successful pop-country crossover act of all time, though he was not a favourite of the critics - and critics there were, not least amongst the country music traditionalists who decried his music (not without justice) as being more adult contemporary pop than country and lamented that through Rogers, this sort of easy listening soft rock had “infected” country radio. But Rogers defended his music, later stating - “My roots were in country and I did it honestly. People like myself, Dolly Parton and Barbara Mandrell, who had pop influences in our lives, just took country to a different place and really attracted a lot of people from places like New York and New Jersey, who would never have listened to country music otherwise.” By the mid 1980’s, Kenny Rogers had became America’s quintessential warm and nostalgic voice - in 1986, both USA Today and People magazine readers voted him their Favorite Singer of All Time.
However, Rogers days at the top were now numbered, and his career instead went into a long after-glow after his run of big hits came to an end. Kenny Rogers career ad life will be concluded tomorrow.
Kenny and Lionel hit paydirt straight off the bat with ‘Lady’, a sophisticated country-soul ballad that spent 6 weeks at the top of the pop chart in 1981. Proving to be the perfect marriage of country and pop, Richie pitched the song idea to Rogers before he had even written the song. After Rogers approved the song, Ritchie had to finish the song quickly. The recording marked one of the first times that a song was placed on a ”Greatest Hits” album before it was ever released as a single prior.
There’s an alternate universe out there somewhere where Lionel Richie decides to keep ‘Lady‘ for himself and it launches the Commodores singer’s solo career into the stratosphere. But in this universe, Richie’s smouldering admission of desire and devotion went to a red-hot Rogers and became the crossover country singer’s biggest commercial success (and Richie still went on to his own super-stardom, climaxing with his performance at AAMI Stadium to celebrate Collingwood’s 2010 Premiership). This is one of the biggest hits of Rogers’ career and for a rightful reason - he was always at his best when he could create with a broad stroke. ‘Lady’ pays testament to his ability to blend country, pop, and R&B with successful results. It’s a soulful plea and a smoky demonstration of faithfulness; his voice eating up every one of Lionel Richie's words.
The song was enormous, staying atop the pop chart for 6 straight weeks and charting on not only topping the country and AC charts, but the soul chart as well. With this song, Rogers virtually obliterated the line between country and pop at the time. It cemented his status as a bona fide pop star as much as a country singer, and showed that Richie had more than enough talent to make it as a solo act himself - which he very soon did in spades. Built off a cascading minor-key piano melody, ‘Lady’ is the ideal balance of Rogers’ tough and tender sides, his voice cracking in all the right places but never once sounding feeble or uncertain about confessing his feelings. It swells up to a lush, pillowy production of sighing strings and languid electric guitars - all satin sheets and flickering candlelight. Country, pop and soul all merged together-
After the huge success Rogers enjoyed with Richie on ‘Lady’, Rogers allowed him to steer his musical fortunes with the album “Share Your Love”. Although the original plan was for Richie to write all the songs for the album, they agreed to accept songs they both liked for the album which had been written by others. ’I Don't Need You‘, written by Rick Christian, was one of those. Rogers described ’I Don't Need You’ as "...still to this day one of my favorite songs …" and it resulted in one of his finest vocal efforts, with Rogers vocals never better. Some critics rate ’I Don’t Need You’ as Rogers best vocal performance, or at least his most soulful - the fans certainly thought so, making this one another country and AC chart-topper and # 3 on the pop chart (and much the same success across all 3 charts in Canada) in 1981.
The lyrics can be interpreted as a relationship in which both partners are aware that they do not need each other, yet they continue to hold onto the idea of wanting each other. The song speaks to the complexities of relationships and how sometimes people can want something or someone that they don't necessarily need. The first verse sets the tone for the rest of the song, as Rogers states that he doesn't need friendship or the beauty of Spring. These things are typically seen as positive aspects of life, but the focus here is on what he doesn't need. He then goes on to say that he doesn't need love, affection, peace or harmony, which are important elements of a relationship. In the chorus, Rogers acknowledges that both he and his partner want the relationship to work, despite the fact that they don't need each other. This could be interpreted as a desperate plea to hold onto something that they both know might not be worth holding onto. The second verse continues this theme, as Rogers declares that he doesn't need to be held or put into a box by having children and that he doesn't need his partner's presence in his golden years. The final "Or do we?" at the end of the song leaves it open-ended, leaving listeners to ponder whether or not the desire to be together outweighs the knowledge that they don't need each other. Then again, I suspect the lyrics probably didn’t register with most, as it just “sounds” like a romantic ballad -
The fourth single from the Lionel Richie produced “Share Your Love” album is one of the greatest wedding/anniversary songs of all time in any genre of music in ’Through the Years‘, which predictively reached # 1 on the AC chart, but only got to # 5 on the country charts in both the U.S. and Canada and # 13 on the U.S. pop chart. Sure, there is a lot of schmaltz here, but, unlike yesterday’s offering, this, with Rogers and Ritchie working together, can be defended as being very highest quality schmaltz there is. ‘Through The Years’ looks back at a relationship, saying “… I'm so glad I stayed right here with you / through the years ...” So, it's one for the romantics amongst you -
On his 50th anniversary TV special, Rogers performed a version of the song with two of his closest friends, Lionel Richie and Dolly Parton, which also included archive footage of him working with both on various projects through the years.
’We've Got Tonite‘ was written by Bob Seger back in 1973. The song developed from an earlier Seger composition titled ’This Old House‘, which featured the same chords, although the earlier song had a slightly different melody. Seger overhauled ’This Old House’ into ’We've Got Tonite‘ the day after seeing the 1973 film The Sting, in a conversation between the Robert Redford character and a woman he is attracted to, who says - "I don't even know you". Redford's response - "You know me. It's two in the morning and I don't know nobody" caused an emotional response in Seger, hence the re-write. ’We've Got Tonite’ wasn’t recorded until 1976’s “Night Moves” album, but was left off as Seger felt it wasn’t a thematic fit. It finally appeared, 5 years after it was written and 2 years after its recording, on Seger’s 1978 ”Stranger in Town” album. Released as a single, it reached # 13 on the pop chart.
In 1983, Rogers recorded the song as a duet with Scottish pop star Sheena Easton and made it the title track of his album “We've Got Tonight”. Their collaboration was at the behest of the label chairman who hoped to restore Easton to chart ascendancy. Rogers stated - "I liked the idea of recording with Sheena. I thought the contrast in styles - I'm so throaty and she's so trained and pure - would really work well". Rogers himself phoned Easton to pitch their duet on December 23, 1982. The two singers then met up on Christmas Eve to rehearse the song with a piano, 6 days later going into the studio, with the completed track going to radio just 9 days later.
Rogers’ raspy voice made him a natural fit to cover Bob Seger’s 1970’s power ballad. But doing the song as a duet with Sheena Easton added a layer of adult-contemporary polish that once again drew fans from beyond country and rock worlds, taking the song to # 1 on the country , # 2 on the AC and # 6 on the pop chart, topping both the country and AC charts in Canada while reaching # 4 on the pop chart, and went world wide, reaching #11 in Australia, making it far more successful than Seger’s original version. Rogers percolates the song, warming it up for Easton to come in with her explosive vocals -
Due to the now massive runaway success of Lionel Ritchie’s own solo career, he was no longer available to produce Rogers music, so it was a case of looking around for someone else to work with, and it was Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, who were now on the downward slide from their own disco dominated career peak, who came on board to produce the 1983 “Eyes That See In The Dark” album. It spawned one massive hit and also answered a question - how do you make a bad song good? The answer? - just get Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton to sing it as a duet.
'Islands in the Stream' is one of those miracle songs - a piece so kitschy and melodically simple and with lyrics that seem to have been translated from English to Dutch then back to English again ... using Google Translate ..., it ought to be (and if not taken in the right spirit, can be) unbearable. And yet… it has that something (a bit like a so bad, it's actually good way). The key to the song is to ignore the ludicrous lyrics (but don't hesitate to sing along) and fully embrace all its schmaltz.
'Islands In The Stream' was written by the Bee Gees’ brothers Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb, with a distinctly different vocalist in mind - Marvin Gaye - who quickly dismissed it as gosh. When Barry Gibb, as Rogers‘ new producer, pitched it to Rogers, it took a few failures before Dolly was brought in to carry the recording home. Rogers later recalled - “I’d sung that song for four days and I finally just told Barry, ‘I don’t even like this song anymore”. “And [Gibb] said ‘What we need is Dolly Parton". She just happened to be working downstairs, and although Parton and Rogers had only met briefly before the collaboration, she immediately agreed and their work together on 'Islands In The Stream' yielded a classic recording and a lifelong friendship.
'Islands In The Stream' was an unprecedented mega-hit in 1983,going #1 across all 3 country, pop and AC charts, the second time Parton and Rogers each accomplished that feat throughout their individual careers. It also swept to the top in all 3 charts in Canada, and was a huge worldwide hit , reaching 1 # in Australia and Austria, # 2 in Ireland, Norway and New Zealand, # 3 in Sweden, # 4 in The Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa and # 7 in the UK. The song, a superb chiaroscuro of Parton’s bubbly optimism and Rogers’ grainy realism, an easy post-disco monolith seemingly perfectly tailored to both Kenny and Dolly‘s particular take on pop-via-country. For this, I've deliberately chosen a live version - I challenge you to watch and listen to this - in the right spirit - without raising at least some sort of smile -
It also led to more collaborations and tours together - as well as rumours about their relationship due to their obvious on-stage chemistry, which both always insisted, no doubt rightly, as nothing more than a close friendship.
Rogers had become, along with his friend, Dolly Parton, the most successful pop-country crossover act of all time, though he was not a favourite of the critics - and critics there were, not least amongst the country music traditionalists who decried his music (not without justice) as being more adult contemporary pop than country and lamented that through Rogers, this sort of easy listening soft rock had “infected” country radio. But Rogers defended his music, later stating - “My roots were in country and I did it honestly. People like myself, Dolly Parton and Barbara Mandrell, who had pop influences in our lives, just took country to a different place and really attracted a lot of people from places like New York and New Jersey, who would never have listened to country music otherwise.” By the mid 1980’s, Kenny Rogers had became America’s quintessential warm and nostalgic voice - in 1986, both USA Today and People magazine readers voted him their Favorite Singer of All Time.
However, Rogers days at the top were now numbered, and his career instead went into a long after-glow after his run of big hits came to an end. Kenny Rogers career ad life will be concluded tomorrow.
Despite his success, Rogers retained an element of insecurity, based on his poverty-stricken youth and his financially lean years as an adult, but the insecurity had its positive repercussions. Never content with a comfortable niche, he continued to experiment with other performance options. With his rugged features and characteristic growling voice, Rogers found film roles in both features and made-for-TV vehicles, some of which were based on his story songs. He also entered the competitive daytime talk-variety show market with a syndicated TV program, saying "a lot of people in this business devote ninety-five percent of their lives to music. When the music goes, there goes 95 percent of their lives. I can express my creativity in different ways“.
Between 1980 and 1994, Rogers appeared in a series of 5 TV movies based on “The Gambler” song. In 1981, he starred in a TV movie based on ‘Coward of the County‘. His big-screen movie debut came in 1982 with Six Pack, playing a race-car driver. That movie featured the hit song ‘Love Will Turn You Around‘. Among Rogers’ other TV appearances is the 1990 movie Christmas in America, only one of Rogers’ many Christmas-related projects. He has also made several Christmas albums and an off-Broadway Christmas stage show. From 1992 to 1995, Rogers hosted a TV history series titled The Real West. He appeared as himself in the 1995 TV movie, Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story. He appeared as himself again in the 1997 TV movie, Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story. One of Rogers’ most successful business ventures was the restaurant chain Kenny Rogers Roasters, launched in 1991. In 1998, he sold that business (before it went into terminal decline) and began his own record label, known as Dreamcatcher Entertainment.
Now back to the music, starting from 1984. With Barry Gibb as head producer, it would be fair to have expected an album full of the type of disco experiments Rogers had already done long before the Gibbs came into the picture. But “Eyes That See In The Dark” is more polished pop than anything else, with a front-to-back consistency that many of Rogers’ albums, with their laser focus on creating huge hits, lack. ‘Evening Star‘ is one of the album’s most “country” entries, with the Gatlin brothers (showing all was forgiven from their name being used as the rapists in ‘Coward Of The County’) singing backup as Rogers happily welds together the pop arrangement with a sweeping western lyric. A stellar moment on the “Eyes That See In The Dark” album, lilting and gentle, it’s straightforward and, simply, pretty. While the background vocals are superb, Rogers voice is always the true centre, providing an absolutely glimmering performance. But in a sign of things to come, the album barely cracked the country Top 10, scraping in at # 9 while the single missed the Country Top 10 (albeit narrowly, peaking at # 11) and didn’t trouble the pop or AC charts -
Rogers added the right touch of longing and nostalgia on the 1986 single ‘Twenty Years Ago’, which stopped just shy of the # 1 position at # 2. The song’s lyrics paid homage to the memories that the lead character in the song had of the town growing up - when things were much more simple and serene than they were in the post-Vietnam era. In the song, the narrator refers to visiting the old town where he grew up in and mentions how much simpler and possibly better life was back then. He mentions the old movie house and the drug store where he worked and, most poignantly of all, recalling the tragedy of the Vietnam War, his childhood friend who never returned from the war. This song doesn’t get the credit it deserves, for it’s one of his best-
Just as ‘Twenty Years Ago’ came out, the U.S. was in the midst of a strong swing back to a more traditional country sound, eschewing the pop influences of the previous decade. This “neo-traditional” sound was spearheaded by George Strait and others in his wake soon followed, such as Randy Travis, Keith Whitley, Reba McIntyre, Dwight Yoakham reviving the Bakersfield Sound (# 455) and Alan Jackson. This largely explains why Rogers, with his now dated brand of adult oriented soft rock/pop-country, was no longer in vogue, rarely reached the upper echelons of the charts from the mid 1980’s onwards. He no longer had pop crossover hits, but his concerts continued to be immensely popular - in fact he remained the top concert drawcard at the time, playing his legacy music. His made-for-TV movies We’re also ratings winners. Although his music was no longer topping the charts, he remained the most personally popular country music performer.
Rogers had married his 4th wife, Marianne Gordon in 1977. They had one son and were married for 20 years before Rogers had something of a mid-life crisis at age 55, seemingly depressed by his declining career and distracted by other events (next paragraph) and they divorced in 1993. His fifth marriage was to waitress called Wanda in 1997. He was 59 and she was 31 and they had dated for 4 years. They had twin sons in 2004 and were married for 22 years until Rogers’ death
To his fans, Rogers oozed Southern charm and seemed as wholesome as apple pie, but as he told Wanda, when he sang his vows to her during their 1997 wedding ceremony - 'I'll give you the future, if you'll forgive me my past“. There was a fair bit to forgive. An inveterate ladies' man, he faced sleaze allegations 4 years earlier in 1993 that severely dented his nice guy image. Three women in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a chunk of his money, sued him for damages, claiming his outlandish sexual behaviour caused them ”emotional stress“. He was accused of having a toll-free, personal phone ”loveline“ on which he asked women to leave obscene messages or listen to his explicit fantasies. Court papers detailed 3-in-a-bed sex, pr0n films and private underwear shows. Eventually the case was thrown out, but not before it irreparably damaged his standing across the southern Bible Belt - ”It was personally devastating, devastating to me …“, he said later, conceding it was ”… not a completely fabricated' situation. I was going through a serious mid-life crisis. I was looking for excitement, I guess, I wanted to play and I thought I was playing with people I could trust …“. It left a ”cloud of guilt“ hanging over him, but he concluded - 'Still, what can you say? Life is a crapshoot and anything that doesn't kill ya, is an experience“. Spoken just like The Gambler.
When ’The Greatest’ was released in 1999 as the first single from the “She Rides Wild Horses” album, Rogers joked "every 20 years I will record a Don Schiltz song”. Rogers turned to the writer of ’The Gambler’ in 1999 for this unlikely hit that compared life to playing baseball. Always a magician with a lyric, Schlitz’s turning the boy’s bad play into an exercise in philosophy turned out to be stroke of genius, providing the singer with his first entry into the Top 30 in 8 years - and cracked the Top 20 in Canada.
Rogers released his 59th album, “She Rides Wild Horses”, in 1999, with a surprise hit single,‘The Greatest’, telling the tale of a young boy one afternoon tossing a baseball in the air and trying to hit it. Alas, he misses three times, striking himself out. Like many young children, the boy was dreaming of being “the greatest” while playing with the bat and ball. We may imagine his disappointment at striking out, but the boy seems undeterred. The twist comes at the end as the boy (and the listener) realises why he can still call himself “the greatest”. It is a sweet message about adjusting one’s perspective to see the best in ourselves. Similar to ‘The Gambler,’ this song is filled with life lessons, but it’s also imbued with optimism. Rogers style of speak-singing works well for the simplicity of the lyric, so as not to distract from the overall message -
Rogers’ final chart-topper ‘Buy Me A Rose’, was a late-career comeback in 1999 that arrived more than a decade after his previous # 1. Written by Jim Funk and Erik Hickenlooper, the story is well-suited for Rogers to tell - man tries to express his love with fancy material things, woman just wants him to say the words and do the little stuff, guy eventually figures it out and vows to stop holding all those feelings inside. Both live happily ever after (I presume). Rogers is joined by the unlikely pairing of country singer Billy Dean and bluegrass star Alison Krauss, who provide the heavenly backing vocals on the simple, elegant recording. For a time, it gave the then 61-year-old Rogers a record as the oldest person to have a # 1 hit (one of his many friends, Willie Nelson, passed him in 2003 at age 70), putting an exclamation point on a career that stretched back to the late 1950’s -
In 2011, Rogers released a bucket-list project, his only Gospel record, ”The Love Of God, on his own label, an accomplishment that Rogers was very proud of - he had learned to sing harmonies in church as a child). Rogers then released his successful memoir, Luck or Something Like It in 2012 and he became a New York Times Best-Selling Author.
It’s hard to listen to ’You Can’t Make Old Friends’, a 2013 duet with Dolly Parton, in the wake of Rogers’ passing. The opening line is a heartbreaker because we know how this story ends. The strength of his voice and the tender conviction are downright astonishing, while the addition of Parton to this beautiful track just adds to this lyrical keepsake. Yes, it’s filled with the kind of sentimentality that would probably be cringeworthy if it weren’t coming from two old, legendary artists who are, in fact, old friends. But the stripped-down arrangements and earnest delivery make it a sincere reflection on mortality from two people who have seen more together than most of us will probably ever understand. Parton’s tearful memorial to Rogers after he passed seems to give this song even more meaning – a chance to not just say but sing those same sentiments to (and with) Rogers while he was still living -
Kenny Rogers always came across as a polite, affable and even humble person when in public, be it with his fans, the media and fellow musicians (he seemed to have an endless array of friends, no enemies) - probably a result of his upbringing in the poorest area of Houston, which he often spoke about. Rogers had a keen and often self-deprecating sense of humour. He never took himself too seriously, often spoofing his own image as the pop country romantic crooner. After his disastrous 2006 plastic surgery, which he regretted, he still laughed about it - “I had the money to do it and I had time off. Now I want my money back”. In my introduction to Kenny a few days back, I mentioned that when he was a boy he would walk through the nicer neighbourhoods in Houston and admire the water sprinklers he saw there. They became like an obsession with him, a totem of success, so when Rogers finally made it and built his own 18-hole golf course near his home in Georgia, he installed sprinklers everywhere - “I’d spend hours just sitting on a golf cart admiring them“, he later said.
Rogers launched a farewell tour called The Gambler's Last Deal in 2015. It culminated in 2017 with a final show held at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena filled with special guests and music icons to celebrate Kenny Rogers’ final music performance. The emotion charged concert featured performances by Dolly Parton (performing’Islands In The Stream’ with Kenny for the final time), Lionel Ritchie (singing ‘Lady’), Chris Stapleton, Idina Menzel, Lady A, Reba McEntire along with many other special guests.
Rogers' 60 year career ended in 2017 as he encountered health problems that included a diagnosis of bladder cancer. He spent the next few years quietly, eventually dying at his Georgia home in April 2020, at age of 81, surrounded by his wife of 22 years , Wanda and children. The tributes poured in from around the music world, far too many to mention, as he was obviously very popular across the country and wider music world. but I’ll make one exception. His closest friend, Dolly Parton said tearfully - ”I loved Kenny with all my heart. My heart's broken. A big ol' chunk of it has gone with him today. You never know how much you love somebody until they're gone. I've had so many wonderful years and wonderful times with my friend Kenny but, above all the music and the success, I loved him as a wonderful man and a true friend“. “Life Is Like a Song”, a posthumous album containing recordings Kenny made between 2008 and 2011, appeared just 2 months ago, in June 2023.
Rogers has sold over 120 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all-time according to the RIAA, with one Diamond album, 20 Platinum albums and 11 Gold. He recorded 24 # 1 hits, 12 # 1 albums and 25 Top 10 albums. Remarkably, he charted a song within each of the previous 7 decades. His music has always crossed boundaries, with singles and albums finding frequent success on the Country, Top 40, and AC charts and in a few instances, on the R&B and Christian charts. The first country artist to consistently sell out arenas, Rogers also achieved pop superstardom and reached the pinnacle of worldwide popularity and celebrity few artists have ever attained. Rogers’ 28 Billboard AC Top 10's rank fifth-best all-time, and he sent the most country # 1’s to the top spot on AC (5 of his 8 AC # 1’s were also country #1’s).
Rogers has won numerous awards. In 2013, Rogers was bestowed with his biggest honor, being inducted as a member of the Country Music HoF. His numerous accolades include 21 American Music Awards, 11 People’s Choice Awards, 10 ACM Awards (including the Career Achievement Award, Entertainer of the Year, multiple Male Vocalist of the Year Awards and the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award), 6 CMA awards (including the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award and Male Vocalist of the Year), 3 Grammies, 2 CMT Music Awards and the CMT Artist of a Lifetime Award in 2015. He received the Career Achievement Award at the TNN Music Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from IEBA (International Entertainment Buyers Association), an IEBA HoF Induction and the SESAC Legacy Award, among many others. He was also the recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, given to those who have distinguished themselves despite humble beginnings, an honor that was very special to him. Rogers was voted the "Favorite Singer of All Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both USA Today and People. He is one of the legends of country music.
I’m now required back in the bush for the next 10 days or so. When I get back it’ll be to feature a female singer that I’d rejected for this series, but her name just kept coming up continually in in my research - including for Kenny Rogers - until I realised my error and relented. Fortunately for my chronology, although she had been around as a well known performer for a long time, her career didn’t actually peak until the very late 1970’s. But for now, it’s au revoir.
Between 1980 and 1994, Rogers appeared in a series of 5 TV movies based on “The Gambler” song. In 1981, he starred in a TV movie based on ‘Coward of the County‘. His big-screen movie debut came in 1982 with Six Pack, playing a race-car driver. That movie featured the hit song ‘Love Will Turn You Around‘. Among Rogers’ other TV appearances is the 1990 movie Christmas in America, only one of Rogers’ many Christmas-related projects. He has also made several Christmas albums and an off-Broadway Christmas stage show. From 1992 to 1995, Rogers hosted a TV history series titled The Real West. He appeared as himself in the 1995 TV movie, Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story. He appeared as himself again in the 1997 TV movie, Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story. One of Rogers’ most successful business ventures was the restaurant chain Kenny Rogers Roasters, launched in 1991. In 1998, he sold that business (before it went into terminal decline) and began his own record label, known as Dreamcatcher Entertainment.
Now back to the music, starting from 1984. With Barry Gibb as head producer, it would be fair to have expected an album full of the type of disco experiments Rogers had already done long before the Gibbs came into the picture. But “Eyes That See In The Dark” is more polished pop than anything else, with a front-to-back consistency that many of Rogers’ albums, with their laser focus on creating huge hits, lack. ‘Evening Star‘ is one of the album’s most “country” entries, with the Gatlin brothers (showing all was forgiven from their name being used as the rapists in ‘Coward Of The County’) singing backup as Rogers happily welds together the pop arrangement with a sweeping western lyric. A stellar moment on the “Eyes That See In The Dark” album, lilting and gentle, it’s straightforward and, simply, pretty. While the background vocals are superb, Rogers voice is always the true centre, providing an absolutely glimmering performance. But in a sign of things to come, the album barely cracked the country Top 10, scraping in at # 9 while the single missed the Country Top 10 (albeit narrowly, peaking at # 11) and didn’t trouble the pop or AC charts -
Rogers added the right touch of longing and nostalgia on the 1986 single ‘Twenty Years Ago’, which stopped just shy of the # 1 position at # 2. The song’s lyrics paid homage to the memories that the lead character in the song had of the town growing up - when things were much more simple and serene than they were in the post-Vietnam era. In the song, the narrator refers to visiting the old town where he grew up in and mentions how much simpler and possibly better life was back then. He mentions the old movie house and the drug store where he worked and, most poignantly of all, recalling the tragedy of the Vietnam War, his childhood friend who never returned from the war. This song doesn’t get the credit it deserves, for it’s one of his best-
Just as ‘Twenty Years Ago’ came out, the U.S. was in the midst of a strong swing back to a more traditional country sound, eschewing the pop influences of the previous decade. This “neo-traditional” sound was spearheaded by George Strait and others in his wake soon followed, such as Randy Travis, Keith Whitley, Reba McIntyre, Dwight Yoakham reviving the Bakersfield Sound (# 455) and Alan Jackson. This largely explains why Rogers, with his now dated brand of adult oriented soft rock/pop-country, was no longer in vogue, rarely reached the upper echelons of the charts from the mid 1980’s onwards. He no longer had pop crossover hits, but his concerts continued to be immensely popular - in fact he remained the top concert drawcard at the time, playing his legacy music. His made-for-TV movies We’re also ratings winners. Although his music was no longer topping the charts, he remained the most personally popular country music performer.
Rogers had married his 4th wife, Marianne Gordon in 1977. They had one son and were married for 20 years before Rogers had something of a mid-life crisis at age 55, seemingly depressed by his declining career and distracted by other events (next paragraph) and they divorced in 1993. His fifth marriage was to waitress called Wanda in 1997. He was 59 and she was 31 and they had dated for 4 years. They had twin sons in 2004 and were married for 22 years until Rogers’ death
To his fans, Rogers oozed Southern charm and seemed as wholesome as apple pie, but as he told Wanda, when he sang his vows to her during their 1997 wedding ceremony - 'I'll give you the future, if you'll forgive me my past“. There was a fair bit to forgive. An inveterate ladies' man, he faced sleaze allegations 4 years earlier in 1993 that severely dented his nice guy image. Three women in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a chunk of his money, sued him for damages, claiming his outlandish sexual behaviour caused them ”emotional stress“. He was accused of having a toll-free, personal phone ”loveline“ on which he asked women to leave obscene messages or listen to his explicit fantasies. Court papers detailed 3-in-a-bed sex, pr0n films and private underwear shows. Eventually the case was thrown out, but not before it irreparably damaged his standing across the southern Bible Belt - ”It was personally devastating, devastating to me …“, he said later, conceding it was ”… not a completely fabricated' situation. I was going through a serious mid-life crisis. I was looking for excitement, I guess, I wanted to play and I thought I was playing with people I could trust …“. It left a ”cloud of guilt“ hanging over him, but he concluded - 'Still, what can you say? Life is a crapshoot and anything that doesn't kill ya, is an experience“. Spoken just like The Gambler.
When ’The Greatest’ was released in 1999 as the first single from the “She Rides Wild Horses” album, Rogers joked "every 20 years I will record a Don Schiltz song”. Rogers turned to the writer of ’The Gambler’ in 1999 for this unlikely hit that compared life to playing baseball. Always a magician with a lyric, Schlitz’s turning the boy’s bad play into an exercise in philosophy turned out to be stroke of genius, providing the singer with his first entry into the Top 30 in 8 years - and cracked the Top 20 in Canada.
Rogers released his 59th album, “She Rides Wild Horses”, in 1999, with a surprise hit single,‘The Greatest’, telling the tale of a young boy one afternoon tossing a baseball in the air and trying to hit it. Alas, he misses three times, striking himself out. Like many young children, the boy was dreaming of being “the greatest” while playing with the bat and ball. We may imagine his disappointment at striking out, but the boy seems undeterred. The twist comes at the end as the boy (and the listener) realises why he can still call himself “the greatest”. It is a sweet message about adjusting one’s perspective to see the best in ourselves. Similar to ‘The Gambler,’ this song is filled with life lessons, but it’s also imbued with optimism. Rogers style of speak-singing works well for the simplicity of the lyric, so as not to distract from the overall message -
Rogers’ final chart-topper ‘Buy Me A Rose’, was a late-career comeback in 1999 that arrived more than a decade after his previous # 1. Written by Jim Funk and Erik Hickenlooper, the story is well-suited for Rogers to tell - man tries to express his love with fancy material things, woman just wants him to say the words and do the little stuff, guy eventually figures it out and vows to stop holding all those feelings inside. Both live happily ever after (I presume). Rogers is joined by the unlikely pairing of country singer Billy Dean and bluegrass star Alison Krauss, who provide the heavenly backing vocals on the simple, elegant recording. For a time, it gave the then 61-year-old Rogers a record as the oldest person to have a # 1 hit (one of his many friends, Willie Nelson, passed him in 2003 at age 70), putting an exclamation point on a career that stretched back to the late 1950’s -
In 2011, Rogers released a bucket-list project, his only Gospel record, ”The Love Of God, on his own label, an accomplishment that Rogers was very proud of - he had learned to sing harmonies in church as a child). Rogers then released his successful memoir, Luck or Something Like It in 2012 and he became a New York Times Best-Selling Author.
It’s hard to listen to ’You Can’t Make Old Friends’, a 2013 duet with Dolly Parton, in the wake of Rogers’ passing. The opening line is a heartbreaker because we know how this story ends. The strength of his voice and the tender conviction are downright astonishing, while the addition of Parton to this beautiful track just adds to this lyrical keepsake. Yes, it’s filled with the kind of sentimentality that would probably be cringeworthy if it weren’t coming from two old, legendary artists who are, in fact, old friends. But the stripped-down arrangements and earnest delivery make it a sincere reflection on mortality from two people who have seen more together than most of us will probably ever understand. Parton’s tearful memorial to Rogers after he passed seems to give this song even more meaning – a chance to not just say but sing those same sentiments to (and with) Rogers while he was still living -
Kenny Rogers always came across as a polite, affable and even humble person when in public, be it with his fans, the media and fellow musicians (he seemed to have an endless array of friends, no enemies) - probably a result of his upbringing in the poorest area of Houston, which he often spoke about. Rogers had a keen and often self-deprecating sense of humour. He never took himself too seriously, often spoofing his own image as the pop country romantic crooner. After his disastrous 2006 plastic surgery, which he regretted, he still laughed about it - “I had the money to do it and I had time off. Now I want my money back”. In my introduction to Kenny a few days back, I mentioned that when he was a boy he would walk through the nicer neighbourhoods in Houston and admire the water sprinklers he saw there. They became like an obsession with him, a totem of success, so when Rogers finally made it and built his own 18-hole golf course near his home in Georgia, he installed sprinklers everywhere - “I’d spend hours just sitting on a golf cart admiring them“, he later said.
Rogers launched a farewell tour called The Gambler's Last Deal in 2015. It culminated in 2017 with a final show held at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena filled with special guests and music icons to celebrate Kenny Rogers’ final music performance. The emotion charged concert featured performances by Dolly Parton (performing’Islands In The Stream’ with Kenny for the final time), Lionel Ritchie (singing ‘Lady’), Chris Stapleton, Idina Menzel, Lady A, Reba McEntire along with many other special guests.
Rogers' 60 year career ended in 2017 as he encountered health problems that included a diagnosis of bladder cancer. He spent the next few years quietly, eventually dying at his Georgia home in April 2020, at age of 81, surrounded by his wife of 22 years , Wanda and children. The tributes poured in from around the music world, far too many to mention, as he was obviously very popular across the country and wider music world. but I’ll make one exception. His closest friend, Dolly Parton said tearfully - ”I loved Kenny with all my heart. My heart's broken. A big ol' chunk of it has gone with him today. You never know how much you love somebody until they're gone. I've had so many wonderful years and wonderful times with my friend Kenny but, above all the music and the success, I loved him as a wonderful man and a true friend“. “Life Is Like a Song”, a posthumous album containing recordings Kenny made between 2008 and 2011, appeared just 2 months ago, in June 2023.
Rogers has sold over 120 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all-time according to the RIAA, with one Diamond album, 20 Platinum albums and 11 Gold. He recorded 24 # 1 hits, 12 # 1 albums and 25 Top 10 albums. Remarkably, he charted a song within each of the previous 7 decades. His music has always crossed boundaries, with singles and albums finding frequent success on the Country, Top 40, and AC charts and in a few instances, on the R&B and Christian charts. The first country artist to consistently sell out arenas, Rogers also achieved pop superstardom and reached the pinnacle of worldwide popularity and celebrity few artists have ever attained. Rogers’ 28 Billboard AC Top 10's rank fifth-best all-time, and he sent the most country # 1’s to the top spot on AC (5 of his 8 AC # 1’s were also country #1’s).
Rogers has won numerous awards. In 2013, Rogers was bestowed with his biggest honor, being inducted as a member of the Country Music HoF. His numerous accolades include 21 American Music Awards, 11 People’s Choice Awards, 10 ACM Awards (including the Career Achievement Award, Entertainer of the Year, multiple Male Vocalist of the Year Awards and the Cliffie Stone Pioneer Award), 6 CMA awards (including the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award and Male Vocalist of the Year), 3 Grammies, 2 CMT Music Awards and the CMT Artist of a Lifetime Award in 2015. He received the Career Achievement Award at the TNN Music Awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from IEBA (International Entertainment Buyers Association), an IEBA HoF Induction and the SESAC Legacy Award, among many others. He was also the recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, given to those who have distinguished themselves despite humble beginnings, an honor that was very special to him. Rogers was voted the "Favorite Singer of All Time" in a 1986 joint poll by readers of both USA Today and People. He is one of the legends of country music.
I’m now required back in the bush for the next 10 days or so. When I get back it’ll be to feature a female singer that I’d rejected for this series, but her name just kept coming up continually in in my research - including for Kenny Rogers - until I realised my error and relented. Fortunately for my chronology, although she had been around as a well known performer for a long time, her career didn’t actually peak until the very late 1970’s. But for now, it’s au revoir.
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I enjoyed Emily Scott Robinson last week. Bought all 4 albums at the show. Well, on CD, that was 40€ not 100€ like vinyl.
Another great new artist:
Was at his first show in Germany yesterday.
Was at his first show in Germany yesterday.
I’m back, albeit briefly, with an artist I’d originally excluded from the history but whose name kept popping up - and doing Kenny Rogers finally changed my mind, as she had a lot to do with him (which I omitted from his story, saving it for this). Not so much for her body of work, she is included now as she was a singer-songwriter who wrote much of her own hits as well as for others. But, being the last of the long line of artists in this series coming from a large depression-era poverty stricken family, she also has a compelling life story of rising from a horrendous childhood - probably the worse of all, with a father even worse than Hank Snow’s cruel, violent step-father (# 202) to eventually, showing a toughness and resilience, enduring many knock-backs, finding stardom. Her music history then also goes through a transformation, as a new image, defying her age and a new music sound found a new, expanded audience.
Born Dorothy Marsh in 1932, in small-town McMinnville, Tennessee, 110 km SE of Nashville, the eldest of 10 children. As the oldest sibling in a very large, depression-era poverty-stricken family, Dottie, as the family always called her, had to put up with hurt and pain that no one should ever have to deal with. Dottie and her siblings were treated like dirt - and Dottie had it even worse - for years. They lived in an old shack in the woods with no running water, no electricity, and lived on blackberries for meals. Her brother Kelton later said - “When you got hungry, you just drank water. You would go to bed, and the next morning if you woke up and the hunger came back, you just drank more water...”.
Hollis Marsh, Dottie's father, was a violent alcoholic thug who beat and abused the family. By the time Dottie was only a year old, he was whipping and hitting her regularly. As the years went by, and more children were born, Dottie naturally became the "second mother" of the family, and she would have to help feed, clothe and raise the other kids. She also had to pick cotton all day in the fields near her home with her brothers, until their fingers bled (I’ve described several times previously how painful cotton picking was on children - I found it painful as an adult just trying it - with many like Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins and Jerry Lee Lewis left with permanent hand scarring).
Dottie saved old rags and newspapers lying around the house and stuck them in the cracks of her bedroom wall so the snow wouldn’t blow in during the winter. The poverty continued for years. Hollis repeatedly hollered, kicked and cursed at the kids, threw dishes around and even ordered Dottie and her mother outside at gunpoint after an all night drinking binge. He wouldn’t work and what little money the family did earn from the children picking cotton or cane cutting, he spent on sugar for his illegal moonshine. The family used old tin covers off lard cans for plates, and drank out of old tin cans with the sharp edges peeled back - Hollis was more interested in a whiskey jug than providing for his family! But it wasn't until Dottie was a teenager that the darkness of poverty and violence turned to horror.
When Dottie turned 12, Hollis began secretly molesting her, often calling her upstairs when he was repairing watches, to help look for screws that he claimed he "lost". But when she went upstairs to help, he r*ped her regularly. No matter how painful the experience was for her, Hollis ordered not to make a sound. To avoid any suspicion from his wife, Hollis sometimes called some of Dottie's brothers to help look for the screws, but they could never find them because, of course, there weren't any screws to begin with. So Hollis kicked and cursed the boys and told them to leave him and Dottie alone. Some time later, Dottie was awakened by stomach cramps. She began to suspect that she was pregnant by her own father. She was! She miscarried in the middle of the night, and barely had enough strength to make it back to her room.
The next morning, Hollis shouted at Dottie to get up. Feeling tired from the episode the night before, she collapsed on the porch. The other kids yelled at Hollis to do something, so he poured a bucket of water on her, and said - "You damn little tramp, if that's how you're going to act, get back in bed". Hollis then beat Dorothy so severely, she required hospital treatment. Unfortunately, the doctors suspected nothing out of the ordinary apart from the beating. The months and years went by and Hollis grew more unstable and violent. The horror for Dottie continued, until one day, while at school, she broke down in a flood of tears. She revealed to her principal what she had been subjected to at home for years.
Dottie's principal immediately called the sheriff and Dottie was placed in his care. Later that day, the sheriff returned to Dottie's home and explained to a disbelieving wife the charges laid against Hollis - rape, incest and violating the age of consent law. Hollis had already been arrested and after several witnesses took the stand, including Dottie herself, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison (no soft-sentencing back then), where he eventually died. The family's conditions were now changing for the better. Dottie's mother, a good cook, helped by Dottie who also cooked and waitressed, opened a restaurant and afterwards, with it’s success, a second restaurant. For the first time in years, things were looking up for the family. They moved into a half decent apartment and Dottie received her first real new clothing at 17 years of age!
Even as she suffered regular beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Dottie’s one escape from a horrible existence was country music, which she loved from an early age - her sole source of entertainment came on Saturday night when they gathered around the radio, as so many others of the time, to tune in to the Grand Ole Opry, so even as a young girl, Dottie always dreamed of playing at the Opry. She even walked for miles and miles selling ointment for her school, thus winning the top prize, which was her very first guitar. Her extreme childhood circumstances could not derail her dreams. While managing to help her mother, cooking and waitressing in the new family-owned restaurant, she began formal music lessons, financing it by a series of part-time jobs which also paid for her college education after graduating from high school, entering Tennessee Technological University with the goal of majoring in music.
At the university West studied many genres of music, but country remained her favourite. She met another country fan there among her fellow students, Bill West, who majored in engineering but played steel guitar as a hobby. The two began performing together at campus functions and married while still completing their mutual degrees. After both graduated, they couple moved to Cleveland, where Bill West landed a job with an electronics firm. The Wests, however, still pursued their interest in playing country music and made appearances at local clubs. They were so successful in the region that they were invited to appear on the Cleveland TV program Landmark Jamboree as one half of a country-pop vocal duo called the Kay-Dots alongside partner Kathy Dee, and they soon became regulars on the show.
At the same time, Dottie made numerous trips to Nashville in the hope of landing a recording deal - and got numerous knock-backs. But 1959, at age 27, she and Bill auditioned for the Starday label, and were immediately offered a contract. The resulting singles proved unsuccessful, but nonetheless they moved to Nashville in 1961. There, she met and became very close friends with Patsy Cline, but just as a Cline became Dottie’s mentor to boost her career, the friendship was cut short when Cline was tragically killed in the 1963 plane crash (# 388-389). Dottie and her husband also fell in with a group of famous or soon-to-be-famous aspiring singer-songwriters like Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, the infamous Faron Young gang often hanging out in Tootsies honky tonk. At get-togethers with these friends, West began writing songs. One of her songs, ’Is This Me?‘ caught the notice of Jim Reeves, who not only recorded it but brought Dottie to the attention of RCA’s master producer Chet Atkins (# 354), who signed her to sing duets with Reeves and to record solo albums. West cut ’Love Is No Excuse‘ with Reeves but this budding vocal partnership abruptly came to an end when Reeves was killed in a plane crash in 1964 (# 385).
Also in 1964, both Dottie and her husband were hired as songwriters by Tree Publishing Company. Together they penned ’Here Comes My Baby‘. It was released at a time when West was still mostly unknown outside Music City. Much to West’s surprise, the song, produced by Chet Atkins, reached 10 in 1964, making it her first national hit, at age 32. Even more fascinating was that the song, an exemplary example of the 1960‘s Chet Atkins inspired Nashville Sound, won her a Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance, making West the first female in country music to ever win a Grammy -
‘Here Comes My Baby‘ endured and has since been covered by hundreds of artists, most notably Perry Como and Dean Martin, growing beyond its country music roots, finding its way as a standard on the Great American Songbook. The success of the song also lead to Dottie fulfilling a childhood dream, being invited to join the Grand Ole Opry. After her induction, she became a regular performer at the Opry for the rest of her life.
Dottie co-wrote ‘Would You Hold Against Me‘ with her first husband, Bill West, and was released in 1966 off her highest-selling solo album of all time, “Surfer Time”. The Chet Atkins produced Nashville Sound song became her most successful 1960’s hit, peaking at # 5. The success of this song made Dottie West sufficiently well known to sether up for sustained, albeit not quite chart-topping, on-going success. The song itself has an interesting premise – a woman has left her husband for another man she’s now about to marry - but is wondering if her decision was right and wants to check out her ex for one last time - or one last chance? If someone I was about to marry asked me thus, I would absolutely hold it against her! -
After teaming up yet again with master producer Chet Atkins, Dottie’s ‘Paper Mansions‘ became yet another Top 10 hit in 1968, reaching # 8 - her last 1960’s solo Top 10 hit. Written by Ted Harris, the song is about a wealthy couple living in an extravagant mansion built with costly materials that creates a luxurious appearance. However, despite the grand facade, the couple’s marriage is falling apart and they are miserable, with the man’s unfaithful behaviour driving the woman to tears and regret. She’s afraid he’ll leave her once again with nothing but pretty words that glow. The song is rooted in the social and cultural context of its time. During the 1960s, the U.S. experienced a rapid economic growth that resulted in a growing middle class and an increase in consumerism. Many people wanted to showcase their wealth, and luxurious mansions became a symbol of status and success. However, this idea of materialistic success came with a cost. Many people sacrificed their relationships, happiness, and health to achieve it, leading to a growing sense of emptiness and disillusionment - making for a perfect country music theme -
Decades after its initial success, ‘Paper Mansions‘, found a new audience and popularity in 1996, when RCA released it on a compilation all her hits titled “The Essential Dottie West”, after years of the song being difficult to find on any Dottie West album. Lynn Anderson released a cover of it on her “Promises, Promises” album.
Dottie continued to have regular, though never chart-topping, success as a solo artist during the late 1960’s with such songs as ’What's Come Over My Baby‘ and ’I'm a Country Girl‘. The last hit garnered her an offer to write an advert based on it for Coca-Cola in 1970. The company liked the result so much, it signed her to a lifetime contract as a jingle writer. All up, Dottie composed 13 Coca-Cola jingles. In 1973 West provided Coca-Cola with an even more successful ad featuring the song ’Country Sunshine’. The immense popularity of the advert prompted West to release the song as a single, and it became one of her biggest hits, her most successful to date, peaking at # 2 -
The ad itself also netted West a prestigious Clio Award for commercial of the year. She was the first country artist ever to win that particular honour, to add to her breakthrough Grammy honour.
‘Last Time I Saw Him‘ was written by pop composer Michael Masser and lyricist Pam Sawyer and was originally released by Diana Ross in 1973, peaking at # 14 on the pop chart. However, despite the Motown production, the light-hearted ditty had a definite country flavour, with the accompaniment including Dixieland-band jazz, a Nashville Sound like string section and even some banjo-pickin'. It was thus inevitable it would get a full country makeover, and so it was just months later, Dottie expediently covered the ‘Last Time I Saw Him‘, banjo picking’ and all, for the country music market, reaching # 8 in 1974 -
Dottie raised herself up from dire poverty, physical violence and horrific sexual abuse by her father, to songwriting and then performing stardom. By 1974, at age 42, she was now an well known name in country music and a staple of the Grand Ole Opry. She was known for her Nashville Sound music and she and her husband, Bill, appeared to be very much a part of the conservative Nashville country music establishment.
However, Dottie West soon charted a new and very different course in her life, her image and her music as her career peaked even as she approached 50 years of age - as will be seen tomorrow.
Born Dorothy Marsh in 1932, in small-town McMinnville, Tennessee, 110 km SE of Nashville, the eldest of 10 children. As the oldest sibling in a very large, depression-era poverty-stricken family, Dottie, as the family always called her, had to put up with hurt and pain that no one should ever have to deal with. Dottie and her siblings were treated like dirt - and Dottie had it even worse - for years. They lived in an old shack in the woods with no running water, no electricity, and lived on blackberries for meals. Her brother Kelton later said - “When you got hungry, you just drank water. You would go to bed, and the next morning if you woke up and the hunger came back, you just drank more water...”.
Hollis Marsh, Dottie's father, was a violent alcoholic thug who beat and abused the family. By the time Dottie was only a year old, he was whipping and hitting her regularly. As the years went by, and more children were born, Dottie naturally became the "second mother" of the family, and she would have to help feed, clothe and raise the other kids. She also had to pick cotton all day in the fields near her home with her brothers, until their fingers bled (I’ve described several times previously how painful cotton picking was on children - I found it painful as an adult just trying it - with many like Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins and Jerry Lee Lewis left with permanent hand scarring).
Dottie saved old rags and newspapers lying around the house and stuck them in the cracks of her bedroom wall so the snow wouldn’t blow in during the winter. The poverty continued for years. Hollis repeatedly hollered, kicked and cursed at the kids, threw dishes around and even ordered Dottie and her mother outside at gunpoint after an all night drinking binge. He wouldn’t work and what little money the family did earn from the children picking cotton or cane cutting, he spent on sugar for his illegal moonshine. The family used old tin covers off lard cans for plates, and drank out of old tin cans with the sharp edges peeled back - Hollis was more interested in a whiskey jug than providing for his family! But it wasn't until Dottie was a teenager that the darkness of poverty and violence turned to horror.
When Dottie turned 12, Hollis began secretly molesting her, often calling her upstairs when he was repairing watches, to help look for screws that he claimed he "lost". But when she went upstairs to help, he r*ped her regularly. No matter how painful the experience was for her, Hollis ordered not to make a sound. To avoid any suspicion from his wife, Hollis sometimes called some of Dottie's brothers to help look for the screws, but they could never find them because, of course, there weren't any screws to begin with. So Hollis kicked and cursed the boys and told them to leave him and Dottie alone. Some time later, Dottie was awakened by stomach cramps. She began to suspect that she was pregnant by her own father. She was! She miscarried in the middle of the night, and barely had enough strength to make it back to her room.
The next morning, Hollis shouted at Dottie to get up. Feeling tired from the episode the night before, she collapsed on the porch. The other kids yelled at Hollis to do something, so he poured a bucket of water on her, and said - "You damn little tramp, if that's how you're going to act, get back in bed". Hollis then beat Dorothy so severely, she required hospital treatment. Unfortunately, the doctors suspected nothing out of the ordinary apart from the beating. The months and years went by and Hollis grew more unstable and violent. The horror for Dottie continued, until one day, while at school, she broke down in a flood of tears. She revealed to her principal what she had been subjected to at home for years.
Dottie's principal immediately called the sheriff and Dottie was placed in his care. Later that day, the sheriff returned to Dottie's home and explained to a disbelieving wife the charges laid against Hollis - rape, incest and violating the age of consent law. Hollis had already been arrested and after several witnesses took the stand, including Dottie herself, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison (no soft-sentencing back then), where he eventually died. The family's conditions were now changing for the better. Dottie's mother, a good cook, helped by Dottie who also cooked and waitressed, opened a restaurant and afterwards, with it’s success, a second restaurant. For the first time in years, things were looking up for the family. They moved into a half decent apartment and Dottie received her first real new clothing at 17 years of age!
Even as she suffered regular beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, Dottie’s one escape from a horrible existence was country music, which she loved from an early age - her sole source of entertainment came on Saturday night when they gathered around the radio, as so many others of the time, to tune in to the Grand Ole Opry, so even as a young girl, Dottie always dreamed of playing at the Opry. She even walked for miles and miles selling ointment for her school, thus winning the top prize, which was her very first guitar. Her extreme childhood circumstances could not derail her dreams. While managing to help her mother, cooking and waitressing in the new family-owned restaurant, she began formal music lessons, financing it by a series of part-time jobs which also paid for her college education after graduating from high school, entering Tennessee Technological University with the goal of majoring in music.
At the university West studied many genres of music, but country remained her favourite. She met another country fan there among her fellow students, Bill West, who majored in engineering but played steel guitar as a hobby. The two began performing together at campus functions and married while still completing their mutual degrees. After both graduated, they couple moved to Cleveland, where Bill West landed a job with an electronics firm. The Wests, however, still pursued their interest in playing country music and made appearances at local clubs. They were so successful in the region that they were invited to appear on the Cleveland TV program Landmark Jamboree as one half of a country-pop vocal duo called the Kay-Dots alongside partner Kathy Dee, and they soon became regulars on the show.
At the same time, Dottie made numerous trips to Nashville in the hope of landing a recording deal - and got numerous knock-backs. But 1959, at age 27, she and Bill auditioned for the Starday label, and were immediately offered a contract. The resulting singles proved unsuccessful, but nonetheless they moved to Nashville in 1961. There, she met and became very close friends with Patsy Cline, but just as a Cline became Dottie’s mentor to boost her career, the friendship was cut short when Cline was tragically killed in the 1963 plane crash (# 388-389). Dottie and her husband also fell in with a group of famous or soon-to-be-famous aspiring singer-songwriters like Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, the infamous Faron Young gang often hanging out in Tootsies honky tonk. At get-togethers with these friends, West began writing songs. One of her songs, ’Is This Me?‘ caught the notice of Jim Reeves, who not only recorded it but brought Dottie to the attention of RCA’s master producer Chet Atkins (# 354), who signed her to sing duets with Reeves and to record solo albums. West cut ’Love Is No Excuse‘ with Reeves but this budding vocal partnership abruptly came to an end when Reeves was killed in a plane crash in 1964 (# 385).
Also in 1964, both Dottie and her husband were hired as songwriters by Tree Publishing Company. Together they penned ’Here Comes My Baby‘. It was released at a time when West was still mostly unknown outside Music City. Much to West’s surprise, the song, produced by Chet Atkins, reached 10 in 1964, making it her first national hit, at age 32. Even more fascinating was that the song, an exemplary example of the 1960‘s Chet Atkins inspired Nashville Sound, won her a Grammy for Best Female Vocal Performance, making West the first female in country music to ever win a Grammy -
‘Here Comes My Baby‘ endured and has since been covered by hundreds of artists, most notably Perry Como and Dean Martin, growing beyond its country music roots, finding its way as a standard on the Great American Songbook. The success of the song also lead to Dottie fulfilling a childhood dream, being invited to join the Grand Ole Opry. After her induction, she became a regular performer at the Opry for the rest of her life.
Dottie co-wrote ‘Would You Hold Against Me‘ with her first husband, Bill West, and was released in 1966 off her highest-selling solo album of all time, “Surfer Time”. The Chet Atkins produced Nashville Sound song became her most successful 1960’s hit, peaking at # 5. The success of this song made Dottie West sufficiently well known to sether up for sustained, albeit not quite chart-topping, on-going success. The song itself has an interesting premise – a woman has left her husband for another man she’s now about to marry - but is wondering if her decision was right and wants to check out her ex for one last time - or one last chance? If someone I was about to marry asked me thus, I would absolutely hold it against her! -
After teaming up yet again with master producer Chet Atkins, Dottie’s ‘Paper Mansions‘ became yet another Top 10 hit in 1968, reaching # 8 - her last 1960’s solo Top 10 hit. Written by Ted Harris, the song is about a wealthy couple living in an extravagant mansion built with costly materials that creates a luxurious appearance. However, despite the grand facade, the couple’s marriage is falling apart and they are miserable, with the man’s unfaithful behaviour driving the woman to tears and regret. She’s afraid he’ll leave her once again with nothing but pretty words that glow. The song is rooted in the social and cultural context of its time. During the 1960s, the U.S. experienced a rapid economic growth that resulted in a growing middle class and an increase in consumerism. Many people wanted to showcase their wealth, and luxurious mansions became a symbol of status and success. However, this idea of materialistic success came with a cost. Many people sacrificed their relationships, happiness, and health to achieve it, leading to a growing sense of emptiness and disillusionment - making for a perfect country music theme -
Decades after its initial success, ‘Paper Mansions‘, found a new audience and popularity in 1996, when RCA released it on a compilation all her hits titled “The Essential Dottie West”, after years of the song being difficult to find on any Dottie West album. Lynn Anderson released a cover of it on her “Promises, Promises” album.
Dottie continued to have regular, though never chart-topping, success as a solo artist during the late 1960’s with such songs as ’What's Come Over My Baby‘ and ’I'm a Country Girl‘. The last hit garnered her an offer to write an advert based on it for Coca-Cola in 1970. The company liked the result so much, it signed her to a lifetime contract as a jingle writer. All up, Dottie composed 13 Coca-Cola jingles. In 1973 West provided Coca-Cola with an even more successful ad featuring the song ’Country Sunshine’. The immense popularity of the advert prompted West to release the song as a single, and it became one of her biggest hits, her most successful to date, peaking at # 2 -
The ad itself also netted West a prestigious Clio Award for commercial of the year. She was the first country artist ever to win that particular honour, to add to her breakthrough Grammy honour.
‘Last Time I Saw Him‘ was written by pop composer Michael Masser and lyricist Pam Sawyer and was originally released by Diana Ross in 1973, peaking at # 14 on the pop chart. However, despite the Motown production, the light-hearted ditty had a definite country flavour, with the accompaniment including Dixieland-band jazz, a Nashville Sound like string section and even some banjo-pickin'. It was thus inevitable it would get a full country makeover, and so it was just months later, Dottie expediently covered the ‘Last Time I Saw Him‘, banjo picking’ and all, for the country music market, reaching # 8 in 1974 -
Dottie raised herself up from dire poverty, physical violence and horrific sexual abuse by her father, to songwriting and then performing stardom. By 1974, at age 42, she was now an well known name in country music and a staple of the Grand Ole Opry. She was known for her Nashville Sound music and she and her husband, Bill, appeared to be very much a part of the conservative Nashville country music establishment.
However, Dottie West soon charted a new and very different course in her life, her image and her music as her career peaked even as she approached 50 years of age - as will be seen tomorrow.
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In the mid 1970's, Dottie West's career took on a whole new dimension. In 1974, her marriage of 20 years to Bill West ended in divorce, but instead of letting it destroy her, she saw it as a new beginning. She married the drummer in her band, Byron Metcalf, who was 12 years her junior. West said at the time - "Older men have been chasing around young girls for years, so it should be OK for women to be involved with younger guys”. Suddenly, her image underwent a huge metamorphosis. The woman who once performed dressed in conservative gingham dresses and refused to record Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night‘ because it was “… too sex oriented“ ditched her conservative ruffled gingham dresses for glitz and glamour, sporting low-cut, shiny, skin-tight outfits, totally changing her formerly prim and proper image into a sex-symbol as she approached her mid-forties. began appearing in skin-tight stage attire. As the sexual revolution peaked, so did Dottie West’s career. Her material became far more provocative and, much to the chagrin of country purists, more commercially successful as well.
In 1976, Dottie was signed to the United Artist/Liberty label, and began a heavy road schedule of up to 300 concerts a year. Mostly known up until 1978 to traditional Nashville Sound audiences, she had already began to incorporate contemporary pop influences into her style when, by chance, she struck up a lucrative association with Kenny Rogers. In 1978 during a recording session, Kenny, wandered into the studio by accident. He had the wrong time booked for his session by his producer - who was also Dottie's producer. Kenny gave Dottie some singing tips and casually sang along with her on ’Every Time Two Fools Collide’. The recording engineers were so impressed with what they heard, and the results were so good, his contribution to her song helping propel it to the top of the charts, Kenny and Dottie went on to record a complete duet album of the same title. A new (albeit accidental) act was born thus.
Their duet work yielded a string of smash hits, including ’Every Time Two Fools Collide’, the most iconic of the duo’s collaborations and, 18 years after her first recording, Dottie’s first # 1 hit. It came at the peak of Rogers’ success and helped to revitalise West’s career after she had gone 4 years outside the Top 10, giving it a second wind and that would continue into the 1980’s -
These were high times with Kenny and Dottie. They recorded another album the following year, and continued a non-stop touring schedule. They went on to win the CMA "Vocal Duo of the Year" in both 1978 & 1979, challenging Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn as Country Music's biggest duo. They proved so popular, they were booked in some of the biggest venues in the U.S and toured Europe, packing in the fans too, often playing to crowds in superdomes and fairgrounds with attendance as high as 100,000. Dottie performed sparkling like a cut diamond in Bob Mackie clothes that cost her up to $100,000 an outfit.
Their second duet album, "Classics", was their biggest seller with over 2 million, introducing Dottie to a much wider crossover pop audience. After nearly 20 years and dozens of albums, she was finally beginning to achieve a superstar status already attained by country "sisters" like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, who had been in the business the same amount of time. Released as a single from the “Classics” album, ‘All I Need Is You’, written by Jimmy Holiday and Eddie Reeves, was originally initially recorded by Ray Charles for his 1971 “Volcanic Action of My Soul” album, but the most successful version was by Sonny & Cher in 1971, reaching # 7 on the pop chart. Two country versions made the charts - Ray Sanders had a # 18 hit in 1971, but Dottie and Kenny took it all the way to # 1 in 1979.
In 1980, Dottie, at age 48 and 21 years after her first recording, finally earned her first solo chart-topper, ‘ A Lesson in Leavin', which finds her lamenting about the man who left her and how she hopes somebody’s going to do to him what he has done to her. The song confirmed how much Dottie’s career had been revitalised by her duets with Rogers after a series of unsuccessful solo singles since 1974. Though not to my taste, this is a perfect example of a country-pop hit of its time. The instrumentation is almost delightfully vintage and catchy -
In 1999, Jo Dee Messina released her own cover of this song, which peaked at # 2
Dottie and Kenny Rogers were one of the most successful duos, but, of course, still had their own separate solo careers. While the two occasionally performed together, ‘What Are We Doin’ in Love‘ was their final recorded duet. Dottie described this duet as her favorite of the many that she recorded with Rogers from 1978 to 1981. This became their second # 1 hit and Dottie’s 4th, including her 2 solo # 1’s -
While Kenny Rogers subsequent many stage performances with Dolly Parton, along with their mega-hit, ‘Islands In The Stream’, are now better remembered, it was Kenny’s duets with Dottie, not Dolly, that actually produced the most big Top 5 hits - 3 went all the way # 1, another reached # 2 and one # 3, whereas Kenny and Dolly only ever had one Top 20 hit - albeit it was a massive one. Dottie and Kenny also played at big stadium venue, attracting massive crowds.
In 1981, Dottie was at her peak. She had also quickly gained a reputation around Nashville for her generosity and big spending, purchasing expensive, custom-made cadillacs and wore elaborate Bob Mackie stage wardrobes, costing nearly $100,000 each. Her income was around the $2 million dollar mark, and she seemed to be having the best times of her life, having become was one of Country Music's leading ladies and one of the very few artists that could really pull in a big crowd. Dottie was also known for helping newcomers break into the business, helping launch the careers of other Country Music stars such as Larry Gatlin and Steve Wariner.
Before Kacey Musgraves released her own song titled ‘High Time‘ in 2015, Dottie’s iconic song about coming back from a breakup was an anthem for jilted women. But the title track of her 1981 “It’s High Time” album would eventually be her final Top 20 hit, peaking at # 16 -
In 1982, at age 50, Dottie, who once refused to record Kristofferson's ’Help Me Make It Through the Night‘ because she considered it too sexual, was now the subject of a 12-page pictorial and interview in Oui, a popular men's magazine which featured pics of naked women … and articles of course. At age 50, Dottie maxed out her sex symbol status with revealing, albeit not naked or totally topless, pics - "When I was takin' those pictures I thought, "McMinnville's gonna get a hold of this. What are they going to think? … They (the magazine) didn't ask me to appear nude, but they asked me to reveal more than I wanted to”.
In the early 1980’s, at the height of her popularity, Dottie appeared everywhere - in TV shows such as The Dukes of Hazzard, The Love Boat, Austin City Limits, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and the movie Aurora Encounter. She had her own float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, undertook a world concert tour, including the Middle East and Europe, sold out the prestigious Carnegie Hall in NYC, worked with renowned orchestras, hosted her own Christmas special and even performed at the White House. She was a popular touring act and headliner at fairs and festivals all across the nation, and was a particular favourite in Vegas and Lake Tahoe.
But by now, Dottie was seemingly living out her songs! Her second marriage to Byron Metcalf come to a sudden end in Las Vegas when she caught him in bed with another woman, took off her ring in front of him, yelling "You broke this", before throwing it out the window! She promptly made the break public after her next Vegas performance. It didn’t take long for Dottie to marry her third husband, Allen Winters. It was a scandal all over Nashville, as he was over 20 years younger than her.
Now it was time for the once hopelessly impoverished, beaten and domestically abused small town girl, to move into her mansion on the hill. And what a mega-mansion it was - the most expensive palace in Nashville! Located on 40 acres in the poshest part of Nashville, it contained more than 30 rooms, a lift (only the most expensive houses had them back then), a bowling alley, a special nursery of rare and exotic plants, the finest furniture and appliances and utility bills that ran in the thousands of dollars a month! It was a lifestyle many said had to be costing her too much ... But Dottie seemed determined to somehow, someway, buy out and bury part of her painful past. She had an extensive doll collection, many tiffany lamps and fine china and even installed a mirror over her bed, which she insisted was used for her exercising!
The wheel of fortune had brought Dottie up from the lowest of the low to the highest … but it kept turning. Friends and family were by now concerned she was living too fast. She and her new toy-boy husband were partying like it was no tomorrow, drinking lots and taking pills. Dottie was frequently showing up late for appearances and concerts. Soon enough, West’s popularity took a nosedive as a new wave of neo-traditional country singers led by George Strait took over the airwaves and the charts, re-claiming authentic country music and shoving aside the pop-country sound that had dominated the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (as already outlined in Kenny Rogers history # 936).
As much as Dottie loved performing, her 2 final studio albums, 1983’s "New Horizons" and 1984’s "Just Dottie" were unsuccessful and her 8 year run on the singles Top 40 had fizzled out, with her last chart hit, ’We Know Better Now’, reaching only #53 in 1985. As a result, Dottie's recording deals and concert bookings became sparse as the 1980's progressed. She was still living the night life at full speed, but some were wondering how she afforded it all. At least her popularity as a regular featured performer on the Grand Ole Opry endured and she also had the pleasure of watching her daughter Shelly West achieve country stardom in 1983 with her # 1 hit ’Jose Cuervo’. By 1985, taking a break from recording, Dottie began touring with a theatre company, playing the role of Madam in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The beginning of the 1990s proved to be cruel, as disaster descended on the now middle-aged star. Dottie was 57 years old. She had been so busy keeping up with her career that she had neglected to keep track of her finances, which were in a mess as the whole high-life edifice she surrounded herself with crumbled. She became caught up in a tragic spiral of disasters. Hooked on drugs and booze, she reached an all-time low in 1990. The story broke all over the world - Dottie West, the woman who made millions of dollars in her near 33 singing career - but had spent even more - was broke. Her tears and humiliation were on national TV for all to see. Dottie was openly crying in front of the Entertainment Tonight cameras. She owed $2 million dollars to various agencies, plus interest. The bank foreclosed on her mansion. The IRS (tax office) was owed $1.3 million, A management firm was suing her for $130,000, her former manager was suing her for $110,000, and if that weren't enough, her third marriage to her toyboy she could no longer maintain ended in divorce and now he was suing her for $7,500.
The IRS moved quickly to seize all of Dottie's assets. Her Corvette, her Bob Mackie stage wardrobe collection, her doll collection, all the rights to her songs she had written over the years - some 400 of them, her tiffany lamps, all her expensive china, her many trophies and all her music awards - even personal items such as Crayola drawings done by her kids years ago, were all gone in the slam of an auctioneer's gavel. For a time she lived in a carpark on her tour bus - but even that had to be sold. Dottie was left with literally nothing but the clothes on her back, living in an abandoned car in a carpark until she got a dingy apartment for herself. Humiliated and poor again, Dottie had one thing that earned her some money and kept her in the public eye - her Grand Ole Opry membership.
We saw yesterday that Dottie had aspired to perform at the Opry since listening to it on the radio as a child - her one escape from a horrible childhood. She fulfilled this ambition by being inducted into the Opry in 1965 and performed there fairly regularly ever since. It was now the one thing left for her. On September 1 1991 (32 years ago to the day as I type this), running late for her appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, already in her stage outfit, her red hair coiffed, Dottie stood beside her stalled Chrysler as showtime at the Opry got closer and closer. When her 81 year old neighbour pulled over and offered to drive her to the Opry House, she climbed into his car, buckled her seatbelt and urged him to go at top speed. She never made it on stage that night.
Barreling at high speeds to get Dottie to her engagement on time, the neighbour drove off the Opry exit ramp at high speed and crashed. Although initially she didn’t seem severely hurt, the accident caused her to have internal injuries such as a ruptured spleen and a lacerated liver And despite several operation, she died 4 days later from her injuries. She was buried in her childhood town of McMinnville, alongside her mother. In 1995 a TV movie, Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story, premiered on CBS-TV.
After years of lobbying by many from within the industry to see the Dottie inducted into the Country Music HoF – such as longtime duet partner Kenny Rogers and Larry Gatlin (whom West had befriended and supported in his career), as well as Steve Wariner, who once played bass in her band, she was finally inducted I to the HoF in 2018. In a 2014 op-ed for Billboard, Wariner wrote West was an artist ahead of her time. - “… You can’t imagine the doors Dottie West knocked down so scores of young female singer/songwriters could walk through behind her. She did it in a ‘good ole boy’ era that wasn’t readily going to let the girls in, but Dottie would have none of it … She was a brilliant songwriter, gifted singer and entertainer with a sharp, keen eye for young, upcoming talent. Among other things, she is credited as discovering several young artists who went on to be stars in their own right”.
And with that, I’ve been called away again - this time to Vanuatu of all places. But I should be back within 2 weeks (though I’ll miss the first week of the finals), with another history piece to come - and it’s another female star of the 1970’s and I to the 1980’s.
In 1976, Dottie was signed to the United Artist/Liberty label, and began a heavy road schedule of up to 300 concerts a year. Mostly known up until 1978 to traditional Nashville Sound audiences, she had already began to incorporate contemporary pop influences into her style when, by chance, she struck up a lucrative association with Kenny Rogers. In 1978 during a recording session, Kenny, wandered into the studio by accident. He had the wrong time booked for his session by his producer - who was also Dottie's producer. Kenny gave Dottie some singing tips and casually sang along with her on ’Every Time Two Fools Collide’. The recording engineers were so impressed with what they heard, and the results were so good, his contribution to her song helping propel it to the top of the charts, Kenny and Dottie went on to record a complete duet album of the same title. A new (albeit accidental) act was born thus.
Their duet work yielded a string of smash hits, including ’Every Time Two Fools Collide’, the most iconic of the duo’s collaborations and, 18 years after her first recording, Dottie’s first # 1 hit. It came at the peak of Rogers’ success and helped to revitalise West’s career after she had gone 4 years outside the Top 10, giving it a second wind and that would continue into the 1980’s -
These were high times with Kenny and Dottie. They recorded another album the following year, and continued a non-stop touring schedule. They went on to win the CMA "Vocal Duo of the Year" in both 1978 & 1979, challenging Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn as Country Music's biggest duo. They proved so popular, they were booked in some of the biggest venues in the U.S and toured Europe, packing in the fans too, often playing to crowds in superdomes and fairgrounds with attendance as high as 100,000. Dottie performed sparkling like a cut diamond in Bob Mackie clothes that cost her up to $100,000 an outfit.
Their second duet album, "Classics", was their biggest seller with over 2 million, introducing Dottie to a much wider crossover pop audience. After nearly 20 years and dozens of albums, she was finally beginning to achieve a superstar status already attained by country "sisters" like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, who had been in the business the same amount of time. Released as a single from the “Classics” album, ‘All I Need Is You’, written by Jimmy Holiday and Eddie Reeves, was originally initially recorded by Ray Charles for his 1971 “Volcanic Action of My Soul” album, but the most successful version was by Sonny & Cher in 1971, reaching # 7 on the pop chart. Two country versions made the charts - Ray Sanders had a # 18 hit in 1971, but Dottie and Kenny took it all the way to # 1 in 1979.
In 1980, Dottie, at age 48 and 21 years after her first recording, finally earned her first solo chart-topper, ‘ A Lesson in Leavin', which finds her lamenting about the man who left her and how she hopes somebody’s going to do to him what he has done to her. The song confirmed how much Dottie’s career had been revitalised by her duets with Rogers after a series of unsuccessful solo singles since 1974. Though not to my taste, this is a perfect example of a country-pop hit of its time. The instrumentation is almost delightfully vintage and catchy -
In 1999, Jo Dee Messina released her own cover of this song, which peaked at # 2
Dottie and Kenny Rogers were one of the most successful duos, but, of course, still had their own separate solo careers. While the two occasionally performed together, ‘What Are We Doin’ in Love‘ was their final recorded duet. Dottie described this duet as her favorite of the many that she recorded with Rogers from 1978 to 1981. This became their second # 1 hit and Dottie’s 4th, including her 2 solo # 1’s -
While Kenny Rogers subsequent many stage performances with Dolly Parton, along with their mega-hit, ‘Islands In The Stream’, are now better remembered, it was Kenny’s duets with Dottie, not Dolly, that actually produced the most big Top 5 hits - 3 went all the way # 1, another reached # 2 and one # 3, whereas Kenny and Dolly only ever had one Top 20 hit - albeit it was a massive one. Dottie and Kenny also played at big stadium venue, attracting massive crowds.
In 1981, Dottie was at her peak. She had also quickly gained a reputation around Nashville for her generosity and big spending, purchasing expensive, custom-made cadillacs and wore elaborate Bob Mackie stage wardrobes, costing nearly $100,000 each. Her income was around the $2 million dollar mark, and she seemed to be having the best times of her life, having become was one of Country Music's leading ladies and one of the very few artists that could really pull in a big crowd. Dottie was also known for helping newcomers break into the business, helping launch the careers of other Country Music stars such as Larry Gatlin and Steve Wariner.
Before Kacey Musgraves released her own song titled ‘High Time‘ in 2015, Dottie’s iconic song about coming back from a breakup was an anthem for jilted women. But the title track of her 1981 “It’s High Time” album would eventually be her final Top 20 hit, peaking at # 16 -
In 1982, at age 50, Dottie, who once refused to record Kristofferson's ’Help Me Make It Through the Night‘ because she considered it too sexual, was now the subject of a 12-page pictorial and interview in Oui, a popular men's magazine which featured pics of naked women … and articles of course. At age 50, Dottie maxed out her sex symbol status with revealing, albeit not naked or totally topless, pics - "When I was takin' those pictures I thought, "McMinnville's gonna get a hold of this. What are they going to think? … They (the magazine) didn't ask me to appear nude, but they asked me to reveal more than I wanted to”.
In the early 1980’s, at the height of her popularity, Dottie appeared everywhere - in TV shows such as The Dukes of Hazzard, The Love Boat, Austin City Limits, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and the movie Aurora Encounter. She had her own float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, undertook a world concert tour, including the Middle East and Europe, sold out the prestigious Carnegie Hall in NYC, worked with renowned orchestras, hosted her own Christmas special and even performed at the White House. She was a popular touring act and headliner at fairs and festivals all across the nation, and was a particular favourite in Vegas and Lake Tahoe.
But by now, Dottie was seemingly living out her songs! Her second marriage to Byron Metcalf come to a sudden end in Las Vegas when she caught him in bed with another woman, took off her ring in front of him, yelling "You broke this", before throwing it out the window! She promptly made the break public after her next Vegas performance. It didn’t take long for Dottie to marry her third husband, Allen Winters. It was a scandal all over Nashville, as he was over 20 years younger than her.
Now it was time for the once hopelessly impoverished, beaten and domestically abused small town girl, to move into her mansion on the hill. And what a mega-mansion it was - the most expensive palace in Nashville! Located on 40 acres in the poshest part of Nashville, it contained more than 30 rooms, a lift (only the most expensive houses had them back then), a bowling alley, a special nursery of rare and exotic plants, the finest furniture and appliances and utility bills that ran in the thousands of dollars a month! It was a lifestyle many said had to be costing her too much ... But Dottie seemed determined to somehow, someway, buy out and bury part of her painful past. She had an extensive doll collection, many tiffany lamps and fine china and even installed a mirror over her bed, which she insisted was used for her exercising!
The wheel of fortune had brought Dottie up from the lowest of the low to the highest … but it kept turning. Friends and family were by now concerned she was living too fast. She and her new toy-boy husband were partying like it was no tomorrow, drinking lots and taking pills. Dottie was frequently showing up late for appearances and concerts. Soon enough, West’s popularity took a nosedive as a new wave of neo-traditional country singers led by George Strait took over the airwaves and the charts, re-claiming authentic country music and shoving aside the pop-country sound that had dominated the late 1970’s and early 1980’s (as already outlined in Kenny Rogers history # 936).
As much as Dottie loved performing, her 2 final studio albums, 1983’s "New Horizons" and 1984’s "Just Dottie" were unsuccessful and her 8 year run on the singles Top 40 had fizzled out, with her last chart hit, ’We Know Better Now’, reaching only #53 in 1985. As a result, Dottie's recording deals and concert bookings became sparse as the 1980's progressed. She was still living the night life at full speed, but some were wondering how she afforded it all. At least her popularity as a regular featured performer on the Grand Ole Opry endured and she also had the pleasure of watching her daughter Shelly West achieve country stardom in 1983 with her # 1 hit ’Jose Cuervo’. By 1985, taking a break from recording, Dottie began touring with a theatre company, playing the role of Madam in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The beginning of the 1990s proved to be cruel, as disaster descended on the now middle-aged star. Dottie was 57 years old. She had been so busy keeping up with her career that she had neglected to keep track of her finances, which were in a mess as the whole high-life edifice she surrounded herself with crumbled. She became caught up in a tragic spiral of disasters. Hooked on drugs and booze, she reached an all-time low in 1990. The story broke all over the world - Dottie West, the woman who made millions of dollars in her near 33 singing career - but had spent even more - was broke. Her tears and humiliation were on national TV for all to see. Dottie was openly crying in front of the Entertainment Tonight cameras. She owed $2 million dollars to various agencies, plus interest. The bank foreclosed on her mansion. The IRS (tax office) was owed $1.3 million, A management firm was suing her for $130,000, her former manager was suing her for $110,000, and if that weren't enough, her third marriage to her toyboy she could no longer maintain ended in divorce and now he was suing her for $7,500.
The IRS moved quickly to seize all of Dottie's assets. Her Corvette, her Bob Mackie stage wardrobe collection, her doll collection, all the rights to her songs she had written over the years - some 400 of them, her tiffany lamps, all her expensive china, her many trophies and all her music awards - even personal items such as Crayola drawings done by her kids years ago, were all gone in the slam of an auctioneer's gavel. For a time she lived in a carpark on her tour bus - but even that had to be sold. Dottie was left with literally nothing but the clothes on her back, living in an abandoned car in a carpark until she got a dingy apartment for herself. Humiliated and poor again, Dottie had one thing that earned her some money and kept her in the public eye - her Grand Ole Opry membership.
We saw yesterday that Dottie had aspired to perform at the Opry since listening to it on the radio as a child - her one escape from a horrible childhood. She fulfilled this ambition by being inducted into the Opry in 1965 and performed there fairly regularly ever since. It was now the one thing left for her. On September 1 1991 (32 years ago to the day as I type this), running late for her appearance on the Grand Ole Opry, already in her stage outfit, her red hair coiffed, Dottie stood beside her stalled Chrysler as showtime at the Opry got closer and closer. When her 81 year old neighbour pulled over and offered to drive her to the Opry House, she climbed into his car, buckled her seatbelt and urged him to go at top speed. She never made it on stage that night.
Barreling at high speeds to get Dottie to her engagement on time, the neighbour drove off the Opry exit ramp at high speed and crashed. Although initially she didn’t seem severely hurt, the accident caused her to have internal injuries such as a ruptured spleen and a lacerated liver And despite several operation, she died 4 days later from her injuries. She was buried in her childhood town of McMinnville, alongside her mother. In 1995 a TV movie, Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story, premiered on CBS-TV.
After years of lobbying by many from within the industry to see the Dottie inducted into the Country Music HoF – such as longtime duet partner Kenny Rogers and Larry Gatlin (whom West had befriended and supported in his career), as well as Steve Wariner, who once played bass in her band, she was finally inducted I to the HoF in 2018. In a 2014 op-ed for Billboard, Wariner wrote West was an artist ahead of her time. - “… You can’t imagine the doors Dottie West knocked down so scores of young female singer/songwriters could walk through behind her. She did it in a ‘good ole boy’ era that wasn’t readily going to let the girls in, but Dottie would have none of it … She was a brilliant songwriter, gifted singer and entertainer with a sharp, keen eye for young, upcoming talent. Among other things, she is credited as discovering several young artists who went on to be stars in their own right”.
And with that, I’ve been called away again - this time to Vanuatu of all places. But I should be back within 2 weeks (though I’ll miss the first week of the finals), with another history piece to come - and it’s another female star of the 1970’s and I to the 1980’s.
- Apr 11, 2015
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Vale Jimmy Buffet. Thanks for the great enjoyment I got from your songs over many, many years. Say hello to Andy Devine.
blackshadow
Hall of Famer
Vale Jimmy Buffet. Thanks for the great enjoyment I got from your songs over many, many years. Say hello to Andy Devine.
A sad day indeed.
Hard to believe - it was less than 2 months ago he was featured here. One who lived life to the full - created a whole new music sub-genre, was an expert sailor and pilot, an adventurer and a self-made billionaire businessman.
RIP
www.jimmybuffett.com
RIP
Official Website Of Legendary Singer & Songwriter Jimmy Buffett
The Official Website Of Jimmy Buffett Featuring Tour Dates, Music, Books, Media, Albums, And Much More!
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RIP Jimmy.
I’ve taken longer than expected to return to the country music history. After returning from Vanuatu some 10 days or so back, I was unexpectedly sent up to central Queensland and now I won’t be back for the Prelim final. However, I should be back next week for the Grand Final - and more country music history.
But one thing I can do now is to too mark the 100th Birthday of the immortal Hank Williams (posts # 205-214) on Sunday 12 Sept. Still the greatest ever. I’ll limit my choices to a few of his songs of loneliness, starting with the best -
Hank will never be for forgotten by lovers of true, authentic, country music -
But one thing I can do now is to too mark the 100th Birthday of the immortal Hank Williams (posts # 205-214) on Sunday 12 Sept. Still the greatest ever. I’ll limit my choices to a few of his songs of loneliness, starting with the best -
Hank will never be for forgotten by lovers of true, authentic, country music -
I’m finally back in town (I insisted to be back for the GF) and so will squeeze in the latest history instalment. I think I’ve now done about 130 artists (about 110 more than I originally envisage), and virtually all have been Southerners along with some Mid-Westerners. The few others John Prine, had parents from the South and he identified as a Southerner even while growing up in Chicago. But 2 notable exceptions have been Canadians Hank Snow (# 202-204) and Gordon Lightfoot (# 696-702). Today’s artist is the second here to hail from the unlikely country music nursery of Nova Scotia. But unlike the first, Hank Snow, who grew up in dire poverty in the depression and was mercilessly beaten by his violent, sadistic father, causing permanent scarring, leading him to run away at age 12, fending for himself by working on an ocean fishing trawler, before eventually becoming a Nashville giant (and Elvis Presleys first manager), our new artist grew up in comfortably well-off family, had a happy childhood and supportive parents who encouraged her musical development. This happy upbringing seemingly affected her outlook, so that even her sad songs seem to have an underlying optimistic sweetness instead of despair.
Born Morna Anne Murray in 1945 in the coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada, the daughter of town doctor James Carson Murray and nurse Marion Margaret Burke and was raised alongside her 5 brothers. Murray's smalltown Canadian environment drove her to entertain herself with music, saying - "After a long winter, people are ready to slash their wrists waiting for spring.... The people along the entire coast amused themselves singing”.
Of course, like most young people of her generation, Anne Murray also listened to the radio - the new sound of rock‘n’roll had her singing along constantly with all her pop/rock favourites – Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield and the Beatles. However, Anne was also inspired by a wide variety of musical styles, including the classics, country, gospel, folk, and pop and jazz artists such as Patti Page, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, folk, blues and spirituals singer, Odetta and folk group Peter, Paul and Mary - she loved them all.
Murray’s parents recognised her talent during family sing-alongs and paid for 8 years of piano lessons from age 11 and at age 15, she also began taking classical voice training, traveling 160 kms by bus every Saturday for 3 years to her singing teacher. She formed a girl trio, The Freshettes and began singing solos at age 15, perform “Ave Maria” at her high school graduation ceremony. But after graduating, Murray didn’t have enough faith in her vocal abilities to depend upon them for her livelihood, so she entered college and obtained a degree in Physical Education in 1966, intending on a teaching career.
At university, Murray sang in a revue and on a student recording. After undergoing a tonsillectomy in 1965, Murray discovered she could open her throat completely and that her voice had dramatically improved. Fellow students who heard her sing convinced Murray to audition for the CBC musical variety TV show, but the producers decided they already had enough altos so she missed out on a solo spot and she rejected the offer of a chorus spot. Two years later in 1967 though, with Murray now a high-school gym teacher, the Singalong Jubilee host, Bill Langstroth, urged her to try out again and was this time successful. Soon after, Murray was offered a role on the TV music show Let’s Go, but she returned to the higher profile Singalong Jubilee just months later. By 1968 she was its most popular soloist, appearing barefoot singing country and folk-flavoured tunes. Canadian fans warmed to her strong voice and wholesome image. and quickly became “Canada's country music sweetheart”.
Brian Ahern, Sing-Along Jubiliee’s musical director, believed Murray could be major star and encouraged her to seek a recording contract with a U.S. label. Capitol eagerly signed the young singer. Her first 2 albums were well received in Canada, with her second album reaching # 13 on the Canadian pop chart in 1969, but got no attention in the U.S. But ’Snowbird‘ a song written by Sing-Along Jubilee regular, Canadian Gene MacLellan, the B-side of what they thought would provide a hit for Murray, her lightly bubbly tune raced up both the U.S. pop and country charts in 1970, peaking at # 8 in the former and # 10 in the latter. It went all the way to # 1 on the U.S. AC chart, becoming the first Canadian female solo singer to achieve a # 1 U.S. hit and to earn Gold certification. This song also topped the Canadian Country charts and #2 on the pop charts -
‘Snowbird’, which was also a hit in the UK, Ireland and a # 3 pop hit in NZ, became, in time, Murray’s signature song and made her an international star. She took this song to heights where other artists such as Gene MacLellan, Bing Crosby, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Presley and Andy Williams covered the track. Ironically, ’Snowbird’ brought Murray controversy as well - "Some people called it a drug song! I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know what cocaine was! A guy wrote it because he was walking alone on a beach in the spring and there was snow around and birds"
Murray’s recognisability increased after she made her US national television debut in late 1970 on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, where she became a frequent guest. The Canadian Broadcasting Commision (CBC) aired the first of many Anne Murray specials. Her reputation as a country singer was further entrenched through appearances on The Johnny Cash Show. Although she became well known in the US, Murray, like Gordon Lightfoot, continued to base her career in Canada. By 1971, she had moved from Nova Scotia to Toronto, but resisted a permanent move to the US even though she performed in there frequently e.g. opening for Glen Campbell’s concerts and appearing in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In 1971, she made her first tour of Western Canada (to sold-out shows) as well as her debut at Massey Hall in Toronto (4 shows over 2 days).
Murray’s 4th studio album, “Straight, Clean and Simple“ (simply titled “Annie Murray” outside Canada, where she didn’t have the same high-profile stardom), was released in 1971. The album contained a mixture of pop and country material by Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Kenny Rogers and Kin Vassy and peaked at # 4 on the RPM album chart in Canada. Though it was originally recorded by Kenny Rogers, Murray’s version of ’A Stranger In My Place’, with it’s distinctive accompaniment of the pedal steel and dobro guitars balancing the lush strings, and a heartbreak theme of losing ones partner to another, making it perfect for a honky tonk weeper, was the most successful single from the album, peaking at # 1 on the Canadian and #27 on the U.S. Country charts respectively in 1971 -
The Southern themed ‘Cotton Jenny‘ was originally written and recorded by fellow Canadian, Gordon Lightfoot (posts # 696-702), who released it on his 1971 album “Summer Side of Life“. It was the 1st single Murray released from her 4th album, “Talk It Over in the Morning”, released in 1972 It became the 5th single by Murray to top the country chart in Canada - and it also topped both the Canadian pop and AC charts to boot. In the U.S. it reached # 11 on the country chart -
Murray began to update her image in an attempt to place her more firmly in the pop genre. In 1973, she found the hit she needed with ‘Danny’s Song’, a song with an interesting history. Kenny Loggins wrote the song in 1971 for his brother, Danny, who had just become a father for the first time. Loggins, broke at the time, couldn’t afford to buy his brother a congratulatory gift, so he wrote him this song instead. Gator Creek first released the song and then it later appeared on the folk-rock duo, Loggins and Messina’s debut album, “Sittin’ In”. Murray released her version of ‘Danny’s Song’ a year later, in 1972, as the first single from her album of the same name. It became her second single, after ‘Cotton Jenny’, to top all 3 Pop, Country and AC charts in Canada and it also became a major cross-over U.S. hit, # 10 on the country chart, even better at #7 on the Pop chart and going all the way to # 1 on the A.C. chart in 1973, consolidating her profile in the U.S. -
Murray was not the first artist to release ‘A Love Song’, which was also co-written by Kenny Loggins with Dona Lyn George. It was first released earlier in 1973 by the Loggins and Messina and featured on their album “Full Sail”. It was the title song and the 3rd single Murray released from her 1973 album “Love Song”. In Canada, the single again topped all 3 Country, Pop and AC charts, Murray’s 3rd single in just 2 years to achieve this. It also reached # 5 on the U.S Country and # 12 on the U.S. Pop charts and again earned the top position on the U.S. AC chart -
Anne Murray’s first 3 albums are now recognised as fine examples of the folk/country hybrid that Canadians spearheaded in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s (e.g. The Band, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen), filled as they were with a newer generation of songwriters - Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen and Gene MacLellan.
So we leave off with Anne Murray in 1973. Her singing ability, honed by 3 years of classic voice training as a teenager, effortlessly able to hit the notes while clearly enunciating each syllable of aline (similar to Jim Reeves but with a greater vocal range), and mastering a laidback, easy listening style that easily crossed over the country, pop and AC genres, had made her easily the most popular female musician in Canada and had also provided much success in the U.S. and beyond. However, her career was still in its early stages, with some fluctuations ahead. Stay tuned for more tomorrow, as her career seemingly comes to a premature end - then reaches its popula, commercial peak
Born Morna Anne Murray in 1945 in the coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada, the daughter of town doctor James Carson Murray and nurse Marion Margaret Burke and was raised alongside her 5 brothers. Murray's smalltown Canadian environment drove her to entertain herself with music, saying - "After a long winter, people are ready to slash their wrists waiting for spring.... The people along the entire coast amused themselves singing”.
Of course, like most young people of her generation, Anne Murray also listened to the radio - the new sound of rock‘n’roll had her singing along constantly with all her pop/rock favourites – Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield and the Beatles. However, Anne was also inspired by a wide variety of musical styles, including the classics, country, gospel, folk, and pop and jazz artists such as Patti Page, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, folk, blues and spirituals singer, Odetta and folk group Peter, Paul and Mary - she loved them all.
Murray’s parents recognised her talent during family sing-alongs and paid for 8 years of piano lessons from age 11 and at age 15, she also began taking classical voice training, traveling 160 kms by bus every Saturday for 3 years to her singing teacher. She formed a girl trio, The Freshettes and began singing solos at age 15, perform “Ave Maria” at her high school graduation ceremony. But after graduating, Murray didn’t have enough faith in her vocal abilities to depend upon them for her livelihood, so she entered college and obtained a degree in Physical Education in 1966, intending on a teaching career.
At university, Murray sang in a revue and on a student recording. After undergoing a tonsillectomy in 1965, Murray discovered she could open her throat completely and that her voice had dramatically improved. Fellow students who heard her sing convinced Murray to audition for the CBC musical variety TV show, but the producers decided they already had enough altos so she missed out on a solo spot and she rejected the offer of a chorus spot. Two years later in 1967 though, with Murray now a high-school gym teacher, the Singalong Jubilee host, Bill Langstroth, urged her to try out again and was this time successful. Soon after, Murray was offered a role on the TV music show Let’s Go, but she returned to the higher profile Singalong Jubilee just months later. By 1968 she was its most popular soloist, appearing barefoot singing country and folk-flavoured tunes. Canadian fans warmed to her strong voice and wholesome image. and quickly became “Canada's country music sweetheart”.
Brian Ahern, Sing-Along Jubiliee’s musical director, believed Murray could be major star and encouraged her to seek a recording contract with a U.S. label. Capitol eagerly signed the young singer. Her first 2 albums were well received in Canada, with her second album reaching # 13 on the Canadian pop chart in 1969, but got no attention in the U.S. But ’Snowbird‘ a song written by Sing-Along Jubilee regular, Canadian Gene MacLellan, the B-side of what they thought would provide a hit for Murray, her lightly bubbly tune raced up both the U.S. pop and country charts in 1970, peaking at # 8 in the former and # 10 in the latter. It went all the way to # 1 on the U.S. AC chart, becoming the first Canadian female solo singer to achieve a # 1 U.S. hit and to earn Gold certification. This song also topped the Canadian Country charts and #2 on the pop charts -
‘Snowbird’, which was also a hit in the UK, Ireland and a # 3 pop hit in NZ, became, in time, Murray’s signature song and made her an international star. She took this song to heights where other artists such as Gene MacLellan, Bing Crosby, Loretta Lynn, Elvis Presley and Andy Williams covered the track. Ironically, ’Snowbird’ brought Murray controversy as well - "Some people called it a drug song! I couldn't believe it. I didn't even know what cocaine was! A guy wrote it because he was walking alone on a beach in the spring and there was snow around and birds"
Murray’s recognisability increased after she made her US national television debut in late 1970 on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, where she became a frequent guest. The Canadian Broadcasting Commision (CBC) aired the first of many Anne Murray specials. Her reputation as a country singer was further entrenched through appearances on The Johnny Cash Show. Although she became well known in the US, Murray, like Gordon Lightfoot, continued to base her career in Canada. By 1971, she had moved from Nova Scotia to Toronto, but resisted a permanent move to the US even though she performed in there frequently e.g. opening for Glen Campbell’s concerts and appearing in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. In 1971, she made her first tour of Western Canada (to sold-out shows) as well as her debut at Massey Hall in Toronto (4 shows over 2 days).
Murray’s 4th studio album, “Straight, Clean and Simple“ (simply titled “Annie Murray” outside Canada, where she didn’t have the same high-profile stardom), was released in 1971. The album contained a mixture of pop and country material by Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Kenny Rogers and Kin Vassy and peaked at # 4 on the RPM album chart in Canada. Though it was originally recorded by Kenny Rogers, Murray’s version of ’A Stranger In My Place’, with it’s distinctive accompaniment of the pedal steel and dobro guitars balancing the lush strings, and a heartbreak theme of losing ones partner to another, making it perfect for a honky tonk weeper, was the most successful single from the album, peaking at # 1 on the Canadian and #27 on the U.S. Country charts respectively in 1971 -
The Southern themed ‘Cotton Jenny‘ was originally written and recorded by fellow Canadian, Gordon Lightfoot (posts # 696-702), who released it on his 1971 album “Summer Side of Life“. It was the 1st single Murray released from her 4th album, “Talk It Over in the Morning”, released in 1972 It became the 5th single by Murray to top the country chart in Canada - and it also topped both the Canadian pop and AC charts to boot. In the U.S. it reached # 11 on the country chart -
Murray began to update her image in an attempt to place her more firmly in the pop genre. In 1973, she found the hit she needed with ‘Danny’s Song’, a song with an interesting history. Kenny Loggins wrote the song in 1971 for his brother, Danny, who had just become a father for the first time. Loggins, broke at the time, couldn’t afford to buy his brother a congratulatory gift, so he wrote him this song instead. Gator Creek first released the song and then it later appeared on the folk-rock duo, Loggins and Messina’s debut album, “Sittin’ In”. Murray released her version of ‘Danny’s Song’ a year later, in 1972, as the first single from her album of the same name. It became her second single, after ‘Cotton Jenny’, to top all 3 Pop, Country and AC charts in Canada and it also became a major cross-over U.S. hit, # 10 on the country chart, even better at #7 on the Pop chart and going all the way to # 1 on the A.C. chart in 1973, consolidating her profile in the U.S. -
Murray was not the first artist to release ‘A Love Song’, which was also co-written by Kenny Loggins with Dona Lyn George. It was first released earlier in 1973 by the Loggins and Messina and featured on their album “Full Sail”. It was the title song and the 3rd single Murray released from her 1973 album “Love Song”. In Canada, the single again topped all 3 Country, Pop and AC charts, Murray’s 3rd single in just 2 years to achieve this. It also reached # 5 on the U.S Country and # 12 on the U.S. Pop charts and again earned the top position on the U.S. AC chart -
Anne Murray’s first 3 albums are now recognised as fine examples of the folk/country hybrid that Canadians spearheaded in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s (e.g. The Band, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen), filled as they were with a newer generation of songwriters - Bruce Cockburn, David Wiffen and Gene MacLellan.
So we leave off with Anne Murray in 1973. Her singing ability, honed by 3 years of classic voice training as a teenager, effortlessly able to hit the notes while clearly enunciating each syllable of aline (similar to Jim Reeves but with a greater vocal range), and mastering a laidback, easy listening style that easily crossed over the country, pop and AC genres, had made her easily the most popular female musician in Canada and had also provided much success in the U.S. and beyond. However, her career was still in its early stages, with some fluctuations ahead. Stay tuned for more tomorrow, as her career seemingly comes to a premature end - then reaches its popula, commercial peak
If I’m a little late today, it’s only because I had to attend the Pies final training session this morning.
Anne Murray possessed of a warm alto with some of the purest tones ever recorded and - an underrated but very real ability for her - an uncanny ear for choosing mature songs - her songs were never meant to appeal to the youth market. Never one for publicity stunts and trying to keep her name in the public limelight, Murray also relied on her music to “do the talking” for her”, later reflecting - “It’s never been a high profile career. I’ve never done the celebrity thing - I just do what I do. I have found that my career has just been about the folks and me. It’s kind of a love affair between us, as opposed to the hype of playing the bigger cities and having to go through all of that”. Anyway, let’s start on her music again, checking back in at 1973.
In post # 407 I wrote “… George Jones the master of barroom heartbreak in a song that … establishes him as the greatest country music vocalist...”. Murray remade the song ’She Thinks I Still Care‘, the story of a man (or in this case a woman) who can't get over their lost love but is in denial about it, for her 1973 “Danny's Song” album and in 1974 issued it as the B-side to her cover version of the Lennon–McCartney-penned Beatles song ’You Won't See Me’ - which John Lennon remarked was his favourite Beatles cover. While ’You Won't See Me’ was a # 8 hit on the Pop chart and # 1 on the AC chart, ‘He Thinks I Still Care‘ (the title and lyrics slightly altered for the female perspécrive) was shopped to country radio. Just as ’You Won't See Me‘ peaked in popularity at the pop stations, ’He Thinks I Still Care‘ became Murray's first # 1 hit on the U.S. Country Singles chart -
Did you know that Bruce Springsteen opened for Anne Murray in Central Park, NYC? Sounds totally unlikely, given their contrasting music styles and Springsteen’s subsequent stardom, but it's true - it happened in 1974 at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park, NYC. At the time, Murray, despite being based in Canada and NYC not exactly attuned to country music, had the more commercial success and a higher profile! It was the just before “Born to Run” was released - so it turned out to be the last show Springsteen ever played as the support act. Decades later, Springsteen paid tribute to Murray at a performance in Vancouver in 2008, calling her out during an encore to sing with him.
As outlined yesterday, music director Bill Langstroth first met Anne Murray when she auditioned for his TV show on CBC Singalong Jubilee. At the time, Bill was still married to Shirley Dennison and father to two young children, David and Margot. He became her boss and the two worked together. But one road trip – fuelled by marijuana and sealed by a kiss and beyond – changed everything and started a secret affair lasting for years. According to Murray, during those years, Bill was so unhappy in his marriage (the usual line) while she, on the other hand, was falling in love and fast - she was powerless to do anything about it even though she knew he was her boss and 15 years her senior. They kept their relationship a secret for years while Langstroth remained married. The early years of the affair proved to be very difficult for her. Not to mention that it also led to rumours about her sexuality and even attracted a legion of gay fans - with her short hair, she also kinda looked the part. Finally, to the disappointment of her army of gay fans, Langstroth married Murray in 1975 after divorcing his wife.
Despite her personal life now finally seemingly sorted - or maybe because of it - Murray was becoming frustrated with her career. Attempts to spice up her image and give her a more sophisticated appeal went nowhere, and in 1975 she went into semi-retirement, ceasing all touring and TV appearances and seemingly content to just live a low profile Normal life as a “normal” wife and mother. The couple welcomed their first child year lin 1976, and then 3 years after, they had a daughter. When Murray returned to performing, she often spoke of the practical and emotional difficulties of touring while raising children.
Murray returned to recording in 1977 with a children’s album “There’s A Hippo In My Tub”, but her true comeback album was “Let’s Keep It That Way” in 1978, which earned 3 Grammy nominations. Her recording of ‘Walk Right Back‘ began a string of high-charting releases stretching into 1986. Her comeback was complete with the 1978 Grammy Award for best female vocal performance for ‘You Needed Me’, a song that shot her to the height of international crossover mainstream success.
‘You Needed Me’, written by Randy Goodrum, turned out to be Murray’s biggest hit since ‘Songbird’ and another signature song. And no one could relate to its poignant lyrics more than Murray, who quickly recorded it after she first heard it. It was her 2nd single to be certified Gold in the U.S. In Canada, it was a # 1 hit on all 3 country, pop and AC charts, while in the U.S. it reached # 1 on the U.S. country chart, # 4 on the pop and # 3 on the AC chart. Furthermore, it was a # 2 hit in Australia and a Top 10 hit in Ireland, South Africa and NZ in 1978 -
With her career now hitting new heights, by the start of 1979, things only got bigger for Murray. ‘I Just Fall In Love Again‘, co-written by Wanda Mallette and Patti Ryan, was another that hit the spot to both country and pop listeners when it was released in January 1979, topping the country and AC charts in the U.S. and #12 on the pop chart, and once again topping all 3 Canadian country, mainstream, and AC charts. The song was co-written by Larry Herbsritt, Steve Dorff, Harry Lloyd, and Gloria Sklerov and was originally performed by The Carpenters - many compared Karen Carpenter’s singing with Murray, both clearly enunciating lyrics with pitch-perfect voices, avoiding any unnecessary “vocal gymnastics“ and torturous trilling that later came to dominate female vocals, to the cost of melody and emotion. However, Murray possessed a greater octave range and stronger vocals than Carpenter.
Richard Carpenter later wrote he felt the song was perfect for his sister Karen's voice and felt their version had hit-single potential. However, A&M Records decided not to release it because, at just over 4 minutes, it was considered too long for Top 40 radio stations to play at the time and it couldn’t be abridged. Dusty Springfield, who Murray had developed a close friendship with, also released a cover of this song in early 1979 on Springfield's “Living Without Your Love” album but it was subsequently never released as a single and went largely unnoticed due to the success of Murray's recording, released just after on her ”New Kind of Feeling” album, and was the third single released from this album -
‘Shadows in the Moonlight’, co-penned by Rory Bourke and Charlie Black, was released in May 1979 as the second single from the album album “New Kind of Feeling“. It was the second Murray song to top the charts in 1979, reaching # 1 in the Country and AC charts in both the U.S. and Canada and also reaching the Top 10 on the Canadian Pop chart, although it only reached # 25 on the U.S. pop chart -
Murray’s faultless run continued with ‘Broken Hearted Me‘, written by Randy Goodrum and originally recorded by England Dan & John Ford Coley for their album “Dr Heckle and Mr Jive”. Released in September 1979 as the first single from her “I'll Always Love You” album, her 3rd # 1 single in 1979 alone on the charts. Once again, Murray enjoyed immense crossover success, reaching # 1 in the Country and AC charts in both the U.S. and Canada and also reaching # 15 on the Canadian Pop chart and # 12 on the U.S. pop chart -
The outstanding crossover commercial success of 1979 is my excuse for holding Anne Murray back to when this history reaches the end of the 1970’s (much like I did with Dottie West) when I could’ve and arguably should’ve introduced her at the very start of the 1970’s when she had her first run of success after the release of ‘Snowbird’ in 1970. Better late than never. Despite stepping back from performing and recording for several years in the mid 1970’s, her laid back, easy listening style, along with her superb pitch-perfect vocals (her 3 years of voice training as a teenager was money well spent), along with choosing the right songs that suited her style, all proved to be a winning formula that appealed to mainstream suburban audiences (OK - this soft, easy listening stuff is far removed from my favourite music formats, but one, as a music lover, can still appreciate how well Murray delivered the goods in the voice and style she had mastered).
Foreshadowing the careers of Canadian pop-country crossover artists such as k.d. lang and Shania Twain, Murray easily spanned the Country, Pop and AC charts. However, her versatile appeal confused many in the recording industry, who were anxious to pigeonhole her sound to better market her recordings (or at least making their marketing jobs easier to do), notwithstanding that Murray‘s crossover appeal surely sold more records than she would’ve had she been pigeonholed to one genre. Tomorrow - as the mainstream music tastes inevitably changes - will follow Anne Murray’s career into the 1980’s and beyond, to it’s conclusion.
Anne Murray possessed of a warm alto with some of the purest tones ever recorded and - an underrated but very real ability for her - an uncanny ear for choosing mature songs - her songs were never meant to appeal to the youth market. Never one for publicity stunts and trying to keep her name in the public limelight, Murray also relied on her music to “do the talking” for her”, later reflecting - “It’s never been a high profile career. I’ve never done the celebrity thing - I just do what I do. I have found that my career has just been about the folks and me. It’s kind of a love affair between us, as opposed to the hype of playing the bigger cities and having to go through all of that”. Anyway, let’s start on her music again, checking back in at 1973.
In post # 407 I wrote “… George Jones the master of barroom heartbreak in a song that … establishes him as the greatest country music vocalist...”. Murray remade the song ’She Thinks I Still Care‘, the story of a man (or in this case a woman) who can't get over their lost love but is in denial about it, for her 1973 “Danny's Song” album and in 1974 issued it as the B-side to her cover version of the Lennon–McCartney-penned Beatles song ’You Won't See Me’ - which John Lennon remarked was his favourite Beatles cover. While ’You Won't See Me’ was a # 8 hit on the Pop chart and # 1 on the AC chart, ‘He Thinks I Still Care‘ (the title and lyrics slightly altered for the female perspécrive) was shopped to country radio. Just as ’You Won't See Me‘ peaked in popularity at the pop stations, ’He Thinks I Still Care‘ became Murray's first # 1 hit on the U.S. Country Singles chart -
Did you know that Bruce Springsteen opened for Anne Murray in Central Park, NYC? Sounds totally unlikely, given their contrasting music styles and Springsteen’s subsequent stardom, but it's true - it happened in 1974 at the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park, NYC. At the time, Murray, despite being based in Canada and NYC not exactly attuned to country music, had the more commercial success and a higher profile! It was the just before “Born to Run” was released - so it turned out to be the last show Springsteen ever played as the support act. Decades later, Springsteen paid tribute to Murray at a performance in Vancouver in 2008, calling her out during an encore to sing with him.
As outlined yesterday, music director Bill Langstroth first met Anne Murray when she auditioned for his TV show on CBC Singalong Jubilee. At the time, Bill was still married to Shirley Dennison and father to two young children, David and Margot. He became her boss and the two worked together. But one road trip – fuelled by marijuana and sealed by a kiss and beyond – changed everything and started a secret affair lasting for years. According to Murray, during those years, Bill was so unhappy in his marriage (the usual line) while she, on the other hand, was falling in love and fast - she was powerless to do anything about it even though she knew he was her boss and 15 years her senior. They kept their relationship a secret for years while Langstroth remained married. The early years of the affair proved to be very difficult for her. Not to mention that it also led to rumours about her sexuality and even attracted a legion of gay fans - with her short hair, she also kinda looked the part. Finally, to the disappointment of her army of gay fans, Langstroth married Murray in 1975 after divorcing his wife.
Despite her personal life now finally seemingly sorted - or maybe because of it - Murray was becoming frustrated with her career. Attempts to spice up her image and give her a more sophisticated appeal went nowhere, and in 1975 she went into semi-retirement, ceasing all touring and TV appearances and seemingly content to just live a low profile Normal life as a “normal” wife and mother. The couple welcomed their first child year lin 1976, and then 3 years after, they had a daughter. When Murray returned to performing, she often spoke of the practical and emotional difficulties of touring while raising children.
Murray returned to recording in 1977 with a children’s album “There’s A Hippo In My Tub”, but her true comeback album was “Let’s Keep It That Way” in 1978, which earned 3 Grammy nominations. Her recording of ‘Walk Right Back‘ began a string of high-charting releases stretching into 1986. Her comeback was complete with the 1978 Grammy Award for best female vocal performance for ‘You Needed Me’, a song that shot her to the height of international crossover mainstream success.
‘You Needed Me’, written by Randy Goodrum, turned out to be Murray’s biggest hit since ‘Songbird’ and another signature song. And no one could relate to its poignant lyrics more than Murray, who quickly recorded it after she first heard it. It was her 2nd single to be certified Gold in the U.S. In Canada, it was a # 1 hit on all 3 country, pop and AC charts, while in the U.S. it reached # 1 on the U.S. country chart, # 4 on the pop and # 3 on the AC chart. Furthermore, it was a # 2 hit in Australia and a Top 10 hit in Ireland, South Africa and NZ in 1978 -
With her career now hitting new heights, by the start of 1979, things only got bigger for Murray. ‘I Just Fall In Love Again‘, co-written by Wanda Mallette and Patti Ryan, was another that hit the spot to both country and pop listeners when it was released in January 1979, topping the country and AC charts in the U.S. and #12 on the pop chart, and once again topping all 3 Canadian country, mainstream, and AC charts. The song was co-written by Larry Herbsritt, Steve Dorff, Harry Lloyd, and Gloria Sklerov and was originally performed by The Carpenters - many compared Karen Carpenter’s singing with Murray, both clearly enunciating lyrics with pitch-perfect voices, avoiding any unnecessary “vocal gymnastics“ and torturous trilling that later came to dominate female vocals, to the cost of melody and emotion. However, Murray possessed a greater octave range and stronger vocals than Carpenter.
Richard Carpenter later wrote he felt the song was perfect for his sister Karen's voice and felt their version had hit-single potential. However, A&M Records decided not to release it because, at just over 4 minutes, it was considered too long for Top 40 radio stations to play at the time and it couldn’t be abridged. Dusty Springfield, who Murray had developed a close friendship with, also released a cover of this song in early 1979 on Springfield's “Living Without Your Love” album but it was subsequently never released as a single and went largely unnoticed due to the success of Murray's recording, released just after on her ”New Kind of Feeling” album, and was the third single released from this album -
‘Shadows in the Moonlight’, co-penned by Rory Bourke and Charlie Black, was released in May 1979 as the second single from the album album “New Kind of Feeling“. It was the second Murray song to top the charts in 1979, reaching # 1 in the Country and AC charts in both the U.S. and Canada and also reaching the Top 10 on the Canadian Pop chart, although it only reached # 25 on the U.S. pop chart -
Murray’s faultless run continued with ‘Broken Hearted Me‘, written by Randy Goodrum and originally recorded by England Dan & John Ford Coley for their album “Dr Heckle and Mr Jive”. Released in September 1979 as the first single from her “I'll Always Love You” album, her 3rd # 1 single in 1979 alone on the charts. Once again, Murray enjoyed immense crossover success, reaching # 1 in the Country and AC charts in both the U.S. and Canada and also reaching # 15 on the Canadian Pop chart and # 12 on the U.S. pop chart -
The outstanding crossover commercial success of 1979 is my excuse for holding Anne Murray back to when this history reaches the end of the 1970’s (much like I did with Dottie West) when I could’ve and arguably should’ve introduced her at the very start of the 1970’s when she had her first run of success after the release of ‘Snowbird’ in 1970. Better late than never. Despite stepping back from performing and recording for several years in the mid 1970’s, her laid back, easy listening style, along with her superb pitch-perfect vocals (her 3 years of voice training as a teenager was money well spent), along with choosing the right songs that suited her style, all proved to be a winning formula that appealed to mainstream suburban audiences (OK - this soft, easy listening stuff is far removed from my favourite music formats, but one, as a music lover, can still appreciate how well Murray delivered the goods in the voice and style she had mastered).
Foreshadowing the careers of Canadian pop-country crossover artists such as k.d. lang and Shania Twain, Murray easily spanned the Country, Pop and AC charts. However, her versatile appeal confused many in the recording industry, who were anxious to pigeonhole her sound to better market her recordings (or at least making their marketing jobs easier to do), notwithstanding that Murray‘s crossover appeal surely sold more records than she would’ve had she been pigeonholed to one genre. Tomorrow - as the mainstream music tastes inevitably changes - will follow Anne Murray’s career into the 1980’s and beyond, to it’s conclusion.
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Today takes up Anne a Murray’s story and music from when we left off yesterday, with her career at an all time high in 1979. Seeking stability for her children, Murray undertook long-term engagements in Las Vegas to reduce travel demands, alternating with concerts in venues such as the prestigious Carnegie Hall, NYC, where she sang in 1979. Landing a Vegas residency was a huge milestone in Murray's career, doing shows on the same strip as Frank Sinatra. But the 2-show-a-night standard was exhausting: she was out until 2:30 or 3 am and then up with the kids at 7 am. So the second time around, Murray fought back, which was unheard of in the 1970s. She insisted on just one nightly performance, and soon other big acts - like Dolly Parton and Wayne Newton - followed her lead, forever changing Vegas residencies.
In 1980, the country music world was impacted by the movie Urban Cowboy, filmed at Mickey Gilley’s famous Dallas nightclub, Gilley’s - see post # 908 for a brief history of this movie and its cultural impact. The soundtrack for Urban Cowboy leaned heavily on pop-flavoured country and generated 5 Top 10 country singles - ‘Love the World Away‘ by Kenny Rogers; ‘Look What You’ve Done to Me‘ by Boz Scaggs; Mickey Gilley’s ‘Stand by Me”; ‘Lookin’ for Love’ by Johnny Lee and ‘Could I Have This Dance?‘ by Anne Murray. The latter 3 all went to #1, and all 5 crossed over to the Pop Chart. Those songs, along with other hits like Dolly Parton’s title tune from her own 1980 film, 9 to 5, caused a major surge in the popularity of the lighter pop or soft-rock side of country - the polar opposite of the 1970’s Outlaw era - but then again, as we’ve seen, Murray was ahead of the curve, already leading the charge in popularising this sub-genre with her run of big cross-over hits through 1978/79.
‘Could I Have This Dance’, a two step waltz composed by Wayland Holyfield and Bob House, appeared on both the 1980 Urban Cowboy soundtrack album and the “Anne Murray's Greatest Hits” compilation album issued in later in 1980. Later on, it also appeared on Murray's 2007 album “Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends”, performed as a duet with Amy Grant. The single became Murray's 5th # 1 U.S. and her 15th # 1 Canadian country hit. It was also Murray's 10th U.S. and 21st Canadian pop Top 40 hit (5 of which went to # 1). For context, I chose a YouTube clip with clips from the Urban Cowboy movie, despite some moments of “movie noise” - the song played during the wedding dance scene in the movie, hence becoming an instant favourite as a choice for many real life wedding dances. More pure versions without this context are easily found on YouTube if you prefer -
Murray won her third Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Female for this song.
In 1983, Murray won her fourth and final Grammy for best female vocal performance for ‘A Little Good News‘. Released as the lead single from the album of the same name, ‘A Little Good News‘ struck a chord with listeners who were tired and frustrated with the violence, inflation, recession cycle and the revival of the Cold War with an ever more aggressive Soviet Union that was going on at the time (giving proof to the saying - “the more things change, the more they stay the same). So, it was no surprise when it became her 6th hit to top both the U.S. and Canadian charts and the 19th to reach the Top 10 in both nations -
’Just Another Woman In Love’, co-penned by Wanda Mallette and Patti Ryan, was the third single released in 1984 from the “A Little Good News“ album and became yet another of her hits to top the country charts in both the U.S., her 8th #1 there, and Canada, where it also became one of Murray’s 24 songs to top the AC charts. The song is one that has enduring popularity -
The music business was still confused about how to categorize Murray’s style and song choices. She had been trying to shed her girl-next-door image and adopt a cooler, more upbeat image. Her 1986 album, “Something To Talk About“ was an effort at electropop but ironically, it did best on the country charts. Ultimately it pleased few and dated very quickly. Inevitably, her popularity waned by the late 1980s, despite her solid fan base. Her last big hit was ‘Now and Forever (You and Me)’ in 1986. She undertook her first Canadian coast-to-coast tour in 1987. In 1992, Capitol Records finally dropped her from its roster after 35 years. Then after 22 years of marriage (and 6 years of a secret affair before that) and 2 children, Murray and her former CBC Singalong Jubilee music director, Bill Langstroth, separated in 1997 and then divorced in 1998. Murray has never remarried.
In 1993 Murray recorded a milestone in her career with Croonin’, an album of pop standards mostly made famous in the 1950s. The songs fit her voice like a glove as she channeled her inner Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney - “I should have been born in that era, because my voice is so well-suited to those songs. Croonin’ is one of my finest. The ‘50s were my childhood. I was weaned on these songs and grew up singing them…”. So in 2002, Murray went to the well again, only this time with “Croonin’ Country”, an album of 30 very well chosen songs - every single one of them a country classic (the very few that haven’t already been featured in this history should’ve been). The album sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone.
The album opened with the Kris Kristofferson classic, ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’, which he wrote in 1969, a time when he was still struggling to make it in the industry. The title was based on an interview in Esquire magazine, in which Frank Sinatra, asked what he believed in, said - “… Booze, broads or a bible … whatever helps me make it through the night ...”. Around the same time, Kristofferson was staying with fellow country artist Dottie West (posts # 939-940 above) and her husband. Kristofferson offered the song to West, who originally rejected it due to it being “too suggestive.” She eventually did record it, but only after several other artists, including Sammi Smith, who had a smash chart-topping hit with it (see posts # 661 and 822), had released their own versions. West later confessed not recording this song first was the greatest regret of her career.
Although ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ will always be associated with Sammi Smith’s original hit version, Murray’s cover on the 2002 “Croonin’ Country” album has, apart from Kristofferson himself, since become the most downloaded version on YouTube, with over 10 million hits. It’s a type of well chosen song, perfect for her vocals -
Another perfectly chosen song on the “Croonin’ Country” album was ’The End Of The World’ - a song so influential that I dedicated a whole post solely to Skeeter Davis’ 1962 original, brilliantly produced by Chet Atkins - see post # 447 on page 18). Lynette Lynn and Dolly Party both acknowledged the 'The End of the World' as having a major influence on their sound.
Years later, 'The End of the World' was played at Chet Atkins's funeral in an instrumental by Marty Stuart. The song was also played at Skeeter Davis' own funeral at the country music motherchurch, the Ryman Auditorium. Murray‘s version does the classic justice -
A song like “The End Of The World” also illustrates Murray’s moving ability to express emotion subtly. She is the antithesis of the psychotic over-singing that characterizes much of today’s pop music, saying - “I do think there’s over-singing going on because I don’t believe one word I’m hearing. With all those gymnastics occurring, I don’t know what the melody is. The song disappears - it’s just plain showing off. That kind of stuff is great used in moderation. If you grow up listening to all those licks and you’re vocally adept, you can do it. It’s just not part of who I am”.
As her performance career slowed, Murray received a number of major recognitions. In 1998, she was among the first stars awarded a place on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto. Murray went on her last concert tour in early 2008 and gave her final public performance in Toronto in May 2008. She published her biography, All of Me (co-written with Michael Posner), in 2009. In an interview with Murray back in 2013, shortly after her retirement, Murray said she was thoroughly enjoying it and didn’t miss singing at all, adding that at some point, her fame became difficult to handle, being so busy that she didn’t have a life at all, and she also sacrificed a lot, family-wise. In 2015, she left Toronto as a final step away from the life of music and settled back in Halifax, Nova Scotia, rekindling relationships with family and old friends she had grown up with. She now lives a very private life, turning down all invites to perform live or to feature in any song.
Murray has sold over 54 million records. In the U.S., she achieved 10 # 1 country hits, 1 # 1 pop hit with 8 in the Top 12 and 8 # 1 AC hits. In her homeland of Canada, she chalked up a remarkable 22 # 1 country hits, 5 # 1 pop hits with 15 in the Top 15 and 24 # 1 AC hits - showing the hold her music had on the adult artist in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
During her illustrious career, Murray received 4 Grammys, an unprecedented, record-breaking 24 Junos (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy), 3 American Music Awards, 3 CMA Awards and 3 Canadian CMA Awards. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honour that can be awarded to a Canadian civilian and in 2007, Canada Post issued a limited-edition Anne Murray Stamp. She has been inducted into the Juno HoF, the Canadian Country Music HoF in 1993, the Canadian Songwriters HoF (which just shows her profile in Canada - for as this history shows, she was never really a songwriter), and the Canadian Broadcast HoF. Murray has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Nashville’s Walkway of Stars. About the one honour to elude her so far, despite many calls to get it done, is being inducted into the American Country Music HoF - perhaps paying the price for keeping her home in Canada.
In 2011, Billboard ranked her 10th on their list of the 50 Biggest Adult Contemporary Artists ever, and on July 1, 2017, in celebration of Canada’s 150th Anniversary, the Toronto Sun listed Anne at #1 in Canada’s Top 160 Influences that helped define Canadian culture!
So that’s all for now - for at least a week or more, where hopefully I’ll have some time celebrating after the GF
FLOREAT PICA. - GO PIES!!
In 1980, the country music world was impacted by the movie Urban Cowboy, filmed at Mickey Gilley’s famous Dallas nightclub, Gilley’s - see post # 908 for a brief history of this movie and its cultural impact. The soundtrack for Urban Cowboy leaned heavily on pop-flavoured country and generated 5 Top 10 country singles - ‘Love the World Away‘ by Kenny Rogers; ‘Look What You’ve Done to Me‘ by Boz Scaggs; Mickey Gilley’s ‘Stand by Me”; ‘Lookin’ for Love’ by Johnny Lee and ‘Could I Have This Dance?‘ by Anne Murray. The latter 3 all went to #1, and all 5 crossed over to the Pop Chart. Those songs, along with other hits like Dolly Parton’s title tune from her own 1980 film, 9 to 5, caused a major surge in the popularity of the lighter pop or soft-rock side of country - the polar opposite of the 1970’s Outlaw era - but then again, as we’ve seen, Murray was ahead of the curve, already leading the charge in popularising this sub-genre with her run of big cross-over hits through 1978/79.
‘Could I Have This Dance’, a two step waltz composed by Wayland Holyfield and Bob House, appeared on both the 1980 Urban Cowboy soundtrack album and the “Anne Murray's Greatest Hits” compilation album issued in later in 1980. Later on, it also appeared on Murray's 2007 album “Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends”, performed as a duet with Amy Grant. The single became Murray's 5th # 1 U.S. and her 15th # 1 Canadian country hit. It was also Murray's 10th U.S. and 21st Canadian pop Top 40 hit (5 of which went to # 1). For context, I chose a YouTube clip with clips from the Urban Cowboy movie, despite some moments of “movie noise” - the song played during the wedding dance scene in the movie, hence becoming an instant favourite as a choice for many real life wedding dances. More pure versions without this context are easily found on YouTube if you prefer -
Murray won her third Grammy for Best Vocal Performance, Female for this song.
In 1983, Murray won her fourth and final Grammy for best female vocal performance for ‘A Little Good News‘. Released as the lead single from the album of the same name, ‘A Little Good News‘ struck a chord with listeners who were tired and frustrated with the violence, inflation, recession cycle and the revival of the Cold War with an ever more aggressive Soviet Union that was going on at the time (giving proof to the saying - “the more things change, the more they stay the same). So, it was no surprise when it became her 6th hit to top both the U.S. and Canadian charts and the 19th to reach the Top 10 in both nations -
’Just Another Woman In Love’, co-penned by Wanda Mallette and Patti Ryan, was the third single released in 1984 from the “A Little Good News“ album and became yet another of her hits to top the country charts in both the U.S., her 8th #1 there, and Canada, where it also became one of Murray’s 24 songs to top the AC charts. The song is one that has enduring popularity -
The music business was still confused about how to categorize Murray’s style and song choices. She had been trying to shed her girl-next-door image and adopt a cooler, more upbeat image. Her 1986 album, “Something To Talk About“ was an effort at electropop but ironically, it did best on the country charts. Ultimately it pleased few and dated very quickly. Inevitably, her popularity waned by the late 1980s, despite her solid fan base. Her last big hit was ‘Now and Forever (You and Me)’ in 1986. She undertook her first Canadian coast-to-coast tour in 1987. In 1992, Capitol Records finally dropped her from its roster after 35 years. Then after 22 years of marriage (and 6 years of a secret affair before that) and 2 children, Murray and her former CBC Singalong Jubilee music director, Bill Langstroth, separated in 1997 and then divorced in 1998. Murray has never remarried.
In 1993 Murray recorded a milestone in her career with Croonin’, an album of pop standards mostly made famous in the 1950s. The songs fit her voice like a glove as she channeled her inner Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney - “I should have been born in that era, because my voice is so well-suited to those songs. Croonin’ is one of my finest. The ‘50s were my childhood. I was weaned on these songs and grew up singing them…”. So in 2002, Murray went to the well again, only this time with “Croonin’ Country”, an album of 30 very well chosen songs - every single one of them a country classic (the very few that haven’t already been featured in this history should’ve been). The album sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S. alone.
The album opened with the Kris Kristofferson classic, ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’, which he wrote in 1969, a time when he was still struggling to make it in the industry. The title was based on an interview in Esquire magazine, in which Frank Sinatra, asked what he believed in, said - “… Booze, broads or a bible … whatever helps me make it through the night ...”. Around the same time, Kristofferson was staying with fellow country artist Dottie West (posts # 939-940 above) and her husband. Kristofferson offered the song to West, who originally rejected it due to it being “too suggestive.” She eventually did record it, but only after several other artists, including Sammi Smith, who had a smash chart-topping hit with it (see posts # 661 and 822), had released their own versions. West later confessed not recording this song first was the greatest regret of her career.
Although ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ will always be associated with Sammi Smith’s original hit version, Murray’s cover on the 2002 “Croonin’ Country” album has, apart from Kristofferson himself, since become the most downloaded version on YouTube, with over 10 million hits. It’s a type of well chosen song, perfect for her vocals -
Another perfectly chosen song on the “Croonin’ Country” album was ’The End Of The World’ - a song so influential that I dedicated a whole post solely to Skeeter Davis’ 1962 original, brilliantly produced by Chet Atkins - see post # 447 on page 18). Lynette Lynn and Dolly Party both acknowledged the 'The End of the World' as having a major influence on their sound.
Years later, 'The End of the World' was played at Chet Atkins's funeral in an instrumental by Marty Stuart. The song was also played at Skeeter Davis' own funeral at the country music motherchurch, the Ryman Auditorium. Murray‘s version does the classic justice -
A song like “The End Of The World” also illustrates Murray’s moving ability to express emotion subtly. She is the antithesis of the psychotic over-singing that characterizes much of today’s pop music, saying - “I do think there’s over-singing going on because I don’t believe one word I’m hearing. With all those gymnastics occurring, I don’t know what the melody is. The song disappears - it’s just plain showing off. That kind of stuff is great used in moderation. If you grow up listening to all those licks and you’re vocally adept, you can do it. It’s just not part of who I am”.
As her performance career slowed, Murray received a number of major recognitions. In 1998, she was among the first stars awarded a place on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto. Murray went on her last concert tour in early 2008 and gave her final public performance in Toronto in May 2008. She published her biography, All of Me (co-written with Michael Posner), in 2009. In an interview with Murray back in 2013, shortly after her retirement, Murray said she was thoroughly enjoying it and didn’t miss singing at all, adding that at some point, her fame became difficult to handle, being so busy that she didn’t have a life at all, and she also sacrificed a lot, family-wise. In 2015, she left Toronto as a final step away from the life of music and settled back in Halifax, Nova Scotia, rekindling relationships with family and old friends she had grown up with. She now lives a very private life, turning down all invites to perform live or to feature in any song.
Murray has sold over 54 million records. In the U.S., she achieved 10 # 1 country hits, 1 # 1 pop hit with 8 in the Top 12 and 8 # 1 AC hits. In her homeland of Canada, she chalked up a remarkable 22 # 1 country hits, 5 # 1 pop hits with 15 in the Top 15 and 24 # 1 AC hits - showing the hold her music had on the adult artist in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
During her illustrious career, Murray received 4 Grammys, an unprecedented, record-breaking 24 Junos (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy), 3 American Music Awards, 3 CMA Awards and 3 Canadian CMA Awards. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honour that can be awarded to a Canadian civilian and in 2007, Canada Post issued a limited-edition Anne Murray Stamp. She has been inducted into the Juno HoF, the Canadian Country Music HoF in 1993, the Canadian Songwriters HoF (which just shows her profile in Canada - for as this history shows, she was never really a songwriter), and the Canadian Broadcast HoF. Murray has a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Nashville’s Walkway of Stars. About the one honour to elude her so far, despite many calls to get it done, is being inducted into the American Country Music HoF - perhaps paying the price for keeping her home in Canada.
In 2011, Billboard ranked her 10th on their list of the 50 Biggest Adult Contemporary Artists ever, and on July 1, 2017, in celebration of Canada’s 150th Anniversary, the Toronto Sun listed Anne at #1 in Canada’s Top 160 Influences that helped define Canadian culture!
So that’s all for now - for at least a week or more, where hopefully I’ll have some time celebrating after the GF
FLOREAT PICA. - GO PIES!!
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I’ve come back down to earth again from an euphoric week just enough to continue this history - only this time, it’s not with a solo artist but with a group that simply must be included in this history. Like the last 2 featured artists, Dottie West and Anne Murray, I could’ve introduced them earlier than the late 1970’s, where we are with this history, as they were well known from 1965 and charted hits right through the 1970’s and beyond - however their first #1 hit wasn’t until 1978. And another thing - I originally promised (either ambitiously or just naively) a potted country music history including all its major sub-genres. So here‘s another sub-genre that originated in the Appalachians back in the 19th century.
Marked by smooth, tight harmonies and a lyrical focus on the message of Christian salvation, Southern Gospel - but particularly the white gospel quartet tradition - had its roots in 19th-century shape-note singing. It, along with black gospel, had an immense influence on country music, starting with A.P. Carter and the Carter family (see posts # 117-119) and following on with many others, including Hank Williams, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley - thus right from the start, rock’n’roll was imbued with a lot of Southern Gospel, along with Black Gospel, influence. Following the civil rights movement, with changing relations between black and white artists, white gospel was influenced by black gospel and bluegrass, helping to usher Southern Gospel music into the cultural mainstream while paving the way for the arrival of crossover-minded highly popular country vocal groups. Today introduces the standout Southern Gospel quartet, crossing over to mainstream secular success and in time attaining an iconic status in country music.
Today’s group got its start way back in 1955 in the small city of Staunton in Appalachian Virginia (the Appalachians long famously being the home of high harmony singing), when the foursome – all local teenagers – began performing together as a gospel quartet on weekends, mostly at local churches. The group consisted of Joe McDorman singing lead, Harold Reid (b 1939) on low bass, Phil Balsley b 1939) singing baritone and Lew DeWitt (b 1938) on high tenor. In 1958, the group, originally billed as The Four Star Quartet, changed their name to The Kingsmen. Harold Reid later recalled about the groups musical origins and how it progressed its sound and lyrics - “We sang some gospel music; we sang country music. We kind of felt like they were first cousins. And if you knew one field, you kind of knew the other. We took gospel harmonies and put them over in country music. There is a simplicity in both. We took those gospel harmonies that we learned from gospel music and we used them in country music, but with country lyrics. We sounded as if we had a new, original style, but we got it from Southern Gospel”.
By 1962, McDorman was replaced by Harold Reid’s younger 17 y.o. brother Don (b 1945) as lead singer. Eventually, the group settled on a new moniker, The Statler Brothers (despite only 2 of them, Don and Harold Reid being actual brothers) to avoid confusion with a hit charting pop group also called the Kingsmen. The group picked its working name on an impulse, from a box of Statler facial tissues, Don Reid jokingly recalling - “We were sitting around in our bedroom rehearsing one night – and there (on the table) was a box of Statler Tissues. We could just as easily be known as the Kleenex Brothers”.
In 1963, before Don was 20, by this stage well honed and delivering a blend of immaculate harmonies - and a good amount of humour in their stage act, the Statler Brothers were discovered by Johnny Cash (posts # 338-345). After arranging a meeting with the promotional department for a local Johnny Cash concert, the Kingsmen were asked to open the performance. Cash was so impressed, he invited the group to join the tour. Cash also secured a record contract for them with Columbia Records, but the label was disappointed with the poor sales of their first records. Having been refused further studio time, they recorded Lew DeWitt’s song ‘Flowers On The Wall’, during a break in one of Cash’s sessions. It resulted in a huge hit and lent its name to their 1966 debut album.
The Statler Brothers’ best-known song sounds like everything and nothing you’ve ever heard, a quirky song that talks about not really having anything to do and having to figure out what to do in order to pass the time. An almost surreal concoction of bluegrass banjo, Southern Gospel quartet-ready harmonies and vivid, eccentric poetry by Lew DeWitt, the group’s first charting single is a slice of 1960’s Americana – in that term’s original sense. It peaked at # 2 on the country chart and crossed over to the pop chart, reaching # 4 in 1965. The song, at its core, is about a man who gave his everything, but still got his heart broken. The sad part is that he can’t seem to move on or to even function as a normal human being -
The song earned the group 4 Grammy nominations in both pop and country categories at the 1966 awards. They walked away with the trophies for the best contemporary – rock – performance by a group and best new country and western artist. More impressive, though, is the hit’s longevity - it’s been covered by everyone from Nancy Sinatra to the Muppets, referenced in Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday and Pulp Diction. It gained additional interest through a contemporary cover by Nancy Sinatra, a Top 10 hit by Eric Heatherly in 2000 and through the use of the group’s 1975 re-recording featured in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Tarantino credited the song’s inclusion in the movie (Bruce Willis’s character sings along to it while driving) to music supervisor Karyn Rachtman - “Karyn just kept giving me different tapes, and for every 5 new songs she’d put an old song on there. I mentioned it to Bruce and he said ‘Oh god, I love it”. Not bad for a song just ruminating on wallpaper, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo.
The Statlers toured with Cash’s road show – Don acting as emcee – for more than 8 years and were a weekly mainstay on ABC’s nationally televised The Johnny Cash Show (1969-1971), performing their own hits and backing Cash and the Tennessee Three. This fruitful professional working arrangement with Cash ensured on-going exposure to the public. All through their career, their appeal was also boosted from the comedy and parody found in their musical acts - mostly thanks to the natural comic talent of group’s resonant bassist, Harold Reid.
One of the more ubiquitous of the Statlers’ novelty tunes, this Curly Putman and Bobby Braddock penned ’You Can’t Have Your Kate (And Edith Too)’ reached # 10 in 1967 by riffing on an already-established clique (one that has reached into the present day, perhaps with help from the Statlers). However, listening to the lyrics, it seems the singers “friend” actually did have his Kate and Edith too, defying the song’s title. The song was popular enough that the Statler Brothers included it in their brief set at Folsom Prison during Johnny Cash’s legendary live recording in 1968 -
Like Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Fancy‘ released a year prior (post # 533), ‘Bed Of Rose’s‘ uses a titular play on words to challenge conventional ideas about sex workers. Written by Harold Reid, the title ’Bed of Rose's’ is, like some of the other Statler Brothers' works, a play on words - in this case the common English idiom means an easy and pleasant life. The song is both a challenge of narrow-minded religion and moralism, and a gentle celebration of love. A young orphaned man in a small town (possibly modelled after the Statlers' hometown of Staunton, Virginia) has, for some reason, become shunned by the "polite" members of society and forced to beg in the streets. His life improves when a streetwalker named Rose, nearly twice his age, takes him in - she becomes his lover - “… This bed of Rose's that I lay on / Where I was taught to be a man …”.
The song juxtaposes the hypocrisy of the nominally Christian townspeople who would "... go to church but left me in the street …" and their envy of Rose who "… managed a late evening business / like most of the town wished they could do …", with the care and tender love that evolves between the two outcasts. This was a daring song in 1970 for a group raised on Southern Gospel music, one that no doubt offended some of their market. But it ended up attracting a wider market, becoming g the group’s second big break, reaching # 9 (and even better in Canada, peaking at #3) in 1970 -
The second single from the “Bed Of Roses” album, the unusual story song, ‘New York City’ shrouds a torrid tale of pregnancy and infidelity in a lilting, comparatively unadorned country production and mellow harmonies. Don Reid wrote and sang lead on this song, which describes a man whose partner has left him to live in New York City – or as the song describes it, hell (by 1970, large portions of inner NYC, especially Harlem and large areas of inner Brooklyn and the Bronx were descending into dirty, violent, drug-addled slum areas, far different from today’s expensive, gentrified communities). Left unsaid is what exactly the man did to prompt such a drastic move. While not an enormous commercial success, only reaching # 19 in 1971, the single showcases the Statlers at the height of their tandem fame with Johnny Cash, performing meaty, serious material in radio-ready style, making full use of their harmonic skills -
‘Do You Remember These’ was a 1972 landmark for the Statlers, as they began recording songs appealing to nostalgia - becoming their second # 2 hit.While part of that repertoire included covers of oldies and standards, several of their other biggest hits had lyrics recalling good times of years past. The Statlers recall post-war (late 1940s through the 1950s) popular culture and good times in the form of a list song. Pop culture references (I find these kind of songs helpful in giving glimpses into a time well before mine) include Saturday morning serials, big-screen cowboy heroes including Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, flat top haircuts, Studebakers, radio programs including The Shadow and Your Hit Parade, aviator and coonskin caps, penny loafers, Howdy Doody, early rock‘n’roll music (including ’Tutti Fruitti‘ and ’Blue Suede Shoes’), white buck shoes, The Whip at amusement parks, sock hops and the Sadie Hawkins dance, "Veronica and Betty“ and celebrities of the time, such as Charles Atlas and James Dean. Other references are of carefree life in general, such as lemonade stands, root beer floats and knock knock jokes; and various social conventions ("Judy's mum" and "ask daddy for the keys") -
The song caused some unpleasantness for the group during a UK tour due to the reference "… knickers to your knees…" meaning short pants or Knickerbockers in the USA, not referring to women's undies like the word means in the UK and Australia.
The Statler Brothers aren’t the first harmony group in this history - the first was in the very early days of this history, being the western harmony group from California, The Sons Of The Pioneers (posts # 123-124) from the 1930’s - and still going strongly, though obviously with many changes through the decades to its members. We’ve also featured the high Appalachian bluegrass harmonies of Bill Monroe (# 181-183) and the Stanley Brothers, (# 187-188), as well as the unsurpassed Louvin Brothers (# 294-295), the immense crossover popularity of the Everly Brothers (# 393-399) and the Browns Trio (# 368-369). But the Southern Gospel quartet sound of the Statler Brothers is quite distinct from all of these. Tomorrow will follow their career from where we left off in 1972 through the rest of the 1970’s.
Marked by smooth, tight harmonies and a lyrical focus on the message of Christian salvation, Southern Gospel - but particularly the white gospel quartet tradition - had its roots in 19th-century shape-note singing. It, along with black gospel, had an immense influence on country music, starting with A.P. Carter and the Carter family (see posts # 117-119) and following on with many others, including Hank Williams, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley - thus right from the start, rock’n’roll was imbued with a lot of Southern Gospel, along with Black Gospel, influence. Following the civil rights movement, with changing relations between black and white artists, white gospel was influenced by black gospel and bluegrass, helping to usher Southern Gospel music into the cultural mainstream while paving the way for the arrival of crossover-minded highly popular country vocal groups. Today introduces the standout Southern Gospel quartet, crossing over to mainstream secular success and in time attaining an iconic status in country music.
Today’s group got its start way back in 1955 in the small city of Staunton in Appalachian Virginia (the Appalachians long famously being the home of high harmony singing), when the foursome – all local teenagers – began performing together as a gospel quartet on weekends, mostly at local churches. The group consisted of Joe McDorman singing lead, Harold Reid (b 1939) on low bass, Phil Balsley b 1939) singing baritone and Lew DeWitt (b 1938) on high tenor. In 1958, the group, originally billed as The Four Star Quartet, changed their name to The Kingsmen. Harold Reid later recalled about the groups musical origins and how it progressed its sound and lyrics - “We sang some gospel music; we sang country music. We kind of felt like they were first cousins. And if you knew one field, you kind of knew the other. We took gospel harmonies and put them over in country music. There is a simplicity in both. We took those gospel harmonies that we learned from gospel music and we used them in country music, but with country lyrics. We sounded as if we had a new, original style, but we got it from Southern Gospel”.
By 1962, McDorman was replaced by Harold Reid’s younger 17 y.o. brother Don (b 1945) as lead singer. Eventually, the group settled on a new moniker, The Statler Brothers (despite only 2 of them, Don and Harold Reid being actual brothers) to avoid confusion with a hit charting pop group also called the Kingsmen. The group picked its working name on an impulse, from a box of Statler facial tissues, Don Reid jokingly recalling - “We were sitting around in our bedroom rehearsing one night – and there (on the table) was a box of Statler Tissues. We could just as easily be known as the Kleenex Brothers”.
In 1963, before Don was 20, by this stage well honed and delivering a blend of immaculate harmonies - and a good amount of humour in their stage act, the Statler Brothers were discovered by Johnny Cash (posts # 338-345). After arranging a meeting with the promotional department for a local Johnny Cash concert, the Kingsmen were asked to open the performance. Cash was so impressed, he invited the group to join the tour. Cash also secured a record contract for them with Columbia Records, but the label was disappointed with the poor sales of their first records. Having been refused further studio time, they recorded Lew DeWitt’s song ‘Flowers On The Wall’, during a break in one of Cash’s sessions. It resulted in a huge hit and lent its name to their 1966 debut album.
The Statler Brothers’ best-known song sounds like everything and nothing you’ve ever heard, a quirky song that talks about not really having anything to do and having to figure out what to do in order to pass the time. An almost surreal concoction of bluegrass banjo, Southern Gospel quartet-ready harmonies and vivid, eccentric poetry by Lew DeWitt, the group’s first charting single is a slice of 1960’s Americana – in that term’s original sense. It peaked at # 2 on the country chart and crossed over to the pop chart, reaching # 4 in 1965. The song, at its core, is about a man who gave his everything, but still got his heart broken. The sad part is that he can’t seem to move on or to even function as a normal human being -
The song earned the group 4 Grammy nominations in both pop and country categories at the 1966 awards. They walked away with the trophies for the best contemporary – rock – performance by a group and best new country and western artist. More impressive, though, is the hit’s longevity - it’s been covered by everyone from Nancy Sinatra to the Muppets, referenced in Kurt Vonnegut’s Palm Sunday and Pulp Diction. It gained additional interest through a contemporary cover by Nancy Sinatra, a Top 10 hit by Eric Heatherly in 2000 and through the use of the group’s 1975 re-recording featured in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Tarantino credited the song’s inclusion in the movie (Bruce Willis’s character sings along to it while driving) to music supervisor Karyn Rachtman - “Karyn just kept giving me different tapes, and for every 5 new songs she’d put an old song on there. I mentioned it to Bruce and he said ‘Oh god, I love it”. Not bad for a song just ruminating on wallpaper, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo.
The Statlers toured with Cash’s road show – Don acting as emcee – for more than 8 years and were a weekly mainstay on ABC’s nationally televised The Johnny Cash Show (1969-1971), performing their own hits and backing Cash and the Tennessee Three. This fruitful professional working arrangement with Cash ensured on-going exposure to the public. All through their career, their appeal was also boosted from the comedy and parody found in their musical acts - mostly thanks to the natural comic talent of group’s resonant bassist, Harold Reid.
One of the more ubiquitous of the Statlers’ novelty tunes, this Curly Putman and Bobby Braddock penned ’You Can’t Have Your Kate (And Edith Too)’ reached # 10 in 1967 by riffing on an already-established clique (one that has reached into the present day, perhaps with help from the Statlers). However, listening to the lyrics, it seems the singers “friend” actually did have his Kate and Edith too, defying the song’s title. The song was popular enough that the Statler Brothers included it in their brief set at Folsom Prison during Johnny Cash’s legendary live recording in 1968 -
Like Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Fancy‘ released a year prior (post # 533), ‘Bed Of Rose’s‘ uses a titular play on words to challenge conventional ideas about sex workers. Written by Harold Reid, the title ’Bed of Rose's’ is, like some of the other Statler Brothers' works, a play on words - in this case the common English idiom means an easy and pleasant life. The song is both a challenge of narrow-minded religion and moralism, and a gentle celebration of love. A young orphaned man in a small town (possibly modelled after the Statlers' hometown of Staunton, Virginia) has, for some reason, become shunned by the "polite" members of society and forced to beg in the streets. His life improves when a streetwalker named Rose, nearly twice his age, takes him in - she becomes his lover - “… This bed of Rose's that I lay on / Where I was taught to be a man …”.
The song juxtaposes the hypocrisy of the nominally Christian townspeople who would "... go to church but left me in the street …" and their envy of Rose who "… managed a late evening business / like most of the town wished they could do …", with the care and tender love that evolves between the two outcasts. This was a daring song in 1970 for a group raised on Southern Gospel music, one that no doubt offended some of their market. But it ended up attracting a wider market, becoming g the group’s second big break, reaching # 9 (and even better in Canada, peaking at #3) in 1970 -
The second single from the “Bed Of Roses” album, the unusual story song, ‘New York City’ shrouds a torrid tale of pregnancy and infidelity in a lilting, comparatively unadorned country production and mellow harmonies. Don Reid wrote and sang lead on this song, which describes a man whose partner has left him to live in New York City – or as the song describes it, hell (by 1970, large portions of inner NYC, especially Harlem and large areas of inner Brooklyn and the Bronx were descending into dirty, violent, drug-addled slum areas, far different from today’s expensive, gentrified communities). Left unsaid is what exactly the man did to prompt such a drastic move. While not an enormous commercial success, only reaching # 19 in 1971, the single showcases the Statlers at the height of their tandem fame with Johnny Cash, performing meaty, serious material in radio-ready style, making full use of their harmonic skills -
‘Do You Remember These’ was a 1972 landmark for the Statlers, as they began recording songs appealing to nostalgia - becoming their second # 2 hit.While part of that repertoire included covers of oldies and standards, several of their other biggest hits had lyrics recalling good times of years past. The Statlers recall post-war (late 1940s through the 1950s) popular culture and good times in the form of a list song. Pop culture references (I find these kind of songs helpful in giving glimpses into a time well before mine) include Saturday morning serials, big-screen cowboy heroes including Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, flat top haircuts, Studebakers, radio programs including The Shadow and Your Hit Parade, aviator and coonskin caps, penny loafers, Howdy Doody, early rock‘n’roll music (including ’Tutti Fruitti‘ and ’Blue Suede Shoes’), white buck shoes, The Whip at amusement parks, sock hops and the Sadie Hawkins dance, "Veronica and Betty“ and celebrities of the time, such as Charles Atlas and James Dean. Other references are of carefree life in general, such as lemonade stands, root beer floats and knock knock jokes; and various social conventions ("Judy's mum" and "ask daddy for the keys") -
The song caused some unpleasantness for the group during a UK tour due to the reference "… knickers to your knees…" meaning short pants or Knickerbockers in the USA, not referring to women's undies like the word means in the UK and Australia.
The Statler Brothers aren’t the first harmony group in this history - the first was in the very early days of this history, being the western harmony group from California, The Sons Of The Pioneers (posts # 123-124) from the 1930’s - and still going strongly, though obviously with many changes through the decades to its members. We’ve also featured the high Appalachian bluegrass harmonies of Bill Monroe (# 181-183) and the Stanley Brothers, (# 187-188), as well as the unsurpassed Louvin Brothers (# 294-295), the immense crossover popularity of the Everly Brothers (# 393-399) and the Browns Trio (# 368-369). But the Southern Gospel quartet sound of the Statler Brothers is quite distinct from all of these. Tomorrow will follow their career from where we left off in 1972 through the rest of the 1970’s.
Fresh off the success of their first nostalgic list song, ‘Do You Remember These?‘, where we finished yesterday – a near-exact equivalent to contemporary memes about things “only ‘90s kids know” – and which spent 4 weeks at # 2 - the Statler Brothers put a more evocative, bittersweet spin on the nostalgia concept with ‘Class of ‘57‘. The matter-of-fact song (the year of 1957 being the graduation year of 2 of the band) describes the high and low fortunes of many members of a high school class (and the examples seem appropriate for their home town of Staunton). It talks about the youthful ambitions in a final (Year 12) high school class - and if one remembers their own final school year, it‘s a very big thing, often the most important event of one’s life up to that point. There are so many hopes and dreams that go with it and so many possibilities - but so many of them are unrealised. Unfortunately, as class reunions can painfully reveal, life has a way of bringing people back to reality in some of the harshest ways possible and this song highlights that unfortunate fact. The song reached # 6 in 1972, and earned the group their 3rd Grammy, for Best Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group -
I can’t but help reflect that if a similar themed song came out now - let’s call it “The Class of ‘97” - especially if it was by another Appalachian based group - this song would be a whole lot more pessimistic, with even fewer success stories, more dependent on welfare and a swathe of (mostly male) premature deaths due to fentanyl and suicides. But enough of that before I depress anyone by describing the poverty and hopelessness found in too many Appalachian towns these days.
As mentioned yesterday, starting from 1964, The Statlers toured with Johnny Cash’s road show as the opening act and with Don Reid acting as MC and were also a weekly mainstay on ABC’s nationally televised The Johnny Cash Show from 1969 to 1971. They continued as Cash’s support act on tour until 1972. However, the popularity of the The Statlers opened up numerous opportunities for the quartet and it became obviously to all parties that to further and fulfill their professional potential, they could no longer continue as a support act but tour as a headline act in their own right as a group. The parting of the ways between The Statlers and Johnny Cash was on amicable terms and they all still remained good friends with Cash and often mentioned the debt they owed to him as the person who have them their break and helped steer them into becoming country music’s most popular band.
The nostalgic flair of the Statlers was typically tempered by their sensitivity to the pop music zeitgeist. But on ‘I’ll Go To My Grave Loving You’, Don Reid channeled compositions made a century before, giving this deeply traditional, bluegrass-tinged love song the aura of a vintage hymn - in fact, it was a secular re-work of a straight-up gospel song composed by Don’s brother, Harold Reid, called ’He Went to the Cross Loving You’. The only new single from the best-selling album of their career, the triple-platinum compilation “The Best of the Statler Bros”, it bore little resemblance to its peers on the charts, but, with it’s compelling, beautiful, almost hypnotic repeating harmony (though the title has a somewhat amusing double meaning), it was among their most successful singles of the period – reaching # 3 in the U.S. and going all the way to # 1 in Canada in 1975 -
Don’t be put off by the slow start to the next song - it builds to a magnificent ending. As detailed yesterday, and as Lew DeWitt explains in the video below, Southern Gospel music is where the Statler Brothers started. Unlike many of their peers, though, they continued recording and performing religious songs even after finding mainstream secular success. So I think it most appropriate to include one pure Gospel song here - especially when it’s this good! The group released the classic hymn ’How Great Thou Art’ as a single in 1976 to promote a pair of gospel albums based on the Old and New Testament respectively. That was their only concession to commercialism, though. Both albums include Biblical readings at the beginning of almost every track, lest anyone be tempted to listen to the lovely harmonies without appropriate piety (keep in mind that back then, the term “Bible Belt, as applied to the South and mid-West really meant something, much more than these days, and the Statlers were well aware of their target market). Both the “Old“ and “New” Testament albums were certified gold -
It took 13 long years after their first chart success of ‘Counting Flowers, in 1965, and not a few near misses, but finally the Statlers had a single go all the way to # 1, in 1978. Singing about singing became something of another theme for the Statlers, and it never worked better than this up beat, feel-good song, in which a mystery woman walks up to the band and requests one of the most classic country music standards, Jimmie Davis’ ‘You Are My Sunshine‘ (posts # 151-152). This sweet song is told from the perspective of the person singing it, telling the other individual that they are their sunshine, they’re everything. Any person that’s ever found their special person can identify with this song. The traditional single (which only included a taste of countrypolitan strings) was the band’s first # 1 in 1978 – it was also the only time original Statler Brothers tenor Lew DeWitt would hit # 1 -
Released in 1979, ‘The Official Historian on Shirley Jean Berrell‘ was the 3rd and final single from the album, “Entertainers…On and Off the Record”. This musical recollection of various details regarding the life of Shirley Jean Berrell came as an uptempo tale told by the Don and Harold Reid. It peaked at # 5 in the U.S., # 7 in Canada. By the end of the song, the narrator outlining his in-depth knowledge of the subject, it was revealed the only thing he doesn’t know about Shirley Jean Berrell was her current whereabouts! -
All through their career, a lot of their appeal wasn’t purely just from their music but the comedy and parody found in their live musical acts, with Harold Reid in particular standing out as a natural comic talent. As a result, they were frequently nominated for awards for their comedy in addition to their music. In 1974 they recorded the comedy/parody album “Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School” under alter egos Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. This recording, in which some of Nashville’s best instrumentalists were invited to play their instruments very badly, became some of a comedy cult classic, with the band presenting as stereotype redneck hillbillies singing deliberately out of tune to an audience of bottle throwing hicks, becoming ever more drunk as the “concert” progressed.
Beginning in 1972 the Statler's were the CMA's Vocal Group of the Year for 9 of the next 12 years, including 6 years in a row. Add to that, 3 then prestigious Grammy's (back then, unlike this century, they weren’t given out like confetti but for very limited, meaningful categories), and you begin to get an idea of what the StatlerBrothers meant, not only to country music but to music, period. As the 1980’s dawned, The Statler Brothers reached their peak - though not without one major change forced upon them - so there’s more tomorrow.
I can’t but help reflect that if a similar themed song came out now - let’s call it “The Class of ‘97” - especially if it was by another Appalachian based group - this song would be a whole lot more pessimistic, with even fewer success stories, more dependent on welfare and a swathe of (mostly male) premature deaths due to fentanyl and suicides. But enough of that before I depress anyone by describing the poverty and hopelessness found in too many Appalachian towns these days.
As mentioned yesterday, starting from 1964, The Statlers toured with Johnny Cash’s road show as the opening act and with Don Reid acting as MC and were also a weekly mainstay on ABC’s nationally televised The Johnny Cash Show from 1969 to 1971. They continued as Cash’s support act on tour until 1972. However, the popularity of the The Statlers opened up numerous opportunities for the quartet and it became obviously to all parties that to further and fulfill their professional potential, they could no longer continue as a support act but tour as a headline act in their own right as a group. The parting of the ways between The Statlers and Johnny Cash was on amicable terms and they all still remained good friends with Cash and often mentioned the debt they owed to him as the person who have them their break and helped steer them into becoming country music’s most popular band.
The nostalgic flair of the Statlers was typically tempered by their sensitivity to the pop music zeitgeist. But on ‘I’ll Go To My Grave Loving You’, Don Reid channeled compositions made a century before, giving this deeply traditional, bluegrass-tinged love song the aura of a vintage hymn - in fact, it was a secular re-work of a straight-up gospel song composed by Don’s brother, Harold Reid, called ’He Went to the Cross Loving You’. The only new single from the best-selling album of their career, the triple-platinum compilation “The Best of the Statler Bros”, it bore little resemblance to its peers on the charts, but, with it’s compelling, beautiful, almost hypnotic repeating harmony (though the title has a somewhat amusing double meaning), it was among their most successful singles of the period – reaching # 3 in the U.S. and going all the way to # 1 in Canada in 1975 -
Don’t be put off by the slow start to the next song - it builds to a magnificent ending. As detailed yesterday, and as Lew DeWitt explains in the video below, Southern Gospel music is where the Statler Brothers started. Unlike many of their peers, though, they continued recording and performing religious songs even after finding mainstream secular success. So I think it most appropriate to include one pure Gospel song here - especially when it’s this good! The group released the classic hymn ’How Great Thou Art’ as a single in 1976 to promote a pair of gospel albums based on the Old and New Testament respectively. That was their only concession to commercialism, though. Both albums include Biblical readings at the beginning of almost every track, lest anyone be tempted to listen to the lovely harmonies without appropriate piety (keep in mind that back then, the term “Bible Belt, as applied to the South and mid-West really meant something, much more than these days, and the Statlers were well aware of their target market). Both the “Old“ and “New” Testament albums were certified gold -
It took 13 long years after their first chart success of ‘Counting Flowers, in 1965, and not a few near misses, but finally the Statlers had a single go all the way to # 1, in 1978. Singing about singing became something of another theme for the Statlers, and it never worked better than this up beat, feel-good song, in which a mystery woman walks up to the band and requests one of the most classic country music standards, Jimmie Davis’ ‘You Are My Sunshine‘ (posts # 151-152). This sweet song is told from the perspective of the person singing it, telling the other individual that they are their sunshine, they’re everything. Any person that’s ever found their special person can identify with this song. The traditional single (which only included a taste of countrypolitan strings) was the band’s first # 1 in 1978 – it was also the only time original Statler Brothers tenor Lew DeWitt would hit # 1 -
Released in 1979, ‘The Official Historian on Shirley Jean Berrell‘ was the 3rd and final single from the album, “Entertainers…On and Off the Record”. This musical recollection of various details regarding the life of Shirley Jean Berrell came as an uptempo tale told by the Don and Harold Reid. It peaked at # 5 in the U.S., # 7 in Canada. By the end of the song, the narrator outlining his in-depth knowledge of the subject, it was revealed the only thing he doesn’t know about Shirley Jean Berrell was her current whereabouts! -
All through their career, a lot of their appeal wasn’t purely just from their music but the comedy and parody found in their live musical acts, with Harold Reid in particular standing out as a natural comic talent. As a result, they were frequently nominated for awards for their comedy in addition to their music. In 1974 they recorded the comedy/parody album “Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School” under alter egos Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys. This recording, in which some of Nashville’s best instrumentalists were invited to play their instruments very badly, became some of a comedy cult classic, with the band presenting as stereotype redneck hillbillies singing deliberately out of tune to an audience of bottle throwing hicks, becoming ever more drunk as the “concert” progressed.
Beginning in 1972 the Statler's were the CMA's Vocal Group of the Year for 9 of the next 12 years, including 6 years in a row. Add to that, 3 then prestigious Grammy's (back then, unlike this century, they weren’t given out like confetti but for very limited, meaningful categories), and you begin to get an idea of what the StatlerBrothers meant, not only to country music but to music, period. As the 1980’s dawned, The Statler Brothers reached their peak - though not without one major change forced upon them - so there’s more tomorrow.
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