I enjoyed that - so, how was the show?
-
LIVE: GWS Giants v Brisbane Lions - 7:30PM Sat
Squiggle tips Lions at 65% chance -- What's your tip? -- Team line-ups »
-
AFLW 2024 - Round 3 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Country Music
- Thread starter Mitchell Madness
- Start date
- Tagged users None
I enjoyed that - so, how was the show?
Short, but good. They probably don't have alot of songs yet.
Sound was not perfect but it worked.
I'm finally back for the next country music history instalment - again going back to the start of the 1980's, this time with an artist who first made his mark as a songwriter but determined to make it a performer. And just like our last features artist, Razzie Bailey, he found "overnight success" as a performer, not just a songwriter, after some 20 years in the business. But once he broke through to major commercial success, he sustained his success all the way through the 1980's, his chart success rivalled by a solo artist by Ronnie Milsap (posts # 732-737) and the band Alabama (#1,009-1,016). He has influenced today's generation of country singers - one in particular. He also stands out for performing using all his 3 names.
Born Earl Conley in the once important Ohio River town Portsmouth, Ohio in 1941 the 3rd of 8 children in an and grew up in the hardscrabble Ohio working class iron and steel factory town just as it commenced its long decline to a rust belt town, losing over half its population. The son of a railroad man, he showed his creative bent early - but painting was his first love, a passion that began at age 10. It was also his way out of a town in decline and when his father lost his railway job when Earl was 14, thanks to the rise of road transport which bypassed the toen, he was more than ready to live with his sister in the much bigger Dayton, Ohio, where he continued to paint and learn more about the art that seemed to direct his life.
Upon high school graduation, Earl seem prepared to accept an art scholarship at a local college but at the last minute, doubting his ability to earn a sufficient livelihood through art painting, he instead opted to join the army. It was there he found a different creative outlet as a member of a Christian-influenced trio, his musical talent and vocal ability were first realised. As he continued to perform, Earl’s feelings towards the country music his father had played for him as a child grew stronger and seemed to take a hold of him. He also figured that entertaining wasn’t a bad way to make a living.
This new found inspiration fuelled the young Conley to seek an education in country music, a love he inherited from his father. Recordings by legends Hank Williams, Ray Price, Buck Owens and George Jones, Ray were the basis of this education, serving as a solid foundation for Conley, who, further showing his creative side, began to write songs around this early period. Following his Army discharge in 1968, Conley came to central Tennessee, working a series of blue-collar day jobs and commuting to Nashville, playing in bars and honkytonks at night, hoping, like so many others, to be noticed. In 1971 he made his Nashville recording debut coupling his version of The Band's 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' with his own self-penned 'River Of Teardrops'. Released by the small local label Prize Records. The single quickly disappeared, failing to make any kind of impact.
With success eluding him during every Nashville visit, Conley, at age 30, moved down to Huntsville, Alabama in 1971 to work in a steel mill. But while there, playing at nights in local bars, he finally got noticed by producer Nelson Larkin, who got him signed to the independent label GRT in 1974. Over the next 2 years, he released 4 singles on the label, all self-penned - 'I Have Loved You Girl (But Not Like This Before)', a country-soul ballad, reached # 87 in 1975 (8 years later he re-recorded the song for RCA, which peaked at # 2). He fared a little better with 'High And Wild' going to # 67 and 'Queen Of New Orleans' at # 77 for GRT.
Nelson Larkin introduced Conley to Mel Street's producer, Dick Heard (who wrote and produced 'Kentucky Rain' for Elvis, amongst other hits), in Nashville. This led to Earl moving back to Nashville. co-writing with Heard and being signed to a publishing contract by Larkin. Influenced by everyone from Hank Williams to the Eagles, Conley delved into the details of songwriting, trying to learn the craft by following the "rules and regulations" of the often formulaic Music Row commercial songwriting community. Eventually, torn by the limits of the "rules" he found his own niche by breaking many of those same rules, his lyrics often going beyond the formula, exploring the contradictions and paradoxes of love, lust, desire and infidelities.
Though his own modest chart success was respectable for a still largely unknown artist (at least unknown to the wider public, though by now imbedded within the industry as a songwriter), Conley was eclipsed by other artists who were having hits with his songs. Larkin gave his brother Billy, 'Leave It Up To Me', which became the first Conley song to reach the Top 20. It was followed shortly afterwards in 1975 by Mel Street’s # 13 hit 'Smokey Mountain Memories' (see post # 628), a co-write with Dick Heard, and then came Conway Twitty’s version of 'This Time I’ve Hurt Her (More Than She Loves Me)', which went all the way to # 1 in early 1976. Now as this song wasn't amongst my Conway Twitty song selection (posts # 514-520) - Twitty being country music's biggest selling 1970's star and I just couldn't fit all his 45 # 1 hits in - and also to emphasise the point (as I've done with some other featured artists) that at this early stage in his career, Conley was better known as a songwriter than as an entertainer, I thought I'd start Conly's song selection with this 1976 # 1 hit he wrote for Twitty -
Despite his new found success as a writer of hits, Conley, like other songwriters before him like Whispering Bill Anderson (# 449-454), Tom T Hall (# 611-617), Kris Kristofferson (# 661-667), Willie Nelson (# 782-793), Rodney Crowell, Matraca Berd, Chris Stapleton and Natalie Hemby, amongst others, Conley was still determined to make it as an entertainer in his own right. In 1977, Conley signed with Warner Bros. By the end of 1977, he had begun performing and releasing records under his full name, Earl Thomas Conley and in early 1979 he had his first Top 40 hit, 'Dreamin’s All I Do'. However, none of his Warner singles became big hits, and he left the label at the end of 1979 with his recordings now released by his producers Nelson Larkin’s own label, Sunbird Records. This led to the release of "Blue Pearl", his first album which included his version of 'This Time I Hurt Her (More Than She Loves Me) the chart-topping song he’d written for Conway Twitty as per above plus four of the songs from his stint on Warner Bros.
All of the songs on Conley's 1980's 'Blue Pearl' album were self-penned, many dealing with the complications of love, drinking or a mixture of the two. This is the album that earned Conley the thinking-man label. 'Middle-Age Madness' and 'Blue and Green' stand out as classically written profiles of people in pain. Though the themes used were far from original for country music, the musicianship and vocal work were assured and confidently professional for a debut album - not so surprising given that Conley, at age 40, had chalked some 20 years of experience either full or part-time in the industry.
Conley’s first single for Sunbird, 'Silent Treatment' from the "Blue Pearl " album, was an immediate Top 10 hit in late 1980, reaching # 7. A mid-tempo ballad about a woman giving her guy the cold shoulder, a tactic he says is “... working on me ...", ushered in a decade of chart dominance began with one of Conley’s finest in-studio performances as a vocal stylist. It also sets the pace for a Conley playlist that often deals with matters of the heart. -
Conley than had a stroke of luck when major label RCA bought out Sunbird, including all of its recordings.Following this, RCA, impressed with Conleys debut album, signed Conley to a long-term deal. Conley's first album for RCA, "Fire And Smoke", released in 1981, utilised all the Sunbird recordings as his first session for RCA didn’t take place until 1982. It was jointly produced by Nelson Larkin and Earl. The 2nd single and title track "Fire And Smoke" (previously included in the "Blue Pearl" album),went all the way to # 1 early in 1981, marking Conley's entry into a new realm of stardom. 'Fire And Smoke' benefits from being the work of a fully realised, mature artist who had already established a signature sound and a radio friendly writing style. It’s one of those country songs that makes one wonder why nobody had ever written it before, contrasting the fiery passion of a love affair with the storm of heartache that extinguishes it -
".." But if there’s fire and smoke / Ooh, what a rush I got when your love was hot /
Oh, but I couldn’t see that when the flame burned out / You’d leave a cold dark cloud, a raining down on me ..." -
At the end of 1981, Billboard named 'Fire And Smoke' as the #1 charting song for the year.
Also from the album, 'Tell Me Why' reached # 10 in late 1981, followed shortly afterwards by the # 16 'After The Love Slips Away' - but here I'm selecting it's hard core country B-side. As mentioned above, one of Conley’s first big breaks in the ‘70s came after this co-write 'Smokey Mountain Memories' became a 1975 hit for the hard core honky tonker, Mel Street. Conley’s own bluegrass-inspired recording proves his vocal delivery and lyrical style could handle more than the post-Urban Cowboy pop-country -
Thanks to the success of the 1981 'Fire And Smoke' album, and the insightful lyrics of his self-penned hits, Earl Thomas Conley songs picked up the label "thinking man's country", a label that stuck with him even as his music became decidedly aimed at the commercial market through to the mid 1980's.
As Conley soon found out, one downside of stardom for a songwriter signed to a major label is the demand to have the next album out there to the market while you're running hot. The difficulty for a songwriter is in continuously coming up with new commercial hit songs - and, like most other artists who found themselves in this situation, Conley turned to songs written by others - in his case, his fellow Nashville based songwriters he knew well - to fill out some of his next album.
Written by Elaine Lifton, Gloria Nissenson and jazz great Lee Ritenour and released in 1982 as the first single from the "Somewhere Between Right and Wrong" album, 'Heavenly Bodies' reached #8. Here, Conley shows he also had a lighter side, having a very excellent night out in a dream bar chasing a batch of willing gorgeous honky tonk angels - or are they chasing him, seemingly being the only male at the bar. So he cheekily, cheerily or cheesily likens this bevy of honky tonk angels to stargazing in this cross between easy listening pop and Tex-Mex country music, but all just a good bit of fun, no doubt best experienced live -
So that's today's quota, with Earl Thomas Conley becoming another country music entertainer to finally earn stardom at a mature age - in his case at age 40 - after some 20 years of striving - another example of authentic country music being best appreciated with some life experience - good and bad - behind ones self. Tomorrow (hopefully) will see more from Conley's 1982 "Somewhere Between Right and Wrong" album and beyond.
One last thing for today - technically Conley was unusual for a country singer as he wasn't quite from the official South, being born and raised in Ohio. However, his home city of Portsmouth was just an bridge across the Ohio River from the official South of Kentucky. Also, this region at the Southern edge of Ohio was originally mostly settled by Southerners and though I haven't delved into his parents background and ancestry, they were surely Southerners. Why am I so sure!? Simple - it's because they named their third child Earle - a name very common, even synonymous with the South - and just about unused everywhere else! The great, just departed, actor James Earl Jones, who was born in the Mississippi delta is just one other example, amongst many others, of this fact.
Born Earl Conley in the once important Ohio River town Portsmouth, Ohio in 1941 the 3rd of 8 children in an and grew up in the hardscrabble Ohio working class iron and steel factory town just as it commenced its long decline to a rust belt town, losing over half its population. The son of a railroad man, he showed his creative bent early - but painting was his first love, a passion that began at age 10. It was also his way out of a town in decline and when his father lost his railway job when Earl was 14, thanks to the rise of road transport which bypassed the toen, he was more than ready to live with his sister in the much bigger Dayton, Ohio, where he continued to paint and learn more about the art that seemed to direct his life.
Upon high school graduation, Earl seem prepared to accept an art scholarship at a local college but at the last minute, doubting his ability to earn a sufficient livelihood through art painting, he instead opted to join the army. It was there he found a different creative outlet as a member of a Christian-influenced trio, his musical talent and vocal ability were first realised. As he continued to perform, Earl’s feelings towards the country music his father had played for him as a child grew stronger and seemed to take a hold of him. He also figured that entertaining wasn’t a bad way to make a living.
This new found inspiration fuelled the young Conley to seek an education in country music, a love he inherited from his father. Recordings by legends Hank Williams, Ray Price, Buck Owens and George Jones, Ray were the basis of this education, serving as a solid foundation for Conley, who, further showing his creative side, began to write songs around this early period. Following his Army discharge in 1968, Conley came to central Tennessee, working a series of blue-collar day jobs and commuting to Nashville, playing in bars and honkytonks at night, hoping, like so many others, to be noticed. In 1971 he made his Nashville recording debut coupling his version of The Band's 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' with his own self-penned 'River Of Teardrops'. Released by the small local label Prize Records. The single quickly disappeared, failing to make any kind of impact.
With success eluding him during every Nashville visit, Conley, at age 30, moved down to Huntsville, Alabama in 1971 to work in a steel mill. But while there, playing at nights in local bars, he finally got noticed by producer Nelson Larkin, who got him signed to the independent label GRT in 1974. Over the next 2 years, he released 4 singles on the label, all self-penned - 'I Have Loved You Girl (But Not Like This Before)', a country-soul ballad, reached # 87 in 1975 (8 years later he re-recorded the song for RCA, which peaked at # 2). He fared a little better with 'High And Wild' going to # 67 and 'Queen Of New Orleans' at # 77 for GRT.
Nelson Larkin introduced Conley to Mel Street's producer, Dick Heard (who wrote and produced 'Kentucky Rain' for Elvis, amongst other hits), in Nashville. This led to Earl moving back to Nashville. co-writing with Heard and being signed to a publishing contract by Larkin. Influenced by everyone from Hank Williams to the Eagles, Conley delved into the details of songwriting, trying to learn the craft by following the "rules and regulations" of the often formulaic Music Row commercial songwriting community. Eventually, torn by the limits of the "rules" he found his own niche by breaking many of those same rules, his lyrics often going beyond the formula, exploring the contradictions and paradoxes of love, lust, desire and infidelities.
Though his own modest chart success was respectable for a still largely unknown artist (at least unknown to the wider public, though by now imbedded within the industry as a songwriter), Conley was eclipsed by other artists who were having hits with his songs. Larkin gave his brother Billy, 'Leave It Up To Me', which became the first Conley song to reach the Top 20. It was followed shortly afterwards in 1975 by Mel Street’s # 13 hit 'Smokey Mountain Memories' (see post # 628), a co-write with Dick Heard, and then came Conway Twitty’s version of 'This Time I’ve Hurt Her (More Than She Loves Me)', which went all the way to # 1 in early 1976. Now as this song wasn't amongst my Conway Twitty song selection (posts # 514-520) - Twitty being country music's biggest selling 1970's star and I just couldn't fit all his 45 # 1 hits in - and also to emphasise the point (as I've done with some other featured artists) that at this early stage in his career, Conley was better known as a songwriter than as an entertainer, I thought I'd start Conly's song selection with this 1976 # 1 hit he wrote for Twitty -
Despite his new found success as a writer of hits, Conley, like other songwriters before him like Whispering Bill Anderson (# 449-454), Tom T Hall (# 611-617), Kris Kristofferson (# 661-667), Willie Nelson (# 782-793), Rodney Crowell, Matraca Berd, Chris Stapleton and Natalie Hemby, amongst others, Conley was still determined to make it as an entertainer in his own right. In 1977, Conley signed with Warner Bros. By the end of 1977, he had begun performing and releasing records under his full name, Earl Thomas Conley and in early 1979 he had his first Top 40 hit, 'Dreamin’s All I Do'. However, none of his Warner singles became big hits, and he left the label at the end of 1979 with his recordings now released by his producers Nelson Larkin’s own label, Sunbird Records. This led to the release of "Blue Pearl", his first album which included his version of 'This Time I Hurt Her (More Than She Loves Me) the chart-topping song he’d written for Conway Twitty as per above plus four of the songs from his stint on Warner Bros.
All of the songs on Conley's 1980's 'Blue Pearl' album were self-penned, many dealing with the complications of love, drinking or a mixture of the two. This is the album that earned Conley the thinking-man label. 'Middle-Age Madness' and 'Blue and Green' stand out as classically written profiles of people in pain. Though the themes used were far from original for country music, the musicianship and vocal work were assured and confidently professional for a debut album - not so surprising given that Conley, at age 40, had chalked some 20 years of experience either full or part-time in the industry.
Conley’s first single for Sunbird, 'Silent Treatment' from the "Blue Pearl " album, was an immediate Top 10 hit in late 1980, reaching # 7. A mid-tempo ballad about a woman giving her guy the cold shoulder, a tactic he says is “... working on me ...", ushered in a decade of chart dominance began with one of Conley’s finest in-studio performances as a vocal stylist. It also sets the pace for a Conley playlist that often deals with matters of the heart. -
Conley than had a stroke of luck when major label RCA bought out Sunbird, including all of its recordings.Following this, RCA, impressed with Conleys debut album, signed Conley to a long-term deal. Conley's first album for RCA, "Fire And Smoke", released in 1981, utilised all the Sunbird recordings as his first session for RCA didn’t take place until 1982. It was jointly produced by Nelson Larkin and Earl. The 2nd single and title track "Fire And Smoke" (previously included in the "Blue Pearl" album),went all the way to # 1 early in 1981, marking Conley's entry into a new realm of stardom. 'Fire And Smoke' benefits from being the work of a fully realised, mature artist who had already established a signature sound and a radio friendly writing style. It’s one of those country songs that makes one wonder why nobody had ever written it before, contrasting the fiery passion of a love affair with the storm of heartache that extinguishes it -
".." But if there’s fire and smoke / Ooh, what a rush I got when your love was hot /
Oh, but I couldn’t see that when the flame burned out / You’d leave a cold dark cloud, a raining down on me ..." -
At the end of 1981, Billboard named 'Fire And Smoke' as the #1 charting song for the year.
Also from the album, 'Tell Me Why' reached # 10 in late 1981, followed shortly afterwards by the # 16 'After The Love Slips Away' - but here I'm selecting it's hard core country B-side. As mentioned above, one of Conley’s first big breaks in the ‘70s came after this co-write 'Smokey Mountain Memories' became a 1975 hit for the hard core honky tonker, Mel Street. Conley’s own bluegrass-inspired recording proves his vocal delivery and lyrical style could handle more than the post-Urban Cowboy pop-country -
Thanks to the success of the 1981 'Fire And Smoke' album, and the insightful lyrics of his self-penned hits, Earl Thomas Conley songs picked up the label "thinking man's country", a label that stuck with him even as his music became decidedly aimed at the commercial market through to the mid 1980's.
As Conley soon found out, one downside of stardom for a songwriter signed to a major label is the demand to have the next album out there to the market while you're running hot. The difficulty for a songwriter is in continuously coming up with new commercial hit songs - and, like most other artists who found themselves in this situation, Conley turned to songs written by others - in his case, his fellow Nashville based songwriters he knew well - to fill out some of his next album.
Written by Elaine Lifton, Gloria Nissenson and jazz great Lee Ritenour and released in 1982 as the first single from the "Somewhere Between Right and Wrong" album, 'Heavenly Bodies' reached #8. Here, Conley shows he also had a lighter side, having a very excellent night out in a dream bar chasing a batch of willing gorgeous honky tonk angels - or are they chasing him, seemingly being the only male at the bar. So he cheekily, cheerily or cheesily likens this bevy of honky tonk angels to stargazing in this cross between easy listening pop and Tex-Mex country music, but all just a good bit of fun, no doubt best experienced live -
So that's today's quota, with Earl Thomas Conley becoming another country music entertainer to finally earn stardom at a mature age - in his case at age 40 - after some 20 years of striving - another example of authentic country music being best appreciated with some life experience - good and bad - behind ones self. Tomorrow (hopefully) will see more from Conley's 1982 "Somewhere Between Right and Wrong" album and beyond.
One last thing for today - technically Conley was unusual for a country singer as he wasn't quite from the official South, being born and raised in Ohio. However, his home city of Portsmouth was just an bridge across the Ohio River from the official South of Kentucky. Also, this region at the Southern edge of Ohio was originally mostly settled by Southerners and though I haven't delved into his parents background and ancestry, they were surely Southerners. Why am I so sure!? Simple - it's because they named their third child Earle - a name very common, even synonymous with the South - and just about unused everywhere else! The great, just departed, actor James Earl Jones, who was born in the Mississippi delta is just one other example, amongst many others, of this fact.
