Country Music

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stax on the mull said:
R.I.P. to the "singing Texan Jew" Kinky Friedman. (1 Nov 1944 - 27 June 2024). Writer of the sh*t-stirring classics: "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore", and the song that earned him the Male Chauvinist Pig of The Year Award in 1973, "Get Your Biscuits In The Oven and Your Buns In The Bed".

He also wrote some sensitive ballads - of particular greatness are: "Ride 'Em Jewboy" - an allegorical c&w tribute to the victims of the holocaust and "Sold American", title song of his 1973 debut album for Vanguard Records.

Found this curious rendition of the latter song performed with Bob Dylan playing some less is more style accompanying guitar on a live TV recording for a Jewish Telethon.

Click to expand...

Well picked up - Friedman sure was a Texan original. Besides his Male Chauvinist Pig of The Year award, another of his accomplishments is that he and his band taped an Austin City Limits show in 1975 which never aired - the first and only time in the show's long history an episode went unaired. The songs he performed apparently offended everyone on the far right, anyone on the far left …. and everyone else in between - so it sounds like it was a great show. He ran for Texas Governor in 2006 as an independent and attained a respectable 12.6%. of the vote.

He also claimed he was the first full blooded Jew to perform on the Grand Ole Opry.
 
So l’m back from my brief Samoan jaunt with some more history, as promised. Now I have to confess I’ve been in 2 minds about today’s artist - for her peak popularity was due to a string of hits that strayed very much on the pop side of country pop (in complete contrast to my honky tonk taste). However, this means she’s about the best example of the state of popular country music c1980 - and also sets the scene for the reaction to come against it.

Furthermore, her country-pop peak of the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, (when she also became a TV and film star) is not the sum total of her music catalog, with her professional charting career going through 3 distinct phases. The first, the early to mid 1970’s will be featured today (so yes, I could’ve introduced her earlier in this history, instead of her career peak c1980, but the narrative of her being the perfect 1980 country-pop example works well. And also, there’s no doubting her all-round musical talent, being a multi-instrumentalist since childhood, especially accomplished on the pedal steel and possessing a rich, timbre laden voice - probably enhanced by her chain smoking. So, with all the bad and good thrown in, here we go.

Barbara Mantrell was born in Houston on Christmas Day 1948, her father, Irby Mantrell, was a travelling country singer and steel guitarist, her mother a music teacher and pianist. The family soon moved to Corpus Christi, South Texas, where her father had decided to settle down with a “real job” as a police officer and the family soon grew with 2 additional daughters. Her mother taught Barbara to read music before she could read words and play the accordion before she was 5. At age 6, the family moved to Oceanside, just North of San Diego, California where Irby opened his own music store, A true prodigy, by age 11, Barbara had also become proficient in playing piano, bass, guitar, 5 string banjo and saxophone. But, even more remarkably, expertly tutored by her father, she mastered the difficult triple-neck pedal steel guitar by age 11.

Barbara’s unusual prowess on the pedal steel guitar, despite her tender age, prompted her father to take her to a music trade show in Chicago in 1969. Her accomplished performance there caught the attention of legendary guitarists, Chet Atkins) and "Uncle" Joe Maphis. After her landmark performance at the show, Maphis invited Barbara to join his show at the Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas. Maphis also helped her secure a regular spot on the California country music TV show Town Hall Party. In 1962, aged 13, Barbara was touring as a steel guitar phenomenon with The Johnny Cash Show, alongside legendary guests such as Patsy Cline, George Jones and June Carter. As she was underage, Barbara shared hotel rooms with Cline. She also performed steel guitar for Red Foley, Little Jimmy Dickens and Tex Ritter and was given the moniker, “The Princess of Steel”.

All the while, when she wasn’t on the road touring or performing each Summer holidays at the Showboat in Las Vegas, Barbara just found enough time to become a high school honours student, successful track athlete, playing saxophone in the marching band and elected to serve on student council. In 1965, aged 16, she won the annual “Miss Oceanside, California” title.

Barbara’s musical parents hadn’t just provided Barbara with a music education. Younger sister, Louise, became a bassist and fiddler; Irlene, the youngest, picked up the drums. So in 1966, Irby, going back to his former profession, formed the Mandrell Family Band, including all 3 daughters, with Barbara on pedal steel guitar, mother Mary on piano, and father Irby on lead vocals. Irby also hired 2 outside musicians including Barbara’s future husband Ken Dudney, as the drummer.

Ten days shy of her high school graduation in 1967, at age 18, Barbara married Dudley and promptly made the decision to step away from the music industry to focus on being a wife. She’d just returned from an exhausting tour to Vietnam where the Mandrell Family Band entertained the troops and, having already been working professionally for nearly 8 years while also excelling at high school. Her husband also retired from the band and joined the Navy to become a pilot.

Two years later, in 1969, Mandrell found herself alone and feeling lonely, her husband having been posted overseas for his Navy pilot career. So she moved from her Oceanside home to live with her parents, who had just moved to Nashville. There, the family attended a performance at the Grand Ole Opry, where Mandrell had a come-to-Jesus moment while sitting in the balcony of the Ryman Auditorium with her father, watching another female performer on stage - My father took me to see the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in my life, at the Ryman. We sat in the center of the balcony. And I remember watching the wonderful stars perform – Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn; it was wonderful. But I had quit when I became a Navy bride, you know? I looked at my dad and I said, “Dad, I don’t want to be down here. I want to be up there. I want to do this. What do you think? Would you manage me?” And my father said, quote - “I would bet my last penny on you”. Thus was her future cast that night at the Opry. Not destined for a life of sitting in the audience. Mandrell’s passion was reignited and she made the decision to get back on stage and give it her all as a solo artist.

With the decision to return to the music industry- this time as a solo artist - finalised, her husband then gave up his naval careeer and moved to Nashville to be with and support her. Wiithin weeks, given her undoubted talent as both a singer and multi instrumentalist, Mandrell had contract offers from 6 different labels. She signed with famed Countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill at Columbia and within months her first single made the charts in 1969, albeit topping out at a very modest # 55, with a remake of Otis Redding’s classic ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ It’s pretty hard for anyone to cover Otis Redding, much less cover one of his most iconic songs – but Mandrell’s first charting single was a valiant attempt to do just that, one that stands well on its own (and sounds different enough not to instantly beg comparison). Her unforced countrified rendition of the classic soul track showcases her effortless vocal ability and its lightly smoky quality (her vocal was seasoned by being a chain smoker when not on stage), helps her versions of soul and R&B songs have a convincing heft -


After scoring 2 Top 20 hits in 1970 (despite the birth of her first child) with the Billy Sherrill penned ‘Foolin Around In Love’ reaching # 18 and a countrified cover of Aretha Franklin’s 1967 hit ‘Do Right Woman Do Right Man’ at # 17, Mantrell followed up with a hoe-down-ready take on the 1965 Roy Head white-soul hit ‘Treat Her Right’. Mandrell’s 1970’s version shows her early versatility. Rather than just countrifying an R&B song, as she had done with some of her other singles up to this point, she drew out the sweetness and seduction in a blues style that already had a rockabilly bent. A little retro even for its time, the release nevertheless worked well for the still up-and-coming singer, reaching # 12 -


Her early success garnered 21 year old Mandrell the ACM Top New Female Vocalist award in 1970 and a membership to the Grand Ole Opry in 1972.

A shared producer in Billy Sherrill led to a series of collaborations between Barbara Mandrell and the now underrated hit-maker, David Houston (see posts # 487-488). While Houston was already at the top of the heap, mainly via his massive hit from 1967 (# 487), Mandrell hadn’t even released her first album when they recorded their first and most successful duet, 1970's ‘After Closing Time’, which became Mandrell's first Top 10 hit, going to # 6, matched by their 1972 duet ‘I Love You, I Love You’, amongst their 5 duet singles placed in the Top 40 from 1970 to 1973. However, better than all these, IMO, came from their 1973 album “A Perfect Match” when Houston revisited the record breaking success (a record finally broken by Taylor Swift in 2012) of his 1966 classic hit ‘Almost Persuaded’. Her silky-smooth vocal delivery and harmony vocals adds to Houston’s already potent sense of longing -


I read somewhere on the net just a few day ago that women cheat just as much, and probably even more, than men, and are better at covering their tracks to avoid being sprung - a finding which, in my experience, doesn’t surprise in the least. And here, to grasp the appeal of Mandrell’s early, rootsy solo material, one need look no further than the relatively rare cheating song from the guilty woman’s point of view, ‘The Midnight Oil’, a tale of unfaithfulness, framed as a working woman burning the midnight oil instead of coming home to her husband. Not only is the narrator working late instead of running home to her beau, but she’s also lying about working late to continue a torrid workplace affair. A gentle, almost folksy instrumental backs Mandrell as she croons some (then fairly risqué) sweet nothings to her unsuspecting partner. The song reached # 7 in 1973 and led Mandrell to record a string of infidelity-centric singles -
“… And tonight I'll cheat again / and tomorrow I'll be sorry /
And I'll feel kind of dirty / 'cause I'll have the midnight oil all over me …” -


Mandrell’s first top 5 hit arrived in 1975 with her first recordings at ABC/Dot Records, which were produced by Tom Collins – the same producer who would steer the most commercially successful pop influenced years of her career. This mournful Susan Manchester and Charles Silver penned single, ‘Standing Room Only’, complete with John Hughey’s distinctive crying pedal steel, allowed Mandrell to show her power and ability within a softer, more subtle range. Unlike most of her subsequent output under Collins, this single was much more country than pop, with a twang discernible even in its dramatic chorus -


So, after a more tradition-grounded run with Columbia and producer Billy Sherrill from 1969 to 1974, Mandrell signed with ABC/Dot. A new label and a new producer in Tom Collins set the wheels in motion for a long run of pop and adult contemporary-friendly hits that made the most of Mandrell's vocal talents - but whose pop production values, including the heavy use of synthesisers and disco beats created an inevitable backlash amongst country music traditionalists - more on this tomorrow when the second of Mandrell’s distinct 3 phase career is explored. But for now, I’ll be heading off to the ‘G.
 

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Having covered the first phase of Barbara Mandrell’s charting career, from 1969 to 1975, with a brief interlude for 1976, during which she gained 2 more Top 20 hits and gave birth to her second child, a daughter, today will have the second phase, label switch to ABC/Dot and a new country-pop sound, that often erred into more pop than country. From 1977 to 1983, which was - by far - the most commercially successful period of her career, she enjoyed consistent high chart success.

In these years, after not having any of her hits go Top5, she scored 6 # 1 hits, placed another 9 in the Top 5 and a further 10 in the Top 10. But make no mistake about it - she achieved (under the guidance of producer Paul Collin’s), this commercial success was a result of infusing her music with pop elements including the heavy use of such non-country “instruments” as the synethiser and disco drum beats. The result was music which was in fashion at the time with a broad suburban audience and sold very well - even though derided by the critics at the time and largely forgotten since.

Now this gave me a dilemma - should I spend the next couple of days inflicting - both on myself and anyone else here - an unrelenting parade of Mantrell’s biggest country-pop hits, justifying it as being the best example of the often dire state of country music around 1978 to 1983? And the answer is - NO! I couldn’t do it. Instead, I chose 3 # 1 hits - her first 2 in this selection, which I consider tolerable, recorded in 1978 before the pop elements in her hit songs were ramped up even further, and one other which was, by very deliberate intent, an actual country song. One other selection here, a B-side of one of Mantrell,’s pop laden hits, is a lilting county song that originated in the UK while the last also stood out for having its pop elements muted.

Two more comments before we plunge into her music. I’ve made this point before - I never blame any professional singer, out there trying to make a living, for choosing commercial success over any sense of music “purity”. In this case, Mandrell had a husband and 2 children to support and obviously wanted to keep a major label contract. It just so happened that in this period from c1978 to c1983, this sort of pop-laden country with synthesisers and disco beats was actually the most popular, top selling version of country music, appealing to a large suburban (if not necessarily traditional country music) market, so artists can’t really be blamed for “compromising” their music. At least her song lyrics were still mostly country themed - it was the production elements that were not.

The second point is, for all of Mandrell’s foray into pop elements, her songs still had very limited success in the pop market, which itself was in a dire state with a string of disco horrors like ‘Disco Duck’ topping the charts. She had only one of her songs (the second selection below), make the Pop Top 49, at a modest # 31. Given her very high profile, this surprised me but I haven’t the time to explore this further - so it’s time to get back to her music.

It took nearly a decade and a considerable stylistic shift, but Mandrell finally ascended to the top of country’s A-list with her new country pop sound an image make-over, reaping a # 1 hit with the Kye Fleming and Dennis Morgan Penned ‘Sleeping Single In a Double Bed’, a jaunty single tailor-made for exercise classes or movie montages sort of song. Despite the song’s supposed themes of loneliness and regret, the song is undeniably (at least for those who bought it) fun and catchy – no surprise, then, it was revived several decades later via a Dave Audé dance remix -


Like many of her early songs, Mandrell’s biggest crossover hit had an extended first life as a massively successful R&B single. ‘If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Wrong), written by the famed Stax Studio songwriters in Memphis (now one of the must visit Memphis places for music lovers), was first recorded by Luther Ingram in 1973, reached # 3 on the Pop chart and was subsequently covered by just about every R&B and blues singer under the sun. This became Mandrell’s 2nd # 1 hit in 1979 and crossed over, reaching # 6 on the AC chart and was also her first and only Top 40 Pop hit, reaching # 32. Mandrell’s version opens with a dramatic, seductive combination of bass in strings that sets up an evocative take on the sultry ballad - but ultimately this is only made convincing by the depth of Mandrell’s voice. -


Fortunately, amongst the albums Mandrell released in this period, not all songs were soaked with pop/disco elements. So instead of inflicting (both on myself and you) some of her following top charting big country-pop hits, that really stretched the boundaries of what should be considered as country, I’m going for something very different - and most definitely country.

‘Darlin’ (not to be confused with the Beach Boys song of the same name) has an interesting background. Written back in 1970 by English sax player Oscar Stewart Blandamer, it was first released under the title ‘Darling’ in 1978 by the English country band Poacher (who had won the British TV talent show New Faces in 1977.). Scottish rocker Frankie Miller then covered it for his 1979 “Falling in Love” album and had a major international hit with it.It reached # 6 in the UK pop chart and went all the way to # 1 in Norway. It also was a Top 5 hit in Austria (# 3), Switzerland (# 2), West Germany (#5) and it also reached # 8 in Australia in 1979.

Following the international success of Frankie Miller’s cover, it was covered in the US in 1979 by David Rogers. Rogers (who placed songs into the charts every year from 1968 to 1984 bar one, without ever really hitting the bing time, his best being 2 # 9 hits) earned one of his five Top 20 hits in this 17 year period, reaching #18.

Mandrell released her version in 1979 as the B-side to her pop single "Years“ - and it’s a far more enjoyable listen than the pop soaked A-side hit. Mandrell’s singing rarely gets rawer than this unlikely cover, released just after Rogers’ version first entered the American charts. The style couldn’t be more different than the disco-tinged pop and string-laden ballads Mandrell was simultaneously bringing to the top of the charts. With gentle acoustic guitar and a bluesy, raspy inflection, here is an almost completely different Mandrell – an artist comfortable with marrying harmonica, acoustic guitar and synths to excellent effect -

In 1981 Welsh pop singer Tom Jones released his cover of ‘Darlin’ as a single and title song from his “Darlin” album. Jones' rendition also reached the U.S. country Top 20, peaking at #19.

It was inevitable Mandrell’s pop soaked hits provoked a reaction. ‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool’, undoubtedly Mandrell’s most enduring, was released at the exact moment when she was at her most dominant – she was on TV alongside her sisters every week, and a fixture of the country charts’ upper echelons, thanks in large part to hit singles that were … scorned by country music purists and by music critics in general. So her label, ABC/dot decided to strike back at the growing list of critics.

‘I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool’ is Mandrell’s reply to her many critics - first pointing out she’s been around for a while, long before she turned to the latest fads of synthesisers and disco beats to top the charts. But her label also brought in the heavy artillery in the form of the traditional country stalwart, George Jones. Fortuitously for Mandrell, Jones was on the same label and had fallen into hard times, battling alcohol and cocaine addictions - making it easier to get him to agree to lend his voice to this song, recorded live.

Alongside Jones, Mandrell sang about listening to the Opry and getting mocked for it in what would become an anthem for the authenticity-obsessed genre. Whether or not she was cool then (she certainly wasn’t amongst the critics or traditionalists), the song quickly became a smash, topping the charts while helping the album become one of the most successful of her career - -


Mandrell was named the CMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 1979 and, under Collins, she dominated the TV and radio airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s, becoming the first-ever two-time CMA Entertainer of the Year recipient. The awards and hits kept coming as Mandrell juggled recording and touring commitments. In 1980, NBC launched her weekly TV variety show, Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, featuring younger siblings Irlene and Louise, who Barbara reunited with 13 years after she had left their family band, as outlined yesterday. The show was enormously popular, drawing nearly 40 million viewers weekly and introduced a new suburban audience to Mandrell’s brand of country-pop music. However, exhaustion and burnout due to over work, juggling touring, recording and TV commitments, along with Vocal strain, possibly aggravated by her chain smoking, led her to cancel the show in 1982, despite having 3 years to run on the contract.

In a common lament, relevant back then (and even more so now), in her 1983 # 1 hit, ‘In Times Like These’, Mandrell sings a timeless ode to hard times (and the people who get us through them) - “… The rich keep getting richer / the poor barely get by …”. There is a lot more depth to this song, which isn’t as pop soaked as her biggest hits in this rime, than might be obvious from its cheerful, rockabilly veneer, helping it climb the charts to # 4 in spite of its doomsday observations. It was released in the midst of Mandrell’s hot streak, when she was ruling country radio with her pop crossover sounds – which only makes this roadhouse-ready track stand out even more -


In 1984, Mandrell was still riding high with her long string of country-pop hits, albeit with the storm clouds of the neo-tradional movement already gathering to right the course of the country music ship. Tragedy struck when Mandrell and her 2 children were involved in a car accident when a on-coming car crossed to the wrong side and struck them head-on, killing the other driver and resulting in multiple injuries for all 3 Mandrell suffered a leg fracture, serious head injuries and severe concussion and had to undergo multiple surgeries. Her 14 year old son, Matt sustained facial and serious internal injuries while 8 year old Jaime, escaped with major bruising. After taking much-needed time for recovery, during which time she had continual memory loss, even forgetting who she was, referring to herself in the third person as something else. This abruptly slowed Mandrell’s momentum, but fortunately she recovered to enter into the third stage of her charting career - and another change in her music direction, to be seen tomorrow - (edit) actually better make that sometime Monday - been too busy Sunday).
 
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We left off Barbara Mandrell in 1984 with her and her children surviving a head-on collision where the other driver (the one at fault) was killed. However, Mandrell and her 14 y.o. son faced a long period of recovery. Mandrell had severe injuries including a broken femur, shattered ankle and injured knee causing her to endure numerous surgeries on her femur and ankle. Even more concerning for a while was her head trauma, causing her to have memory loss, a temporary shift in personality with wild mood swings and outbursts and even insisting that she was different from Mandrell the singer - that she was someone else. Depressed due to constant pain, Mandrell became reclusive for some months, even from her own family - "I never thought I would ever sing again or be Barbara Mandrell again, or any of that …".

Despite now being pregnant, Mandrell eventually recovered enough to return to the recording studio in May 1985. By this time, the country music landscape had changed dramatically. Though few artists could match Mandrell’s combination of vocal and multi-instrumental prowess (and the specifically country bent of those talents), her willingness to experiment with pop crossover sounds still made her a critical target – especially as the 1980’s wore on, when the neo-traditional backlash started to dominate the country radio zeitgeist. The glitzier, more pop-influenced music Mandrell had recorded and performed was rapidly falling out of favour. This brought a change in approach by Mandrell and her producer Tom Collins, who, without abandoning altogether, at least dialled back the somewhat overpowering pop elements, reintroducing traditional country music staples like the pedal steel and even the fiddle in some recordings. Thus did the third (and final) stage of Mandrell’s music career commence.

Mandrell’s return to the recording studio (though she still couldn’t perform on-stage for a further year as she was still recovering both physically and mentally from the accident), resulted in the 1985 # 7 hit ‘There's No Love in Tennessee’, which appeared on Mandrell's “Greatest Hits” compilation, also issued in 1985. Blissfully free of the kind of schlock that had long plagued the genre - including much of Mandrell’s biggest hits - ‘Tennessee’ written by Stephen Allen Davis and Dennis Morgan is kept light by a barely two-step ready tempo as it extols the specific tributes to Tennessee - while also giving a traditional country music lament to the lack of missing her lost lover. Some of the lyrics, referencing now departed country legends betray the age of the song -
“… They still make Jack Daniels in Lynchburg / On the Opry, Mr Acuff's still keen /
You can get the best biscuits and gravy / And Loretta can still really sing …” -


Straight after recording ‘There’ No Love In Tennessee’, Mandrell immediately went on to record her 16th studio album, “Get to the Heart”, in June 1985, which spawned 3 singles, the first being ‘Angel in Your Arms’. Although it firmly belongs to the long tradition of country music cheating songs and was composed by Herbert Clayton Ivey, Terrence Woodford, and Tom Brasfield as a country song, ‘Angel in Your Arms’ was actually introduced by the multi-racial (black, white & Hispanic) pop/R&B/soul trio Hot. Hot's lead singer Gwen Owens requested the group be given a country song, and Ivey and Woodford obliged with ‘Angel in Your Arms’, whose third co-writer was Muscle Shoals resident Tom (Tommy) Brasfield.who took it to # 6 on the Pop chart in 1977.

Mandrell’s cover was released as an advance single from the “Get to the Heart” album, peaking at #8 in 1985. If you’re wondering why Mandrell would cover this pop/soul number, well the lyrics are bang on Mandrell’s favourite theme (itself a long time classic country music theme) of cheating, infidelity and the like. In this case, we have a case of double cheating, the long suffering singer getting her revenge on her philandering partner -
“… When I first found out I hurt all over / I felt so left out till I got to know her /
So I tried the way that she got over / And I became just like her / So don't be surprised to find /
That the angel in your arms this morning / Is gonna be the devil in someone else's arms tonight …” -


Even by the prolific standards of country music, Mandrell sang an truckload lot of songs that involved cheating (and not just by males) and other songs with trysts or clear sexual innuendo (you only get a small sample of them here in my 3 days of selections). So what do all these songs of illicit sex tell us about Mandrell? The first advice aspiring writers are usually given is to “write about what you know”, and perhaps this advice could be extended to songwriters. However, for all her talent and broad expertise in music (Mandrell typically played 4 or 5 instruments in her concerts and was acknowledged as one of the very best pedal steel players), she was no songwriter. The answer to the question just posed posed is full of irony.

The irony here is that for all her many songs about cheating and sexual innuendo, Mandrell’s private life was the direct opposite of what she typically sang about. As already outlined, she met her future husband, Ken Dudney when her father hired Ken to be the drummer of the Mandrell Family Band. She was then 14, while Ken was 21. Both immediately fell for each other, but there was a big problem – Ken was engaged to another girl at the time - so he broke off the engagement and they married 4 years later in 1967 and 57 years later they are still married, having had 3 children and several grandchildren. This is the only man she has ever had for her entire life! Tried as I have, I’ve found not a credible hint of any scandal involving Mandrell (apart from the contents of many of her songs).

Furthermore, doubling down on the irony of all her cheating and sexual songs, Mandrell is - and had always been - an active and staunch church going Christian of that conservative Southern variety. In late 1985, a year after the car wreck, she gave birth to a son after, while still recovering from her injuries, enduring a very complicated pregnancy and birth, where it was expected the baby had died and would be still born. About her third child, Mandrell said - “He is a miracle. He is so healthy, so perfect, and God has really, really blessed us“.

Penned by Roger Murrah and Steve Dean, with the second single from the ‘Fast Lanes And Country Roads’, Mandrell continued her run of Top 10 hits with an irreverent, uptempo take on what has become an inescapable theme of pop-country - dirt road supremacy. It’s more rock’n’roll than rootsy, but nevertheless, the lyrics are sharper than they need be. Mandrell sells the blend of synths, gospel backing vocals and pedal steel well enough, taking it to # 4 in late 1985 -


In late 1985, Mandrell copped another serious setback stemming from the 1984 fatal car crash. Though the police confirmed the other deceased driver was solely to blame for the accident, it had cost Mandrell a fortune in medical costs while she lost a fortune in cancelled tour bookings and recording sessions. The problem was that under an odd Tennessee law, Mandrell had to go through the formality of filing a lawsuit against survivors of the dead driver who had caused the accident, a 19 y.o. college student, in order to collect from her own insurance company. She informed the dead students family she wanted no money from them, but was only doing what she had to do to get her own insurance company to pay for her medical costs.

However the press reports didn’t mention these details, so most fans never knew about her not wanting any money from the family or about Tennessee’s convoluted insurance law. They saw only the headlines about the lawsuit against the family who had lost a son. To make matters worse, her insurance company filed for bankruptcy, so she also had to pay court costs and never got anything back apart from bad publicity. Her record and ticket sales fell off “in a big way”. Speaking about this 12 years later, Mandrell commented that given the information most of the public got through the brief, selective, way it was reported in the media, said - “I’m not blaming the public. I would have felt the way they felt“.

Singling that her days of a top charting artist were coming to an end, Mandrell’s 17th studio album,1986’s “Moments”, reached a lowly # 55 in the albums chart and only spawned one single, ‘No One Mends a Broken Heart Like You’. peaking at #6 in 1986. It’s a straightforward, understated country ballad that works as a perfect showcase for Mandrell’s voice, having an easy simplicity that can be hard to find in her catalog -


Ironically (given all her country-pop chart toppers), I’m finishing Barbara Mandrell's music selection with her going into pure honky tonk territory - and doing it properly with a tradition-bound version, a heartache theme of being unable to move on from a lost love, all done to the Ray Price beat and all - of this Harlan Howard-penned Ray Price classic, ‘I Wish That I Could Fall In Love Today’, from her 19th studio album, “I’ll Be Your Jukebox Tonight”, released in 1988. The native Texan might have been a couple of decades late in offering her first honky-tonk anthem, but this track, originally recorded by the legendary Texan, Ray Price in 1960, still sounded tailor-made for walking the floor when Barbara Mandrell brought the song to #5 in 1987. Mandrell hardly had to prove her country bona fides at this point, but the fact her last top 10 single was about as pure country as it gets, one to get everyone on their feet swinging in all those traditional Texan dancehalls (and my personal favourite from all her songs) was undoubtedly a perfect rejoinder to any remaining naysayers -


Mandrell had also made numerous TV appearances throughout her music career. Most notably from 1980 to 1982 Mandrell and her 2 sisters, Irlene and Louise, headlined in the top-rating variety show Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters. She also hosted a range of popular TV programs from Barbara Walters’ Specials and Larry King Live to the national country music show, Hee Haw. In 1993 Mandrell appeared in the TV series Empty Nest.

As the 1980’s became the 1990’s, with her music no longer topping the charts , Mandrell began focusing almost exclusively on live performances, where she remained a significant draw to her loyal fanbase. In 1990 she published her autobiography, Get to the Heart: My Story, which made it to the New York Times Best Seller List after only 4 days and remained there for 6 months. The autobiography was so popular it was later turned into a made-for-TV movie. She continued to produce albums in the early 1990s. Two other studio albums appeared - 1991's “Key's in the Mailbox” and 1994’s It Works for Me, her 27th - and final - studio album of her career. She also occasionally appeared on TV, but gradually drifted toward a retirement she officially announced in 1997.

So Mandrell officially retired in 1997, at age 48, with a final concert titled Barbara Mandrell and the Do-Rites: The Last Dance. It was filmed at the Grand Ole Opry and rated highly. Mandrell walked away because she wanted to focus on her family, particularly her high school aged youngest son. She was nearing 50 years old at the time - far past the age most country singers maintain dominance on the charts. She went as far as to sell all her instruments and aside from one or two tributes, she has not sung a note since. She now spends much of her time doing the gardening on her family estate.

However, after her retirement from music, Mandrell took up acting more seriously in the late 1990s. In 1997 she co-wrote, co-produced and starred in Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story, a made-for TV adaptation of her 1990 best-selling autobiography, Get to the Heart: My Story. She subsequently appeared in a number of TV shows and made-for-TV movies, including Stolen from the Heart in 2000. Mandrell also starred in various TV specials for HBO, CBS and TNN. She has hosted popular programs from The Tonight Show to the People's Choice Awards and made guest appearances on a string of shows.

Through her career, Mandrell collected a gaggle of awards. From 1981 to 1985 and again in 1987 she captured the favourite female music vocalist award from the American Music Awards. She also won 2 Grammys, the first in 1983 for best inspirational performance for ‘He Set My Life to Music’ and the second in 1984, with American gospel music singer and TV host Bobby Jones, for best soul gospel performance by a duo or group for ‘I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today’. .

In 1999, Mandrell was inducted into the Gospel Music HoFame (though I omitted her Gospel songs from my selection). In 2000 the ACM honoured Mandrell with its most prestigious award, The Pioneer Award. In 2006, several artists re-recorded some of Mandrell's most popular singles in tribute to her career. Titled “She Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool: A Tribute to Barbara Mandrell“, featuring remakes of her songs performed by contemporary performers such was Kenny Chesney, Sara Evans and LeAnn Rimes.

In 2009, Mandrell received 2 accolades that rank the proudest of her career, she became the only woman ever to be inducted into the Steel Guitar HoF and the Country Music HoF inducted her with a ceremony that paid tribute to her inimitable career. At the ceremony, Reba McEntire spoke about her influence - "I thank you for the things that you've taught me, not only musically, but spiritually...”. In 2014, she was recognised for her prowess in playing multiple instruments, particularly her mastery of the steel guitar, by being inducted into the Musicians HoF.

Finally, in 2022, at age 73, 25 years after retiring from music , Barbara Mandrell made her triumphant return to the Grand Ole Opry stage, in Nashville, to celebrate her 50th anniversary of her first performance and induction with the country music Mecca. Even after retirement, she kept up her membership and is frequently spotted in the audience - “The Grand Ole Opry feels comfortable and is home”. She also described her 1972 induction, at the age of just 23 as "… one of the proudest moments of her career“. Carrie Underwood, who performed on the night as part of the all-female lineup, told the gathered crowd she wouldn't be where she is today without Mandrell - "She has been such an inspiration to me and so many others that stand on the shoulders of great female artists like her …”.

And with that, we draw the curtain on Barbara Mandrell’s career. As we’ve seen, she was (or is) a whole lot more than just a country-pop princess and should be forgiven for some crimes against authentic country music. Now I’ve just been informed I’m to head back to the Pacific in a few days - this time to the Cook Islands, and could be away for up to 2 weeks. So once again, you’ll all have a decent break from any more country music history.
 
I'm pretty much right with you regarding Ms. Mandrell, Prof - much respect for her musical talent, but no real affection.
Another excellent portrait.
Thanks again, and enjoy your time in the tropics.
 
PatsFitztrick said:
I'm pretty much right with you regarding Ms. Mandrell, Prof - much respect for her musical talent, but no real affection.
Another excellent portrait.
Thanks again, and enjoy your time in the tropics.
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Thank you. Yes, for all her undoubted talents, forged from her childhood, and her commercial success, I was compelled by their more authentic music, to offer more selections than I did for her from the likes of Townes Van Zandt, Gram Parsons, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot’s, Guy Clark and, of course, Fred Eaglesmith. relatively less commercially suc

Now, as it’ll be a few weeks at least before any more history gets posted, I’ll leave an updated index. As always, with a few exceptions, it’s order is roughly based upon when an artist breaks through to sustained prominence/stardom). The index to the history includes 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.

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.
CR = Country Rock, still definably country but with a heavily rock influenced sound, especially the accompanimen.
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 “Urban Cowboy” 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’.
SGQ = Southern Gospel Quartet
PRC = usually called “Alternative” (or “Alt” for short), a term I dislike (it describes what it ain’t, not what it iis), so i go with Progressive Roots Country, an updated folk-country (TF) sound with a rock influence that became popular in the 1990’s.

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, CR, OC
Willie Nelson Texas 782-793 TF, TC, G, WC, CB, HT, CR, OC
Hank Williams Jr Louis 800-807 TC, HT, NS, CR, 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, CR, OC
David Allan Coe Ohio 830-836 TC, HT, CR, OC
Gary Stewart Florida 840-842 HT, TC, OC
Jerry Jeff Walker New York 844-847 OC, TF, GW
Guy Clark Texas Texas 848-856 TF, OC, TC
Emmylou Harris Alabama 860-873 TF, TC, OC, CR
Linda Ronstadt Arizona 889-893 TC, RR
Crystal Gayle Kentucky 897-902 PC, NS, TC
Mickey Gilley Mississippi 907-909 UC, PC, TC
Jimmy Buffett Alabama 911-924 GW, TC, PC, CR
Kenny Rogers Texas 932-936 PC, CR, UC
Dottie West Tennessee 939-940 NS, PC
Anne Murray Novia Scotia (Can) 946-948 PC, CR
The Statler Bros Virginia 949-952 SGQ, TC, PC, G
The Oak Ridge Boys, Tennessee 961-964 SGQ, TC, PC, RR, G
Eddie Rabbitt, New Jersey, 972-974 TC, PC, UC, CR
T.G. Sheppard, Tennessee, 977-978 TC, PC, UC
Fred Eaglesmith, Ontario (Can) 982-987 PRC, CR, TF, TC
The Bellamy Bros, Florida, 984-997 PC, CR, TC
Johnny Lee, Texas, 1004-1005 UC, PC, TC
Alabama, Alabama, 1,009-1016 CR, PC, TC, BG,
John Anderson, Florida 1,035-1,040 TC, TF
Barbara Mandrell, Texas, 1,052-1,055. PC, CP, CR, TC
 
rank and file said:
Not sure how many country songs Johnny Winter did,but this one I love.
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I love this song. Johnny Winter, hailing from close to the Texas-Louisiana border, was truly a great bluesman. His version of it was also clearly the inspiration of a more recent Billy Strings version, throwing in his customary acoustic guitar wizardry. But for me, the stand-out version is the 1966 cover by Sanford Clark (he of the all-time rockabilly classic ‘The Fool’ fame - posts # 311-311).

Country music has produced a slew of dark songs with lyrics about fights and murders. More than a few came from Texan Leon Payne, a blind songwriter known as the “blind balladeer, using the pseudo name, “Pat Patterson” (and also cut some rockabilly in 1956 under the name “Rock Rogers”). He wrote the Hank Williams classic ‘Lost Highway’ (post # 209) and Eddie Noack’s controversial 1968 hit, ‘Psycho’, amongst others. It was first released by Arizonan rockabilly and folk pioneer, Loy Clingman, in 1957.

Sanford’s delivery here is stone ice cold. The dead-pan, matter-of-fact tone of Clark’s voice takes one straight to a rough, dangerous West Texan oil town bar (let’s say in a tough oil town like Odessa), where the barman is giving out some sage advice- and is perfectly menacing. It’s arranged around the country core of a simple double bass and unadorned drum part. Recorded in Lee Hazelwood’s Arizona studio where he had co-written and produced Sanford’s ‘The Fool’, as well as original recording Clingman’s original version of this in 1958, Hazlewood used a big steel round tank with holes drilled in it for the reverb effect. He gathered a stellar group of backing musicians, with Roy Clark and Waylon Jennings on guitar and Zane Beck on pedal steel. That weird monster mosquito sound overhanging the song ain’t a kazoo - Beck used a fiddle bow on his pedal steel to create that eerie sound -
"… Oh well, that's life / or it was / Its nothin' to me” -

[/QUOTE]
 
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Professor Knowall said:
That’s exactly the type of gigs I love - intimate barroom or honky tonk venues, and very rarely mainstream.

Meanwhile, I’ve somehow found myself in Samoa over the last few days. My first hour and a bit here was bizarre, as my driver taking me to the opposite side of the island where I was required, aged 25 (but already married with kids in typical island style), actually loved old school country music and his favourite, which he played for an hour on the drive, was, of all the old time artists, the now relatively obscure Don Williams (posts 757-759)! He was singing along word for word to his songs and seemed totally unsurprised that I also knew the singer and his songs. It seems everyone here likes songs to sing along to, so a lot of classic old school country appeals to them - but I was still staggered about a bloke in his 20’s knowing the music of Don Williams (dec).

Anyway, I’ll be back to wintry Melbourne in a couple of days, in town just long enough for another history instalment, from circa 1980.
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I’m Sri Lankan. My folks are in their 60’s and they used to listen to a ton of Don Williams. He seems quite popular over there too. Funny cause she heard Waylons version of Amanda for the first time only a few years back. i sorta get the gist that Don Williams might have actually been bigger than Waylon over there at that time. Another on of mums faves is Jim Reeves and it’s not a name I hear or see unless mum mentions it.
 

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PatsFitztrick said:
I have to admit that I am something of a musical heretic - but I guess we all are to varying degrees.
George Jones made this song famous, but Van Morrison took it to another level.
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You damn heretic - how dare you! ;).

Was it sheer coincidence you chose a song penned by the “blind balladeer“, Leon Payne, outlined on my previous post above as the song-writer of ‘It’s Nothing To Me’?

Actually, one under appreciated feature an Morrison’s 2006 album of country classics, “Pay The Devil”, is that, while giving his own vocal interpretation, he uses a musical accompaniment appropriate to the era of each of the songs - so in Morrison’s cover of the 1953 # 1 Webb Pierce honky tonk classic, ‘There Stands The Glass’, (# 248) we hear the distinctive early 1950’s sound of the steel guitar sans pedals (a sound still familiar to many because of the enduring Hank Williams recordings) -


My favourite from Morrison’s country album, written by Rodney Crowell, the lyrics loaded with vivid imagery, the poignant ‘Til I Gain Control Again’ was first recorded by Emmylou Harris in 1975 (see post # 862) and has been recorded by various notable artists, including Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Bobby Bare. However, the most popular commercial version is the # 1 hit recorded by Crystal Gayle, 7 years after Emmylou’s beautiful original (post # 900 - the very last song on p 36) -
 
"Was it sheer coincidence you chose a song penned by the “blind balladeer“, Leon Payne, outlined on my previous post above as the song-writer of ‘It’s Nothing To Me’?"

Yes, Prof - it was.
Van Morrison stands front and centre on the top shelf of writers, singers and song interpreters.
The Man can sing any style, any genre - and I am a huge fan.
 
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PatsFitztrick said:
… Van Morrison stands front and centre on the top shelf of writers, singers and song interpreters.
The Man can sing any style, any genre - and I am a huge fan.
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Absolutely with you on Van Morrison. He’s made the very most - and beyond - of a very fortunate musical education. His electrician father was an avid record collector, especially blues and jazz and also worked in the U.S. for a couple of years, from which he brought back a big collection of records otherwise unavailable and hence unknown in the UK. So Van Morrison got to listen to the greats of blues, country, R&B, gospel and then soul - Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Leadbelly, Ray Charles and the like, absorbing all these greats pretty much uniquely as a child in the UK.
 
Professor Knowall said:
Absolutely with you on Van Morrison. He’s made the very most - and beyond - of a very fortunate musical education. His electrician father was an avid record collector, especially blues and jazz and also worked in the U.S. for a couple of years, from which he brought back a big collection of records otherwise unavailable and hence unknown in the UK. So Van Morrison got to listen to the greats of blues, country, R&B, gospel and then soul - Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Leadbelly, Ray Charles and the like, absorbing all these greats pretty much uniquely as a child in the UK.
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Pigpen from the Dead had a similarly upbringing with his dad being the first white DJ on a black Bay Area station.
 
THE A5 said:
I’m Sri Lankan. My folks are in their 60’s and they used to listen to a ton of Don Williams. He seems quite popular over there too. Funny cause she heard Waylons version of Amanda for the first time only a few years back. i sorta get the gist that Don Williams might have actually been bigger than Waylon over there at that time. Another on of mums faves is Jim Reeves and it’s not a name I hear or see unless mum mentions it.
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Yes - a lot of Jim Reeves hits (posts # 383-386) were released posthumously after his fatal plane crash in 1964, but he was already very popular in the UK and Ireland where he had toured. He was known for his rich, pitch-perfect baritone vocal and his never-satisfied perfectionism. A long serving sound technician, who considers Reeves to be the best “pure” country vocalist at the Nashville RCA studios played a tape of him singing his biggest hit ‘He’ll Have To Go’ in the famed Studio B where he recorded it - listening to his voice in those perfect acoustic setting was something else. A couple of biographies which detailed his womanising - including a taste for under-age teens - have damaged his legacy in the last 20 years or so, perhaps explaining why we no longer hear about about him anymore.

I reckon another one your mother may have been keen of was Slim Whitman (# 252-254), who was immensely popular in the UK and Ireland - even more than the likes of Johnny Cash back in the ‘50’s and 60’s - and more well known and popular than what he was back in his U.S. homeland.
 
I’m finally back for, first from the mid-Pacific, then back out again to the Victorian bush, for a few days, just long enough to return to the early 1980’s in the history series - and while todays lot starts with some more early 1980’s pop-country, it comes from an artist who simply couldn’t be omitted from this series (even if I have omitted some of her more pop-influenced big hits). Her music selection here moves well beyond its pop-country beginnings as we proceed through it, particularly as, along with her lifestyle, her music drastically changes course, with her own song-writing coming to the fore.

This series has already featured a son of a legend, in Hank Williams Jr, highlighting the burden he initially carried (posts # 800-807) and the sibling of a legend in Crystal Gayle, sister of Loretta Lynn, albeit 19 years younger. (# 897-902). Now we have the daughter of a legend, the eldest daughter of Johnny Cash (# 338-345) and his first wife, Vivian Liberto. Rosanne Cash was born in 1955 in Memphis, the eldest daughter of the rising regional Sun Studio star and his wife, a South Texan beauty of Italian and (as much later found through DNA testing), African-American descent.

In 1959, with Johnny Cash leaving Sun Studios now as a major National star, the family moved from Memphis to L.A. Later Cash bought a hobby farm in then rural Ventura, NW of L.A. (and now thoroughly suburbanised). Rosanne and her 3 younger sisters were raised in then semi-rural Ventura, largely by their mother. By the 1960s, Johnny Cash was on the road constantly. Rosanne has said her father “… was bigger than life … because of his image and because he was not home a lot. ’Conquering hero’ is a good term for it...” - and that her father’s alcohol and drug problems and constant infidelity on the road (despite his promise to “walk the line”) - along with his raging ambition at that time - further distanced him from his family. Roseanne was 12 years old when her parents divorced in 1967.

A fairly typical rebellious teen growing up in Southern California, at age 14 in 1969, her hair dyed pink or purple, Roseanne began experimenting with drugs - marijuana and pills, not the hard stuff. She has described her musical tastes at the time as “… the same stuff most kids listened to in California … I grew up in Southern California and I absorbed everything that was on the radio and in the air in the ‘60s - Buffalo Springfield and The Beatles, Joni Mitchell James Taylor and Jefferson Airplane – and then The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers and two “old folkies, Tom Rush and Eric Andersen”. As for country music - “I loved country music when I was a little kid. But then, as a teen, that was my parent’s music. Yes, Patsy Cline was phenomenal; Merle Haggard’s ‘Silver Wings’ – one of the greatest songs ever written; Dad’s “Ballads of the True West” and ‘Hey, Porter’– love it. But let’s just put it over here. I’m going to go with Buffalo Springfield for the moment…”.

Following her graduation from high school in 1973, Rosanne, spurred by her mother’s depressive illness after her marriage break-up, sought closer contact with Johnny and went on the road with her dad. She spent 3 years on the road with his touring show, first as a wardrobe assistant and then backing vocalist - but found it a mixed blessing - “It was a good learning ground to watch him work, but I was so protected I couldn’t get any objectivity about my work. I got to the point where I was doing a couple of songs, but it was still playing for his crowd and it was still cute for his daughter to be up”. But it was from that experience – and listening to Emmylou Harris – that she felt a calling to to chart her own course in country music

While on tour, Rosanne learned more from The Carter Sisters (posts # 222-232) than her famed father - “… because we were in the dressing room so often when my dad was on stage, I learned how to play the guitar. Really basic things - they taught me how to play. The first chord I ever learned was from Helen Carter. They taught me all The Carter Family songs. Carl Perkins was in the dressing room, and he taught me a couple things on the guitar, but he didn’t have much patience for an 18 year old neophyte. Also, from the Carters, I learned this naturalness about being on stage. June could be having a conversation with you and walk on stage without ever breaking stride. She was herself”.

In 1976, after 3 years on the road with her father and the Carter family, now aged 21 and determined to do her own thing and
not rely at all on her father, Rosanne moved to London and briefly worked for CBS Records there. She then enrolled in Vanderbilt University in Nashville, then returned to California and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Hollywood. In 1978, she began writing her own songs and recording them on tapes, sending them to various record labels. The German record label Ariola approached her about cutting an album, so she moved to Munich to record her first self-titled album. The resulting LP, which Rosanne was overall disappointed in, was never issued in the U.S. (it’s now a sought after collectors item) but it impressed Columbia Records enough that they offered her a contract.

After returning to the U.S., in 1978, Cash began playing with songwriter Rodney Crowell's band The Cherry Bombs in California clubs. Crowell and Cash married in 1979 and moved to Nashville. At the time, Crowell was very well known within the industry for his hit-making songwriting, but was still little known to the wider general public, having not yet established himself as a successful performer in his own right. With Crowell as her producer, she issued “Right or Wrong” as her first U.S. LP in 1979. In 1981, the couple moved from L.A. to Nashville, and released “Seven Year Ache” as her star-making break-through album. The album, produced by Rodney Crowell, earned a Gold Record and was hailed as a cornerstone of the so-called “young country” movement - though in truth, this movement was really just riding the pop-country wave of the early 1980’s that we’ve already heard so much of (or too much?) more recently in this history. But Cash, with her reflective tone and inflexions, quickly gaining herself a reputation as the queen of sad songs, gave her songs extra gravitas than the usual pop-country pap. In any case, it was commercially perfect for its time.

Written at a time of personal change following the birth of her first child, Cash’s 2nd Columbia album, channelled the uncertainty and doubt into a album focused on the conflicting emotion when relationships unravel - the desire to hold onto love while needing to let go, a time honoured country music theme. There are compositions by Merle Haggard, Steve Forbert, Rodney Crowell and Tom Petty but, against such esteemed competition, Roseanne Cash’s own songs are the best on the album, particularly the title track. Cash’s weary, resigned vocal is indeed incredibly melodious, giving voice to smart, relatable lyrics about drinking away heartache at the local watering hole. ‘Seven Year Ache’ was the title song and lead single from the album and became her first # 1 hit. The song - and the album - really launched her long career, and even had some crossover success, reaching # 22 on the pop charts, announcing her as a commercial and critical power -
“…Girls in the bars thinking who is this guy / But they don't think nothing when they're telling you lies /
You look so careless when they're shooting that bull / Don't you know heartaches are heroes when their pockets are full …”


The title here kinda makes it obvious - ‘Blue Moon With Heartache’ is another sad Rosanne Cashsong. While a lot of Cash’s songs about heartbreak pair sad lyrics with upbeat music, this one goes for sombre all the way through. It became Cash’s 3rd # 1 - and all 3 came from her 1981 breakout “Seven Year Ache” album. -
"… I'll play the victim for you honey, but not for free / I run into that heartache just like a wall /
And act like nothing happened to me, nothing at all …" -

The wildly successful breakthrough “Seven Year Ache” album, so important to Cash’s career, has since been re-released 3 times. The “Somewhere in the Stars” album followed a year later, in 1982. Rosanne Cash's record. Once again with husband Rodney Crowell in the producer's chair and acting as a full collaborator, Cash pushed the Nash-Vegas pop-rock envelope to the breaking point for the time. Interestingly, Cash, while writing a great deal during this period, only recorded one of her own songs and co-wrote another with Crowell. The album spawned 2 Top 10 singles in 1982, ‘Ain’t No Money’ at # 4 and ‘I Wonder’ at # 8.

Cash’s deeply personal “Rhythm & Romance” album was issued in 1985. Her song ‘Hold On’ won BMI’s Song of the Year.. But when she lost at the 1983 Grammy Awards, she turned to Crowell and said “I’ve got my new dress, I’ve got my new shoes tonight - I don’t know why they don’t want me” That line became the basis for the next Cash-Crowell composition.

A common thread on Cash's early albums was upbeat songs with sad lyrics. ‘I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me’ the first single from the album comes with a warning - this is the most pop-flavoured song I’ve included for Cash’s selection. I felt compelled to include it as not only was it her 4th hit # 1 and won her first Grammy Award for Best Female Vocal Performance. As an added bonus, Vince Gill’s voice is on the chorus, but to me the song, despite its lyrics, still feels a little more “sad pop” than country, like honky tonk heartbreak meets up with peppy Cyndi Lauper -
“… Just when I think that I can make it without you / You come ‘round and say you want me now /
You tell me don’t leave, and I believe you / Why can’t you see just how much I need you? …” -


Cash’s 1987 “King's Record Shop”, album signalled Cash's shift from her twangy poppy new waver to the neo-traditionalist movement that, led by George Strait and others like Keith Whitley and Randy Travis, had swept aside the early 1980’s pop flavoured urban cowboy sound with a more authentic country rooted - though still very commercial - approach. Produced by her then-husband and longtime collaborator Rodney Crowell, it’s a granite-solid collection of covers and originals that delve deeply into the country music traditions and.yielded four # 1 singles.

From the album. ‘The Way We Make A Broken Heart’ is one Cash covered twice. Originally recorded by slide guitar master Ry Cooder in 1980, Cash and John Hiatt (who wrote the song) recorded a cover of it in 1983; then, in 1987, she covered it again with the upbeat vibes of her previous recording replaced by a little Spanish-inspired country flavour. This time, it went all the way to become her sixth # 1 in the U.S. and her first (after a few near misses) in Canada -
“… And with lesson four, there'll be no more for her to bear / And on some dark night we'll dim the lights on this affair /
Then she'll find somebody new and he'll likely hurt her too / 'Cause there must be millions just like you and me, practiced in the art …” -


While most of Rosanne's music can be very easily be separated from the sound of her famous father, who she never sought to copy, one of her finest moments came when she brought new life to her father’s ‘Tennessee Flat Top Box‘. the highlight from her 1987 neo-traditional “King’s Record Shop” album. Johnny Cash’s original version of ‘Tennessee Flat Top Box‘ (a colloquial term for a 6 steel string acoustic guitar) was issued in 1961 and went to # 11. The song is about the Texas equivalent of Johnny B. Goode - a young boy talented enough to dominate his local bar scene and woo young women far and wide. He disappears for a while, with his throngs of female fans "… from there to Austin …" seeing him next on a national television broadcast. While the lyrics were a product of the times, the galloping acoustic accompaniment sounds more like an old traditional tune. The charming guitar work was done by Randy Scruggs, the son of bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs (# 194-195).

Roseanne Cash also got a surprise after its release. She confessed that when she recorded the song, she thought it was an old traditional public domain song, something like ‘Red River Valley’. Though she had been familiar with her father‘s version all her life - he had sang it to her often when she was little -and she knew he had previously recorded and had a hit with it - she didn’t twig that he had actually composed the song - one of her father's best nods to his guitar-picking forebears - until informed of this after its release. Rather, she just assumed that the timeless classic had been around forever. Roseanne took this song all the way to # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada -

Following her father's death in 2003, Rosanne Cash performed ‘Tennessee Flat Top Box‘ during The Johnny Cash Memorial Tribute concert TV special.

By the end of 1987, Roseanne Cash, at age 32, having very much charted her own course since leaving her legendary
father 11 years earlier (in fact, she had had a very much strained, sparse relationship with Johnny until 1987 when she had a rapprochement with him that lasted the remaining of his life) was still riding high on the charts, having chalked up 7 # 1 hits from 1981, aided by her talented song-writing husband and producer, Rodney Crowell. They also had 2 daughters together, with a third on the way. But big - and painful - changes were soon to come. Tomorrow will see these changes, how they altered her music and she become the artist as we know her now, far removed from the pop-flavoured artist she started as, writing not just from her talent and imagination, but from painful life experiences.
 
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Yesterday, after we got through her early to mid-1980’s pop-country era, ended with two # 1 singles from Rosanne Cash’s 1987 neo-traditional “King's Record Shop” album. Today’s selection starts with 2 more # 1 hits from this stellar album, both released in 1988.

So another hit off “King's Record Shop”, Cash co-wrote ‘If You Change Your Mind’ with Hank DeVito and became Cash’s 9th # 1 hit in 1988. The song - very typical of a 1988 country song if there ever was one - is about a spurned lover insisting that she’ll always be there if her ex changes his mind (something that never tends to work in reality) -
“… And when your heart’s in doubt / And things aren’t working out / I can be the one who makes you happy /
Call me on the telephone / Darling, I’m always home / If you ever change your mind ...” -


Though less rooted in country music than the other singles, ‘Runaway Train’ has lyrics rich with imagery, using a runaway train as a metaphor for a relationship spiraling out of control. It was written by John Stewart (not the guy from The Daily Show), who was well-known as a member of The Kingston Trio in the 1960’s and as the writer of the 1967 Monkees hit ‘Daydream Believer’. In 1987, 20 years after leaving the Kingston Trio for a solo career, John Stewart recorded his “Punch the Big Guy” album, which included one of his best songs, ‘Runaway Train’. That same year, Rosanne Cash, who contributed vocals to the “Punch the Big Guy” album, recorded the song for her own “King's Record Shop”. Both versions were greeted with their fair share of critical praise but in Stewart’s case, relative public indifference. But though Cash recorded her album in Nashville, she succeeded in capturing a tough, California folk-rock sound, Cash took it all the way to her 11th # 1 in 1988, thanks in part to Eddie Bayers' muscular drumming and Steuart Smith's tasteful, yet stinging lead work -


Although Cash’s “King’s Record Shop” album spawned four # 1’s through 1987 and 1988 – a record for a female country artist at the time – and Rosanne was heralded as a leader of the “young country” movement, she did not feel fulfilled, creatively - “I felt a little fake with “King’s Record Shop”. It was authentic – I loved the songs – but I wanted to be a songwriter and I had only written a couple on that album. My real passion is being a songwriter”.

In 1987, Cash also recorded ‘It’s Such A Small World’ as a duet with Rodney Crowell, released as the lead single from Crowell’s 1988 album “Diamonds & Dirt” - and it became yet another that rode all the way to # 1 in 1988. It tells the story of a former couple that reunites for just one night. In the song, the man leaves in the morning ... but in its accompanying music video, he returns. Crowell and Cash used footage from their honeymoon in the music video -
“I’ll be gone again come morning / Like I’ve always done / But to see you tonight /
Makes everything right / It’s such a small world.” 1988 -


After penning a string of hits performed by stars including Waylon Jennings, Crystal Gayle, Bob Seger, the Oak Ridge Boys and Highway 101 amongst others, Crowell, after years of trying, finally enjoyed commercial success on his own with his massively successful 1988 album “Diamonds & Dirt”, which included an unprecedented 5 consecutive # 1 singles, even surpassing the 4 # 1 singles from Cash’s “King’s Record Shop” album. They were seen as the power couple of country music. But this sudden success from Crowell actually totally destabilised their marriage, as he spent more and more of his time cashing in on his new found fame and fortune, staying out on the road touring rather than spending time at home with his young family. Cash gave birth to their 3rd daughter while Crowell was living and playing hard and loose, getting addicted to cocaine and, as so many country artists touring on the road were doing back then - and more fatal to the marriage - sleeping around.

All this brought on a life crisis with Cash, who was now stuck at home raising 4 children (she was also the step-mother of Crowell’s eldest daughter from his previous brief first marriage, in addition to her 3 young daughters - and she used song-writing as her psychotherapy. In 1990, the brooding song cycle “Interiors” album became her first totally self-composed and self-produced collection, Crowell now reduced down to "guest vocal”. Not only is this the first time she's produced herself, it's the first time she wrote all the songs. An album of spare, stripped-down songs that reckoned with the other big challenge in her life - the slow unraveling of her marriage - the 10 songs linked thematically by the chronicling of the tension, dysfunction, and ultimate dissolution of Cash's marriage to Crowell caused by dishonesty, infidelity, substance abuse, and physical distance. Everything is laid out - the disillusionment, the anger, the vain hope of reconciliation, and finally the acceptance and resignation that endings are a part of life and serve their purpose.

While “Interiors” was the subject of great critical acclaim, it was a commercial failure, ignored on country radio, and in truth, while it was her finest songwriting to date, the sparse, acoustic, sombre laden music simply wouldn’t appeal to a mainstream commercial audience . Hence, the album generated only one Top 40 hit and only just, sneaking in at # 39 - in ‘What We Really Want’, Cash slows things down and allows her vocal talents to shine on this overlooked cut off her emotion laden 1990 album -
“… We tried to make ourselves pay / For something we've never done /
Threw the best parts of life away / On street talk, strangers and drugs / …
We are ships in the night / The waters deep in between /
The air is freezing and we can't find the light / So we sail off into our dreams /
But what we really dream is love /What we really need is love …” -


The album accounted for Cash’s last appearances on the chart. Though it may have been inspired by the breaking of her marriage, it also signified her departure from Nashville and its country music establishment. In fact, Cash experienced an all-encompassing life transformation. She packed up and walked out of her palatial home, marriage and children, leaving Nashville after 11 years of living there, her major label record deal and her marriage. I’ll let her explain it - “I knew my marriage was ending. In fact, somebody wrote a review and said it was a “divorce record” and I was shocked because I hadn't realised it. And then, of course, later on, I realised he was right. So unconsciously, I knew that was going on. I was unhappy. I was unhappy living in Nashville and was not happy in my marriage. I didn't know what to do. I had kids. I had them all, so there were four then. And I couldn't see how I was going to unshackle myself without hurting so many people. I just couldn't see it. But I was a New Yorker at heart. I always had been since I was a preteen. I knew it, and I longed to be here”.

“When I gave the record to the label. I was really proud of it. I thought it was the best thing I'd done. I had produced it myself. I wrote these dark, kind of raw, acoustic songs, and they didn't want it. They said, “We can't do anything with this”. I was shocked and then 2 or 3 months went by and they hadn't done anything, any marketing. And I was sitting on a plane looking out the window and thought, “I have to take control of this. I'm going down”. So I went in by myself, no manager or anything, to the head of the label (Columbia Records). And I said, “You have to let me go. Neither one of us is happy, and this is going to get worse. This is going to get worse for both of us.” And at the end of my little speech, he said, “Well, we’ll miss you.” That was it. 12 years, like, done. I walked out of his office, and I was literally dizzy. I had to lean against the wall. I thought, “What am I going to do now?” I called my dad not long after that and said, “Dad, I got to get out of here.” And he said, “Screw ’em. You belong in New York”.

So in 1991 Cash left her family in Nashville and relocated to a Manhattan pad in Greenwich. In 1992, she her divorce from Crowell was finalised. She also found herself falling in love with her new producer, the multi-instrumentalist guitarist John Leventhal. Her previous “Interiors“ album had set the stage for the new Rosanne. Cash had been unhappy and was yearning to live a life of authenticity in her music and her personal life. With her landmark 1993 album, “The Wheel”, Cash and Leventhal came together to work on a brand new sound set of songs that reconciles the pain of the past with the heady energy of starting a new life. Cash was never a purist country artist, always a bit more literate and sophisticated than her peers without looking down on her audience, and with “The Wheel”, she essentially broke her ties with Nashville and its ways of doing things. The album is more like pop music for adults than country - beautifully crafted, rich with nuance, matching the emotions of Cash's lyrics. But none stood out enough to be selected.

After a 3 year hiatus, Cash returned in 1996, publishing her first book, a short-story collection titled Bodies of Water, but also issuing her first release on Capitol Records, “10 Song Demo”, actually an 11 songcollection of stark home recordings released with minimal studio gloss. In 2003, Cash returned with “Rules of Travel”, an album 5 years in the making and her first full-fledged studio release since 1993’s “The Wheel”. It was nominated for a Best Contemporary Folk Album at the Grammy Awards and has one that really stands out to this day. It's tempting to keep Cash family collaborations out of this to keep Rosanne's talents and recordings apart from her famous father. Yet it's undeniable this rare chance to hear 2 generations together is special. ‘September When We Come’ is one of the few times one get to hear Rosanne sing with her father - and this song is particularly poignant, as it's one of the last recordings that the elder Cash made before he died.

The Lyrics for ‘September When it Comes’ came to Rosanne Cash years before the music was added with the help of John Levanthal. The sound is full of sorrow, aching with loss and regret. The words read like poetry as Cash tackles the most challenging of themes - a child’s relationship with a parent, the acceptance of mortality and the things we cannot change. It is at once deeply personal and entirely universal and one of her most emotionally affecting songs -
“… There's a light inside the darkened room / A footstep on the stair /
A door that I forever close / To leave those memories there /
So when the shadows link them / Into an evening sun /
Well, first there's summer then / I'll let you in / September when it comes / …”
Then the song is made complete and the emotional gravity ratcheted right up by the addition of the ailing Johnny Cash’s vocal -
“… I cannot move a mountain now / I can no longer run / I cannot be who I was then / In a way I never was /
I watch the clouds go sailing / I watch the clock and sun / Oh, I watch myself depending on / September when it comes /
When the shadows link them / And burn away the clouds / They will fly me like an angel / To a place where I can rest …” -

I should point out that in the Northern Hemisphere, September announces the start of Autumn (a.k.a. “fall”), and is traditionally associated with growing old, frailty and gently approaching death (in contrast, say, to the Spring month of May, associated with youth and budding first love). Johnny Cash would in fact die peacefully in September 2003, just 6 months after the album’s release, June Carter Cash having already passed in May 2003.

In regards to Rosanne’s songwriting, not just relying on her fortunate DNA or the tutelage of her father, the highly literary Cash worked long and very seriously on the craft. Again, I defer to her own words - “Well, start with the Beatles. I deconstructed how those songs were written, both rhyme schemes and the way the choruses and the lyrics were set up, and that was the first imprint. And then Joni Mitchell, of course, because it was the first time I realised a woman could be a songwriter. Before then, the ones that I took in, they were all men. And it was inspiring: Not only could a woman be a songwriter, but her inner life was legitimate art to put out in the world, in a public sphere, and that was not only legitimate, but it was elevated to art. That changed things for me. And then, you know, I loved Neil Young so much. I loved Tom Rush. Kris Kristofferson. I loved Mickey Newbury. Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Colin Meloy. And Leonard Cohen, of course. I think “Hallelujah” is one of the greatest songs ever. … Then, there is the really deep, deep stuff like Washington Phillips, the Carter family stuff, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, all that shit”.

Anyway, that’s more than enough for today. Tomorrow will bring Rosanne Cash’s career up to date - and include my favourite album from her, a real landmark album.
 
So we’ve just gone past the 1990’s with Rosanne Cash now well and trulyset up in New York - where she soon moved from her Greenwich Village pad to a very nice apartment in hip Chelsea (still a very hip area, with the Chelsea Market and Google HQ) and married to the all-round musician and producer, John Leventhal. She has fulfilled her ambition of writing her own albums, albeit at the expense of hitting the top of the charts as she did in the 1980’s - those days were over. There were also some more difficult times following her decision to flee Nashville and her previous marriage to Rodney Crowell - “getting my kids up here, like one by one. That was excruciating”. To cut this short, this eventually ended up happily - she re-established a good relationship with all the 3 daughters she had with Crowell. She also, in time, mended her relationship with Crowell and has even performed with him occasionally, including providing backing vocals for his 2017 album.

Through the 1990’s (well actually from when she recorded ‘Tennessee Flatbox in 1987, Cash developed an increasingly closer relationship with her aging and ailing father and his wife, June Carter-Cash. Oreviously she tended to keep her distance, dépité her father’s hands best efforts to be closer - “You have to separate to find out who you are. It so happened that my dad cast a very large shadow. I probably pushed away longer than was necessary or gracious. But fortunately, he completely understood that”. The increasingly family oriented Rosanne also simultaneously grew closer to her natural mother, Vivian, who had also remarried but never truly got over Johnny Cash’s desertion.

But then more difficult times In the span of just over 2 years from the release of album in 2003, Rosanne lost her beloved stepmother, June Carter Cash, then her father just 4 months later, her godfather, an aunt, a stepsister, and, in a final punch to the gut, her mother (Johnny’s first wife), Vivian Liberto Distin. However, 2 months after June Carter-Cash passed, and 2 months before Johnny followed her to the grave, Rosanne arranged for Johnny and Vivian to meet for the first time in 35 years, and of course, the last time. In this emotional meeting, Johnny gave his blessing for Vivian to release a book about their life together, saying - “If anyone deserves to have their story told, it’s you”.

After the dark, chilling and frankly somewhat depressing themes of 2006's “Black Cadillac” album, which saw Cash dealing with her grief over the deaths of her famed step-mother and father, then her beloved stay-at-home mother who raised her - all of whom passed within a 2-year span - one might assume that her next project would move into an even deeper level of bleakness, but with 2009’s “The List,” it's immediately clear she instead found a measured place to stand

As outlined 2 days earlier, Cash went on the road with her dad in 1973, the day after she graduated high school, the girl from Southern California riding through the unfamiliar South on the tour bus. She had inherited John’s passion for music, albeit based on Southern Californian teenage rock, but not his penchant for performing - “I wanted to be a songwriter. I didn’t really have any interest in being a performer at that time”. But was on that tour that Johnny recognised serious gaps in his daughter’s knowledge of American roots music -

“… We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said, ‘I don’t know that one.’ And he mentioned another. I said, ‘I don’t know that one either, dad’, and he became very alarmed that I didn’t know what he considered my own musical genealogy. So he spent the rest of the afternoon making a list for me, and at the end of the day, he said, ‘This is your education.’ And across the top of the page, he wrote ‘100 Essential Country Songs’.”

“Many of the songs I was familiar with. They were part of the oeuvre of my childhood. Some were such big radio hits that it was impossible not to have heard them and some my mother and father played in the house. He wasn’t giving me the list thinking, ‘Oh, she doesn’t know any of these,’ he was giving me the list to say, ‘This is a template for excellence and for our own musical DNA. Make sure you give as much value to these songs as you do to rock ‘n’ roll”.

Cash says she was immediately intrigued by her father’s list - “At that moment on that tour, I would ask him ‘How does this song go?’ or ‘How does this one sound? Eventually I learned all of them, either through him or by the record or just by opening myself to absorbing this stuff. The list might be better titled 100 Essential American Songs because they covered the gamut from Appalachian tunes and American protest songs to gospel and classic country songs”. When Cash got around to thinking about a new studio project in 2008, she was set on making an album of cover songs, something she had never done before. She explains - “John [Levathal] started saying to me, ‘Well, if you’re going to do a record of covers, the record to do is songs from the list.

So after holding onto that list for 35 years, Cash decided to turn her father's priceless gift into a singularly personal new album - titled simply “The List”. The duo sat down with her father’s inventory and began the process of narrowing 100 songs to less than 15 - “There was a natural vetting process. Some of them were on the list because they were an important history song or something like that that didn’t make sense for me to sing and some of them were so much of a male voice that it was sort of impossible to turn it around. Then we started talking about which ones really suited my voice and which ones I had been singing throughout my life and were close to me“. Levanthal produced and arranged the album

“The List” is homage to great American music of the past - every song a classic standard, and the album itself a loving tribute to her father. It’s about legacy, both musical and personal. Curating these songs and adding her own voice to those that came before helped Cash to find her own place in the history of roots music and to resolve many of the themes she had tackled previously in her own work. The album includes guest performances by Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright. It also contains covers of classic country songs made by legends, Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Hank Snow, Don Gibson, Ray Price, Lefty Frizzell, Patsy Cline, Bobby Bare, amongst other country stars, as well Blind Willie Johnson’s gospel blues standard ‘Motherless Children’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl from the North Country’.

“The List” peaked at #5 on the album chart - Cash's first Top 10 album on the chart in 22 years - and even hit #22 on the Pop chart, topping her previously most successful album on that chart, 1981's “Seven Year Ache” which peaked at #26. It was also her first entry on the Top Rock Albums chart, where it debuted and peaked at # 8. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album and won the prestigious Album of the Year award at the 2010 Americana Music Honors & Awards. Though tempted to fill all today’s music selection with songs from this album, I eventually disciplined myself down to just 3 selections -

For a cover song to be truly worthwhile, the new version should innovate on the original version. A new interpretation should be offered that reflects the world view and experiences of a different artist - without being so different from the original that all connection between the two, beyond the lyrics and the melodic theme, is lost. Cash recorded ‘500 Miles’ and the entire “The List” album with husband, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Leventhal, and he plays every instrument on the recording.

Originally made famous by Bobby Bare in 1963 (post # 464), cash’s version of ‘500 Miles’ begins with a beautifully sad, lonesome organ, and the instruments build from there. Bass, to acoustic guitar, to percussion. This is a great song of the lonely traveller, a classic lyrical essay on homesickness. In an era when long-distance phone calls were a luxury, interstate highways were rare, flying a privelage of the wealthy and emails nonexistent, 500 miles was a world away from family and the familiar. Leventhal’s production and Cash’s vocal performance really elevates this. This live performance is from Austin City Limits -
“… Teardrops fell on mama's note / When I read the things she wrote / She said, "We miss you son, we love you, come on home / Well, I didn't have to pack / I had it all right on my back / Now I'm 500 miles away from home /


Cash magically makes Springsteen sound more like Vince Gill with this gentle duet that masterfully revises the oft-covered ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’. The original dates back to the great king of loneliness, Don Gibson in 1961 (post # 402) which was somewhat spoiled by its over-exuberant Nashville Sound accompaniment - no such problem here. Plenty of musicians have covered this Paul Hampton/Hal David composition, including Johnny Cash, but this version works so well because these two are great at sounding lonely together. -


The third selection was real hard - so many classics to choose from - Patsy Cline’s "She's Got You’, Ray Price's ‘Heartaches By the Number’, Merle Haggard's ‘Silver Wings’, Hank Williams' ‘Take These Chains From My Heart’, the Carter family standard "Underneath The Weeping Willow’, Lefty Frizzell’s famed murder ballad ‘Long Black Veil’, the list (pardon the pun) goes on. In the end I settled on a somewhat left-field choice - a gospel blues standard originally recorded by Blind Willie Johnson way back in 1927 - the timeless ‘Motherless Children’. Cash’s 2009 version is loose, groovy and effortlessly brilliant, laced with John Leventhal’s exquisite guitar -


In 2014, cash released “The River & The Thread”, an album chronicling her travels with Leventhal, following Highway 61 down to the Arkansas Delta, her father’s boyhood home, then to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Cash, thoroughly at home in New York City, explains - “My heart was kind of closed to the South before I started writing the songs for “The River and the Thread”, partly because of living there when my marriage was dissolving, under constant scrutiny. It was constant. I started to feel so suffocated and so uninteresting and uninterested. My life had codified into something that was as far from being artistic as I could imagine. I felt like a fraud. I just had this huge record with “King’s Record Shop”. Four # 1 singles. It sold really well. I had a ton of leverage with the record label, but I just felt like I had veered off the track of my life”.

“Arkansas State University called and said they wanted to buy my dad's boyhood home. There had been, originally, 500 houses left in this New Deal-era colony, but there were only about 20 left, and my dad's boyhood home was one of them. It was at the point of falling apart, and they wanted to get it before it fell apart. And they asked, would the family be interested in joining them in fundraising and supporting the renovation project? Well, I get asked to do a million projects about my dad, and this was the first one that really struck my heart. It had nothing to do with, you know, his iconic image and the projections that people put on him, trying to work their own agendas through him. It was about the source of him - and the earth itself. It was about "Five Feet High and Rising,” the gospel songs, losing his brother, everything that formed him. And so, I said yes“.

It is a sure sign of greatness when an artist at age 59, can produce albums like 2014’s “The River & The Thread” ’deep into a successful musical career. The songs reflect Cash’s family roots, through the nostalgic journeys she and her husband took to Scotland, where she traced her paternal family roots and the long sweep through the deep South, especially through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and, of course, Arkansas where Johnny Cash was raised, to explore and reflect her family legacy. The lyrics on “The River & the Thread” fittingly abound in road references. But the title, characteristic of Cash’s method - adds further layers, through two other symbols of pathways that ribbon through landscapes and lives - River, not just the obvious mighty Mississippi, but also for the coursing currents of history, geography, and culture that shape the South. And thread, for the more personal strands of genetics, memory, and even literal fabrics - cotton and clothes - that entangle Cash herself in that complicated place.

The album won critical approval and 3 Grammy Awards, including 2 for ‘A Feather’s Not A Bird’, the centerpiece of the album. Cash's husband John Leventhal co-wrote and produced the song, continuing a working relationship that dates back to 1993's “The Wheel”. This rootsy single represents the whole album, which is a reflection on the social history, culture, myth and musical heritage of America’s Deep South, a timeless song from an album that stands as perhaps her greatest achievement, with lyrics that read like poetry - "A feather’s not a bird / The rain is not the sea / A stone is not a mountain / But a river runs through me …", a dark undercurrent reminiscent of her father and vocals that sound as good as they ever have. It won the Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance at the Grammy Awards -


How to follow up the broad, sweeping majesty of “The River & The Thread’?” With “She Remembers Everything’“, some of Cash’s most personal material in years, steeped in love, loss, compromise and all aspects of life. On its release in 2018, the album was absolutely current in its themes and scope without being overtly political or topical, the songs gently atmospheric and full of humanity. The songs tell of how love and loss, unfulfilled dreams, and small victories shape our lives and make us who we are - “I could not have written them 10 years ago. Time is shorter. I have more to say”. It’s mature, lyrical and intimate. Through them, we get to know more about Rosanne Cash and a little about life - and so I end Rosanne Cash’s music selection with the beautiful and haunting ‘Everyone But Me’ -
“We run a similar course / On a track laid with broken glass / So tie your shoes real tight / It goes by real fast...”. Yep, she ain’t wrong there, oh my, it goes fast -


In November 2023, Cash, soon after acquiring and now owning all of her masters, commemorated the 30th anniversary of her seminal album, “The Wheel”, with an expanded, remastered edition. “The Wheel 30th Anniversary Deluxe Editio” features the original, remastered album, along with a second live LP, including Cash’s Austin City Limits performance from July 1993, and a rare recording of her appearance on the Columbia Records Radio Hour. Now in 2024 sees Cash, at age 69, undertaking a national U.S. tour.

In addition to her songwriting, Cash is also a talented essayist and author of 4 books, including her bestselling memoir Composed in 2010, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read.” Her most recent publication, Bird on a Blade was published in 2018. She has also written articles for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Nation, and the Oxford-American. Cash is also involved with Children Incorporated, an organisation that educates impoverished children. She is a member of P.A.X. which works to prevent gun violence among children.

Cash was awarded the SAG/AFTRA Lifetime Achievement Award for Sound Recordings in 2012 and received the 2014 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award in the Performing Arts. She completed a residency at the Library of Congress in December 2013 and then received the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award in the Performing Arts in 2014. That same year she was honored with multiple nominations from the AMA for Artist of the Year, Album of the Year for “The River & The Thread” and Song of the Year (for ‘A Feather’s Not a Bird”’. Those same recordings also earned her 3 2014 Grammy Awards for Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance. In 2015, Rosanne was chosen as both an Artist In Residence at the Country Music HoF (though she hasn’t yet been inducted) and as a Perspective Series artist at the prestigious Carnegie Hall. In 2021, Cash was the first female composer to receive the MacDowell Medal, awarded since 1960 to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to American culture.

Despite her 16 Top 10 hits ba k in the 1980’s, of which 11 climbed all the way to # 1, after which Rosanne Cash eschewed commercial success for artistic integrity, she eventually fulfilled her life-long ambition ro be primarily known as a songwriter, being inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2015. She has achieved this by charting her own course.
 
"For a cover song to be truly worthwhile, the new version should innovate on the original version. A new interpretation should be offered that reflects the world view and experiences of a different artist - without being so different from the original that all connection between the two, beyond the lyrics and the melodic theme, is lost."

Once again, I absolutely agree, Prof.

And here is a perfect example.
The angelic voice and piano mastery of Norah Jones - giving new life to a Hank Williams classic.

 
After returning from the Cook Islands and immediately sent back out to country Victoria, I'm now back to once again revisit the early 1980's with a singer - pretty much long forgotten now - whose vocal style fused country with "blue-eyed soul" (a term first used for The Righteous Brothers in 1964). Immersed from childhood in music, proficient in guitar and a songwriter to boot, but not possessing a strong vocal, he is a prime example of perseverance eventually paying off, making the most of a relatively brief window where his distinctive style of pop-country was in vogue. Actually, his music had elements of several musical styles, including pop, soul and R&B as well as traditional honky tonk country that he had performed live for many years in clubs and honky tonks, long before he finally found "overnight" success.

Born Erastus Bailey in rural Alabama in 1939, he was, typical of so many in this series, raised in rural poverty. Named after his father, “Rasie”, he later changed the spelling to Razzy, so people would pronounce his name correctly. The elder Bailey was a music loving farmer who played guitar and banjo and was an amateur songwriter. Razzy was also influenced by the blues music played by the many black farmhands he worked alongside in the fields as a youth.

At the end of the working day, Razzy’s father often strummed out his original songs to the attentive youngster Razzy on the porch. From the many black farm labourers (in an era before machinery replaced them), he gained a love of bottle-neck guitar and blues harmonica, but it was the regular Saturday night singing around a blazing fire that Razzy got his first taste of entertaining. From miles around, local musicians - fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo and harmonica players, converged on the Bailey’s farm to sit around the front porch and pick and sing until the early hours of the morning - “I sang with the rest of the family, but the truth is I was mostly just hollerin’ back then”.

This interest in music led to his father buying Razzy a secondhand guitar - “It was a used 5 or 6 dollar guitar with a neck so warped it looked more like a bow and arrow than a guitar”. But it was good enough for him to master the basics, and urged on by his parents he began taking lessons from a local schoolteacher. At high school, aged 15, he joined the Future Farmers of America at nearby Lafayette, Alabama - his sole purpose for joining was to be able to play in the FFA string band at the came in second in a Georgia State talent contest held at Auburn University. After that, he even made enough money with the string band, playing at nearby clubs and honky tonks, to buy himself a car in his senior year of high school.

Following high school graduation in 1957, Razzy took his first permanent job as an entertainer in a local highway honky tonk, but just 4 months later the club closed down and Razzy was out of a job. The closing had nothing to do with Razzy’s music - the opening of a new interstate freeway bypassing the venue made it impossible for customers to reach the club easily - but it was quite a blow to Razzy’s musical ambitions.

Typical of that era in the South, as we've also often seen here, Bailey also married straight after graduating high school and then had a lot of children - eventually totalling 7. As a result, his career as a performer was sporadic and unsuccessful for a number of years. After he lost his Highway honky tonk gig, at age 19, he and his band, The Rebelaires, managed to cut a single with a local label, B & K Records, in Birmingham Alabama in 1958, with the ill-timed rockabilly 'Keep Singin' and Look Ahead' (it's on YouTube) - recorded just at the time the reaction to R&R set in - especially in the South. .

Desperate to support a young and growing family, having married as a teenager, he became utterly disillusioned, frustrated and discouraged, dropping out of music to try working as a delivery-truck driver, insurance salesman, butcher and furniture seller. However, is wife, Sandra, urged him to continue pursuing his music dreams, so he resumed playing part-time where he could on the local honky tonk circuit.

In 1966, after 4 years away from a full-time music career, Razzy decided to once again give the music business his full concentration. He formed a trio called Daily Bread. He was performing mainly the pop hits of the day in clubs throughout the South-east. “I’ve always loved doing country, but back then it was a question of playing whatever kind of music that would get you work Rock‘n’roll was in and club owners didn’t want to hire unknown country acts". Though he was forced to do little more than cover versions of well-known pop songs for many years, he always had a dream of establishing himself as a performer in his own right. He worked on writing songs, making demo tapes and badgering music publishers.

Razzy's sent several self-penned songs to Atlantic Records' Bill Lowery in Atlanta, a highly respected publisher, responsible for discovering and grooming successful artists like Tommy Roe, Joe South and Billy Joe Royal. Lowery was quite impressed by some of Razzy’s songs, especially '9,999,999 Tears', which Lowery agreed to produce. While the 1966 single, on which Bailey was backed by a studio band featuring Billy Joel, Joe South, and Freddy Weller, failed to chart, it renewed the singer's interest in pursuing a recording career full-time - “Up until that time, I’d been out playing in local clubs about 3 nights a week, but I thought it was time to take the big jump and give it everything I had”.

The next 6 to 7 years found Bailey recording for a number of different labels. He formed the pop-oriented trio Daily Bread in 1968, releasing a pair of singles on small labels - but each time a hit record eluded him. In 1972 he formed a new group called Razzy Bailey and the Aquariums and recorded some more of his own songs including the up-tempo soul flavoured 'I Hate Hate'. Bailey wrote 'I Hate Hate' as an anti-war song and strengthened the emotional power of its lyric – urging an end to hate between left and right, black and white, young and old – by adding a children’s choir and re-releasing it under the name ‘Razzy & The Neighbourhood Kids'. Released in 1974, it failed to chart - it's "blue-eyed soul" sound didn't readily fit into any commercial genre, but it gained sufficient radio plays for the major label, MGM Records to sign Razzy -
"... There's so much hate going on today / On the right and on the left /
You see, we hate our brothers / Yes, we do, and we hate our own self /
There's even hate going on today / Between the young folks and the old /
Can't see all this hate is really / Eating up our very soul ..." -

The soul/R&B fueled 'I Hate Hate' has had a strange afterlife. It was never a hit at the time, little noticed, but its lyrics ring even more true today as they ever did, its message more relevant as the U.S. has become more divided between left and right over the last decade, urged on by the cesspit of social media. This is why the song was revived in Andrea Arnold’s 2016 road movie American Honey. It's now by far the most downloaded Razzy Bailey sung song on YouTube, easily exceeding all his subsequent big hits.

However, the MGM label was undergoing a shake-up and with only one release to his name, Razzy found himself back at square one - “I got so used to my songs being turned down and my efforts at recording deals falling through that it just made me all the more determined to succeed”. He secured a new deal with Capricorn Records in 1975 and recorded another of his own songs, 'Peanut Butter', this time with Bob Montgomery, the noted producer and song publisher, guiding him. He was also signed as a writer to the House of Gold publishing firm and Montgomery gave this record a marked ‘country’ feel, which had been lacking on his previous recorded attempts. But yet again the single failed to make much of an impression, so he was again dropped by a record label.

So Razzy's near 20 year music career up to 1975 had been a succession of false starts, disappointment being the order of the day - I suspect not helped by his lack of a strong "country" vocal. But his luck and fortune finally changed the very next year, 1976 in an unexpected way. Pop and country-pop star, Dickey Lee, having stronger vocals than Razzy, covered Bailey's 10 year old 1966 single, '9,999,999 Tears', and took it right up to # 3 -

The tearful song (sorry for that bad pun) marked a return to the pop charts for Lee following a 10-year hiatus - in the interim he had begun a 10-year string of country hits (including one # 1 hit, 'Rocky' in 1975) ending in 1981. Thai artist Bird Thongchai also had a hit in 2008 with Razzy’s '9,999,999 Tears'. Thongchai molded the old country hit into a Latin dance mix.

After the success of '9,999,999 Tears', Lee then recorded Razzy's 'Peanut Butter', which also made the Top 20 in 1976, thus establishing Razzy as a successful "new" hit writer in Nashville. But for Razzy, unlike, say, Roseanne Cash amongst others, songwriting was not his first love, saying back then - “I’d rather entertain and record than anything. I enjoy writing songs, too, but I have so many other things I’m trying to learn about my career that I just haven’t had the chance to write regularly". Indeed, while not ceasing his song-writing altogether, once Razzy finally found success as a singer, he relied more on the works of studio writers for his hits than his own pen.

These minor successes finally awakened Nashville's Music Row’s interest in the now 37 y.o. Razzy. Delighted by the success that Dickey Lee enjoyed with the 2 Razzy Bailey songs, RCA had no hesitation in signing the singer-writer to a recording contract in early 1978. With Bob Montgomery still guiding him, Razzy went into the studios armed with some of the best new songs from Montgomery’s publishing firm. With Montgomery also producing, Bailey debuted on the major label with the Steve Pippin and Johnny Slate penned 'What Time Do You Have to Be Back To Heaven'. A well-crafted pop-country ballad with hooks and overdubs and at the forefront of the pop-country sound sweeping through country music, with the outlaw era coming to an end, this had no trouble in rising high to # 9 in 1978 and finally, after 20 years of trying, setting Razzy on his way to establishing himself as a bona-fide country star -


Pippin and Slate also penned his follow-up single,´Tonight She’s Gonna Love Me (Like There Was No Tomorrow)', another sweet and syrupy ballad that charted even better, reaching # 6. Both these singles appeared on his first RCA album "If Love Had A Face", released in 1979. Titled after the 3rd of his 4 Top 10 hit singles from the album, it has an assortment of sounds ranging from up-tempo countryfied funk to gentle syrupy love ballads. Surprisingly there were only 2 self-penned Razzy songs, including´Natural Love', a mid-tempo tune with a strong soul feel that brings to mind Brook Benton.

Razzy followed this initial success with the very syrupy pop-flavoured single 'I Can't Get Enough of You', penned by Johnny Slate and Danny Morrison which went to # 5 in 1979 and subsequently became the opening track of his # 12 selling 1980 album, simply titled "Razzy", which propelled Razzy's career right up to the top. 'Lovin Up A Storm', also written by Slate and Morrison, was released as the 3rd single from the "Razzy" album and became Bailey's 6th Top 10 hit and the first to go all the day to # 1 in 1980. The lyrics of a cheating couple are country enough, but the production is a perfect (in lieu of a more direct term - example of 1980 style pop-country (so you've been warned) that grabbed the suburban marketplace -
"It's the same old situation / Where cheaters never win / And we are no exception to the rule /
But your husband is my buddy / And my wife is your best friend / And these games we play are tailor made for fools ..." -


'I Keep Coming Back' penned by studio writers Jim Hurt, Johnny Slate and Larry Keith, was the 4th single released from the "Razzy" album "Razzy", and became Bailey's 2nd successive # 1 in 1980. It is a prime example of his "blue-eyed soul" version of pop-country, which you may take or leave -


Razzy's 20 years of struggling to establish himself had at least given him plenty of experience in the music business and interpretative powers in his singing, even if his voice was not particularly distinctive and certainly lacking the power of most country singers of that era. Having worked so long and hard for it, Razzy enjoyed his new found fame, saying at the time - “I’m more at peace with myself now than I was years back when I felt like I was getting nowhere. Lots of folks never heard of me until 'What Time Do You Have To Be Back To Heaven', so I tell them if 20 years in the business counts as ‘overnight success’ then I like it fine".

So leave off for now in 1980 with Razzy having finally, at age 41, reached the heights of commercial success with 2 # 1 hits. Tomorrow will see out the remainder of his career and will even include several big hits - one in particular - that I like.
 
Razzy reached his commercial peak through 1980 and 1981, with a string of seven # 1 hits, including the 2 featured yesterday from his 1980 # 12 "Razzy" album. His next album, 1981's "Makin' Friends", was even more successful, reaching 12 and spawning 5 Top 10 hits, of which 4 topped the chart. Sonically, Razzy brought a mainly gentle, string-led sound to the in-fashion suburban pop-country, fitting in well with the trending Urban Cowboy movement. But he also infused elements of soul, R&B and, as will be seen below, traditional honky tonk and rock'n'roll.

Razzy's first 2 of his 5 # 1 hits in 1981 came from a double-sided single release. You may want to skip straight to the B-side just below, but 'Friends', another from the pens of Johnny Slate and Danny Morrison, is the proper A-side, a tender ballad about how friends eventually find themselves lovers - “who makes better lovers than friends?”. The sentiment (if not the reality) is touching, I guess, if you don't take it seriously. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, Razzy's vocal performance here is shaky at best. He is trying, but not quite succeeding. I suppose the vulnerability of the lyrics and the seeming sincerity of Razzy's delivery, along with his pop-country sound being very much in vogue of that time, was enough to get this up to # 1 -


But never mind about the A-side - the single on the B-side also went to # 1 and it's my favourite Razzy song (thus betraying once again my weakness for old school honky tonk). The self-penned 'Anywhere There's A Jukebox' is evidence of how a songwriter knows his own strengths as a singer. As we saw yesterday, prior to his "overnight success" Razzy had some 20 years of experience performing in clubs and honky tonks, and thus knew all about honky tonk music - and culture, real well. Here, he’s in a perfect honky tonk groove. There’s nothing terribly original here lyrically, but when you’re talking about seeking out and enjoying honky tonk dives populated by women looking for a good time and has Hank Williams playing on the juke box (i.e. the perfect honky tonk), do you really need to reinvent the wheel? Thankfully, Razzy keeps it all traditional, with the Ray Price 4/4 shuttle beat and I appreciate his reference country, musics greatest legend in his lyrics -
"... I was born in Alabama beneath the cold beer sign / Learned how to dance on a hardwood floor to 4/4 and 3/4 time /
I met my first cheating woman when I was seventeen / Since then it's been me and old Hank /
I understand the songs he sings ..." -


The 2nd single from 1981's "Makin' Friends" album is another good one, worth a listen. 'Midnight Hauler' written by Wood Newton and Tim DuBois was released at a time when truckie songs were popular - It was Razzy's 6th # 1 and in comparison to his usual work, it seems a frenzied rush that captures the drive of a truckie, though for me the lyric about "18 wheels" - used in several truckie songs of that era - always amuses me as it really dates the song - tThese days, in Australia, you wouldn't boast about anything with less than 34 wheels. Razzy sings of “... a belly full of coffee and whites ...”, which strikes me as a similar diet to everyone in a recording studio This is relentless, and Bailey sounds more engaged and vocally distinctive than anything he did previously. The musicians tear it up, with an absolutely sizzling guitar solo rivaling the fast paced piano for the biggest musical highlight of the track -


Now for a bit of fun - starting, perhaps, with a schoolboy sn1gger about the song title 'She Left Love All Over Me'. If you think this song will be about a very satisfying rendezvous and its aftermath, then you're right. But the central conceit –
“... she left love all over me ... ” (stop sn1ggering!) just doesn’t work as the writer surely intended (did no-one see this at the time?), so the song has to be carried by Razzy’s delivery. He mostly does a pretty good job for someone of his vocal limitations and it connects - except for when he reaches for a George Jones type wail that accomplishes nothing but establishing that Razzy Bailey was not George Jones (though to be fair, there was only one Georg Jones). One more thing - The guitar line at the beginning seems like it might have inspired the opening riff of Hank Jr.'s 'A Country Boy Can Survive' (post # 803) -

After Razzy sent no less than 5 songs all the way to # 1 in 1981, exceeding any other singers for that year, he was named Billboard's Country Singles Artist of the Year for 1981. But this was his last # 1 single.

Razzy's next album "Feelin' Right", released in 1982, also sold well, reaching # 10. However, in a sign of things to come, only 2 singles were released from the album, though both made the Top 10. His next album, released in late 1982, "A Little More Razz", failed to make the Top 50 and also only spawned one Top 20 hit, 'Loves Gonna Fall Here Tonight', written by Kendal Franceschi, which got to # 8, Razzie's last entry into the Top 10. I suppose, if one is feeling generous, this could be described as a relatively pleasant up-tempo, easy listening radio tune. But one can also understand why this type of pop-country had by now ran out of steam, ready to be steam-rolled by the neo-traditional movement -


Razzy's relatively brief run as a major country star came to an end by the end of 1982, with only a handful of Top 20 and Top 40 singles after that. In 1984, Razzy switched to MCA Records and began emphasising his old R&B influences. He issued countrified cover singles of the R&B classics 'In the Midnight Hour', which reached # 14 (and only narrowly missed the cut for the selection here), 'Knock On Wood' (his final 2 singles to chart), and 'Starting All Over Again'. His homage "Blues Juice" album of 1989 capped this phase. By the mid-'80s, however, Bailey's hit-making days were largely over; his singles landing only in the lower rungs of the charts.

As he receded from the top of the charts, Razzy began recording more of his own compositions again. These included 1983's 'After the Great Depression', 1985's 'Modern Day Marriages', 1986's 'Old Blue Yodeler' and 'Rockin’ in the Parkin’ and 1988's 'Unattended Firé. In 1987, Razzy began issuing his records through his own label, SOA (Sounds of America). His last charted single was 1989’s 'But You Will', which he co-wrote.

In 1993, the year after he recorded his 1992 collection "Razzy Bailey: Fragile, Handle with Care", his wife of 37 years, Sandra, committed suicide - she shot herself with a gun Bailey gave her for protection (as they still do in the U.S.) while he was touring at the time in Illinois. Razzy said his wife's suicide has left him devastated and searching for inspiration - "She was my centre of everything". Hoping to find a fresh start, the couple had recently moved to the city of Decatur in northern Alabama. But in the wake of his wife's tragic death, Razzy returned to Nashville and re-married shortly thereafter, in 1994.

After his U.S. career waned, Razzy did what many other U.S. artists do once their domestic market plummets and headed abroad. He headlined overseas in England at the Wembley Festival, as well as at shows in Australia, New Zealand and Croatia - yes, Croatia, which was at war with Serbia and under fire in 1994 when Razzy and his entourage landed on its soil. Being the only act to go their at that time, he became hugely popular there, albeit for a short period time, when he and his music took war off the minds of millions of hospitable Croatians. Razzie rated this experience as his most memorable career highlight. In 1997, an obscure, extremely rare 20-year-old recording of Razzy's 'The Love Bump' somehow became a hit in Japan for reasons that are a mystery - the original recording was never released and only a few demos were pressed. In 2008, as mentioned 2 days back, the Thai artist Bird Thongchai had an dance-mix hit with Bailey’s '9,999,999 Tears'.

After the tragic suicide of his first wife, Razzy resumed his own recording career with such collections as 1998's "Razzy Unwrapped", 1999's "Your Cheating Heart", "Damned Good Time" in 2008 and "Whiskey California" in 2009. His 2005 "Razzy Unwrapped" album, celebrating his 50 years of performing, was released on his own SOA label, with a collection of Razzy penned songs with stellar guest performers such as Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels, Mickey Gilley, Randy Van Warmer, Delbert McClinton and Dobie Gray, among others.

As the years rolled by, in addition to continuing to perform live at various clubs and honky tonks, just as he had for his first 20 years before his breakthrough to the charts, Razzy became well known for mentoring new songwriters and aspiring country performers coming into Nashville. This kept him active in the Nashville music scene well into the 2000s, his obituary noting - “So many entertainers looked to Razzy as their mentor and for his guidance in the music industry. Razzy was always the first to reach out and help a struggling newcomer to Nashville”.

In 2020, at age 81 in Razzie was still relatively fit and healthy for his age. But in December 2020 he was involved in a serious car crash, which left his neck broken in 4 places, his back vertebrae cracked and 2 broken ribs landed him in the trauma and critical care units at a Nashville hospital. He never fully recovered, not helped by the Covid lockdown starting a couple months after the accident, which meant the very social Razzie was kept in isolation and having to rehab alone. This really sapped his spirit. He did eventually discharged back home but still in poor health with on-going issues and requiring home hospice care before succumbing to congestive heart failure in August 2021, aged 82.

Razzy's star shone very brightly, if only briefly. After 2o years of just being one of hundreds of singers performing on the honky tonk circuit, it was his songwriting that brought him to the attention of music row. In that brief 5 year period from 1978 to 1982, but like so many country singers of that era, he didn't commercially survive the onslaught of the neo-traditional movement, fading into obscurity - very little of his material, apart from his biggest hits, has ever been released on CD. But during the 5 years he was with RCA, he placed 13 singles in the Top 10, of which 7 went all the way to # 1.

Now once again, I have to head back to the bush for a few days, then from mid next week back to the Pacific - this time in Vanuatu for a week or so. But I should be back sometime after that for more history.
 

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