Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

In the slipstream of Johnny Cash came what would become known as the Outlaw Movement, an informal response to Nashville’s easy listening, corporate and safe style, often recorded in Texas, reviving the honky tonk sounds of Hank Williams with strong lyrical content. Starting in the mid-’60s with singers like Bobby Bare, Tompall Glaser and Johnny Darrell, the sub-genre’s standard bearers would include Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter, Willie Nelson (after he grew his hair), Kris Kristofferson, Leon Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, Hank Williams Jr, Jerry Jeff Walker and Gram Parsons.

More traditionally-minded country stars, many mentored by the great RCA producer and guitarist Chet Atkins,  still broke through — Loretta Lynn, Roger Miller, Charley Pride (the first black mainstream country singer), Tammy Wynette, Porter Wagoner (on whose TV show Dolly Parton began her iconic career),  or Conway Twitty, hitherto a rock & roll singer. And some straddled the mainstream/Outlaw divide. Merle Haggard, though not part of the Nashville establishment, sang about social issues, but had much success with hippie-bashing, hyper-patriotic songs such as Okie From Muskogee, which won him the greatest establishment accolade, the Country Music Association’ Entertainer of the Year award. Haggard was in fact satirising small-town values, though he didn’t advertise that too loudly. Whatever the case, the counter-culture liked the song because they thought they got the joke, and those who didn’t get the joke loved it because it articulated their feelings accurately. In that way, Okie is the first postmodern country hit. The follow-up, The Fightin’ Side Of Me, was more angry-American fodder, entrenching Haggard in the public imagination as a right-wing spokesman, a position he resented.

Haggard, an ex-convict, came from the country scene in Bakersfield in California, where the sounds of the South where brought by Dust Bowl migrants, like his parents, in the late 1930s. While Haggard was actually born there, the king of Bakersfield doubtless was Texas-born Buck Owens, whose long career was influential (and whose names Beatles fans will recognise as the original singer of Ringo’s Act Naturally). He was preceded by the Ferlin Husky, an innovator and creator of some of the worst records ever made. And Bakersfield gave rise to Gram Parsons, whose brief but eventful career continues to influence music today. And up the road, in Los Angeles, Arkansas-born Glen Campbell was enjoying great success with a slicker brand of country.

The counter-culture touched Country in a time of change.  The Fraternity Of Man, for example, recorded the drug anthem Don’t Bogart That Joint in 1968, helping to ring in a fusion of country music and rock which would locate its spearhead in The Byrd’s collection of country covers, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and which saw a member of bluegrass outfit The Dillards record a couple of duet albums with a member of The Byrds.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Lefty Frizzell – She’s Gone, Gone, Gone
2. Ernest Tubb – Waltz Across Texas
3. Eddy Arnold – Make The World Go Away
4. Justin Tubb - Take A Letter Miss Gray
5. Chet Atkins - Back Up And Push
6. Don Bowman – Dear Harlan Howard
7. Dane Stinit – Don’t Knock What You Don’t Understand
8. Hank Thompson – A Six Pack To Go
9. Flatt &  Scruggs with Doc Watson – Pick Along
10. Willie Nelson – Three Days
11. Hank Locklin – The Girls Get Prettier (Every Day)
12. Kitty Wells – Crying Time
13. Merle Haggard – Life In Prison
14. Johnny Paycheck – Pride Covered Ears
15. Statler Brothers - Flowers On The Wall
16. Johnny Cash & June Carter – Long-Legged Guitar Pickin’ Man
17. Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner – The Last Thing On My Mind
18. Faron Young - Unmitigated Gall
19. George Jones – Walk Through This World With Me
20. Mel Tillis – Life Turned Her That Way
21. Skeeter Davis – Precious Memories
22. Red Sovine – Phantom 309
23. B.J. Thomas – Hooked On A Feeling
24. The Dillards – Nobody Knows
25. Fraternity of Man – Don’t Bogart Me
26. Bobbie Gentry – Louisiana Man
27. Glen Campbell - Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife
28. The Everly Brothers – Less Of Me
29. Loretta Lynn – Fist City
30. Dillard & Clark – Train Leaves Here This Mornin’
31. Townes Van Zandt – Tecumseh Valley
BONUS TRACKS:
Waylon Jennings – Destiny’s Child
The Byrds – You’re Still On My Mind

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In the late 1950s and early ’60s country was in a good shape. The likes of Johnny Cash, George Jones,  Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline (who like Reeves would die in a plane crash), Don Gibson, Kitty Wells, Marty Robbins, Skeeter Davis, Ray Price, Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, ex-boxer Lefty Frizzell and Wanda Jackson were recording prodigious success, even in rivalry with its progeny, rock & roll.These were the comfort years before the social upheaval of the 1960s put into question old certainties, even in the world of country music.

By now, country was no longer confined to the South. In some ways, country influenced the English 1950s skiffle genre, particularly via rockabilly and western swing. In London, a young Keith Richards was obsessed with country even more than he was with the blues (and his love for the genre would return with force when he became friends with Gram Parsons in the late 1960s). In Liverpool, young George Harrison was obsessed with Carl Perkins. And a young Jewish songwriter from Minnesota based his sound on the folk music of Woody Guthrie –  who once was regarded a member of the country camp (which then was called folk, just to confused matters) – and the entire repository of country music. That singer caught the Zeitgeist of the 1960s when he announced that the times were a-changing. Country was not immune from a shifting society.

Spearheading that new age was Johnny Cash, who attracted audiences well beyond the traditional country set without compromising his sound. Outspoken on social rights issues — Cash recorded an album, Bitter Tears, bemoaning the treatment of Native Americans in 1964 — he also performed for President Richard Nixon (he refused to sing Nixon’s requests of right-wing songs, instead singing a defence of the counterculture which Tricky Dick so despised). A hellraiser in classic and acceptable country mode, he broke taboos — such as divorcing and then marrying June Carter — which scandalised the country set.

Yet, Cash also represented traditional values, particularly his deeply-held Christian faith. Cash was so mainstream that he hosted a TV show, and so alternative that he would invite acts that otherwise would never get an airing. And Cash stood with the downtrodden, performing in prisons (one such gig persuaded the inmate Merle Haggard to forego a life of crime in favour of making music), in the United States and outside. Cash was the first country singer to really provoke (and then stare down) the Ku Klax Klan, which once burnt a cross on his lawn.

Other musical forms were influenced by country, in turn influenced country and even fused with country. In 1962 Ray Charles released his Modern Sounds In Country And Western (employing a terminology for the genre that had no currency in country circles), a collection of shrewdly selected country songs. Around the same time, R&B artists were recording in the country medium, though not exclusively, as Charley Pride later would. These include Solomon Burke, Arthur Alexander, Clarence Frogman Henry, Stoney Edwards, Clarence Gatemouth Brown and even Joe Tex.

Before we get to the business end of this post, a little factoid: Anita Wood at one point was Elvis Presley’s girlfriend, and she recorded on the label which first launched Elvis, Sun Records.

TRACKLISTING:
1. The Louvin Brothers – Red Hen Hop
2. Don Gibson – Lonesome Number One
3. Hank Locklin – Happy Journey
4. Bill Anderson – Po’ Folks
5. Anita Wood – I’ll Wait Forever
6. Hank Snow – Conscience I’m Guilty
7. Patsy Cline – She’s Got You
8. Claude King – Wolverton Mountain
9. Freddy Fender – Wasted Days And Wasted Nights
10. Arthur Alexander – I Hang My Head And Cry
11. John D Loudermilk – Road Hog
12. Skeeter Davis – Don’t Let Me Cross Over
13. Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Fiddle And Banjo
14. Charlie Rich – Sittin’ And Thinkin’
15. Ray Charles – You Win Again
16. Jean Shepard – Jealous Heart
17. Carl Smith – Air Mail To Heaven
18. Lefty Frizzell – Saginaw, Michigan
19. Willie Nelson – Half A Man
20. Sam McGee – Sam McGee Stomp
21. Buck Owens – Hello Trouble
22. Johnny Cash - Custer
23. Doc Watson – Born About Six Thousand Years Ago
24. George Jones – The Race Is On
25. Kitty Wells – Password
26. Tammy Wynette – I Don’t Wanna Play House
27. Faron Young - My Dream
28. Chet Atkins - Guitar Country

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In Volume 9 of the country history series, we look at the glory years of country, a time when the genre was at its most self-confident and profitable. It was still a vibrant genre, as this collection shows, though the crooners were already beginning to define the genre, a situation that would give rise to the outlaw movement, the protagonists of which were inspired by several of the artists on this mix.

It’s difficult to say who was the biggest star in 1950s country. The crooner likes of Eddy Arnold were immensely successful, but in terms of sales and influence, the biggest names were Left Frizzell and Webb Pierce, rival kings of honky tonk music. Pierce notched up more country #1s than any other in the 1950s, having in the late ’40s gained recognition by placing girls in the frontrow of his gigs and paying them to scream at him, bobbysoxer style.

Pierce was famous for his Nudie suits – the ornately decorated outfits country singers used to be associated with, if they didn’t wear cowboy hats. Indeed, Pierce did much to popularise the suits made by Nudie Cohn, the Hollywood tailor who got his start from Tex Williams (whom we met in Volume 7). After a row over money, Pierce resigned from the Grand Ole Opry in 1957. The move coincided with the decline of Pierce’s career, though he continued to record until 1982. He died in 1991 at the age of 69.

Marty Robbins was a prolific songwriter and versatile performer. In Volume 8, he covered Chuck Berry’s Maybelline; here he sings his own composition El Paso, a cowboy song from his hugely successful 1959 album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. Robbins also wrote one of the Lefty Frizzell songs featured here, Cigarette And Coffee Blues.  From the time of his first hit in 1952 till the year after his death at 57 in 1982, Robbins was never off the country charts. He did a cover of Arthur Crudup’s That’s Alright Mama before Elvis’ recorded his version. Who knows what might happened had Robbins’ single been a huge hit? He also scored a batch of pop hits, most famously A White Sports Coat (And A Pink Carnation), a US #2. He might have had another massive pop hit; he was the first to record Singing The Blues, written by Melvin Endsley, but his label, Columbia, pushed the version by Guy Mitchell, recorded almost two months later. Robbins’ version sold 750,000 copies; Mitchell’s 3 million. Robbins was also a skilled NASCAR racing driver, notching up six top ten finishes (he played himself in the NASCAR film Hell on Wheels).

For a long time, country music was not a place for women. Sporadically, one or two would have big hits, of course, but it was a solidly male world. Rose Maddox was among the pioneering women in country, even if she, as the frontwoman, still had to take second billing behind her brothers (they featured in Volume 8). The Maddox family had migrated from Alabama to California, a couple of years before the dustbowl sharecroppers from Oklahoma made their exodus there. Living in Modesto, the Maddox kids quickly established a reputation as California’s best hillbilly band (in the days before the term hillbilly was a slur), specializing in what then passed for racy lyrics. Their country boogie won the Maddox Brothers & Rose a recording contract in 1946. They made their breakthrough in 1949 with a song written by Woody Guthrie, Philadelphia Lawyer. It is said that Fred Maddox’s style of slap bass playing was central in the development of rockabilly, and therefore rock & roll. Only one of the six Maddox siblings – Don, 88, – is still alive. Fred died in 1992 at 73; Rose in 1998 at 72.

R&B musicians had an affinity with country music. Hank Ballard adopted his first name in tribute to Hank Williams, and Chuck Berry reworked a Bob Wills song from the 1930s, Ida Red, to create the seminal Maybelline. Over the years several R&B singers would sing country. Among them was Clarence Frogman Henry, a Louisiana musician in the mould of Fats Domino, who is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R, and includes covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Don Gibson - Blue Blue Day
2. Hank Locklin – Geisha Girl
3. Buddy Holly – An Empty Cup (And A Broken Date)
4. Barbara Pittman – Two Young Fools In Love
5. Patsy Cline – Three Cigarettes In The Ashtray
6. Webb Pierce – There Stands The Glass
7. Hank Snow – Tangled Mind
8. Leroy Van Dyke – The Auctioneer
9. Ferlin Husky - Gone
10. Tommy Collins – You Better Not Do That
11. Jack Clement - The Black Haired Man
12. Lefty Frizell – Cigarettes and Coffee Blues
13. Charlie Walker – Pick Me Up On Your Way Down
14. Little Jimmy Dickens - Me And My Big Loud Mouth
15. Billy Brown - High Heels But No Soul
16. Cowboy Copas – Circle Rock
17. Clarence Frogman Henry – I Told My Pillow
18. Wes Holly – Shufflin’ Shoes
19. Johnny Cash – Guess Things Happen That Way
20. Patsy Cline – A Stranger In My Arms
21. Hank Locklin – Send Me The Pillow You Dream On
22. Marty Robbins – El Paso
23. Eddy Arnold – Tennessee Stud
24. George Jones – White Lightning
25. Lefty Frizzell – Long Black Veil
26. Skeeter Davis – Set Him Free
27. Brenda Lee – I’m Sorry
28. Wanda Jackson – Tweedie Dee
29. Jim Ed and the Browns - Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons
30. The Stanley Brothers – Rank Stranger
31. Johnny Horton – Johnny Freedom (Freedomland)

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Some years ago, the brains at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley’s debut single That’s All Right, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup’s song, over Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer).

It is, of course, a fruitless mission to identify a “first” rock & roll song, because the genre is a jumble of diverse influences that convened, not always simultaneously, in an untidy evolution. One might as well seek to pinpoint the first piece of classical music or identify the inventor of the wheel. There is no single originator; there cannot be, because rock & roll is not a recipe consisting of essential ingredients. The genre has always been diffuse, subject to a broad sweep of influences.

Rock & roll grew from various strands of what we broadly term R&B, gospel and country. Alas, the latter influences are often relegated to the incidental. Rock & roll might have received its name from Cleveland DJ Allan Freed as a crossover term for black music, but what the genre became is not what Freed had in mind in 1951, at least not musically.

Indeed, it could (and, indeed, should) be argued that more than a genre of music, rock & roll was an attitude, a new ethos, a response to the times. Rock & roll was an assertive posture, a rejection of prescribed inhibition and the formulae of social expectations. It was a cultural insurrection, and politically helped nudge America towards racial integration. A social (and sexual) revolt, and, briefly, a musical uprising.

A bid to emphasise the contribution of country music to the rock & roll revolution must not be seen as diminishing the absolute centrality of black musical genres in the narrative. Almost all American music, save perhaps for Appalachian broadside ballads, has its roots in black sounds. But country and R&B were not driving on so segregated tracks that there was no cross-pollination before rock & roll. The reality is that in the South, where the roots of rock & roll are so deeply embedded, the social boundaries always were crossed when it came to music. The notion of white and black workers singing together in the cotton fields (proverbial and otherwise) is documented fact.  Some blues of the 1920s or ’30s sounds much like some of what would come to be called country, and vice versa. Early country produced a huge number of songs with the word “blues” in the title, and these were indeed blues songs; not because these singers were consciously imitating black musicians (though they were profoundly influenced by them), but because the blues cut across the races. The father of country music, Jimmy Rodgers, had a catalogue full of blues songs. In short, as we saw in the first instalment of this series, early country owed a debt to black music, perhaps above all in the songs’ authenticity. The late soul singer Brook Benton once described country music as a form of gospel music, “the soul of the country”.

Jazz also influenced some country. Bob Wills, the biggest name in western swing, commented in the 1950s that he was doing rock & roll already 25 years earlier: “Rock & Roll? Why, man, that’s the same kind of music we’ve been playin’ since 1928! [...] But it’s just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It’s the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm’s what’s important.” Wills also provided a prototype for one of rock & roll’s most pivotal songs. Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, another perennial contender for the first rock & roll song, was a reworking of Bob Wills version of the fiddle number Ida Red (as featured in Copy Borrow Steal Vol 4).

It is striking that Rolling Stone named as the “first” rock & roll records those by singers whose roots were in country (if I had been asked, I’d have nominated any number of songs by the jump blues and jazzman Louis Jordan, who sounded and acted rock & roll long before it became a thing). Bill Haley was a western swing musician, and Elvis might have grown up in a small white enclave in Tupelo’s black ghetto and hung out in Memphis’ Beale Street, but his roots were in country. The first song Elvis ever sung in public, at 14, was Red Foley’s Old Shep.  After his handful of recordings at Sun, Elvis was signed to RCA by the label’s head of the country division, Steve Sholes; was often produced by country guitarist and producer Chet Atkins with legendary country pianist Floyd Cramer occasionally on the ivories and country harmonising quartet The Jordanaires on backing vocals.  And the b-side of That’s All Right was, of course, a country song, Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon Of Kentucky).

And surely there can be no denying the importance of rockabilly – a sub-genre of country that did not really sell well – in the rise of rock & roll. The most notable exponent of rockabilly was Carl Perkins, who was taught the guitar by bluesmen, but the musical styles rockabilly drew from had been around since the late 1930s. Buddy Jones’ 1939 song Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama (featured in A History Of Country Vol. 3) is generally regarded as the first rockabilly record.

Likewise, rock & roll would not have been quite the same without the “hillbilly boogie” of Moon Mullican, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Cliffie Stone, the Delmore Brothers, Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, Merril Moore or The Maddox Brothers & Rose (who drew also from rockabilly). The slap bass, so integral to early rock & roll (imagine Elvis’ singles without Bill Black’s bass!), was standard in boogie, rockabilly and western swing.

Many leading rock & roll stars crossed over from country: Jerry Lee Lewis (whose piano style borrowed heavily from Merril Moore’s), Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddy Cochran, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Del Shannon, Ricky Nelson, Wanda Jackson and so on. Many of them intermittently returned to their country roots.

Several R&B performers were at home with country. Ike Turner (another regular “first” rock & roll song nominee) could do a mean country song, as could deep soul men Joe Tex and Solomon Burke. Ray Charles recorded a whole collection of country songs. Arthur Alexander, a massive influence on The Beatles, was known for his country-soul. Hank Ballard, another black rock & roll legend, identified as his most pivotal influence the singing cowboys, led by Gene Autry (of course, Hank was not his real name).

The mutual respect and shared sources of rock & roll may be summed up well by Carl Perkins. When he first heard Chuck Berry’s Maybelline, he recalled thinking: “Here is a man who likes country” – just as Carl loved the blues.

……………………………………..

And so on to the country songs of the incipient years of the rock & roll era, itself a golden age for the genre.Some of these songs are country classics, some a relatively obscure (especially a handful of rockabilly tunes). There is a symbolism in my choice of opening and closing track: Jerry Lee Lewis covering Ray Price’s big hit.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Ray Price – I’ll Be There If You Want Me
2. Webb Pierce – More And More
3. Rudy Gray – Hearts Made Of Stone
4. Lefty Frizzell – I Love You Mostly
5. Hank Snow - The Next Voice You Hear
6. Kitty Wells – Making Believe
7. Jimmy Heap and the Melody Masters – You’re Nothing But A Nothing
8. Doug Poindexter & the Starlite Ramblers – My Kind Of Carrying On
9. The Davis Sisters – Fiddle Diddle Boogie
10. Charlie Feathers – Peepin’ Eyes
11. Johnny Cash – Hey Porter
12. Carl Perkins – Movie Magg
13. Jess Hooper – Sleepy Time Blues
14. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons
15. Eddie Bond – Double Duty Lovin’
16. Hank Locklin – Love Or Spite
17. Werly Fairburn – I Guess I’m Crazy (For Loving You)
18. Terry Fell – That’s What I Like
19. Merrill Moore – Rock-Rockola
20. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Caffeine Patrol
21. Maddox Brothers & Rosie – I Gotta Go Get My Baby
22. The Farmer Boys - It Pays To Advertise
23. Jimmy Newman – Teardrops In My Heart
24. Marty Robbins – Maybelline
25. Cliffie Stone – The Popcorn Song
26. Bonnie Lou – Daddy-O
27. Buck Owens – Down On The Corner Of Love
28. Kitty Wells – I Don’t Claim To Be An Angel
29. Johnny Horton – Honky Tonk Man
30. Elvis Presley – How Do You Think I Feel
31. Eddy Arnold – I Wouldn’t Know Where To Begin
32. The Louvin Brothers – Kentucky
33. Jerry Lee Lewis & his Pumping Piano – Crazy Arms

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In this segment we briefly turn our focus on some of the individuals featured on this mix and the 1950/51 compilation. Pictured on the cover is the 1952 Cadillac in which Hank Williams died of heart failure on New Year’s Day 1953, aged 30 (though he always looked much older than that). His was the first of a series of young celebrity deaths that created legends for all times.

Among the more unexpected names in country must be that of Ole Rasmussen, a western swing bandleader who with his Nebraska Cornhuskers enjoyed success in the early ’50s. Rasmussen had a Bob Wills obsession; he was widely regarded as an imitator. Indeed, he would interject ad-libs into songs much like Wills (though not quite in a falsetto). Still, the quality of the music was fine, driven by Tex Atchison’s fierce fiddle. Atchison had previously been a member of the Prairie Ramblers, who featured in Vol. 4 of this series. It seems curious that a Danish-named country musician and businessman (more the latter than the former) would lead his band named after the state of Nebraska in sunny California.

Of course, California had a vibrant country scene, due largely to the Dust Bowl migration in the 1930s. Spade Cooley, whom we met in Vol. 5, was based in LA. But California’s country capital was Bakersfield, whence the likes of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons would emerge. Another Bakersfielder, though by choice, was Ferlin Husky, a man of annoying accent and often sentimental lyrics (his maudlin The Drunken Driver is a stone-cold candidate for worst ever record). These shortcomings did not stop the D-Day veteran from having a string of country chart-toppers, and even a couple of top 10 pop hits.

His Korean war-themed duet with fellow Bakersfielder Jean Shepard was one of these country #1s and pop Top 10 hits. With it, 19-year-old Shepard set a record as youngest female country chart-topper until 14-year-old Tanya Tucker eclipsed her almost two decades later. Shepard, at one point one of only two female singers at the Grand Ole Opry (the other was Kitty Wells), went on to marry country singer Hawkshaw Hawkins, who died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas.

Another California-based country legend was Johnny Bond, who had a long career as a performer of cowboy songs (Gene Autry and the Sons of the Pioneers being particular influences), and with Jimmy Wakeley appeared in b-movies and on Autry’s radio show in the 1930s. Both went on to have successful careers in the ’40s; each has a song on the History of Country Vol. 4 compilation. Bond was also a productive songwriter, the oft-covered Cimarron probably being his best known song. By 1957, the 42-year-old was dropped from the Columbia Records roster. Soon he made a comeback with the rock & roll hit Hot Rod Lincoln, on Autry’s Republic label. In his later years, before his death in 1978, Bond wrote a biography of fellow singing cowboy Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John Ritter) as well as an autobiography. Incidentally, the Bond song featured in the 1950/51 mix – Sick, Sober And Sorry – was co-written by Tex Atchison, the fiddler in Ole Rasmussen’s band.

We met Cowboy Copas in The Originals Vol. 37 as the first to record Tennessee Waltz. He enjoyed success in the late ’40 and early ’50s, but then his recording career began to stutter. He made a comeback (in the charts; he had been a member of the Opry and a regular on the Ozark Jubilee TV show) in 1960, with the hit song Alabam. Things were looking up when he agreed to perform at a benefit on 3 March 1963 in Kansas City for a radio disc jockey who had died in a car crash a few months before. Copas and the other performers boarded the Piper Comanche aeroplane piloted by his son-in-law Randy Hughes, who was also Patsy Cline’s manager. Nobody on the plane survived the crash in a forest near Camden, Tennessee.

Half a year earlier and much less prominently, Leon Chappel died, also in tragic circumstances. Chappel was one of the shapers of western swing in the 1930s as a member of the Lone Star Cowboys. After a serious car crash in 1935 left him with long-term injuries, his career gradually fizzled out. During World War 2 he served as a policeman, but that career was cut short when he apparently was caught accepting bribes. He was jobbing as a pipe fitter and truck driver when Jimmy Davis, singing star and former governor of Louisiana, briefly revived Chappel’s career, this time in the honky tonk medium (though the great True Blue Papa shows traces of his western swing background). The resurgence didn’t last very long. Chappel disappeared from the scene. His music career gone, his injuries forcing him into retirement and marriage broken down, Chappel on 23 October 1963 put a revolver to his head and pulled the trigger.

The man with the greatest influence on country music was Hank Williams, but Lefty Frizzell’s contribution was nearly as significant as his erstwhile touring partner’s (even if Eddy Arnold was outselling both). Like Williams, Frizzell was a prolific songwriter; at one point in 1951, he had four songs in the country top 10. It was this artistic independence, his charisma, laid-back honky tonk stylings and soulful vocals that directly influenced future country giants as diverse as George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison (whose Traveling Wilbury name, Lefty, was a tribute to Frizzell), Merle Haggard, George Strait, Randy Travis and so on. Frizzell was also a hard drinker, and his abuse of alcohol contributed to his death at 47 in 1975.

Drinking can kill, and so does smoking. It’s a myth that until the 1960s people had no idea how poisonous cigarettes are. Tex Williams in the brilliant Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette), which he co-wrote with Merle Travis in 1947 and re-recorded in 1953 and 1960, admonishes: “Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death.”  In the same song he jokes: “I don’t reckon that it’ll hinder your health. I smoked ‘em all my life and I ain’t dead yet.” Tex frequently sang about smoking and advertised cigarettes, so after he died, the persistent story arose that he had died of lung cancer. It was in fact pancreatic cancer that did him in 1985 at the age of 68. While battling the cancer, he reportedly managed to cut down from two packets a day to one. He probably had disagreeable breath.

One might think that the title bestowed on Carl Smith, “Mr Country”, was a slice of hyperbole in an industry not known for its bashfulness. Smith, who died last year at 82, did have a string of quality hits which continued into the 1970s, including 30 country hits in the 1950s alone. But he is also a suitable Mr Country for his connections: he was married to June Carter before his good friend Johnny Cash, then married Goldie Hill, and from his first marriage was the father of Carlene Carter. Smith rarely bothered the pop charts, but there is no doubt that songs like Hey Joe (written by Boudleaux Bryant) helped influence the many country singers who would soon cross over into rock & roll.

Smith remained married to Goldie Hill until her death in 2005. Hill was in that first great wave of female country singers that came through in the 1950s, paving the way for future stars such as Loretta Lynn, Skeeter Davis, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette. I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes, an answer record to Perry Como’s Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes (featured here in Skeets McDonald’s hit version), topped the country charts, not long after Kitty Wells’s own million-selling answer record, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, eclipsed Hank Thompson’s The Wild Side Of Life. Suddenly the record company bosses saw commercial prospects in letting the gals sing. Unlike Wells, Hill’s career was relatively short-lived. When Goldie married Carl Smith in 1957, she retired from the music business, other than a brief and unsuccessful comeback attempt in the ’60s, to breed horses on the couples’ Tennessee farm.

Kitty Wells occupies a pivotal position in the history of country music. Already in her 30s and a mother of three when she became a star, she was the first female ever to top the country charts – though she was not the first female million-seller; that honour belongs to Patsy Montana. And in that first hit she made a statement that a woman need not be submissive (even if it was written by a man, JD Miller), and knocked off Hank Thompson’s slightly misogynist anthem off the #1 spot. Many women in country would peddle the submissiveness of their gender in song (Tammy Wynette, a victim of domestic abuse, sang the anthem), but Wells introduced feminist themes long before that was regarded as ordinary and articulated a female self-confidence that would become characteristic of many women who succeeded her – especially Loretta Lynn. Wells, who took her stage name from a 19^th century song, was country’s leading female singer every year from 1952-65.

We first encountered Stuart Hamblen in The Originals Vol. 22 as the writer and first performer of This Ole House, later hits for Rosemary Clooney and Shakin’ Stevens. Hamblen, who was born in 1908, started his career in the late 1920s as a cowboy song singer, before that sub-genre crossed over into Hollywood, taking Hamblen along as a sidekick to the great cowboy singers such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.  In Hollywood the Texan also became a close friend of John Wayne. The story goes that Hamblen was hunting with Wayne when they happened upon an abandoned cabin with the skeleton of a man inside, giving rise to This Ole House. Soon after that, the son of a Methodist preacher had a religious conversion. Billy Graham has credited Hamblen’s pulling power with getting his ministry off the ground. The conversion had consequences: he was fired as a radio DJ because he refused to have alcohol ads on his show. Hamblen also tried his hand in politics. In 1938 he stood, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat candidate for Congress; in 1952 he was the presidential candidate for the Prohibition Party. History records that Dwight Eisenhower was elected that year.

Where Hamblen represented an old age, Sonny James in some ways anticipated the advent of a new youth-driven musical form, if not in sound (he crooned mostly ) then in his look and public image. The fiddle-playing farm boy from Alabama had fought in Korea, but looked like he had been scrubbed up straight from college in a New York salon, not to look like a rock & roller but like one of those nice boys who, we often forget, were hugely popular too. He looked, one might say, like the 1950s, and it was his 1957 hit Young Love that introduced country to the teenage mainstream. It might be a coincidence, but the character Sonny in the film Grease looks not unlike Sonny James. James enjoyed a long and very successful career in country, hitting his peak in the early 1970s.

The title of George Morgan’s song in this mix is obviously appropriate for this blog. Morgan was best known for his 1947 hit Candy Kisses, which featured in A History Of Country Vol. 5. He worked the roses theme hard with songs such as Room Full of Roses, Red Roses For A Blue Lady and Red Roses From the Blue Side of Town. Morgan is also a great (and correct) trivia answer to the questions: Who is country singer Lorrie Morgan’s father? Who was the last singer to sing at the Grand Ole Opry’s legendary Ryman Theatre in 1974? Who was the first singer to sing at the new Grand Ole Opry House? Morgan died in 1975 at the age of 51.

As a bonus, I include a comedy bit by Archie Campbell from 1952. Campbell was a writer and star of the TV show Hee Haw. The bit here is one of his famous That’s Good/That’s Bad routines wherein Campbell would tell of an event, countering the straightman’s reactions of relief or alarm with a subsequent event that proves the opposite of that response.

The next instalment will look at country’s often underestimated influence on rock & roll. Some of the songs on this mix anticipate the new sound. Listen to Roy Hogsed’s She’s A Mean Mean Woman, Jaye Morgan & Hank Penny’s Fan It, Merrill Moore’s House Of Blue Lights (hear the influence on Jerry Lee Lewis) or Moon Mullican’s Rocket To The Moon.

TRACKLISTING
1. Tex Williams – Smoke, Smoke, Smoke
2. Eddy Arnold – I Wanna Play House With You
3. Roy Hogsed – She’s A Mean Mean Woman
4. Lefty Frizzell - Always Late (With Your Kisses)
5. Hank Thompson – The Wild Side Of Life
6. Kitty Wells – It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
7. Hank Snow – (Now And Then) There’s A Fool Such As I
8. Cowboy Copas – Don’t Leave My Poor Heart Breaking
9. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys – I Want To Be Wanted
10. Little Jimmy Dickens – No Tears In Heaven
11. Slim Whitman - Indian Love Call
12. Hank Williams – Kaw-Liga
13. Skeets McDonald – Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
14. Goldie Hill – I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes
15. Kitty Wells – I Heard The Juke Box Playing
16. Webb Pierce - Back Street Affair
17. Jean Shepard & Ferlin Husky – A Dear John Letter
18. Hank Locklin – Let Me Be The One
19. Ernest Tubb – Counterfeit Kisses
20. Jaye P. Morgan with Hank Penny – Fan It
21. Jenks Tex Carman – Hillbilly Hula
22. Sonny James – I Need You
23. T. Texas Tyler – Bumming Around
24. Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Bryant’s Bounce
25. Carl Smith – Hey Joe
26. Hank Locklin – Empty Bottles, Empty Heart
27. Merrill Moore – House Of Blue Lights
28. Moon Mullican – Rocket To The Moon
29. Hank Williams – Take These Chains From My Heart
30. George Morgan – Half-Hearted

DOWNLOAD (Flash Mirrors)
DOWNLOAD (Hotfile)

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Previously in A History of Country
More CD-mixes

Country music is a fertile field for answer records. So here we’ll look at three answer records from that genre. Kitty Well’s response to Hank Thompson was a massive hit, a breakthrough for country’s first female superstar that outsold the hit song it was responding to. And I defy anyone not to like, even secretly, these songs — few things annoy me so much than people claiming categorically that they hate “all country music”.

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Should he stay or should he go now?

Act 1: Jim Reeves – He’ll Have To Go (1960).mp3
Gentleman Jim is in a bar when he figures out that only a phone call can get his two-timin’ gal back to him. And with that mellifluous baritone the recipient of Jim’s call should not find it difficult to make a decision. To complicate matters, she presently is with another man, which Jim realises rather constrains her from telling him exactly how she feels. So he’ll do the talking, cunningly asking her to put her “sweet lips a little closer to the phone”, to create an atmosphere of intimacy, while he tells the barman “to turn the juke box way down low”. And so he puts an ultimatum to her, all she has to do is answer yes or no. If it is the former, than he — the he of the title — will have to be told to leave. If it’s no, Jim will put down the phone, whereafter he’d presumably order the barman to pump up the jam and fill a few glasses for a heartbroken fella learnin’ the blues.

Act 2: Jeanne Black – Hell Have To Stay (1960).mp3
Using the same melody, Jeanne gives her answer away in the title. But it’s not just a simple no. Jeanne explains to Jim exactly why “he’ll have to stay”. See, the night before, Jim and Jeanne had a date, but guess who didn’t show! Jeanne clearly is not one to take such a sleight lightly, nor is she short of potential suitors. Within a day of Jim standing her up — she demands no explanation — she has hooked up and ostensibly fallen in love with with the personal pronounced joker of the title, who right now must be feeling pretty smug. Jeanne does not hold back. Once she loved Jim, but he’s messed her around too much. She suspects cheating on his part: even now she suspects he’s “out again with someone else”, citing the softly playing juke box as evidence. But why would Jim phone her if he was already sorted out for the night? Jeanne won’t concern herself with questions of logic. It’s time to tell Jim they’re through: “I have found another love I know is true, and [to answer Jim’s question] he holds me much more tenderly than you. Loving you is not worth the price I have to pay. Someone else is in your place, he’ll have to stay.”

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A vow’s a vow’s a vow…

Act 1: Hank Locklin – Please Help Me, I’m Falling (1960).mp3
Oh shit, Hank is falling in love with somebody he can’t be with, and he cannot be with her because he belongs “to another whose arms have gone cold”.  He has made his vows “to have and to hold” (even if the arms are cold and legs presumably locked), and the mere act of  falling for somebody else would be sinful, apparently (that is some pretty dodgy theology there, I think). So he begs the object of his desire to “close the door to temptation; don’t let me walk in”. In other words, he wants her to go away. But he doesn’t really. “I mustn’t want you, but darling I do; please help me, I’m falling in love with you.” The confusion is evident, poor bastard.

Act 2: Skeeter Davis – (I Can’t Help) I’m Falling Too (1960).mp3
And if the object of your desire is Skeeter Davis (who on her album also responded to Jim Reeves in Jeanne Black’s stead, and who previously in this series featured responding to Ray Petersen, all on the same album), then falling in love can be easy. Skeeter reciprocates Hank’s love, and tells him so. Two poor souls in love but circumstances and morals prevent that love’s consummation. But Skeeter can be of no assistance in Hank’s predicament: “You say that you’re falling, but what can I do? You want me to help you, but I’m falling too.” So might an affair be on the cards? Not likely: “We could never be happy living in sin. Our love’s a temptation, but we just can’t win.” Sigh, no chance then. As you wish, Skeeter. As you wish.

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Answering the MCPs.

Act 1: Hank Thompson – Wild Side Of Life (1952).mp3
Hank has been left by his best girl, and he has to tell her how he feels. But he can’t do so by telephone, because she has told him not to phone her (in any case, she might go all Jeanne Black on him should he phone her), and not by letter, which Hank thinks she wouldn’t read. Confronting her face-to-face could lead to a restraining order, if one isn’t in effect already. And with Facebook still almost six decades in the future, Hank shall communicate through the ancient medium of song. And he won’t exercise much tact: “I didn’t know God made honky tonk angels, I might have known you’d never make a wife. You gave up the only one that ever loved you, and went back to the wild side of life.” Where Hank comes from, a honky tonk angel evidently is a very bad thing, a lady of promiscuous virtue even: “The glamour of the gay night life had lured you to the places where the wine and liquor flow, Where you’re waiting to be anybody’s baby, and give up the only love you’ll ever know.” It may be necessary to point out that Hank’s understanding of the “gay nightlife” may not coincide with ours.

Act 2: Kitty Wells – It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (1952).mp3

Let’s remember that it’s 1952; women’s liberation is not really on the agenda yet, much less so in the conservative, Lawd-fearin’ world of country music. So when Kitty is challenging Thompson’s notions of the jezebel, which she has heard on the juke box (obviously not turned down low), she is challenging the whole patriarchal system. So, for starters, don’t blame God for the reality of “honky tonk angels”. It wasn’t Him who created them, but bad, two-timing, untrustworthy men. “Too many times married men think they’re still single. That has caused many a good girl to go wrong. It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women. It’s not true that only you men feel the same. From the start, most every heart that’s ever broken was because there always was a man to blame.” Kitty Wells’ song did not produce a comoplete change in attitudes .A decade and a half later, the women’s rights movement had gathered steam, but in country world, big-haired right-wingers like Tammy Wynette still counselled wives to stand be their man.

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More answer records

Here is the second part of musicians who died in 2009. Part 3 will follow early in the new year. I make no claims of having arrived at a complete and exhaustive list of musicians who left us the past year. Some I didn’t include because their names or output is unfamiliar to me, or just not my scene; and a few I left out because I have no music by them, and could not find any.

Finally, in response to an e-mail, the photo gallery follows the order in which people are listed. So Dave Dee is on the top left, Uriel Jones next to him, MJ (listed third) left second from top and so on.

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Dave Dee, 67, of ’60s hit group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, on January 9
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich – The Legend Of Xanadu (1968)

Uriel Jones, 74, drummer of Motown backing band collective The Funk Brothers, who played on songs such as Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Trough The Grapevine, The Temptations’ Cloud Nine, and the song below, on March 24.
Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (1967)

Michael Jackson, 50, pop singer and former childstar with the Jackson 5 (the b-side of whose 1971 hit I’ll Be There features here), on June 25
Jackson Five – One More Chance (1971)

Bob Bogle, 75, member of surf rock band The Ventures, on June 14
The Ventures – Scat In The Dark (1970)

Billy Powell, 59, Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist, on January 28
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Simple Man (1973)

Ron Asheton, 60, guitarist of The Stooges, found dead on January 6
The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog (1969)

Lux Interior, 62, frontman of punk legends The Cramps, on February 4
The Cramps – Human Fly (1978)

Johnny Jones, 73, leader of The King Casuals, alma mater of Jimi Hendrix, on October 14
Johnny Jones & the King Casuals – Purple Haze (1968)

Jim Dickinson, 67, R&B singer with The Jesters, pianist (on songs such as the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses) and producer, on August 15
The Jesters – Cadillac Man (1966)

Clinton Ford, 77, English skiffle and country singer, on October 21
Clinton Ford – Huggin’ And A Chalkin’ (1962)

Al Alberts, 87, member of the Four Aces, on November 27
Four Aces – Love Is A Many Splendored Thing (1955)

Hank Locklin, 91, country legend, on March 8
Hank Locklin – Send Me The Pillow You Dream On (1960)

Liam Clancy, 74, last surviving member of the hugely influential folk group The Clancy Brothers, on December4.
The Clancy Brothers – The Leaving Of Liverpool (1964)

Mike Seeger, 75, folk singer, brother of Peggy and half-brother of Pete, on August 7
Mike Seeger & Paul Brown – Way Down In North Carolina (1996)

Chris Feinstein, 42, bassist of alt.country band The Cardinals, on December 14
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals – Follow The Lights (2007)

Jeff Hanson, 31, high-voiced singer-songwriter, on June 5
Jeff Hanson – Now We Know (2005)

Rudy Cain, 63, singer and founder of The Delfonics and Blue Magic, on April 9
The Delfonics – Ready Or Not Here I Come (1968)

Fayette Pinkney, 61, member of The Three Degrees, on June 27
Three Degrees – Dirty Old Man (1973)

Eric Woolfson, 64, Alan Parsons’ sidekick in the Project who took lead vocals on the group’s biggest hit, Eye In The Sky, on December 2
The Alan Parsons Project – Sirius/Eye In The Sky (1982)

Jack Rose, 38, virtuoso guitarist, on December 5
Jack Rose – Kensington Blues (2005)

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In Memoriam Vol. 2

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