Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

After a hiatus of a few months we return to the history of country music. In the last narrative instalment (Volume 4) we noted the rise of female country singers; some of them will feature in this mix, which covers the years 1950-51, and its follow-up, 1952-53. In the course of the 1950s we will also review country’s contribution to rock & roll, and discuss some of the artists featured. What follows then is a brief overview of country music in the 1950s.

Country had always been a diverse genre. New forms emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Bluegrass took country back to its rural roots, with a sound based primarily on the interplay of string instruments — banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin. The pioneer of bluegrass was Bill Monroe, a big fellow with a small mandolin, who in 1939 had formed a band called the Blue Grass Boys. The line-up kept changing, with the most consequential incarnation, in 1946/47, including the hitherto unknown Lester Flatt and Earl Sruggs, who soon would form their own band, have a massive hit with the instrumental Foggy Mountain Breakdown (revived later as a theme for the film Bonnie And Clyde), and enjoy long careers together and separately. Bluegrass has never become mainstream. Various revivals and dedicated musicianship have kept the sub-genre alive; it is possibly more popular now than it ever was, thanks to the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack  and the efforts of singers such as Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, Del McCoury, Alison Krauss and Dolly Parton.

Rockabilly borrowed from western swing, boogie woogie and the new genre of black music, rhythm & blues. It had in fact been around for a while: the record commonly identified as the first ever rockabilly record was Buddy Jones’ Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama in 1939, with its boogie woogie piano solo and guitar work that anticipates the sound of the 1950s. The evolution of rockabilly is key to the birth of rock & roll as much as R&B. The slap bass style of playing which was so integral to early rock & roll was a common western swing and rockabilly technique (Bob Wills argued that he had been playing rock & roll since 1928). Western swing artist Bill Haley turned into a rock & roll pioneer via rockabilly. Carl Perkins was first and foremost a rockabilly musician. Elvis Presley was initially regarded as a rockabilly singer who also did R&B — and, as mentioned before, he was a regular on the Louisiana Hayride, having made one appearance at the Opry (supporting Hank Snow).

Other acts initially rooted in country would become rock & roll legends, such as the Everly Brothers  (who were so well served by Nashville songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant), Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. And the folk scene that had begun growing from New York City in the late 1940s (and would reach its zenith with the rise of Bob Dylan in the 1960s) had its roots in country. Woody Guthrie was initially regarded as a country artist (before the term was in wide use, the label “folk” was often employed to describe the genre).

The 1950s also saw a revival of cowboy music, with Marty Robbins enjoying some big success with his Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs and its pop #1 El Paso.

Finally, the 1950s launched the biggest, most important star in country: Johnny Cash. Cash’s influence on almost all areas of country cannot be underestimated. And it was Cash who pioneered a new trend in country: the outlaw movement.

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TRACKLISTING
1. Eddie Kirk – Sugar Baby
2. Moon Mullican – I’ll Sail My Ship Alone
3. Cotton Thompson – How Long
4. Red Foley – Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy
5. Tennessee Ernie Ford - Mr And Mississippi
6. Tex Williams - Wild Card
7. Ole Rasmussen – Sleepy Eyed John
8. Bill Monroe – Alabama Waltz
9. Jesse James – Rag Mop
10. Ted Daffan’s Texans - I’ve Got Five Dollars And It’s Saturday Night
11. Bill Strength – Black Coffee Blues
12. Lefty Frizzell – I Love You In A Thousand Ways
13. Leon Chappel - True Blue Papa
14. Stuart Hamblin – Remember Me, I’m The One Who Loves You
15. Tex Ritter – High Noon
16. Wilf Carter (Montana Slim) - Apple, Cherry, Mince And Choc’late Cream
17. Bill Haley - Rose Of My Heart
18. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Brown Skin Gal
19. Carl Smith – Mr Moon
20. Hank Williams – Baby, We’re Really In Love
21. Lefty Frizzell - I Want To Be With You Always
22. Johnny Bond - Sick, Sober And Sorry
23. Flatt & Scruggs – Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’
24. Carolina Cotton with Bob Wills – You Always Keep Me In Hot Water
25. Pee Wee King’s Golden Cowboys – Slow Poke
26. Hank Snow & Anita Carter – Bluebird Island
27. Gene Autry – Peter Cottontail
28. Spade Cooley – Indian Summer
29. Cliffie Stone – Jump Rope Boogie
30. Tennessee Ernie Ford – Rock City Boogie

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By the early 1940s the crooners had begun to make their mark, with Jimmie Davies — future Democrat governor of Louisiana — having led the way. Many of them had toiled and crooned in the 1930s. But with a world war slowly engulfing the globe, the market wanted, and got, romance. More than that, men took their country songs with them to the army and disseminated the music among their fellow soldiers. Country music thus found new fans, and its leading singers — Roy Acuff, Gene Autry, Red Foley, Tex Ritter, Eddy Arnold — gained a national audience. In 1945, Arnold even beat the mighty Frank Sinatra in a favourite-singer poll among GIs stationed in Germany.

Some singers hit temporary highs before disappearing, such as Ted Daffan, whose 1944 hit Born To Lose (actually recorded in 1942) would later be covered by Ray Charles on his seminal 1962 LP Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music. Other temporarily bright stars included Wesley Tuttle and Jack Guthrie. The latter, Woody Guthrie’s cousin, was very influential but died at the age of 32 of tuberculosis in 1948.

Western swing continued to grow in popularity. Not only was Bob Wills one of the biggest names in country, but artists such as Pee Wee King (like Wills a bandleader) made an impression. Spade Cooley took the genre towards a more pop-oriented style. Cooley in 1961 was convicted of murdering his wife, dying eight years later in jail (more about him in Vol 5).

Other new stars appeared on the scene. In 1941 Ernest Tubb recorded his first hit record (the honky tonk Walking The Floor Over You, which, unusually for the time, prominently featured the electric guitar, as would in 1948 Arthur Smith’s seminal Guitar Boogie) and the prolific songwriter and singer Cindy Walker hit the country and pop charts with her cover of Bing Crosby’s Long Star Trail. Helped along by the proliferation of hayride and barndance shows on radio, country went mainstream. The most influential of these of course was Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, which attracted the best and most popular stars from other shows, a policy it would follow well into the 1950s (when it nevertheless failed to spot the talents of Louisiana Hayride regular Elvis Presley, even after he appeared on the Opry as Hank Snow’s opening act). Augmenting the Opry line-up, headed and presented by Acuff, were comics such as the wildly popular Minnie Pearl. Not surprisingly, the novelty record was very much part of country music. Some of them, such a Lonzo & Oscar’s I’m My Own Granpa, were even funny.

As the US joined the war, some singers turned to the sort of jingoism which 60 years later Toby Keith exploited to lucrative effect, with a similar lack of tact or sophistication. Very soon after the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii, the Carson Robison Trio entreated their listeners to Remember Pearl Harbor, demanded that We’re Gonna Have To Slap The Dirty Little Jap and called to arms with Get Your Gun And Come Along (We’re Fixing To Kill A Skunk) — though neither sounded country, or any good, at all — while yodeller Elton Britt promised that There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere. The latter, recorded on 19 March 1942, narrated the desire of a handicapped country boy to fight in the war. This slice of maudlin patriotism became country music’s first gold single. Zeke Williams’ Smoke On The Water (also recorded by Red Foley) in 1944 represented the victory which within a year would become reality. Around the same time, Woody Guthrie — still in the country fold — threatened just comeuppance for fascists.

Most of the stars of the early 1940s not only survived the post-war years, but benefited from a boom which saw the emergence of new superstars in the late ’40s and early ’50s, such as Merle Travis, Hank Snow (a Canadian!), Webb Pierce, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hank Thompson, Jim Reeves and so on. Two of these would be monumentally influential: Lefty Frizell and Hank Williams. Debuting in 1947 with the outstanding Move It On Over (which in parts sounded much like the later Rock Around The Clock), Williams scored 36 more hits before his death at 29 on New Year’s Day 1953. There might have been rock & roll without Hank Williams, but perhaps not quite the way we know it. Frizell was just as huge as Williams, at one point in 1951 scoring four simultaneous hits in the country top 10. Frizell exercised a profound influence on future giants of country such as George Jones, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.

The era also saw the slow rise of the female country singer. Such artists as Sara and Maybelle Carter, Patsy Montana, Louise Massey and Cindy Walker had enjoyed success in the preceding two decades, but there were very few women in country. The early 1950s produced the first enduring superstar, Kitty Wells, and a few others in whose footsteps the likes of Loretta Lynn, Wanda Jackson, Skeeter Davis and Tammy Wynette would walk. Molly O’Day had briefly attained star status in the 1940s, Goldie Hill was hugely popular for a while, Rose Maddox had a series of hits with her brothers. We will encounter them and others in volumes 6 and 7.

TRACKLISTING
1. Ernest Tubb – Walking The Floor Over You
2. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Corrine Corrina
3. Hoosier Hot Shots – Dude Cowboy
4. Louise Massey and the Westerners – My Adobe Hacienda
5. Sons Of The Pioneers – Cool Water
6. Carson Robison Trio – Remember Pearl Harbor
7. Elton Britt – There’s A Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere
8. Jimmy Wakely – When It’s Round Up Time In Texas
9. Ted Daffan’s Texans - Born To Lose
10. Cindy Walker – Miss Molly
11. Bob Atcher & Bonnie Blue Eyes – Pins And Needles (In My Heart)
12. Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys – Night Train To Memphis
13. Texas Jim Lewis – Too Late To Worry, Too Blue To Care
14. Rex Griffin – Everybody’s Trying To Be My Baby
15. Al Dexter and his Troopers – Pistol Packin’ Mama
16. Red Foley – Smoke On The Water
17. Wilf Carter - A Sinner’s Prayer
18. Woody Guthrie & Sonny Terry – All You Fascists Bound To Lose
19. Bradley Kincaid and his Kentucky Mountain Boys – Ain’t We Crazy
20. Tex Ritter – There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder
21. Gene Autry – Gonna’ Build A Big Fence Around Texas
22. Wesley Tuttle – With Tears In My Eyes
23. Floyd Tillman - Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin
24. Johnny Bond – So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed
25. Molly O’Day – When God Comes To Gather His Jewels
26. Merle Travis – Divorce Me C.O.D.
27. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – Keep A-Knockin’ But You Can’t Come In
28. Delmore Brothers – Freight Train Boogie
29. Harry Choates – Jole Blon
30. The Prairie Ramblers – I Don’t Love Anybody But You

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The second article in the history of country music covered the trends and artists of the depression and pre-war years, 1930-41. Here we’ll look at some of the songs of the era. The photo on the cover comes from a superb series of colour photos from the US in the 1930s and ’40s.

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Rock ‘n’ roll grew out of R&B and various shades of country, especially rockabilly, a sub-genre that peaked in the 1950s. But what is widely regarded as the first rockabilly number dates back to 1939, Buddy Jones’ Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama. It’s a futile exercise to identify “the first-ever rock ‘n’ roll record”, but any list of contenders must include Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll” features shockingly few early country songs. One that is included is Jimmie Rodgers Blue Yodel No. 9, recorded in 1930 with Louis Armstrong, marking the first instance of a white country singer collaborating with a black musician. As the title suggests, the collaboration with Satchmo was preceded by eight blue yodels, which introduced an Alpine musical form into the crazy stew that also included influences as diverse as Hawaiian sounds and 18^th-century folk ballads from England. By collaborating with Armstrong, Rodgers also helped to introduce jazz to the mix, which would find fuller expression with the rise of western swing.

While Blue Yodel starts our 2-CD set, Red Foley’s Old Shep of 1941 almost bookends it. The maudlin ballad about a child’s dying dog is not really very good (and the sound quality here isn’t great), but it also merits consideration in the development of rock ‘n’ roll for helping to inspire a pre-pubescent Elvis Presley of Tupelo, Mississippi to take up music. In fact, Old Shep was the first song Elvis ever sang in public, at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo in October 1945 (he placed fifth in the talent show). After becoming a rock ‘n’ roll sensation, Elvis paid tribute to the song he once was obsessed with by recording it.

The terribly arbitrary and incomplete Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list also includes Roy Acuff’s Wabash Cannonball — one of the many train songs in country. A folk song from the late 19^th century originally recorded by the Carter Family in 1929, it was Acuff’s breakthrough hit, launching a career that spanned four decades. In 1948 he reluctantly ran for governor of Tennessee on a Republican ticket (the idea initially was a publicity stunt), but lost to two-time governor Gordon Browning, who won 67% of the vote.

One country singer who did become a governor was Jimmie Davis, who governed Louisiana as a Democrat for two non-consecutive stints (1944–48, 1960–64). Davies’ signature tune, You Are My Sunshine, now is Louisiana’s state song. He even claimed to have written it as a school boy, but that is untrue (imagine that, a politician who tells lies). It was written by the Rice Brothers Gang of Shreveport, Louisiana but first recorded on 22 August 1939 by the Pine Ridge Boys of Atlanta. Davies, who recorded his version in 1940, put his co-composer credit on the song after buying the rights to it from the Rice brothers. At campaign rallies, Davies would sing the song while riding a horse called, of course, Sunshine.

Bob Wills had been co-inventing western swing for a few years before he scored his first national hit with New San Antonio Rose, a reworking of his 1938 instrumental song (his use of drums and horns when performing his hit at the Grand Ole Opry caused quite a bit of a stir in Nashville). Arguably the more influential Wills song, however, was 1936’s Steel Guitar Rag, written by Leon McAuliffe, which was pivotal in popularising the steel guitar, which gives country the Hawaiian sound (the steel refers to the slide held in the hand that holds the frets).

Roy Rogers is among Hollywood’s singing cowboys of the movies featured here (though songs by the original singing movie cowboy, Ken Maynard, are quite difficult to find). Rogers was a founder in 1933 of the Sons of the Pioneers. The original pioneers are long gone, but new generations of pioneers are keeping the name alive even now, led by Luther Nallie, who joined the group in 1968. But back in the ’30s, Rogers soon left for the big screen while the Sons of the Pioneers became both country staples and performers on the big screen, including the 1942 movie with Rogers named after the band. They recorded the first version of Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds — written by bandmember Bob Nolan, who first named it Tumbling Tumble Leaves — before Gene Autry made it famous. For his part, Autry was the first to record the standard That Silver-Haired Daddy Of Mine in 1931. A later compilation will feature the Sons’ other great original, 1946’s Cool Water (also written by Nolan).

Woody Guthrie (pictured) was regarded as a country singer before folk music went its own way. Guthrie of course influenced generations of folk singers; indeed, he spearheaded the folk movement with acolytes such as Pete Seeger. It arguably reached its zenith with the output of Bob Dylan in the 1960s. Dylan also owed a lot to the repository of blues and country. Other than Guthrie, it is evident that Dylan listened much to the original Carter Family. Their rendition of a traditional hymn, Can The Circle Be Unbroken, was covered by Dylan and many others (Carl Perkins also borrowed the chorus for his Daddy Sang Bass, later covered by Johnny Cash with the help of June Carter). Dylan adopted several traditional folk songs, including the Appalachian ballad Pretty Polly for Ballad Of Hollis Brown.

Lastly, Gid Tannen and his Skillet Lickers might have been the first disco musicians: in the introduction to Soldier’s Joy Breakdown, Tannen makes reference to shakin’ booties before his band launches into a remix of the song they first recorded in 1929.

TRACKLISTING
1. Uncle Dave Macon – All In Down And Out Blues
2. Wade Mainer & Zeke Morris - Train Carry My Gal Back Home
3. Arthur Smith Trio – Indian Creek
4. Lee O’Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys - Mellow Mountain Moon
5. Hackberry Ramblers – Cajun Crawl
6. Hoosier Hot Shots - Breezin’ Along With The Breeze
7. Roy Rogers – Hi Ho Silver
8. Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers – Jig
9. Coon Creek Girls - Banjo Pickin’ Girl
10. Hank Penny’s Radio Cowboys – Cowboy’s Swing
11. The Tune Wranglers – Dixie Moon
12. Patsy Montana with the Prairie Ramblers – Big Moon
13. Light Crust Doughboys – Gin Mill Blues
14. Roy Acuff and the Crazy Tennesseans – Wabash Cannonball
15. Buddy Jones – Rockin’ Rollin’ Mama
16. Swift Jewel Cowboys – Willie The Weeper
17. Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers - Waiting At The End Of The Road
18. The Pine Ridge Boys – You Are My Sunshine
19. Jimmie Davis – Born To Be Blue
20. Delmore Brothers – Wabash Blues
21. Roy Acuff - Old Age Pension Check
22. Louise Massey and the Westerners – Put Your Little Foot Right Out
23. Bob Wills and his Texan Cowboys - New San Antonio Rose
24. Carter Family – My Home Among The Hills
25. Woody Guthrie – Talkin’ Dust Bowl Blues
26. Blue Sky Boys – Brown Eyes
27. Tex Ritter – Good-Bye My Little Cherokee
28. Red Foley – Old Shep
29. Texas Jim Lewis – Old Fashioned Hoedown

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