Country Music Blog: History

Got my copy of the last issue of No Depression magazine in the mail a few days ago and I'm stretching out the reading to make it last longer. I hate seeing magazines go under. Especially good music magazines. There haven't been many of them and I treasure the ones that have made the world a better place for their readers and the singers and musicians they write about.And No Depression was one of those. Never flashy, never shallow, No Depression has been serious about the music, without being deadly, if you know what I mean. The last issue before me on my desk has Buddy Miller on the cover, and that's a very fitting choice. Miller is a musician's musician, a singer's friend, a thrilling guitarist, a solid songwriter and singer, and just plain a good guy to hang out with.

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This weekend we got on the bus and got to perform at a very popular festival. I grew up listening to The Lewis Family but had never performed at their festival, and it's been going on for more than 20 years! The festival is held in Lincolnton, Ga., on the South Carolina/Georgia border. As I drove in past a road called The Lewis Family Road, I knew we were close. We drove up to the festival grounds and saw Little Roy, Jesse McReynolds, Jimmy Buchanan and countless other musicians we knew. It was home away from home!

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If I'm interpreting a sidebar on the People magazine Web site correctly, Barbara Mandrell is tabbed in the publication's annual "Most Beautiful People" list, which this year is being expanded from 50 to 100. That's a nice compliment to Babs, who turns 60 this Christmas.

During her heyday, she was one of country music's greatest ambassadors, in part because her television show, Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters, put the genre on prime time every Saturday night. The show was dismissed by critics, but the public loved it, and Barbara stopped only because it took time away from her family and her music.

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Last week I gushed over a book of fictional stories and "true" recollections by country songwriters called A Guitar and a Pen. I was particularly effusive about the tale of Bill Monroe's encounter with Frank Sinatra at the White House, which the book -- and I, in turn -- identified as having been written by CMT.com's Hazel Smith. Hazel just told me that while the core of the story is true, she didn't write it. Nor did she accompany Monroe on the trip to Washington, as the story says. These substantial departures from fact call into question all the other pieces presented as real happenings.

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Even the most artfully crafted song is a mere "teaser" to a longer story. We hear a great song and wish we knew more, as we do, for instance, when we listen to "He Stopped Loving Her Today" or "Strawberry Wine." In a new book called A Guitar and a Pen, 25 of country music's most gifted lyricists are given ample space to tell their stories instead of being limited to three verses, a bridge and a chorus.

Most of the pieces here are works of fiction, but a few are true chronicles. Shining brightest in the latter category is CMT's Hazel Smith's account of accompanying Bill Monroe to Washington, D.C., where he was to receive a presidential award, and watching helplessly as he imposed his iron will on everyone he met, from airport security guards to a strangely-subdued Frank Sinatra. On the fictional side, Bobby Braddock serves up a hilarious tale of amorous deception on the Internet, while Bob McDill introduces a camp cook too sensitive for mere mortals to trifle with.

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Today is the one-year anniversary of a tragedy in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville - an incident that's already showing signs of becoming legendary. The former home of Johnny Cash and June Carter was undergoing a restoration by new owner Barry Gibb when it caught fire and burned to the ground.

The event is already captured in a piece of folklore on George Strait's new album, Troubadour. "House Of Cash," a duet with Patty Loveless plays with the facts and the symbolism to reach new levels of understanding. Cleverly crafted by songwriters Monty Holmes and Leslie Satcher, it suggests the ghosts of Johnny and June simply would not allow another soul to occupy the place. "No one sleeps in Cash's bed," says the chorus, "but the Man in Black and the woman he wed."

An appropriate thread of other-world spirituality runs through "House Of Cash." It's hellfire-and-brimstone dark in tone, and by incorporating a song June wrote about Johnny -- "The ring of fire comes full circle" -- it makes some interesting connections. Johnny, of course, believed in the afterlife and played with its images by remaking the cowboy classic "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky." June's "Ring Of Fire" was co-written with Merle Kilgore, who made a deal with Johnny Horton that whoever went first would send a specific message from the other side. After Horton died in a car accident, the exact, agreed-upon words were spoken to Kilgore, who believed it was indeed a sign from Horton's spirit.

Was the 2007 fire a parting message from Johnny and June? Probably not, but it makes for a friggin' great song.

See photos from the House of Cash.

As Carrie Underwood readies herself to become the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry, it's time we paid some attention to its oldest member -- Little Jimmy Dickens. He's a virtually untapped treasury of country music lore, and he's not going to be around to recount the old days forever. A member of the Opry since 1948, Dickens is 87.

Although there have been hundreds of articles written about him, I don't believe he's ever been the subject of a full-scale and scholarly biography. Yet here's a man whose performing skills were so impressive that the mighty Roy Acuff got him into the Opry even before Dickens had his first hit record. The diminutive (4'11") West Virginian was there to welcome Hank Williams to the Opry in 1949 and subsequently toured with him.

It was probably his small stature that drove Dickens toward the novelty songs by which he's primarily known, pieces such as "Take an Old Cold Tater (And Wait)," "Out Behind the Barn" and "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose." But he's also a first-rate ballad singer who can rivet an audience with something like "We Could" or bring it to tears with a recitation like "(You've Been a Good Doll) Raggedy Ann." Younger Opry stars, notably Vince Gill and Brad Paisley, have recognized Dickens' still formidable talents and featured him in some of their music videos. But more needs to be done.

Somebody at the Country Music Hall of Fame (of which Dickens has been a member since 1983) ought to sit down with him and record every story, joke and obscure lyric he can recall. There aren't many memories of his era still around.

I think anyone with any liking at all for the music of one or all of the three Hanks (the original Hank, Hank Jr. and Hank III Williamses, that is) will like the new Family Tradition exhibit that opens at the Country Music Hall of Fame on Friday, Mar. 28. It includes numerous artifacts from all of the Williams families. The Hall has more and more in recent years been emphasizing the human elements of its subjects, moving away from including only official artifacts and awards and trophies. In this case, any Williams fan would enjoy seeing big Hank's silk pajamas, III's skateboard, and Jr.'s guns. And there's other neat stuff, including lots of music memorabilia. The personal details always cinch it for me, though.

I've been reading Three Dog Nightmare: The Continuing Chuck Negron Story, a book about the tragic fall and personal resurrection of one of the lead voices from the pop band Three Dog Night. In it, Negron makes a claim that the band was one of the first to pack stadiums with a rock show.

The Beatles had done it before, at New York's Shea Stadium, and there were other bands that played stadiums, though many of them fell far short of filling them out. But I'll bet no one in the Fab Four's mid-‘60s era -- or in Three Dog Night's early-‘70s prime -- ever thought country music would be capable of that.

So this week's anniversary of the first George Strait stadium tour is one worth celebrating. Strait brought in 56,000 fans on March 14, 1998, to Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona for a lineup that featured Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, John Michael Montgomery, Lee Ann Womack and others. And Strait continued doing stadium tours with massive talent rosters for several more years before pulling back to his traditional in-the-round arena format.

What's now amazing is that while the stadium date is still a country rarity, it happens much more frequently than anyone could have predicted in the past. Kenny Chesney is playing 14 of those dates this summer, supported by a rotating list of acts that includes Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich, Gary Allan and Luke Bryan, among others. Toby Keith has offered a handful of stadium shows as well.

Strait could likely pick up and fill out stadiums again, if he chose, and you can imagine Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn and Shania Twain (remember her?) doing the same thing. In fact, when the Gridiron Bash -- a strange, college-football-related fan competition -- lined up stadiums across the U.S. for April, a surprising number of country lineups were employed: Alan Jackson in Alabama, Dwight Yoakam in West Virginia, Dierks Bentley and Wynonna in Kentucky, Montgomery Gentry and Taylor Swift in Tennessee.

At last week's Country Radio Seminar, one booking agent noted that outside of such longstanding classic-rock icons as the Rolling Stones and U2, there's no stronger genre for live shows these days than country music.

Considering that a lot of country artists were happy to play high-school gymnasiums and small county fairs at the time Three Dog Night was playing those stadium dates, it's tough to find stronger support for the upward transformation that's taken place in country music.

Approximately 2,000 broadcasters were in Nashville last week for the 39th annual Country Radio Seminar. The event is extremely useful on a lot of fronts -- good for networking, good for picking up new business ideas and good for record companies trying to expose their artists to an industry that's vital to creating stars.Ironically, this year's gathering came just days before the fifth anniversary of Natalie Maines' career-deflating statement in London in which she said the Dixie Chicks were "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Lots of radio stations immediately pulled Chicks songs off the air, saying they were reacting to listeners who threatened to tune them out permanently. That's a major fear for radio, which is a particularly conservative medium: Stations with no listeners get no ad dollars.

The Chicks pulled a symbolic move just two years ago when they released "Not Ready to Make Nice," their angry reaction to the public's kiss-off, on March 10, 2006. Quite ironically, just two days prior (on March 8, 2006), Tim McGraw and Faith Hill had slammed the same president for his administration's inadequate reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

"If you don't know what to do," McGraw said to several radio syndicators, "you shouldn't be doing it."

Fans were apparently not outraged, they didn't threaten to stop listening, and McGraw and Hill went unscathed.

You can parse the two situations a bit: The Chicks made their statement on foreign soil about a war that hadn't yet started, and their opinion contrasted with that of many Americans. McGraw and Hill were commenting on a disaster that was months in the past, and their views were seemingly shared by a majority.

No punishment was in order for the McGraws.

But none was in order for the Chicks either. Maines' comment was made to set up their song "Travelin' Soldier," a very poignant piece about the tragedy that surrounds war -- every war. Take a look at the documentary Shut Up and Sing, and it's hard to see her statement as anything but an informed opinion that was weirdly turned into a rallying cry.

Radio took a monetarily motivated stance in the aftermath, and it's still impossible to hear the Chicks in many -- if not most -- markets. You can't really blame the broadcasters for protecting their business. But they did play a part in a storyline that is one of the most embarrassing developments in pop culture's history.