CMT Blog: History

Charlie Daniels is already spreading the good tidings of Christmas. First of all, he's released a new holiday album, Joy to the World: A Bluegrass Christmas, with guests like Jewel, Kathy Mattea and Aaron Tippin, as well as Suzanne and Evelyn Cox, the Grascals and Dan Tyminski. Instead of a duets project, Daniels lets the singers tackle a whole tune. (Tyminski's rendition of "The Christmas Song" is especially terrific.) Daniels also offers a nifty new original, "Mississippi Christmas Eve," and recites both an original short story ("A Carolina Christmas Carol") and a passage from the book of Luke.

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I've loved Miranda Lambert's music since day one so this kind of shocked me: She told The Tennessean newspaper that her latest album is the one she would hand out to her heroes. She said, "The fact that Patty Loveless knows my music at all, that made me really pumped. This is the first time I've made a record that I want my heroes to hear. This one, I'd hand it to my heroes with no hesitation." I hope that doesn't mean she's not proud of her first two albums. Like if she were to hand those to her heroes, would she seriously hesitate? I mean, sure, she's come a long way since "Me and Charlie Talking" but those efforts produced deeper cuts like "Bring Me Down," "New Strings" and "More Like Her." I can't speak for all Lambert's heroes, but I have a feeling they'd dig everything she's done since her debut in 2004. She should be proud of it all.

Some of my earliest memories of really connecting with music come from a Creedence Clearwater Revival Chronicle Vol. 1: The 20 Greatest Hits CD that my mother owned, and usually it started with a guitar lick. The riffs that John Fogerty wrote with Creedence were so iconic and natural that I never gave any thought to his skill with his instrument. But according to this interview in The Tennessean, even after all of his success he felt guilty about his guitar playing and how he never reached the level of his inspiration, Chet Atkins. Disproving the old-dogs-can't-learn-new-tricks theory, he spent almost two decades practicing and now feels like he can jam with Buddy Miller -- who contributed to Fogerty's The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again album -- without having to apologize first. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me, and shows what determination can do. Needless to say, I am pumped to see what he's got this Sunday at the Ryman. Maybe it will be something like this trailer from his concert DVD, Comin' Down the Road.

In his nostalgic new video, "Charcoal Sky," esteemed singer-songwriter Chip Taylor reminisces about placing nickels on the rails as a kid and listening to his father chat with the conductors. Taylor sets numerous family stories to music on a new album, Yonkers NY, with one of the two discs bolstered with personal anecdotes. Taylor is most recognized for writing "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning" -- which couldn't be more different -- but throughout his brilliant career he's also placed songs with the likes of Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Dusty Springfield. There's also a terrific new Chip Taylor anthology on Ace Records, with dozens of vintage artists offering their own renditions of his work, in case you're in the mood for memories too.

With a little bit of downtime at the office this week, I finally had a chance to read Beautiful Mess, an autobiography by Diamond Rio that was released a few months ago. It's a quick read and an insightful look at all six guys in the award-winning band, famous for hits like "Meet in the Middle," "How Your Love Makes Me Feel," "I Believe" and "One More Day." I was lucky enough to see them play a county fair in the early 1990s when they were just getting started, and it might even have been my first country concert. However, much of the storyline of the book involves their live performances over the last seven or eight years when Marty Roe just wasn't cutting it vocally. It got so bad that their longtime sound engineer quit the job after repeatedly getting jeered by nearby audience members.

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Coming up as a journalist, I was encouraged to read as much as I could, to learn how to tell a story well. During an interview about his new album, Somedays the Song Writes You, I asked Guy Clark if songwriters should take the same tactic. "Yeah, of course, and read something good, too," he said. "Read Dylan Thomas or listen to it. I just got a new CD of the whole Under Milk Wood play. Every time Townes (Van Zandt) and I thought we were pretty hot shit writers, we would put on a tape of Dylan Thomas reading."

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She should've won. He shouldn't have. This artist is too old. That one is too new. Why wasn't she nominated? Who voted for him? This is fixed. Controversies and questions surrounding this year's CMA Awards are endless. But it's certainly nothing new. Back in 1975, when John Denver won the CMA Award for entertainer of the year, the reigning titleholder Charlie Rich opened the envelope -- and set fire to the card in disgust. Despite earning the most votes, Denver wasn't considered a true country artist by many Nashville insiders, according to The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Denver wasn't there, thank God, so he didn't have to walk up onto that fiery stage and embrace that awkward moment on national TV. So now we have a bit of history repeating itself, with artists and fans weighing in on whether or not the right person won the top award last week. But all I know is, as long as nobody pulled a lighter out of their pocket at last week's show, we are keeping it classy.

It was mostly the usual suspects who got nominated for the awards that were presented Wednesday (Nov. 11) in Nashville, but the winners in some of the categories make you wonder what's going on among the voters who are card-carrying members of the Country Music Association. (I should mention that I am a CMA member, but I'm not sure I could locate my card if I had to.) Lady Antebellum had a great year, but what does it mean when they win over the longtime favorite, Rascal Flatts? And while there was much discussion about whether Taylor Swift would win the entertainer of the year award, I really thought CMA voters would make her wait at least another year before presenting her with the organization's highest honor. And when people accuse country music of sounding like pop music, the song of the year prize somehow goes to Jamey Johnson's "In Color." At the risk of stirring things up, what are your thoughts about the winners at the CMA Awards show?

Congratulations to Kris Kristofferson on his newly bestowed BMI Icon award for monumental achievements in songwriting. I assembled a playlist below to exemplify just how deep his catalog runs in country music. His most famous lyric may be "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," which sets the bar extremely high, although I also love these phrases: "Take the ribbon from your hair/shake it loose and let it fall." "The Sunday smell of someone frying chicken." "Don't look so sad./I know it's over." In addition, I included his own version of "To Beat the Devil" (from his 1970 debut album) because its vivid descriptions make me feel like I was kicking around Nashville's bars in the late 1960s, too -- what I wouldn't give to see what the city was like back then.

"Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends," Ronnie Milsap
"For the Good Times," Ray Price
"Why Me Lord," George Jones
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First George Jones. Now Rosanne Cash. Why are country's traditionalists ganging up on the progress country music has made? In an interview with the Wall Street Journal about her new album of essential country tunes, The List, Cash talked a bit about the state of country music today. When the interviewer asked, "How is the singer-songwriter tradition working today? You see Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood at the top of the charts. Is it flourishing?" And Cash says, "You mentioned two songwriters that I don't know any of their songs, I'm sorry to say. I saw (Taylor) on a TV show and thought she was adorable. But I don't listen to country radio. And I'm not an authority on what's going on in country music." I guess for some artists, looking back is a better way to make music than looking ahead.