In the hours after Eddy Arnold's death early Thursday morning, country music stars and everyday working class people from Nashville have been sharing their stories of the Country Music Hall of Fame member. And if there's one underlying theme, it's the kindness and decency he showed to everyone he had contact with long after he had anything to prove or anyone to impress.
He was a superstar long before anyone ever coined the expression, but he didn't act like a superstar and you certainly wouldn't pick him out of a crowd as being a multi-millionaire. Up until a few months ago, he could be seen most weekdays having lunch at a modest meat-and-three restaurant south of downtown Nashville. Read more...
In an age when Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley and I all wear the same size jeans, it feels good to see Keith Anderson and James Otto so comfortable in their own bigness. It's tempting to get into all kinds of "size matters" and "live large" clichés, but I won't.
I will say, though, that I think these two guys have found the key to a woman's heart: the bigger you are, the more petite she'll feel. At least, that's my takeaway from their new videos.
Like a lot of people, I couldn't get a good seat at Stagecoach festival this year because I didn't buy a VIP seat. (In fact, I didn't realize there would be VIP seats.) So I spent most of the weekend milling around behind the throng of lawn chairs and blankets and wrote about the festival mostly from what I saw on the big screens. That's OK, too. At least I didn't have to walk as far to the barbecue contest. And I could easily hear music from the Eagles, John Fogerty, the Judds, Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood and more.
Posted: May 6th, 2008 at 11:36 am| By: Chet Flippo
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.
After about a decade of taking concert photos, I finally invested in a nice zoom lens about three years ago. It pretty much changed my life. No longer did I come home with shot after shot of a tiny artist on a big ugly stage. That lens gave me the power to get tighter than tight on their faces. And what I discovered is that while you can certainly get extreme close-ups of the artists singing, you can also zoom in on everything else. And by everything else, I mean the tattoos that grace their skin.
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.
Last week's Billboard magazine had a story about concert security. Yes, those pesky windbreaker-wearing guys who stand between you and say, Brad Paisley. And while they do get in the way of potential autographs and hand shakes, they really are there to make concerts safer. Yet this article paints a picture of budget tightening and staff cutting. That scares me.
Have you been to a country concert, or worse, an all-day festival lately? The crowds come rowdy and ready to party. By the time the headliner takes the stage, there is a lot of pent up energy, often fueled by long neck beers and $15 margaritas. And that buzz apparently gives those fans permission to stand up on flimsy folding chairs, dance with the unwilling, and shout along to the lyrics at the top of their lungs.
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.
Posted: April 30th, 2008 at 6:41 pm| By: Chet Flippo
Rampant reports around the Web indicate that Miley Cyrus has had a moratorium on public appearances and media utterances placed on her. Reports say that Disney has decided the Hannah Montana star has reached a no-win situation with the media frenzy surrounding her recent Vanity Fair magazine photo shoot and its somewhat revealing results.
So she seemingly will stay buttoned up and in the Disney cocoon for awhile, until the hubbub dies down. That's probably the smartest thing she could do. The media monster is blaming her, blaming Billy Ray, blaming Vanity Fair, blaming the publicity machine. There's plenty of blame to go around, but there's still a valid argument to be made that this is a tempest in a teapot. Millions of words written and spoken over ... what? Remember, despite all of her superstar success, Miley Cyrus is just a 15-year-old child.
Posted: April 28th, 2008 at 5:01 pm| By: Jay Frank
In Nashville, the conventional wisdom has been that radio is most important. It's so pervasive that I've never seen more artists thank radio at awards shows than I do in country music. As important as radio is, I do believe that history books will likely show that April 2008 may be the epicenter of when that equation changed for country artists. Notable events include:
James Otto debuting Top 5 across all genres, with the most noticeable awareness spike occurring right when online marketing went into high gear.
In the hours after Eddy Arnold's death early Thursday morning, country music stars and everyday working class people from Nashville have been sharing their stories of the Country Music Hall of Fame member. And if there's one underlying theme, it's the kindness and decency he showed to everyone he had contact with long after he had anything to prove or anyone to impress.
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 
If I'm interpreting a sidebar on the People magazine Web site correctly, 
Last week's Billboard magazine had a story about concert security. Yes, those pesky windbreaker-wearing guys who stand between you and say, 
Last week I gushed over a book of fictional stories and "true" recollections by country songwriters called 
Rampant reports around the Web indicate that 
In Nashville, the conventional wisdom has been that radio is most important. It's so pervasive that I've never seen more artists thank radio at awards shows than I do in country music. As important as radio is, I do believe that history books will likely show that April 2008 may be the epicenter of when that equation changed for country artists. Notable events include:
©2008 Country Music Television, Inc., a Viacom company. A division of 
