CMT Blog: Bobby Bare

It’s not often you get a stellar evening of excellent music that is also totally Pro Tools-free. No doctoring of performances was needed at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Medallion ceremony on June 29, marking the induction of Tom T. Hall and the Statler Brothers into the Hall of Fame. Although both Hall and the Statlers have been retired for years, they unpacked their chops to sing and to show the world that they’ve still got it. Hall performed his true-life ode, “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.” The Statlers sang a kick-out-the-jams version of their “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You.” Longtime Hall friend Bobby Bare paid him tribute with a moving “That’s How I Got to Memphis.” Reba McEntire brought the Statlers’ “Flowers On The Wall” back to life with verve.

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Bobby Bare wasn’t home when his Hendersonville home was hit by a falling tree. It landed on the couch where Bare’s wife was sitting, but she escaped injury.

You know how sometimes while you’re reading, your mind wanders onto other subjects — like how you need to make a dentist appointment or how you still have to take your pet in for shots — only to find yourself re-reading the page to know what the heck it is you just spent ten minutes reading? This just happened to me, but not while reading. I was listening to some Bobby Bare and while he was belting “Drunk and Crazy,” I got to thinking. I still don’t have my 2008 New Year’s resolutions made. I know, a bit random and yes, more than two weeks late, but better than never, right? Plus, I need to put some serious thought into this list, especially if I’m going to spend a whole year completing it.

As I’m sure most spent their first moments of 2008 “Drunk and Crazy,” a new year is upon us. Here’s what I’m thinking:

1. Have more fun – Sometimes I take life a little too seriously and need to loosen up. Perhaps I should let my hair down more often, you know, like Bobby Bare. Though not entirely, he does end up in the hospital at the end of this song. (Something about a fractured skull and a busted spine)

2. Brighten someone’s day, everyday – I’d like to take the extra time each day to help someone in some way, even if it’s only through a smile.

3. Drink more …tea. (No, not brewskies.)

4. Make new friends — I’m not shy. Plus, I’m pretty good at talking to strangers. I need to put this to use.

5. Floss – My teeth asked for this one. Unfortunately, I had my first, yes, first visit to the dentist’s office since I moved here in May 2006. (‘Nough said.)

6. Write, write, write – It’s what I love to do. Plus, I was given some lovely moleskin journals for Christmas. It’s time I put them to use.

7. Last, but certainly not least, call my little brother more often. — He is the one person who even in his silence makes me feel better. Though I may be older, he is the one I look up to most. Plus, I think he needs me just as much as I need him. (Even if he doesn’t want to admit it.)

Have you made your list? If not, what better time than now? You can start with me. Late is better than never. I recommend some good thinking music. Perhaps, “Drunk and Crazy.” So, lock all the doors and open the wine and get to writing. I have a good feeling as we embark on 2008. Perhaps we’ll even meet and I’ll introduce myself. Maybe we could be friends. Like Mr. Bare suggests, “Let the good times roll.”

I call it a sorry damn world when a man can bend his ear all day long to country radio and still not hear one single song about the great democratic sport of adultery. To listen to the wussy yowling that claims to be country music these days, you’d think we hillbillies spent our time at the feet of Oprah and Dr. Phil instead of sneaking up the back stairs now and again with our boots in our hands. What has happened to our honesty? I know we’re supposed to be family-loving, God-fearing dullards, but only people who tape the CMA Awards actually believe that malarkey. You show me a songwriter who’s not enjoying or casting a covetous eye on a bit of strange, and I’ll show you a tombstone. Let’s get real.

It used to be that country music had songs that faced the slimy facts of life with an element of grace. When Webb Pierce sang “Back Street Affair” or Earl Thomas Conley “Holding Her and Loving You,” you could get the delicious carnal thrill of cheating and still feel pretty good about yourself. Pierce moaned, “For the one that I’m tied to/was the first to be untrue,” a clear excuse for balancing the scales, and Conley cut himself some moral slack by ruminating, “I still love her, but I love you more.” Bobby Bare beat himself up for betraying his seemingly happy home but still succumbed to fleshly hankerings in Tom T. Hall’s “Margie’s at the Lincoln Park Inn.” In a related tune, Bare temporarily abandoned his mistress to be with his wife in the wonderfully ironic “Look Who I’m Cheating on Tonight.”

“The Long Black Veil” has got to be the darkest song about adultery since the singer chooses to be hanged for a crime he didn’t commit rather than confess that he’d “been in the arms of [his] best friend’s wife.” Ouch! There are lots of other titles I could recommend to today’s country songwriters — gems like “Slipping Around,” “One Has My Name,” “I Take the Chance,” “Thinkin’ of a Rendezvous” — but why should they pay attention to me when they’re getting rich on lyrical air bubbles? Maybe, though, they’ve heard the greatest adultery song of all time and decided they’ll never be able to match it. And they’re right. Written and recorded by Wayne Kemp, it’s called “Your Wife Is Cheatin’ on Us Again.” Ponder that masterpiece and weep, Mr. and Ms. Songwriter of the Year.

The best musical performance at the recent Medallion Ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame, I think, came when Bobby Bare sang “Detroit City” to honor HOF inductee Mel Tillis. Bare sounded as sharp and incisive as ever, and it reminded me anew of his remarkable career.

Along the way in that career, Bobby Bare and writer Shel Silverstein did some amazing things together with music. Their musical partnership resulted in some marvelous songs and a number of them are reprised in one of this year’s best reissues. Lullabys, Legends and Lies was released in 1973 and included the hits “Marie Laveau,” “The Winner,” and “Daddy What If” (recorded with five-year-old Bobby Bare Jr.). But this new, re-mastered version of the original album includes some other Shel-Bare classics.

Like the inimitable “Quaaludes Again”:

She fumbles and stumbles
And falls down the stairs,
Makes love to the leg of the dining room chair.
She’s ready for animals, women or men.
She’s doin’ quaaludes again.

And there’s “Rough on the Living,” a spot-on tale of a fading country star’s death and the subsequent crocodile tears shed over him. His ex-wife, who had divorced him, becomes the grieving widow on the news. His former producer, who had dropped him, speaks movingly of his devotion to the dead star. You know how it goes.

They’re plannin’ a book for September
Showin’ his plain country roots
Any they’re sellin’ the rights to the movie
And the Hall of Fame’s gettin’ his boots
At the funeral somebody recited a poem
That told how he suffered and bled
Nashville is rough on the livin’
But she really speaks well of the dead.

This live version of another Shel song, “Drunk and Crazy,” isn’t from the album, but it’s of a piece of what Bare and Shel were doing then and captures the exuberant spirit of that free-wheeling era.

“A Boy Named Sue,” “The Winner,” “Hey Loretta” — when it came to poking fun at country music’s foibles and conventions, no one could match Shel Silverstein. Befriended by such Music Row colossi as Johnny Cash, Bobby Bare and Waylon Jennings, this Chicago-born original (who got his start as a cartoonist for Playboy) never had to pull his lyrical punches to fit in with the country crowd. Thus he fearlessly dashed off potentially offensive lines like “I’m going back to Texas and be one more horse’s ass,” “Nashville is rough on the living, but she really speaks well of the dead,” “She’s ready for animals, women or men/She’s doin’ Quaaludes again,” and this faux good ol’ boy contribution to feminist literature, “[Y]ou can fill my pipe and then go fetch my slippers/And boil me up another pot of tea/Then put another log on the fire/And come and tell me why you’re leaving me.” Silverstein continued to tickle and elbow country in the ribs until his sudden death in 1999 at the age of 68. He had, of course, anticipated his passing in a song that observed: “You can quit smokin’ but you’re still gonna die/Cut down cokin’, but you’re still gonna die.”

The other day, a friend and fellow Silverstein zealot invited me to drop by a club on Music Row to sample a few comic songs from JR & The Roadkill Choir, a band that’s already developed a following in the mustier honky tonks of Nashville’s Lower Broadway. JR is John Russell, a handsome and affable chap whose swipes at country stereotypes are just as irreverent as those of his famous predecessor. In one ditty, he moans to his erring girlfriend, “You’re too ugly to be cheatin’ on me,” then adds the clincher, “I settled on you ‘cause I thought you’d be true.” Elsewhere, he ruminates about the burdens of parenthood: “Girls go from dolls to derelicts quicker than a wink / That’s why sometimes daddies need to drink.” On matters of domestic harmony, he concludes, “No man was ever shot washing the dirty dishes.” In yet another song, when a guy’s wife catches him sneaking out of the Holiday Inn with a Waffle House waitress, he attempts to disarm her with a simple question, “How can it be cheating if I was thinking of you?” So maybe Shel ain’t gonna die after all.

I started thinking about Chet Atkins and his legacy after the news this week that Tony Brown is starting his own production company and locating it in Atkins’ old building on 17th St. South, also known as Music Square East. There’s no doubt in my mind that Brown is the single person most qualified to sit in Chet Atkins’ chair.

Brown, as you probably know, is a musician, producer and label executive responsible for a number of things. He played piano for Elvis Presley and in Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, among others. He signed artists ranging from Lyle Lovett to Steve Earle to Rodney Crowell to Shooter Jennings. As a producer he has presided over recordings from much of Brooks & Dunn’s work to Reba McEntire’s current top-charting duets album. Equally importantly, he’s been a force for music progress in a town and a community that doesn’t always honor or even encourage progress or change of any sort.

Atkins, as I hope you remember, is the guitar legend who died in 2001. Beyond setting new standards and being a musical ambassador around the world, Atkins left behind a considerable musical legacy. As a producer, he signed and guided talents ranging from Waylon Jennings to Bobby Bare to Jim Reeves to Don Gibson. As a record label executive, he made RCA Nashville a continued powerhouse. Under his reign, he saw his beloved pop-ish Nashville Sound give way to Waylon’s Outlaw Country and beyond.

Chet is well-represented by a current, two-CD reissue, The Essential Chet Atkins. But the album of his that I most treasure on vinyl has never been available on CD and I think it should be. The Night Atlanta Burned is actually by The Atkins String Company, made up of Atkins on lead guitar, Johnny Gimble on mandolin, Lisa Silver on fiddle and Paul Yandell on rhythm guitar. Together they formed an exquisite chamber country ensemble, blending classical, country and bluegrass musics together. It is available now on MP3 and as a CD import on Raven from Australia. It would be certainly fitting if RCA Nashville kept it in print.

This has to be a pretty good week in the life of Mel Tillis. He wakes up on his 75th birthday today with the knowledge that he’s finally taking his rightful place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Most news accounts will hail Vince Gill’s induction, because he’s the most current of the three inductees. Ralph Emery will get his share of attention, because as a TV personality, country fans are extremely familiar with his visage. Mel, unfortunately, has been often overlooked. He had a successful career as a recording artist, culminating with his selection in 1976 as the CMA Entertainer of the Year. He placed an impressive 45 singles in country’s Top 15 from 1965-1984, though none of them quite attained status as a standard.

But as a songwriter, he left an indelible mark. “Detroit City,” a Grammy winner for Bobby Bare, created a believable portrait of misguided blue-collar pride. “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” helped define Kenny Rogers’ uniquely scratchy vocal presence. “So Wrong” provided Patsy Cline one of her most haunting performances. And while you won’t hear these songs on too many stations anymore, the Ray Price shuffles “Burning Memories” and “Heart Over Mind,” the Webb Pierce novelty “I Ain’t Never” and the reflective Jack Greene ballad “All the Time” are remarkably attractive works.

Pam Tillis paid homage to her dad five years ago with the album, It’s All Relative: Tillis Sings Tillis. It’s worth the price simply for a remake of his first charted single, “Violet and a Rose,” with extraordinarily sensitive background vocals from Dolly Parton, another Hall of Famer who — like Mel — was a regular on Porter Wagoner’s syndicated TV show. Mel also appeared regularly on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and made a mark as a personality, in part because he was able to convert his stutter from an embarrassing weakness to a comedic strength. But his most impressive legacy is as a writer. Along with peers Kris Kristofferson, Bill Anderson, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, Harlan Howard and Felice & Boudleaux Bryant, he helped cement Nashville as a songwriting haven. It’s high time he joined them in the Hall of Fame.