CMT Blog: Glen Campbell

With the new MySpace Karaoke site, you can record or listen to amateur versions of the country hits you love. Like a pitch-challenged interpretation of a Martina McBride hit.

Spend two minutes under the stage at Nashville’s Sommet Center with Bon Jovi, courtesy of The Tennessean newspaper.

Glen Campbell’s staging a California comeback. He’s getting ready to debut brand new songs at this weekend’s Stagecoach Festival.

Check out what everything the bloggers at The 9513 have done to celebrate Willie Nelson’s 75th. You could even win braids.

Steve Earle’s son, Justin Townes Earle, recalls the do-or-die night in the ER when he was forced to face his drug addiction.

Batter up!

Major league baseball started its season in the U.S. on Sunday by unveiling a new ballpark in Washington, D.C. And if you want proof that baseball and country music belong together, think back to last year’s World Series. It was over in four games, but in two of them, it was country stars — Carrie Underwood and Trisha Yearwood — who sang about “the home of the brave.”

Country music doesn’t confine itself to the major leagues, either. Taylor Swift’s version of the anthem inaugurated the 2007 season for the Reading Phillies. Little Big Town, who practically toured ballparks doing the “Banner” for several years, led off the Nashville Sounds‘ season five years ago. And 15 years past, Vince Gill did the same thing, though he skipped a line of the song in the process, probably blinded by the rockets’ red glare.

Earlier this week in Texas, Jack Ingram delivered the national anthem for the Houston Astros‘ home opener, and on Monday, Neal McCoy will do the same when the Texas Rangers open their home schedule. Charley Pride — who trained, as is his tradition, with the Rangers this year — sang the opening-day anthem for the team two years ago. During this week a year ago, Clay Walker was voicing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Houston’s Minute Maid Park.

Singing is not the only connection country stars have to baseball games, though. When the Arizona Diamondbacks won their first game 10 years ago this month, it was a moment of pride for Glen Campbell, a minority owner in the franchise. And 60 years ago, a pitcher with the Henderson Oilers in Texas got injured in his final game: That guy went on to be a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Jim Reeves.

At this point in the digital age, why isn’t every album ever released by a major label available either on CD or as a download? And why does it so often take a foreign record label to re-release classic music that’s sitting in a corporate vault?

I just got back from the Ernest Tubb Record Shop after learning that two of Chet Atkins‘ RCA albums from the mid ‘70s — The Night Atlanta Burned and The First Nashville Guitar Quartet — were finally released on CD. Not by RCA, of course, but by Raven Records, an Australian company that packaged them together on one disc. I gladly plunked down $24, but honestly, for the past decade, I would have paid twice that amount — but that CD simply didn’t exist and the download still doesn’t.

Atkins recorded both albums with acoustic ensembles — The Night Atlanta Burned with guitarist Paul Yandell, mandolinist Johnny Gimble and violinist Lisa Silver and The First Nashville Guitar Quartet with guitarists Liona Boyd, John Knowles and John Pell. Great stuff. While interviewing Chet Atkins in the mid ‘90s — when he was recording for Columbia — I asked if he thought The Night Atlanta Burned would ever be released on CD. He said, “All of that belongs to RCA. I’d love to see it released, but I don’t have any control over what they do.”

Raven made me very happy through the years with some of the titles they’ve been the first to release on CD, including an expanded version of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb’s Reunion. Raven was also the first to offer CD versions of Michael Murphey’s Geronimo’s Cadillac and Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir, two excellent albums he made for A&M in the ‘70s.

If projected sales figures prohibit releasing CD versions of certain albums, how much does it cost to make a download available? No doubt, there are financial and legal factors at play in some situations, but it sure looks like the major labels are still sitting on a lot of music because they either don’t know what they’ve got — or don’t care enough about it to make it available to the public.

For the last year and a half, I have been obsessed with The Doyle and Debbie Show - a country music send-up that is still going strong in Nashville. See, Doyle Mayfield is a washed-up country star who never really had too many hits to start with, but when he discovers his “new Debbie” in a rural VFW hall, he realizes that she’s his ticket back to the big time. It’s a script, so you get the same show every night (and I’ve seen it 11 times now), but it’s just so clever that I can’t keep from cracking up time and time again.

My favorite line in the whole thing may come from “Stock Car Love,” as Debbie confides, “I miss the pole position. I used to get it all the time. But now I barely qualify at all.” The whole song is completely ridiculous, yet it’s more inventive than just about any novelty song I’ve ever heard. You can hear most of the music (but unfortunately none of the dialogue) on their Web site. Still, the real reason to see it in person is for Doyle’s anything-for-entertainment gestures, and Debbie’s hilariously subtle expressions that prove she’s giving it all she’s got with this wacko.

To me, Doyle is pretty much a cross between Bill Anderson and Glen Campbell, and he seems ready to come unhinged at any moment. Meanwhile, Debbie is a pretty little gal who actually has a brain and a strong set of pipes. She just wants to be a star so bad that she makes some bad decisions. (Really… really bad.) She can sing like Loretta Lynn or Patsy Cline, but “For the Children” is like a melodramatic Martina McBride ballad gone very, very wrong. But that’s OK. As Doyle & Debbie are proud to admit, they’re just doing all they could with what the good Lord gave ‘em.

If the only thing John Hartford ever did were to write “Gentle on My Mind,” his place in country music history would be secure. But the truth is he contributed much more. After the enormous financial freedom given to him by Glen Campbell’s 1967 hit, Hartford went on to a career that was incredibly diverse and always defied categorization. As well as playing banjo, guitar, fiddle and tap dancing, he listed his other occupations as tugboat and steamboat pilot. Not exactly your average star of country music…

An artist with such a huge catalogue can often be off-putting for the uninitiated, and I’ll admit I didn’t own any Hartford records until I came across this re-release by Rounder Records — Gum Tree Canoe. The cover itself is gorgeous and inviting in the way it presents the main players on the record. The legendary Jack Clement produced this masterpiece, and he sits next to Hartford like a Cheshire cat. Mark O’Connor played fiddle and this has to be some of the best stuff he ever recorded in Nashville — hungry and incredibly imaginative. For those of you familiar with his work, you really need to inspect the cover to enjoy Mark’s incredible beard — an impressive Abraham Lincoln impression! The late great Roy Huskey Jr. holds down the rhythm section as he only he could and no one else has since. Guest appearances by Sam Bush, Marty Stuart and Jerry Douglas mean this album is my new definition of sublime charm.

The original songs are all wonderful, but top marks to these guys for re-inventing the Janis Joplin hit “Piece of My Heart” and upping the hillbilly ante on the Stones‘ “No Expectations.” Although this collection of songs is now 20 years old, it could well have been recorded yesterday. It still sounds fresh and innovative.

I haven’t found much new music to rave about this year, but stumbling across gems like this me a happy man again. I can’t guarantee you’ll feel as strongly as I do if you take a listen, but I’d be surprised if anyone writes in and tells me they don’t like this record. Hartford simply charms you into wearing a grin as wide as the Mississippi River!

Life isn’t fair. My dad used to say that all the time, and the inequities and randomness of it all become clearer every day. As the nation observes the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the contrasts between lives is one of the things that hits people most about it. Thousands of families lost everything they owned and were crammed into shelters while the rest of us watched the story unfold through the news from the comfort of our own homes thousands of miles away.

One of the oddest contrasts of that disaster was found for me in the tale of two people involved with the song “Southern Nights,” which was a hit 30 years ago. As soon as you heard the title, you probably thought of Glen Campbell, who recorded it. The song was written by Allen Toussaint, a New Orleans figure who produced Patti LaBelle’s “Lady Marmalade” and wrote Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coalmine.”

The dichotomy between Campbell and Toussaint could not have been much greater on Aug. 29, 2005. Glen received word that he was being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, a significant milestone in his career. Toussaint boarded up his home and went to a shelter to ride out the hurricane, his very life hanging in the balance.

Both musicians made changes in their residences that year — one by choice, the other by force. Just months before, Campbell had sold his toney mansion near a Phoenix golf course and moved to California’s elite Malibu neighborhood, where, oddly enough, Tanya Tucker also recently moved. Like many other Louisianans, Toussaint is still displaced. He originally moved to Baton Rouge and now resides in New York. His home is being rebuilt, and he does intend to move back to the Crescent City.

I don’t have a lot of other valuable insights. It’s not like the same kinds of contrasts don’t play out all the time: Tim McGraw, for example, moved to Nashville the same day Keith Whitley died; Johnny Paycheck recorded the biggest hit of his career in Nashville the same day that Waylon Jennings got busted on cocaine charges. But Katrina really underscores for me a couple of old adages: Life isn’t fair, and much of life is out of our control. What we do with those facts goes a long way toward determining who we are as people.

Too many “singer-songwriters” are making records these days. Their singing may be OK, but too often their songwriting sucks. I wouldn’t care if I didn’t have to suffer through their dopey, derivative, meterless, awkwardly rhymed and wafer-thin lyrics. But I do. And it’s infuriating when you consider all the great songs out there that never get cut because the singer doesn’t own a piece of them.

Country music has had a wealth of first-rate singer-composers: Jimmie Rodgers, A. P. Carter, Hank Williams, the Louvin Brothers, Marty Robbins, Don Gibson, Carter Stanley, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Mel Tillis, Bill Anderson, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Tom T. Hall, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Roger Miller, Dottie West, Eddie Rabbitt, Earl Thomas Conley, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rodney Crowell, Alan Jackson and perhaps a dozen others whose omission from this list will haunt me as soon as I post this blog. Even these lyrical wizards didn’t limit themselves to their own songs. Superb songwriters though they are, Larry Gatlin and Clint Black gradually dimmed their appeal by refusing to open their records to other songwriters. The more of their own material they did, the more it sounded the same.

A lot of music critics hold singer-songwriters in particularly high regard, contending that such exalted creatures are more believable, interesting and authentic than mere mouthers of other people’s words. Bullspit! What counts is the emotion conveyed in a performance, not lyrical authorship. Could Irving Berlin, who wrote the song, capture hearts with “White Christmas” the way Bing Crosby did? Does it lessen their emotional impact because Eddy Arnold, Ray Price, Glen Campbell, Jim Reeves, George Strait, Reba McEntire, Charley Pride, Don Williams, Ronnie Milsap, Randy Travis and Tim McGraw, for example, wrote few or none of their biggest hits?

Being a singer-songwriter is as much about money as it is about art. Any singer who can land a record contract can be sure of a lucrative music publishing deal as well. That’s because the publisher knows the singer can then be induced to record his own songs. When a singer does this and his songs are played on radio and sold on albums, he will be paid performance fees for the former and mechanical fees for the latter, in addition to album royalties. These economic realities are big incentives for the singer to become a songwriter, whether he can write or not. I guess it all comes down to this: Do writing-impaired artists want to make a living or a build a career? Weak songs won’t sustain them for the long haul. But they will torment me for the moment.

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.

We were playing at a huge two-day festival in Ireland called the Midlands Music Festival and we were being shuttled over to the site from the hotel. This guy had on a pair of those atrociously ugly shoes called Crocs (yes, I have a pair) so we started talking about how ugly they were but soooo comfortable at the same time. Turns out we both live in Austin, so we talked about missing Mexican food. I have no idea who he is, but he says he’s a tour manager and says to the bus driver, “We’re all here but we need to wait a minute for Richard.” There are a lot of Richards in this world, so I think nothing of it. Anyway, a guy squeezed past me and gets on the bus. (Is this Richard?!?!) Then, I get in the bus and there are no seats. This nice man offers up his seat to me, and when I look, it’s Richard Thompson! My band was about to DIE! We were all like, “Uh, that’s Richard Thompson and he just offered up his seat for little ol’ me.” We got to talk to him about music and where we live and what kind of music we did, etc. We watched him play later in the day from backstage, and can I just say, he was so awesome.

There were so many unbelievable people on that same bill. I got a T-shirt just because my name was on the same shirt as all them, everyone from Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Kris Kristofferson, Glen Campbell, the Be Good Tanyas, Blind Boys of Alabama, Gillian Welch (who is the sweetest thing ever!) and Ricky Skaggs. Jim Lauderdale was a hoot to hang out with. He surprised me and got up on stage during our set to sing the duet, “Lavender Blue,” that he sang with me on my CD. We got the whole performance on video and there’s a really funny part I can’t wait to put up on my Myspace page! Stay tuned! I hope they invite us back another time because we had such a great time!

We have one more festival in Sweden before we head home on Saturday. I will be sleeping the whole way home on the airplane, because I am so tired I can’t even see straight. But when we get home, I will have been playing music in five different countries for five weeks and nothing much can really compare to that!