CMT Blog: Jimmie Rodgers

If you liked the experimental side of Nickel Creek, you’ll probably get a kick out of founding member Sara Watkins‘ first solo album. She recorded half of the self-titled project in Nashville and the other half in L.A., and she says the constant flow of friends coming and going during the sessions inspired the freewheeling vibe of the record. Indeed, we spent about half of our interview time talking about how much we both love Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, who both appear on the record. Chris Thile and brother Sean Watkins — her longtime Nickel Creek bandmates — are represented, too.

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The most recent CMT Music and Talent department’s New Video evaluation meeting was treated to the dilemma of seven new submitted videos, all wanting to fit into one of only three open video slots. A delicious problem. It obviously sparked lively discussion as the videos competed for their space in the sun — or on the tube, that is. Roll ‘em.The videos:

Artist: Taylor Swift
Video: “Should’ve Said No”
Director: Rac Clark

This is a live clip of Taylor Swift’s live performance of the song at the recent ACM Awards show, including the waterfall conclusion.

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Now that the Writers Guild of America has granted a waiver to the Grammy Awards, the show will go on in Los Angeles on Feb. 10 and I’m glad it will. Although it must be said that the idea of the WGA granting waivers, as it has been doing, somewhat diffuses the impact of a writers strike. Even so, I think not having a show this year, which marks Grammy’s 50th anniversary, would be severely detrimental to a music industry that’s in enough trouble of its own. I enjoy going to the Grammy Awards for its attempts to honor good music across all genres. Year in and year out, the Grammy voters consistently try to honor the best music, and generally do a pretty good job of doing so. Even so, there have been some curious lapses in Grammy judgment. For example, how many Grammys do you think the following rock artists have won — Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, and the Doors? Answer: none of them ever won a Grammy.

What about the following country artists – George Strait, Patsy Cline, Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and Ernest Tubb? Answer: zero. Not a single Grammy among them. Strait is nominated again this year, for country album and country male vocal performance. He’s had nine Grammy nominations. Maybe this will be his year.

Is bluegrass music the new Branson, the last resort for aging country artists who can’t get major record deals? It may look that way, but I think it’s just as likely that these acts, finally freed of the usual commercial expectations, rejoice in singing the kind of songs they grew up with, ones that embody the string band sound and the rural images that were once common in mainstream country. Looking over such recent arrivals as Merle Haggard’s The Bluegrass Sessions and Bill Anderson’s Whisperin’ Bluegrass, it occurs to me that country performers have long shown a fondness for this old-time style.In 1970, Dolly Parton and Lynn Anderson, both of whom would record bluegrass albums in the twilight of their careers, scored country hits with “Muleskinner Blues” and “Rocky Top,” respectively. “Muleskinner” was a Bill Monroe evergreen by way of Jimmie Rodgers. Anderson’s “Rocky Top,” of course, covered the Osborne Brothers‘ 1968 dynamo.

Bluegrass took to the country (and pop) charts again in 1973 via Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell’s galloping instrumental, “Dueling Banjos,” the theme from Deliverance. At the height of his country prominence, Tom T. Hall recorded The Magnificent Music Machine, an entire album of bluegrass songs, most of them standards. The 1976 collection featured such guest pickers as Monroe, Jimmy Martin and J. D. Crowe. Six years later, Hall teamed with Earl Scruggs for The Storyteller & the Banjo Man. (Since his retirement from touring, Hall has devoted himself to bluegrass.) In 1978, Conway Twitty saluted bluegrass with “Boogie Grass Band,” a tune written by Ronnie Reno, son of Bluegrass Hall of Famer Don Reno.

Throughout the ‘80s and 90s, Ricky Skaggs pumped a torrent of bluegrass into his country music. Travis Tritt enriched his 1991 album, It’s All About to Change, with the Jimmy Skinner bluegrass classic, “Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler.” Steve Earle brought legions of new fans to bluegrass in 1999 when he recorded The Mountain with the Del McCoury Band. That same year, Parton crossed the musical border with The Grass Is Blue. Anderson and Janie Fricke both re-styled their country hits in 2004 on albums called, not surprisingly, The Bluegrass Sessions.

So the next time a country icon reaches for a banjo, try not to be too cynical. It could be that he really does like bluegrass. Couldn’t it?

It wasn’t too long ago that country performers routinely incorporated a title with their name, the idea being that such an addition gave them a little extra boost in stature and individuality. Thus, Roy Acuff was the King of Country Music, Kitty Wells the Queen and Tammy Wynette the First Lady. The practice went a long way back. Jimmie Rodgers billed himself as the Singing Brakeman (and later bore the title of Father of Country Music). Grand Ole Opry patriarch Uncle Dave Macon was known as the Dixie Dewdrop. Eddy Arnold gained fame as the Tennessee Plowboy (but gradually eased away from that designation as he sought a broader, more urbane audience). Tennessee Ernie Ford styled himself as the Old Pea Picker, and Ernest Tubb labored as the Texas Troubadour. Patti Page was the Singing Rage.

Sometimes these titles were conferred on performers by their admirers and sometimes by their paid promoters. But whatever its origin, the value of a title lay in whether or not it stuck and eventually became synonymous with the performer’s name.

Before there was a Gary LeVox, Vern Gosdin was the Voice. Roy Rogers was King of the Cowboys, Bill Monroe the Father of Bluegrass, Hank Snow the Singing Ranger, Johnny Cash the Man in Black and Tom T. Hall the Storyteller. Generously proportioned Kenny Price of Hee Haw went to his grave as the Round Mound of Sound. Ranger Doug Green of Riders in the Sky continues to call himself (albeit puckishly) the Idol of American Youth.

So here’s what I’d like to know: What do you think would be fitting honorifics for the likes of Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill (separately or in tandem), Josh Turner, Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, Miranda Lambert or any other act of your choosing? Here’s your chance to influence country music history. The floor is yours.

Every country singer who wears a cowboy hat ought to tip it now and then to the memory of Gene Autry. Sept. 29 is the centennial of Autry’s birth in Tioga, Texas. While his greatest fame came from the Western movies he made — starting in 1934 with In Old Santa Fe and continuing through his 1950-56 TV series — he was initially a country singer and would remain one throughout his long recording career.

Autry emerged musically around the time that high-powered radio stations were beginning to attract millions of listeners with their weekly “barn dances,” all of which featured live musical talent. Because much of the talent and many of the fans were from rural backgrounds, the singers and musicians often dressed up as “hillbillies” for their performances and publicity pictures, with bib overalls, grotesquely patched trousers and shirts, battered felt and straw hats, suspenders, gingham dresses and the occasional corncob pipe.

But there was none of this demeaning tomfoolery for Gene Autry. Although he was not the first country singer to sport Western wear (Jimmie Rodgers sometimes did), Autry was already cultivating a neatly pressed cowboy persona when he joined the National Barn Dance on Chicago station WLS in the early 1930s. There he deftly marketed that persona by promoting his personalized songbooks, records and Gene Autry Roundup Guitars. The movies, of course, subsequently burned his wholesome, Stetson-topped image even more deeply into the American consciousness. It’s still there in the looks of such troubadours as George Strait, Alan Jackson, Kix Brooks, Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Clint Black and, most sincerely and soulfully, Riders in the Sky (who have re-released their Public Cowboy # 1 album, now subtitled A Centennial Salute to the Music of Gene Autry).

Want to talk cowboy classics? Autry had a bundle of them: “The Last Roundup,” “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “South of the Border,” “Back in the Saddle Again” and “Don’t Fence Me In.” Much of his best work, though, was straight-ahead country fare, songs like “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes,” “I Hang My Head and Cry,” “At Mail Call Today” and “Someday You’ll Want Me to Want You.” Still, his key to cultural immortality may turn out to be those infectiously crooned tales about Peter Cottontail, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The man knew how to build a brand.

Gene Autry cantered into the sunset on October 2, 1998, leaving a life well lived and a job well done.

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.

Fifteen years ago, Garth Brooks was hands-down the biggest thing in country music, so when he did a three-night stand at the America West Arena in Phoenix, he naturally sold out each show. Little did he know that one of the people watching him that first night would later end up at Capitol Records, the same label for whom Garth recorded at the time.

“He just gave every ounce of energy when he was out there, and when he walked off stage, he staggered,” Dierks Bentley told me in 2005, recalling that concert. “It blew me away how much energy he put in his show. I learned a lot from him and he became an influence in that way.”

Dierks picked up influences from a lot of different areas — he played the bluegrass circuit when he first moved to Nashville, built his band with the same instrumentation as Buck Owens, but has also dropped in an AC/DC riff in his live set. In that way, he’s like Garth, who cited Kiss and Queen alongside George Strait among his influences. George likewise picked up on artists as diverse as Bob Wills, Merle Haggard and Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, Merle has paid homage to country pioneer Jimmie Rodgers and pop singer Bing Crosby as major influences.

It’s kind of funny when you hear critics say that modern country music doesn’t really sound country anymore. Newer artists such as Jason Aldean, Cole Deggs & the Lonesome and Little Big Town are indeed allowing a lot of pop and rock influences into their sound, though when you line them up against current hit-makers such as Linkin Park or Beyoncé, their country roots are clear. I doubt that either Garth or Dierks were thinking about those issues when Dierks went to the arena on July 19, 1992. But it turns out they were both at a different place in their process of stepping into a country music tradition: salting the genre with a little outside flavor.