CMT Blog: Jimmie Rodgers

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.