Bakersfield Roots

Country music doesn't get any better than this.

The hard luck, futility, even the sketchiness of the perennial down-and-outer come through loud and clear in the emotive harmonizing of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam, two country giants -- one of whom helped shape the Bakersfield (California) sound in classic country music, the other of whom brought that sound back in the 1980s to listeners who had been starving for it.

Homer Joy's song is, of course, a classic. But this version is special because it captures the cross-cultural, working-class roots of the city itself, thanks to the addition of norteño legend Flaco Jimenez on accordion. A perfect country recording.

Patsy Cline's Housewife Noir

Talk about melodrama! I thought The Louvin Brothers hosted the best pity party on the block, but this makes the Louvins sound like Martin and Lewis on laughing gas.

Speaking of 50s Hollywood types, director Douglas Sirk probably never heard this tune; Hollywood rarely mixed with country singers in those days. Too bad, because it would have been right up Sirk’s alley. This is pure housewife noir, swamped with emotion, and hinting darkly at some repressed something-or-other.

Here’s the exquisitely-tortured Patsy Cline with “When You Need A Laugh”.

An Unexpected Trace of Mountain Music

At 13 years of age, Tanya Tucker was extremely self-possessed. She still had that mountain quaver in her voice, even though she had come from Seminole, TX. That just goes to show how big an influence mountain music and bluegrass -- Carter Stanley and early Keith Whitley are the best examples -- had on their more commercial country cousin.

In any case, Ms. Tucker has always been able to put a story across. Here she is with one of her greatest story-songs, “What’s Your Mama’s Name?”

Vintage Weekend Listening

Here’s some gorgeous listening: Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs, their sublime duet vocals, a well-chosen selection of country and bluegrass songs, and minimal acoustic accompaniment. When two singers are this brilliant, this emotionally raw, who needs anything else?

Ten Books That Changed My Life

There are at least ten books that, by the time I finished them, had completely upended my understanding of myself and the world around me. These are they.

The list is here because it contains some seminal works on popular music. Feel free to ignore the tomes on social justice if you didn't ask for my opinion on such things.

In chronological order of reading, best as I can remember.

Take Wing; Jean Little: Even though there were other (visibly) disabled kids in my class, I felt I was the only one. Jean Little's best book, about a girl with a learning-disabled brother, made me realize that other kids coped with disability -- and were desperate to hide it. Take Wing hit me like a bomb. It is, hands down, the book that made me love reading, way back in fourth grade.

The Poetry Of Rock; I was a classically-trained flautist who didn't start singing until she was fifteen. What I didn't know about the crucial importance of lyrics, this book taught me. It would be decades before I could explicate this way of thinking to others. Side note: My copy of this is dissolving as I write.

That Man Cartwright; Ann Fairbairn: Two lessons -- wait, no, three -- I learned from this book: One: Change will never come about if you only hang with the, er, cool people, or those who think like you. Two: Going along to get along exacts a terrifying cost that everyone in your orbit ends up paying. Three: Justice for farmworkers means justice for everyone who consumes the fruits of their labor. This is true in the most concrete and immutable way possible. Don't believe me? Read this book, then think hard -- really hard -- about the constant spate of produce recalls we see today.

The Rolling Stone Record Guide; Various: As much as I hated Rolling Stone's chest-pounding, provincial style, the magazine -- and, by extension its first record guide -- introduced me to a way of writing about music that directly impacts my work today. Despite what crabby commentators like Steve Allen said, rock and roll could often be counted on to reveal a rich inner life and exceptional cultural literacy; as well as an activism informed deeply by established knowledge and lived experience, on the part of its creators. Attention must be paid, they insisted. I haven't stopped paying attention since.

The Name Is Archer; Ross MacDonald: I didn't have to read books to know that some people did evil because it was fun (The First Deadly Sin, Lawrence Sanders). I didn't have to read books to know that a parent could be the devil incarnate (Iceberg Slim's Mama Black Widow). I didn't have to read books to know that kids could be thrown in the trash because it was convenient (Bel Kaufman's Up The Down Staircase, Stephen King's Carrie). I did have to read a book to know that, somehow, somewhere, there were adults who gave a rip. And I had to read it over and over again. This collection of short stories, featuring detective, Lew Archer, yet another survivor of a rough childhood, was that book. I've only just now remembered that I found it because someone in Rolling Stone mentioned MacDonald's heart for maltreated kids, as expressed in the California-centered Lew Archer stories. I have no idea who that person was, but I am eternally grateful.

Tales From A Troubled Land; Alan Paton: From the days when art and literature from South Africans of color (U. of Chicago prof, Denis Brutus, was a notable exception) weren't getting through to the States. South African-raised Englishman, Paton, avoids the privileged-yet-earnest white activist traps of broad characterization, either/or thinking, and sweeping generalization. Paton knows the emotional terrain because he lived with and loved deeply South Africa's people of color. Their experiences were his unshakable, true north, and his writing taught me never to accept anything less from my own. Today's activist authors rely on The Times (pick a major, metro area) and NPR for their talky, tired, impotent change-being. They get book deals and literary prizes for it, too. Paton puts them all to shame.

Gentlemen's Agreement; Laura Z. Hobson: More than just how bigotry looks, Gentlemen's Agreement is about how bigotry thinks -- and, in the most rarified circles. It helped me home in on the qualities of human interaction on race and creed that just seemed ... off. Surprisingly, for a book about ideas, this is a book of profound humanity. Surprisingly, for a book about a bunch of New York swells, it's a book that stays blessedly down to earth.

Fahrenheit 451; Ray Bradbury: Censorship? No. Fahrenheit 451, first published in 1953, is about the consequences of thinking -- and doing -- for yourself in the age of Internet and reality TV. Shatteringly prescient.

Can't You Hear Me Callin'; Richard D. Smith: I was not a fan of musical biographies. Even the high-falutin' ones seemed to focus exclusively on their subjects' sex lives in order to obscure the authors' inexcusable ignorance of the fundamentals of music, and of creativity itself. Not so Richard D. Smith's towering biography of the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe. Smith understands Monroe's earth-shattering, musical creation in a way that bluegrass musician/authors like Neil Rosenberg, and musical dilettantes like Ted Lehmann and Kim Ruehl of No Depression fail to do to this day. Are the sex, the soap operas, the struggles, and the spite still here? Yes, they are, in authoritative detail. But, if you want to understand bluegrass music better than anyone else on the festival circuit, there is no other -- or better -- book.

The Bible: Right. Don't @ me. See, if someone spends your childhood telling you that you must live by this book, or perish; if, decades later, you discover that a bunch of someones spent your childhood lying to you about what's in this book you must live by, or perish; when you finally read the entire book for yourself, it is life-changing. In my case, so much so that I now live by an almost entirely-different set of rules than those with which I grew up.

This Is Why We Can't Have Bluegrass Things

I'm supposed to write an arresting opening line here -- one that grabs your attention, and sets the tone for the piece.

But, I am just. so. tired. 

You know, the kind of tired you get when you read self-important drool from what amounts to a major media outlet in your particular small pond. 

I'm speaking of this piece on rock's allegedly uneasy alliance with bluegrass and country music, over on the, um, "Bluegrass" Situation. The inspiration for the piece? "West Coast rockers", The Flying Burrito Brothers, and their groundbreaking album, The Gilded Palace Of Sin.

Uneasy alliance?

Who cares that bluegrass is as much about history as it is future?

Who cares about the rebellious, countercultural energy of bluegrass' first generation when you believe that bluegrass begins with a rapacious suburbanite from Champaign, Illinois? (Long hair, warp speed, hotshot instrumentalists, the high lonesome sound, the sketchy personal lives -- bluegrass wasn't exactly yer grandpa's sleepy string band)

And who cares if that selfsame major media outlet takes the name of bluegrass in vain, just to sell itself "as the authentic expression of a brand-name musical genre with considerable cachet" as I wrote here?

Some megachurch baby has a point to make, and he's gonna make it.

Let's sort this out, shall we?

Just how unlikely would it have been for a bunch of California hippies to ally themselves with country and bluegrass music?

Never mind the huge number of boomers and 1960s kids whose parents played bluegrass and country, live or via radio and records, in their homes. Never mind that this population included not only native southerners, but those who had taken the Hillbilly Highway in search of work. Never mind the bluegrass  versions of songs about that very phenomenon -- "California Cottonfields", "One More Dollar", and "Waitin' For the Hard Times To Go".


Let's instead focus on that most obscure and academic of cultural indicators -- television. 😂😂😂

How antagonistic were them librul hippies to country and bluegrass?

So much so that country and bluegrass artists The Carter Family, Flatt and Scruggs, Doc Watson, The Dillards, and Johnny Cash appeared on the beatnik showcase, Hootenanny. Premiere date? April, 1963.

So much so that country and bluegrass artists as diverse as Watson, Cash, The Stanley Brothers, Cousin Emmy, and The New Lost City Ramblers appeared and jammed with noted union supporter, Pete Seeger, on Seeger's Rainbow Quest TV show. Premiere date? 1965.

So much so that rockers like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Linda Ronstadt -- the last three based in California -- appeared and jammed with country star, Johnny Cash, on his eponymous TV show. Premiere date? June 7, 1969.

For the sake of chronology, let's review the release date for The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace Of Sin:

How easy was that?

I guess you have to know history to Google it.

You should be required to know history before you're  hired to write about it.

The Best Albums of 2017

This year's records were so good that even I didn't know which way this was going to go until the bitter end. It seems that real country has a fighting chance, real blues is still alive, and Europe cares deeply about what's going on here in America -- so deeply that their art reflected their concern in unsettling ways.

That said, let's get to it.

9. Midland, On the Rocks: The rap on these guys is that their brand of country has an authenticity problem, which is funny for an industry that bestows its highest accolades on guys who do bad Gregg Allman imitations for millennials.

I hear echoes (no, waves) of Keith Whitley (the really good stuff before he left J.D. Crowe and The New South), Glen Campbell, and George Strait.

If there's routine pop with a twang here, blame it on a record company and a willing producer; you don't sing and pick like this if you want to be the next big thing in bro country. Nashville desperately needs these sounds. If music like this is the way back to real, so be it.

8. The Medlars, The Medlars: The contrast is so jarring it's almost unbearable: a delicate, pastoral setting sketched out with banjo, cello, flute, and doleful horns. And then, that voice -- big, brassy, untutored, and raw, singing the harsh realities and rough-hewn joys of English country life.
The pentatonic scale hasn't had a workout this vigorous since the heyday of traditional bluegrass.

7. Karen and the Sorrows, The Narrow Place: There are echoes here of modern country, and Tom Petty's country rock, circa 1980s. Karen Pittelman's vocals take some getting used to. Even so, she reveals herself to be an able writer of tunes that fogies like me still call "real country music".

If you're in a bluegrass or classic country outfit, and you're not thinking of covering one of these songs, you're doing it wrong.

6. Gregg Allman, Southern Blood: Much was made of the fact that Gregg Allman was dying as he recorded this, his final album. In one sense, this was as it should have been; the physical effort alone made him a tragic, heroic figure.

In another sense, that narrative couldn't have been more wrong. At his best, Gregg Allman always sang this kind of music, with precisely this level of world-weary desperation. If we lost anything when he passed, it was the crucial presence of the down-and-out in popular music.

5. Eric Bibb, Migration Blues: A singer and picker of uncommon subtlety and skill, Eric Bibb grabs a listener's attention from the first hushed and urgent notes. Like all true blues people, he has a heart for the oppressed and forgotten, and he's at his best when he's bringing equally-marginalized music, like blues and gospel, to the fore.

This is the kind of music for which the NEA was founded, and for which, so many plutocrats would like to shut its doors. It's no accident that our country was a lot kinder when music like this actively influenced the music in the Top 40.

4. I'm With Her, Little Lies: Separately, I'm With Her got their start in progressive bluegrass bands like Crooked Still and Nickel Creek, but the drive, instrumentation, intensity, chops, and even some of the repertoire on display here have more in common with high-octane traditional grass.

That said, the trio handles contemporary fare with equal skill. This is a band of tremendous versatility; in that, they remind me of the classic Seldom Scene. Next year promises a full CD from them, and I can't wait.

3. Offa Rex, The Queen of Hearts: Although you'll hear strains of Pentangle, Steeleye Span, and Fairport Convention here, with their debut album, Offa Rex has created a sound that's lush, textured, entirely unique, and instantly identifiable as their own.

A collaboration between American indie faves, The Decemberists, and English folk singer, Olivia Chaney, Rex shines brightest when classically-trained Chaney handles the vocals. Decemberists frontman, Colin Meloy, lacks the diction and drive to pull this singing style off, but makes up the lack with crunchy guitar work that sometimes verges into early Black Sabbath territory. Bonus: A cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" that restores the song to its folk roots.

2. Brian Owens, Soul of Cash: With this CD, soul crooner, Brian Owens, gives the music of Johnny Cash a stoned soul makeover, and gives us the album the world has been waiting for since 1962, when Ray Charles released Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music.

The songs are entirely familiar, yet completely reconstructed. There's not a predictable moment on the record, so it's impossible to choose highlights. The closing track, initially disappointing because it's not a Cash tune, serves as Owens' raison d'être for anyone who, in these polarized times, wonders why he bothered.

1. Judy Dyble and Andy Lewis, Summer Dancing: It's been said that crisis reveals character, and any casual observer of current events has seen character revealed in surprising ways since Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

What I didn't expect was the way character was revealed in ... home design.

Ikea teamed with Hay Designs for rooms that looked like kindergarten classrooms doing double duty as funeral homes. Liberty of London's noisy-scary florals with their goth backgrounds and muddy, clashing colors brought Maurice Sendak kicking and screaming into the Donald Trump era.

There were black houses, and black rooms -- the kind of places that might have inspired this record of sun-dappled nightmares.

Art is the first world's great escape, but Dyble and Lewis won't stand for it. They insist that adult problems be faced in an adult way, which usually means they're never quite solved.

Yet, in Dyble and Lewis's psychedelic world, as in the real one, dew still sparkles on the grass. The sun still shines. We still get our silly moments after nights without sleep, and those casually-vicious betrayals that add up. All aspiring adults must face the fact that it's never either/or, but both/and -- both climate change and Summer Dancing.

30-Day Music Challenge: Day 29

29. A song that you remember from your childhood.

My poor dad! He had a voice like Jimmy Martin's. He wanted to be Eddy Arnold.

To this day, I prefer Jimmy Martin, but there's something magical about this song, which my dad had the good sense to never attempt.

When I was in high school, we went on a church retreat of sorts to Squaw Valley. While we were there, we saw Eddy Arnold at Harrah's in Lake Tahoe (We were clearly not Baptists), with some neighbors who had moved to Sparks, Nevada years before. Naturally, Arnold sang this song. It was as evocative as I remembered.

This is Eddy Arnold with "Cattle Call".

30-Day Music Challenge: Day 1

1. A song you like with a color in the title.

How did she do it? How did she dare?

I mean, sure, this record sounds raw, vulnerable, and true, and everybody uses those words to describe art.

It's another thing altogether to do them -- to live them -- in public. This is what blue, in its alternate meaning sounds like, feels like, hurts like.

It takes guts.

There are those who would shun these expressions from a loved one in an effort to be reasonable. Avoid such people. It should hurt when your partner has to leave.

This is Emmylou Harris, complete with cracks and pops, singing "Blue Kentucky Girl".

The Bitter End

Ever hear or read a story that you knew would end badly from the first line, yet you were unable to turn away until you had absorbed every last, brutal word of it?

Alan Paton’s book, Too Late the Phalarope, was like that for me, as is this song by Porter Wagoner.

Wagoner might as well be reading the phone book, albeit with the tiniest tremor in his voice, and that’s a masterful choice on his part. This is the sort of song you want to under-sing, so the story can tell itself.

Here’s Porter Wagoner with “The Cold, Hard Facts Of LIfe”.

As Classic As Country Gets

When the story behind the original version of a country song is sadder than the song itself … but that’s another story.

I love that this album exists, and this is one of the best cuts from it. Just listen to Dolly Parton pouring out her heartache on the bridge (In simplest terms, that’d be the part in the middle of the song)! Her performance on this one is especially moving.

Country don’t git more classic than this. For Music Mix Monday, this is Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette with “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know”.

Bobbie Gentry: The Heart Of A Real Writer

It's Bobbie Gentry's birthday today. I know you expect the one song, and that's coming; but I think birthdays present a particular opportunity to look more closely at a person's unsung and undervalued accomplishments. That's where I want to start.

Reba McEntire had a huge hit with a lesser-known Bobbie Gentry composition, and a lot of people used that occasion to revive some ugly Southern stereotypes. It seems that survival sex is only a tragedy if sex workers don't belong to a subset of people that most white, middle-class folks despise. It seems that a Southern writer's work is only valuable if she uses it to repudiate her raising by heaping scorn on poor, southern whites.

Bobbie Gentry refused to respond to the dog whistle of the white middle class. Here's what she had to say about the song that would become a hit for Reba McEntire:

"Fancy" is my strongest statement for women's lib, if you really listen to it. I agree wholeheartedly with that movement and all the serious issues that they stand for—equality, equal pay, day care centers, and abortion rights.

Viewed through the lens of Gentry's comments, her performance of  "Fancy" on The Johnny Cash Show seems uncomfortably-daring. She's asking us to look -- really look -- at what this girl had to go through, and how much it cost her to be this person without once dropping the mask:

Bobbie Gentry is still around, but she's since retired. How big a loss is that? Read what she said about her lone American hit, and weep:

"Those questions [of why Billie Joe committed suicide, and what he and the girl threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge] are of secondary importance in my mind. The story of Billie Joe has two more interesting underlying themes. First, the illustration of a group of people's [indifferent] reactions to the life and death of Billie Joe, and its subsequent effect on their lives, is made. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother is shown, when both women experience a common loss (first, Billie Joe and, later, Papa), and yet Mama and the girl are unable to recognize their mutual loss or share their grief."

That, folks, is how deeply a real writer thinks. It's a crying shame she's not writing new songs to comment on today's times. That's our loss, and it's a big one.

Bobbie Gentry's songwriting career was mowed down by the American hit machine. She left us this, the record of a woman who was not only a real writer, but a real performer, too.

This is Bobbie Gentry with "Ode To Billie Joe".

What Good Singers Can Do

How can such a simple song tug so on your heartstrings?

Say all you want about how the melody is constructed -- and that does have something to do with it. If it weren't for good singers, this song might not be good at all. Mary Travers (Peter, Paul and Mary) sings with John Denver on the original recording, but Mama Cass is just as good, in her way, here.

This is "Leavin' On A Jet Plane".

Prince, Fanboy Extraordinaire

I had read that Prince was a huge Joni Mitchell fan. In interviews, he mentioned Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, an entire album that sounds like its title; his favorite local record store reported that Mitchell's Hejira was among the last records he purchased, in support of Record Store Day.

So, it was no surprise to hear that he had covered Mitchell; the surprise came when my heart gave a horrible thump at those first unmoored chords, fluttering like birds until they landed on the tonic. What was this?

The arrangement settles in to old-school R and B, with some tantalizing hints of classic country, while Prince's vocal continues the high flying with a stunning falsetto. You've never heard Joni Mitchell like this.

Attitude problems notwithstanding, this is the most brilliant and innovative Joni Mitchell cover I've ever heard. Here's Prince with "A Case Of You".

Senator Robert Byrd's "Mountain Fiddler" Remastered

Robert Byrd was a self-taught fiddler who learned traditional fiddle tunes while growing up in the hill country of West Virginia. Eventually, he became the U.S. Senate Majority Leader, and the longest-serving member of the Senate, but he never gave up playing the fiddle.

In 1977, Sen. Byrd recorded this album in his office, backed by members of The Country Gentlemen -- Doyle Lawson on guitar, James Bailey on banjo, and Spider Gilliam on bass.

The result was an album filled to the brim with true, traditional mountain music -- joyful, authentic, and totally raw. Some of the tracks are introduced by Sen. Byrd's anecdotes recounting the first time he heard these age-old tunes, the musicians he learned them from, and the places and occasions where they were played. It's fascinating stuff from a born raconteur.

The band jelled seamlessly, and it shows, especially on the instrumentals, "Forked Deer" and "Red Bird".

One of the most intriguing things about Mountain Fiddler is that Sen. Byrd provides a lead vocal on many songs that are played as instrumentals these days. "Cripple Creek", "Turkey In the Straw", "Old Joe Clark", and "Cumberland Gap" are among these.

Sen. Byrd's vocal delivery is just as raw and untutored as his fiddle playing on these songs. By contrast, he gives moving, inspired readings on story songs like "Wish I Had Stayed In the Wagon Yard", "Rye Whiskey", and the album's countrified standout, "Come Sundown She'll Be Gone".

Sen. Byrd also takes some bluegrass standards out for a spin, including "Don't Let Your Sweet Love Die", "There's More Pretty Girls Than One", "Roving Gambler", and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken".

Both old-time and bluegrass musics have largely strayed away from this sound, and lost a lot of their emotional impact in the process. Mountain Fiddler is a study in the real deal for musicians and fans of  those genres.

Truth In Advertising

When they called this CD "Mountain Soul" they weren't kidding. In a forest of slick counterfeits, this is the real deal.

Patty Loveless could carry this one all by herself, but she brought in a crew of musicians who match her note for heartbreaking note.The harmony vocals are intricate and lovely, the instrumental backing is textbook classic country. If you want to know how country should sound, this is a track you should hear, over and over again.

 "Cheap Whiskey" is one of "Mountain Soul's" strongest tracks and my favorite. Here's Patty Loveless, backed by Rebecca Lynn Howard and Jon Randall, to sing it for you.

A Great Vocal With A Questionable Arrangement

I loved this one when I was a kid. Now that I understand more deeply what these lyrics are saying, the arrangement strikes me as hugely inappropriate. The horns are too bright, too celebratory; it’s just wrong.

Glen Campbell got it right, though. This is one of the best vocals he ever did. The song is Jimmy Webb’s “Galveston”.

A powerful reminder that one of the most-recorded songs of the 1960s had deep roots in … bluegrass.

That’s the composer – the late, great John Hartford – on banjo. He’s joined by Glen Campbell and Ricky Skaggs at the Grand Ole Opry for “Gentle On My Mind”.

Stop Suburbanizing Country Music

This hit me so hard! I feel about this performance the way I felt the first time I ever heard Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs harmonize, the first time I heard The Seldom Scene do “Wait A Minute”.

People don’t do this kind of music anymore, it seems like. It’s head over heart, even in bluegrass these days.

It’s funny: People who are embarrassed by country music’s humble origins keep trying to drag it uptown, polish it up, so their faux-cosmopolitan friends will feel safe around it. I grew up on honky tonk music and “Hee Haw”, even as I was being classically trained as a musician, and I like my country music just fine like this.

Here’s the Foghorn Stringband with “You Didn’t Have To Go”.

The Spin On A George Jones Classic

My favorite George Jones song.

When they used this on the Mad Men soundtrack, I thought, “Of course they did”; it seemed the perfect expression of ad man Don Draper’s pathological self-absorption. Which is funny, because it’s about a man who was anything but self-absorbed.

This is George Jones with “Cup of Loneliness”.