Classic Rewind: Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton – ‘Just Someone I Used To Know’

Single Review: Darryl Worley – ‘Sounds Like Life To Me’

There are those songs that just stick with you and gnaw at you sometimes. This is one of those songs for me. To be honest, I didn’t like it very much in the beginning, not so much because of the music or Worley’s interpretation, but because it just seemed so insensitive.

You probably know the story by now since the song recently entered the top 20 . A guy’s friend’s wife calls him up to tell him that his friend has fallen off the wagon and she doesn’t know what to do. The singer heads down to the local bar where, sure enough, there sits his friend drowning his sorrows. And he’s got a long list of sorrows – some of which are pretty serious.

From bills to pay, three kids and a wife, and a baby on the way to putting Mama in the nursing home, this friend has a lot on his plate. Instead of just nodding with understanding, though, and allowing him to vent, Worley’s character responds

Sounds like life to me, plain old destiny
Yeah, the only thing for certain is uncertainty
You gotta hold on tight, just enjoy the ride
Get used to all this unpredictability
Sounds like life

Man, I know it’s tough but you’ve gotta suck it up
To hear you talk, you’re caught up in some tragedy
Sounds like life to me

My initial reaction to the song mirrored that of the reaction of the friend. His face gets red and he disagrees and says, “You don’t understand.” Many of the reviews I’ve read on the song seem to side with the friend and think the song isn’t worth listening to because it’s insensitive.

Super Summer Giveaway

The dog days of Summer are here.  The mercury is shooting up and the only place to be is ‘on a creek bank layin’ in the shade’.

In hopes of making the sticky Summer a little more pleasant for you, My Kind of Country is announcing our Super Summer Giveaway.  We’ve put together a prize package of seven great country CDs to give away to seven lucky winners.  Thanks to various means, we have hits packages from George Jones and our spotlight artist John Anderson as well as the latest albums from Charlie Robison and Adam Hood.

Classic Rewind: Vince Gill & Patty Loveless – ‘My Kind Of Woman, My Kind Of Man’

The bottle that pours the wine: Songs about songwriting

It’s always about the song in country music. Whether the writer sings the song or not, a topic Razor X raised last week, the song itself is what everything else ultimately depends on. One of the things I love about country music is the range of subjects it tackles, but the thing most songwriters know the most about is, of course, writing songs.  So it should come as no surprise that some writers have chosen to reflect on that process within their work: the nature of inspiration; the way lives and pain are transmuted into art; and complaining about or celebrating the state of the music industry. Self-referential, perhaps – but also a fascinating insight into songwriters’ thoughts about the songs they write. So here are some of my favorite songs on the theme.

‘Sixteenth Avenue’, the ultimate tribute to the professional songwriters of Music Row, written by one of their own, Thom Schuyler, and made famous by Lacy J Dalton, speaks briefly of the magical moment of inspiration when some struggling writer finds the perfect words:
“One night in some empty room where no curtains ever hung
Like a miracle some golden words rolled off someone’s tongue“

Another nod to the idea that the music comes from some place beyond is expressed in David Ball’s lovely ‘The Bottle That Pours The Wine’, which he wrote with Allen Shamblin for his 1996 album Starlite Lounge, as he answers a young fan asking where the songs come from:
“I’m just a bottle that pours the wine
A fragile vessel for melody and rhyme“

Classic Rewind: Clint Black & Martina McBride – ‘Still Holding On’

When two stars collide

Country music has a long history of two separate artists coming together to record a single or album together.  We’ve also seen our fair share of duos who sing and perform exclusively together.  In the 1970s it seemed like all the rage for two of country’s biggest stars to join forces.  The decade saw the birth of partnerships between Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, and perhaps most famously, the musical marriage between George Jones and Tammy Wynette.  But the trend didn’t end there and county stars have continued to sing together over the years.

A young Dolly Parton was offered a spot on Porter Wagoner’s syndicated television show in 1967.  This was Dolly’s first big break since she would be exposed to a national audience every week.  The two recorded some great songs during Dolly’s seven-year stint on the show.  One of my favorites has always been ‘Please Don’t Stop Loving Me’.

Even though Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn were both huge stars in their own right, the two paired up to release a string of hugely successful duets.  Their first single together, the Grammy-winning ‘After The Fire Is Gone’, shot to #1 and they subsequently released over a dozen albums together and won at least as many awards.  Here’s the duo in their prime.

The year 1971 also saw the debut of George Jones and Tammy Wynnete as a duo. Even though they were married in 1969, their first single release came two years later, when Jones’ Musicor contracted expired and the pair were finally on the same label. Theirs would be one of country music’s fabled and most-talked about love stories of all time. Together, they recorded some of the finest country music ever and the effects of their marriage was still evident over the rest of Jones’ recording career.  Ironically, their greatest commerical successes came after their divorce.  Listen to ‘Golden Ring’ or the telling ‘Two Story House’.

Classic Rewind: Dolly Parton – ‘Coat of Many Colors’

Album Review – John Anderson – ‘Wild And Blue’

Wild And Blue was John Anderson’s fourth album, released in 1982, and it provided the springboard for a major change in his career.

It was produced, like I Just Came Home To Count The Memories, by John with the Canadian Frank Jones who had worked with some of the all-time greats, including, at various times, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, Ray Price and Johnny Cash. The sessions which resulted in this album were the last ever recorded at the legendary Columbia Studio B, which was demolished immediately afterwards. Most of the album was in the solidly country style John had become known for in the past few years, but there were a couple of tracks where he took a new turn.

The title track is a carefully crafted song written by John Scott Sherrill, with a clever play on words (”They could just take you up to yonder, honey, you’re already wild and blue”), pained, wailing vocal, and fiddle-heavy arrangement. The complex lyric depicts a troubled woman yearning for a man she can’t have, with the narrator asking,
“Way across town a phone rings off the wall
If you know he ain’t home why do you keep calling?”
She then seeks some kind of tawdry satisfaction with other men – and only in the last verse do we find that the narrator is this woman’s husband, when he pleads,
“It’s four in the morning and you’re all alone
With no place to go, you know you ought to come home”.
The lead-off single from the set, it was John’s first #1 hit, a major achievement but one soon to be overshadowed.

Classic Rewind: Alabama – ‘Love In the First Degree’

From 1981. here’s country supergroup Alabama performing on the Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters TV show.  Enjoy!