Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
Randy Travis was the first artist I fell in love musically, and one who saved country music in the second half of the 1980s from declining into pop-influenced irrelevance.
Randy’s new autobiography take us briskly through his childhood, blighted by a father who was an alcoholic bully, sometimes violent towards his wife and children, his youthful off-the-rails behaviour, and his joining forces with Lib Hatcher, the married mid-30s club owner who took charge of him and his career when he was barely 17. He admits he was sleeping with her when she was his court-appointed legal guardian when he was just 17 – we would certainly be calling this an abusive relationship if the genders were reversed, with no question. And that doesn’t even take into account the way Randy eventually discovered (post-divorce) just how badly she had been taking advantage of their relationship financially.
After they moved to Nashville Little Jimmy Dickens, a customer at the Nashville Palace, spotted his talent and gave him a chance to sing on the Opry. Ralph Emery was another early supporter. The young Randy, with only an eighth grade education, and not a very committed one at that, was rather naïve, signing anything Lib told him to. He comes across as very modest concerning his remarkable talent.
There is a lot of interesting detail both on Randy’s recordings and his touring. He comes across as a very nice, genuine person but not a very strong character, easily guided by his long term partner, who was in many respects the driver of his career. As we see his catapulting into stardom, it is clear that Lib Hatcher took advantage of Travis, viewing his success as her own. At times she undermined him, both controlling him by convincing everyone he had a number of allergies (he didn’t), and arguing with business contacts. On one occasion she had something close to a standup fight with George Jones’s wife Nancy, the latter coming off better. Randy wasn’t even allowed his own phone.
He did not think about breaking away until Lib’s attentions were distracted by another young man she could control, a young Irish pop singer. He found support from an old friend whose marriage was also on the rocks, and this blossomed into love. It was only after Randy filed for divorce that he began to see how much Lib had been taking advantage of his success financially. However, the divorce also led him into excessive drinking and things soon spiralled out of control, as we all remember from the lurid newspaper reports of public nudity while in a drunken fugue. Kyle Lehning and George Jones both tried to tell Randy he was drinking too much. When George Jones tells you you have a drinking problem – you really, really do.
The book is very well written, with the help of Ken Abraham. Randy is frank about his failings, accepting some responsibility for letting Lib control him, and acknowledging that he handled the new relationship with Mary a little irresponsibly at its outset. There is a bit too much medical detail following the stroke; while Randy appears to want to dispel thoughts that it was due to the drink problem, the level of detail is boring for the non-medical professional.
We end with details of Randy’s continuing recovery, and his gratitude for the support of fellow artists, with an element of redemption as he has mended some bridges burnt by Lib in earlier years. There are a couple of albums’ worth of unreleased recordings which may be released in due course, and my bet (given financial concerns set out in the book) is that this will be sooner rather than later; recent single ‘One In A Row’ is clearly one of these tracks.
This book is enlightening in many ways, and well worth reading.
Grade: A
If you are a fan of the too-often underrated Julie Roberts, you may have bene intrigued by the announcement that she had written a memoir.
The book opens with Julie at the peak of her commercial success, performing on stage while promoting her debut album, only to be struck down with what were to prove to be the first signs of multiple sclerosis. After that first chapter, we dart back in time to a dramatic midnight escape by the five year old Julie, her sisters and their mother, from Julie’s drunken, abusive father. Regrettably, the family would return, and the pattern repeated on more than one occasion. Perhaps the most poignant anecdote in the book is Julie’s recollection that her mother viewed Martina McBride’s hit single ‘Independence Day’ as aspirational.
The story then moves briskly through Julie’s childhood, a few pageant competitions and community college, before she won the Vince Gill Scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville, where she was able to hone her performing skills. After college Julie encouraged her mother to pluck up the courage to leave abusive dad and get a job and new life in Nashville. The story of her winning her record deal anonymously while working as a receptionist at Mercury Records is already well known, and gets a slightly fuller airing here.
The most interesting part of the book for me were the behind the scenes stories of Julie’s recording career, especially around making and promoting her first album. Shockingly, the label put her on so severe a diet, she was permitted only 800 calories a day, combined with intensive boot camp gym. They tried to do the same to Jamey Johnson, and you may not be surprised to learn he was less willing to cooperate than Julie, declining to participate further after a single gym visit. She talks briefly about sexual harassment in the industry, mostly on a fairly low level, but still disturbing.
After Julie’s big hit single ‘Break Down Here’ and acclaimed debut album, her star rather fizzled. She was forced against her own wishes to split with Brent Rowan, the producer of her first album in favour of someone the label thought would be more commercial. She was not happy about recording a pop cover unsuited to her own style. She spent some time in California pursuing a movie which was supposed to be inspired by her life, and starring herself, but the loss of focus on music was to prove fatal. The movie project was shelved until she was a bigger star – and she lost her record deal because they had been pinning their hopes on the movie raising her profile.
It is back to more drama with an intense account of the 2010 Cumberland River floods, when Julie lost all her material goods. At least she, her mother and sister, and their pet dogs were all rescued; she shared the rescue boat with a man who had to leave his dog behind because he was too big.
Her MS diagnosis did not help her with potential record labels, but she has worked hard at continuing her music career. She is frank about the commercial disaster which was her deal with Sun Records, arranged by a boyfriend. Intriguingly, she speaks about a new album produced recently by Shooter Jennings – hopefully this will emerge soon.
Music of the book focusses on Julie’s emotional struggle after getting MS, her gradual acceptance of it, and work as a spokesperson for others with the disease. It is also imbued with Julie’s Christian faith, and this is almost as much a religious testimonial as it is a music business memoir. The book is well written by Julie with the help of ghost writer Ken Abraham, and although quite short, is an absorbing read.
Grade: B+
Freddy Powers, country-jazz musician and songwriter, was an influential figure, not least as sidekick to Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. The book was started a few years before his death last year aged 84, with the help of his wife Catherine and professional writer Jake Brown.
It is neither biography not autobiography, coming across more as a set of clippings, or the script for a documentary’s voiceovers. Freddy himself, Catherine, and various friends and colleagues from his past (including the late Haggard), are all quoted at length talking about the man and incidents in his life, with each original interview or set of interviews chopped up and scattered through the book, interspersed with reviews of albums and concerts from the press, and the lyrics of many of Powers’ songs. I would have preferred some overarching third (or first) person narrative which would have made it feel more cohesive. (It could also have done with a sharper eye proofreading, as there are a few spelling errors throughout.) There is also a chapter comprising rare photographs, but unfortunately these do not translate well to a kindle reading. However, there are some fascinating anecdotes and the book offers some insight into Haggard at the peak of his career.
The book’s title comes from the period in the early 80s (actually covering several years, not just the 1983 of the title) when Freddy and Haggard lived on adjacent houseboats on Lake Shasta. Both separated or divorced and happy to be single again, they engaged in a hedonistic mix of drugs and sex with an everchanging group of women, while writing songs. It’s probably not the book to read if you want to believe your heroes never have feet of clay, although to be fair everyone involved seems to have had a really good time with no regrets.
This period is not the sole focus of the book, although as an incredibly creative time it does loom quite large in the story. Freddy also talks about his childhood and early career, and about his love story with his last wife Catherine (20 years his junior but very evidently the love of his life). In his last years, when the ravages of Parkinson’s disease stopped him from playing the guitar, he adopted more of a cuddly grandpa persona and served as mentor to young female artists, including Texas artist Pauline Reese and Mary Sarah.
So the content is absorbing; it’s just a shame that it was not better produced with more editorial input.
Grade: B
As the ‘last man standing’ Billboard‘s country charts have taken on an almost mythical importance, yet for most of the 1940s and 1950s, Billboard did a relatively poor job in recording the history of country singles in that their various country charts only went 10-15 places deep.
Music Vendor (later Record World) started tracking country music in 1954 and immediately started tracking 55 chart places for country records, a depth of country charts Billboard wouldn’t approach until 1964 when Billboard went to 50 places. For purposes of simplicity, I will always refer to Music Vendor/ Record World as ‘Record World‘.
Joel Whitburn’s new volume Hit Country Records 1954-1982: Music Vendor/Record World performs a valuable service in restoring to the known discography of country music a staggering 1700 songs and 200 artists that Billboard failed to chronicle.
I always thought that the Wilburn Brothers had a relatively thin representation on the Billboard charts with 31 chart entries from 1954-1972, with many songs that I knew to have been at least mid-level hits not being tracked by Billboard. Turns out that the Wilburn Brothers were the poorest served of all country artists by Billboard with a staggering 30 songs not tracked by Billboard. Other artists with huge holes in their Billboard chart discographies include Hank Snow (26 songs), Eddy Arnold (23 songs), Kitty Wells (21 songs), Hank Thompson (21 songs), Johnnie & Jack (20 songs) and Ernest Tubb, Marty Robbins, Ferlin Husky and George Jones (each with 19 songs).
Among Bluegrass artists, Flatt & Scruggs pick up an extra 15 chart entries, Mac Wiseman (13), Jimmy Martin (6), Bill Monroe (4), and the Osborne Brothers (4).
There were also apparently differences in how artists were classified. Country audiences always loved Brenda Lee, Elvis Presley, George Hamilton IV and Conway Twitty, a fact Billboard somehow failed to acknowledge. After missing “Jambalaya”, Billboard tracked “One Step At A Time”, and then missed the next eleven consecutive Brenda Lee songs including such monsters as “Dynamite”, “Sweet Nothings”, “Fool #1” and “Break It To Me Gently”.
The track record on Elvis was worse as Billboard failed to track “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Blue Suede Shoes”, along with 15 more songs.
Record World tracked six George Hamilton IV singles before Billboard got around to recognizing “Before This Day Ends” as a country single. Ditto for Conway Twitty who Billboard picked up as country with “Guess My Eyes Were Bigger Than My Heart”, after ten singles had already been tracked by Record World.
While most of the songs that Music Vendor/Record World picked up were second tier hits, there were some surprising Billboard misses uncovered such as the George Jones favorites “Tall Tall Trees”, “Eskimo Pie” and “Nothing Can Stop Me (Loving You)”. A very famous song from 1955 was Bobby Lord’s 1955 hit “Hawkeye”; Billboard missed the song entirely on any of its charts, whereas Record World had it charting for twelve weeks, reaching #16.
I mentioned that approximately 200 artists show up in this book that Billboard never tracked on its country charts. These include Carl Dobkins Jr (three songs including “My Heart Is An Open Book” which Record World has as a #2 country hit, and Billboard had reach #3 pop), Pete Drake (three instrumental singles), and Buddy Holly (four singles including “Peggy Sue” and “Maybe Baby”).
I’ve only had this fascinating book for two days and I will probably report further as time permits, but it would be remiss of me not to further examine the song that initially got me interested in charts. Yes – I do mean “Groovy Grubworm” by Harlow Wilcox and The Oakies. Cashbox had the record reach #1 on its country chart (#24 pop) for two weeks whereas Billboard had the record stall out at #42 on the country chart while reaching #30 on the pop charts. This was the biggest chart disparity ever between singles that reached #1 on either the Billboard or Cashbox country chart but not the other chart.
The record was hugely successful, selling a million copies between the US and Canadian markets (it was a top ten hit on several Canadian regional pop charts), so I was curious to see how Record World treated “Groovy Grubworm” on its country charts, recalling that Record World had the song chart higher on its pop chart (#23) than did either Cashbox or Billboard.
Drum roll please :
Record World had the song reach #3 for one week on its country chart during its thirteen week chart run.
The following review was written by MKOC reader and commenter Ken Johnson:
Buck Owens – The Biography
Author: Eileen Sisk
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
If you only know about Buck Owens via his amazing catalog of hit recordings and songs or his hayseed “Hee-Haw” persona, you truly don’t know the REAL Buck Owens. Author Eileen Sisk went behind the public facade to reveal a complicated, difficult, contradictory, vindictive, manipulative yet occasionally generous man who knew how to completely control his image long before publicists became a required member of every country performer’s staff. Singer/songwriter Gene Price perhaps summed up the Buck Owens story best when he told Sisk that she was about to “write a book about a very bad man who made very good music. “
Sisk relates how she began writing her book with Buck’s blessing after a face-to-face meeting at his Bakersfield, California headquarters in early 1997. Concerned that focusing primarily on his music would make for a boring read, Buck desired an entertaining book that would concentrate on his unpredictable and occasionally sensational personal life. True to form, three years later permission to write his story was abruptly withdrawn without warning or explanation. Rather than abandon the three years that she had already invested in the project, Sisk decided to label her work as an “unauthorized” biography. She enlisted the assistance of a former member of Buck’s “Buckaroos” band Doyle Holly who acted as her liaison to former Owens’ subordinates and encouraged them to go on the record and be forthcoming with their memories. Because Holly was quoted “everything with Buck is fifty percent bullshit and fifty percent truth” the resulting story is probably closer to reality than if Buck had fully participated and exercised complete editorial control.
Born just two months before the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression, Alvis Edgar “Buck” Owens entered the world in Sherman, Texas on August 12, 1929. The book details how despite two birth defects and serious childhood illnesses including a serious brain infection, Buck persevered. By his early teens he had become proficient on several musical instruments. Buck loved to tell about dropping out of school to help his poor struggling family and often compared his own story to the Steinbeck classic The Grapes Of Wrath. However it was the first of many fabricated tales that Buck would create throughout his career. Despite the hard times, his father was always able to find work to fully support his family. Though life may have been difficult it was far from the dire situation that many other depression-era families faced.
Young Buck found plenty of time for female companionship, an activity that would continue in excess throughout his lifetime. Contrary to what Buck wanted his fans to believe, Bonnie Owens was not his first wife. Sisk uncovered Buck’s first marriage at the age of sixteen that produced a daughter that he never knew. Buck would sire at least eight more children, both in and out of wedlock, but only publicly acknowledged three of them.
My Kind of Country 