On Music
COOK, BRUCE
On Music NASHVILLE SOUNDS by bruce cook J^ndifferent to what is happening elsewhere??though far from ignorant of it??the Nashville music folks just go their own way. And more and more, their path...
...That was enough to convince ABC that John Conlee deserved an album...
...About half the cuts??notably "Backside of Thirty," "Lady Lay Down," and "Some Old California Memory" (not all of them his)??have "crossover potential...
...Finally he gathered up his songs and his guitar and set out in search of fame and fortune in the capital of country music...
...He is the person responsible for "It's Me Again, Margaret," a little story-song about an obscene phone-caller who, when arrested, uses his alloted single phone call on the girl of his dirty dreams...
...He maintains that any of those numbers, while they might be thought of as folk-rock, would sound country if they were backed by a steel guitar and a Nashville rhythm section...
...They will always remember a Don Gibson, a Kitty Wells, a Jeanne Pruett, and they will keep attending the concerts and buying the records of their favorites...
...You can be sure that ABC is aware of his possibilities...
...He is at his best here on "Baby's Not Home," the old standby "I Love You Because," and the title track...
...Many other Nashville performers have inspired the same question...
...He was born in Tennessee, split his growing-up between Memphis and Richmond, Virginia, and went to the University of Virginia...
...He came out of North Carolina by way of Knoxville, Tennessee, and began turning out hit after hit...
...Craft's creations are themselves, by the way, far from what one would call traditional country...
...It took Willie Nelson a decade and a half as a writer before he made it as a singer...
...and by Janis Joplin, when she was the reigning queen of rock...
...it bubbles, boils and spills over in the most unexpected ways...
...by Gordon Lightfoot, who is considered a folk singer...
...They offer the kind of personal, deeply expressive lyrics that careful listeners will always respond to...
...Or that his best effort, "Middle-Aged Crazy," has what might be termed a certain universality...
...T JL...
...There is in that cut and in "Georgia on My Mind," "Blue Skies" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," as well as in the rest, a romanticism that is as much a part of the time that produced them as it is the personal style of this performer...
...After all, country is as much a "sound," a matter of treatment, as it is a style of song-writing...
...That first trial session at ABC Records produced "Rose Colored Glasses," a single that sold a solid quarter-million copies, placed on pop's Top 40 and went to number five on the country charts...
...For if the success of Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson means anything at all, then it will not be long before country music's tuneful melodies and strong lyrics start dominating the so-called mainstream of popular music...
...His argument is a solid one...
...Well, the guy who wrote "I Can't Stop Loving You" has only been writing and singing in Nashville for over 20 years...
...It matters little that his songs appear on the R&B and pop charts nearly as often as on the country...
...Like all other art forms, pop music has its own life...
...Gibson shows that in his heart and in his approach to the music he is as young as any of them...
...At the same time, a recent visit to Nashville revealed that even as the nation prepares to sway to the skating whine of a steel guitar, fundamental changes are taking place??to the point where it is becoming difficult to say what is and what is not country...
...His voice is also right for crossover: just country enough to sound regional and just city enough not to sound corny...
...To say he is "wildly talented," as I have, is to indulge in the kind of phrase-making??enthusiastic and vague??that Rolling Stone is notable for...
...Maybe he's right...
...Once in demand, however, he began years of grueling 300-days-on-the-road touring that simply proved too much for him...
...He spent considerable time back home in Kentucky, writing songs and trying to muster the nerve to bring them to Nashville...
...physically and emotionally...
...These days everyone is playing for national stakes down there...
...But throughout the entire album he is in total control...
...And those good ole boys seem to be holding all the best cards...
...Is Willie Nelson country...
...That means they have a chance of appealing to both the mainstream pop audience and the country...
...Craft followed this with "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life," the song that set America on its ear some months back by roundly satirizing everything Nashville audiences hold sacred...
...It was recorded by its author, by Charlie Pride, by Waylon Jennings, among other country stars...
...He is writing as impressively as he ever did and performing better than ever...
...Roy Acuff, that grand old man of the Grand Ole Opry, alone seems to be able to tell the difference nowadays??and according to him, the floodgates to rock were opened the moment the first set of drums was allowed onto the stage of the Ryman Auditorium...
...Paul Craft, one of the most wildly talented writers in the business, thinks they are...
...But you cannot help asking yourself as you listen to them: Are they really country...
...Of course...
...His Stardust album (Columbia 35305) is an acknowledgment of his debt to the mainstream of American popular music...
...For instance, if you go to the Exit/In on Writer's Night (Tuesday)??when the undiscovered and the discovered come to exhibit their latest wares??you hear a great many fine songs that recall the best of the late '60s and early '70s...
...Consider Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby Magee...
...But there was another factor: Some of the "in" crowd at the Opry thought Gibson was getting too innovative, too close to rock...
...Sure...
...To hear Nelson sing the title track in that sweet, reedy voice of his is to listen to the homage paid by a mature artist to a whole era, a one-man American Graffiti...
...In the light of the alternatives currently on the scene??punk rock, disco??that is something to be thankful for...
...It has now been issued under the title (what else...
...And more and more, their path appears to be the one the rest of America is following...
...It is a tribute by a great writer of country songs to some great writers named Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin and Duke Ellington...
...It took Ronnie Milsap 10 years of rock and Rhythm and Blues to break into country??what he was aiming at from the outset...
...Is Paul Craft country...
...That's country territory...
...Now Gibson is in the midst of a comeback...
...His involvement with drugs played a large part in his disappearance from the music scene...
...Conlee was forced to put in another three years of writing, knocking on the doors of the powerful, dropping off demo tapes, and jockeying discs at local Nashville stations to keep body and soul tosether before he ever got a break...
...By the time he did, he was well prepared to take advantage of it...
...The record has generous samplings of the work of young Nashville writers, including Eddy Raven and Mickey Newbury...
...Rose Colored Glasses (ABC AY-1105), and the disc could extend his reputation well beyond the country field...
...urn-arounds and comebacks like Gibson's occur fairly often in Nashville because there is no audience more loyal than hard country fans...
...besides he's from Texas...
...It is a portrait of a man in the sort of mid-life crisis instantly recognizable to readers of Gail Sheehy's best seller about growing up and growing old, Passages: Heain't wearing his usual gray business suit He's got jeans and high boots with an embroidery star And the young thing beside him, she understands He's middle-aged crazy trying to prove he still can...
...No brass bands were waiting...
...If you grant Throckmorton the "ain't" and the "high boots," there is nothing left here that would identify this as a country song: It could well pass for candid-camera poetry on any street corner south of New York's Union Square...
...Yet the bizarre developments of the last 25 years should have taught us the futility of compartmentalization...
...But listen to what the bearded boss of Austin's "outlaw" contingent has been up to lately...
...Is Don Gibson country...
...The song, in short, was country to those who performed country, a folk song to the folkies and rock to the rockers...
...The result??played on a wide variety of Nashville stations, from country to easy listening??is beautiful, rich with the gold of pop standards from the '30s and '40s...
...Nevertheless, in his case the description is apt, since Craft is certainly immensely talented, and since his talent is of the unruly, chance taking variety...
...He has also penned "Linda Lovelace, Sit on My Face," but no one has yet come forward to record that one...
...More important, as he demonstrates on his latest album, Look Who's Blue(ABC Hickory HB44014), he has lost none of his eclectic, experimental spirit...
...Without doubt...
...The only problem with all this loyalty and love directed at established performers is that it is difficult for newcomers to break into the field...
...Is Sonny Throckmorton country...
...It has taken John Conlee a while, too...
...In the meantime, he worked as a licensed embalmer, and later in local radio stations around his hometown...
Vol. 62 • January 1979 • No. 2
