A Neophyte's Guide to Country Sounds - Getting Older, Sorting It All Out: My Old Man’s Music Part II

Some memories you never shake. Some are simply burnt so deeply into your soul that you couldn’t rid yourself of them if you wanted to. These aren’t always full, vivid recollections, but are often merely a scent, a small noise, a fragment of conversation, or a startling déjà vu vision - little bits and pieces of your past, fragments of a life already lived, rising from the deep rivers of your sub-conscious. In these memories rests our lives. Our personal histories become relegated to a set of fleeting and circumstantial evidences that slowly dissipate and then ultimately disappear with time.

It’s a weird and unsettling thing to think about - these slivers of your own life’s history that forever haunt the distance between the present and an ever-fading past - and it’s probably nothing that belongs in a music column (I am fairly certain that more than one of you is already thinking to yourself, “Christamighty, what the hell is he talking about? I came here to read about music.”). But it is music that I am talking about; it’s just that it isn’t only music to which I refer.
You see - there is this strange point that you reach in life where you start to see yourself through time’s prism. There’s a time when age seems to just creep up on you and suddenly the people who had always played a part in the periphery of your life simply disappear…or die, and you’re left to see them in yourself. Families drift apart. Friends fade away. Loves collapse. And while you may always think you’re quite the forward-looking fellow, fragments of your past will suddenly come rushing back - calling upon you to face up to the past that inevitably made you who you are.

This by no means suggests that life is a long slow turn toward permanent melancholy. These things - memories, ruminations, reminiscences, and nostalgia - are, as I said, fleeting at best, and we often spend much of our youth running from them without ever knowing it, but they are distinct and vivid pieces of the puzzle. And they are completely and entirely you.

So the older you get the more you find yourself seeking out some sort of meaning to it all. The older you get the more you try like hell to figure it all out. The older you get the more you want to figure it all out. And the older you get the more you find yourself wondering exactly whom these people and things that mean so much to you in your life were/are: your parents, your grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, music, books, art, films, foods, places, events, traditions - the whole ball of wax.

Death does weird things to people. It gives hope and presents despair; fuels guilt and drains pride; it stalks and frightens; it seems distant but always looming. Somehow, when you hit a spot in life when as much humanity has flooded in to fill in the past as still stands in front of you as the future, we wind up trying to figure out how we got to where we are and how, if at all, we’ll find a way to leave something behind that will forever mark how just far we got. It doesn’t happen all by itself, and that probably scares me (and likely some of you) more than death itself. All of this - for what?

To be honest with you, none of this shit ever really mattered to me and probably doesn’t mean as much to me as it sounds now, what with all of this dime store philosophizing and all. But because I am now faced with the grim prospect of knowing the inevitable and certain demise of my own father, I have found myself often staring into mirrors, looking for something of him that may or may not be there in me.

But these kinds of pseudo-psychological self assessments don’t mean jack shit to you folks, and I do apologize for the lengthy groundwork above - but give a fella a break will ya? It ain’t easy heading toward forty and feeling a damn fool for trying to figure out the parts of who I am that might matter and don’t have a goddamn thing to do with this music thing. It truly is something I’d rather not think about…but I have no choice.

Enough already - however, about the only thing I have no doubt whatsoever about is that my life’s obsession with music was in no small part passed on from my old man and his own passion for sound. And during my recent in-depth forays into country music’s finer sounds I’ve come to realize that the older I get the more my old man’s music matters to me.

So yeah, I done went and got maudlin on ya’ll. I’ve gone soft. So what? You say I’m tugging at heartstrings - you’re right. So what? I stand accused. However you want to say it I’ll accept it and admit yeah, I’m lame. But I don’t give a damn. My old man (dad, pops, father, whatever you wanna call him) is sick with at least two types of cancer and it flat out fucking sucks. But, that said, it’s also high time that I admit to myself that in no small way it was him - my dad - who turned me on to music.

My pops always had records around the house - lots of them. The titles were a mish mash of popular jazz, oddball novelties (The Harmonicats!), hit and miss soundtracks, themed Time/Life series collections (The Music of the Television Era!), and a wide array of Mexican-type music. None of the music made much sense as a collection, but there were hundreds of old vinyl LP’s laying around all of the time. My old man would often head to the library and check out all of the records he could (I believe the limit was five at the time) and record them on to cassette. He’d get into these swings where he’d obsess over certain odd sorts of music for months at a time. I remember Saturday mornings with German Waltzes and Marches playing loudly.

There were Sundays with piano jazz (and only piano jazz).

There was a period when, with my dad in what must have been his early-to-mid fifties, he went through a sort of musical mid-life crisis and had to get his hands on nearly every Linda Rondstadt record ever recorded. It was always something.

But the one constant through it all, the one sound that my old man always came back to when his wanderlust began fading, the only sound that I’d ever known to make my pops sing out loud was Country music. Now my father was never much of a populist, in fact, I’d always said he’d have made a perfect punk, so his country music wasn’t always the mainstream of country music. He liked what he liked and everything else just didn’t exist. “Now that’s not bad,” he’d say, “but it sure isn’t country, whatever it is.” He didn’t care much for Johnny Cash or George Jones, but he he’d defend Freddy Fender to the end. He definitely loved the lady singers (Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn were infallible) but he preferred Kitty Wells to Patsy Cline. When he listened to the men it was often the Californians he’d loved. Buck Owens was played loud and often and Merle Haggard was a hero. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were just hippies to dad, but as Waylon himself once sang, Bob Wills was still the king. There was no rhyme, reason, or agenda to my dad’s tastes - he just knew what he liked and was able to quickly dispense with that which he didn’t. And that was okay by me. I just relished hearing my dad’s weird, eclectic selection of hillbilly music (That is what dad called it - still does in fact. I have never heard him say the word “country”, he always calls it “hillbilly”). I mean, a guy named Narvel Felts? Geez - this music of my old man’s was a ticket to another world.

In time I grew into my teens and away from my parents eccentricities, as we all tend to do, and I went about discovering my “own” music. Sometimes I wish it hadn’t worked that way because now I realize just how much good music I left behind when I shunned those weird, wondrous sounds for the oddities of my own era. Spilled milk they say; I’d agree I suppose.

About, oh, ten years ago or so I started to miss the simplicity of the music I’d used to hear in my fathers car but I sure wasn’t ready to concede to his tastes. I had had enough of the beautiful harshness of American Indie Rock and the so-called “alt.country” movement was flaring up so I jumped onboard for a bit. It seemed like a viable compromise between actually giving in to my old man and still making my own way. But it wasn’t long before the alternative country sounds had me thumbing through my fathers old records every time I went home; then leaving with a Porter Wagoner/Dolly Parton record, or a “Best of” Kitty Wells. I’d go home and listen to these old sounds (although much of what were my old favorites from way back when were a part of my dad’s now difficult-to-listen-to 8-track tape collection) and be amazed by how much I truly enjoyed them. But, being the hardheaded son of my dad that I am I stuck mainly to the Uncle Tupelo’s of the burgeoning new country rock set. That old stuff was my father’s music. This new country - so steeped in rockroll - would be mine.

But a funny thing happened ten years into my own country music rebellion - I finally figured out that most of my father’s music, or the music of his era, was, in truth, vastly superior to mine.

Same Train, a Different Time, Merle Haggard’s moving (although slightly flawed by his between song narrations) tribute to the brilliance of Jimmie Rodgers, was the turning point. Wow, what an amazing set of tunes! The first time I heard those songs - and my Lord they sounded utterly brilliant in every way - I knew I had been missing out on way too much great music for far, far too long. ‘Revelation’ is a word that exists solely for a moment like that. I played that goddamn record to death.

But what next? Where to go from there? It was a good question - and a difficult one. My sojourns into the realms of jazz merely a year before had taught me that, like all forms of music/art, each form of music has its in’s and it has its out’s. There is an awful lot of very good stuff out there, but which was the truly great stuff? And, for a well-schooled rockroll goon, where do you turn to find the stuff your rockroll sensibilities can relate to?

Well, I have searched long and hard brothers and sisters. I have looked high and I have looked low. I have consulted resource after resource. I have spent time, and I have spent money. I have found misses a-many, but I have found hits like nuggets of gold. I have worked hard for me, and now I am sharing my work with you.

Yessiree my friends, I am here to set you off on an adventure that I hope can be as rewarding as mine has been. I have distilled my tedious research, although it is FAR from complete, into a simple list of places for an old rockroll snob to start, and the things that one would likely want to hear. A guide, if you will, for the lost or uninitiated, into a world of country twang that is safe for your softened rockroll ears. This is certainly no definitive list of country’s best offerings (others have already nailed that one down, particularly John Morthland with his 1984 effort The Best of Country Music - as perfect and readable a guide to music as you will ever get your hands on, regardless of genre) it is merely a slate of suggestions from a fellow country music rank amateur who has found some immense pleasures in the music listed herein. My only restrictions were to avoid the obviousness of box sets and to try, wherever possible, to dodge greatest hits type packages (although this was an immensely difficult rule to stick to with country music having always been a singles medium), and to stick to pre-alt.country artists, which I have made sure to have done. Thus I offer to you this: A Neophytes Guide to Country Sounds: or, how to remain rock and roll while wearing your boots and a big old Stetson hat (no easy feat I’ll tell ya!)

The Records:

Jerry Lee Lewis - Killer Country: The father, son, and holy grail of rockroll chaos was, yes, as good as they got when it came to tear-jerkin twang. This collection of the best of his many (and I do mean MANY) country sides is utterly astounding. He never wrote a damned one of hem, but as a stylist the Killer was all thrill and no fill…he lines’em up (starting with the eternal “Another Place, Another Time”) and knocks’em down, one after another, after another. Astonishing really.

Elvis Presley - Elvis Country: First the Killer, now the King, two names forever intertwined in rockroll’s seedy history. Both were Southern souls who never did quite shake the country bumpkin outta their hearts, one (Jerry Lee) turned it into a greater success than his rockroll ever was and the other (Elvis) made the most illuminating and heartfelt record of his long illustrious career. The records subtitle, “I’m 10,000 years old”, spoke volumes of the future that Presley seemed to know lay in wait for him.

Buck Owens - Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat: Buck Owens brilliantly pop country songwriting and Don Rich, Don Rich, Don Rich! What more could you need? This is a beyond brilliant collection of Owens’ stellar early 1960’s sides - flawless.

Dwight Yoakam - Just Lookin’ for a Hit: a 1989 collection of sides from the best honky-tonker this side of 1985 (I know, that ain’t saying a whole lot). Oh, and there’s guitarist/producer Pete Anderson (he’s worked with the Meat Puppets for chrissakes!) and his steely perfection on the six strings. Yoakam only wrote five of these, but they’re good ones - and the rest are covers that prove the guy has impeccable taste when it comes to tunes.

Johnny Paycheck - The Real Mr. Heartache: The Little Darlin’ Years: Or, the REAL George Jones and how a bigger Nashville name stole a fella’s voice. Paycheck may have ultimately become a cartoon, but when he wasn’t, he wasn’t big time. This is proof that Paycheck’s 70’s success and legacy was a fool’s vision of a man who damn near took honky-tonk into its modern era. He’d have been an amazing rockroller had he turned that way back then.

Willie Nelson - Phases and Stages, Red Headed Stranger, Stardust: These three records, in effect, made Willie Nelson who he is today. His was a pen made for broken hearts and losers and a voice made for hippy rockroll that didn’t quite exist at the time - so he invented it all himself. “Walkin’”, from 1974’s Phases and Stages, might just be his or any of country/rockroll’s finest forgotten moment.

Hank Williams Jr. & Friends: The record where country-rock, for better or worse, was truly invented. A rough and tumble collection that stumbles through the three covered tunes but soars when working over Hank Jr.’s poignant introspections. It was here with Hank Jr. that country stopped sneering at rockroll’s smokey, dope-addled image and ‘fessed up to its own sordid darkness.

Gram Parsons - GP/Grievous Angel: Nobody, and I do mean NO-body, wanted to be a country music icon more than Gram Parsons. He never did get what he wanted. Instead he became a mystical and cosmic hippy country rock memory. But my God, nobody else ever sang with such painful and frightening prescience about the path his life was taking. Weird…but beautiful.

Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson: The first city-type hippy to turn country music into an urban cowboy’s pipe dream. He started off telling everyone to “blame it on the Stones”, then went on to write some of the most memorable trans-genre tunes of the era (“Me and Bobby McGee”? Come on now! Hell, after hearing Jerry Lee take to it on the aforementioned Killer Country you’ll know all you need to know about Kristofferson’s writing talents).

Keith Whitley - I Wonder Do You Think of Me, Sad Songs and Waltzes: One, I Wonder Do You Think of Me, features the most ethereal vocal performances I have ever witnessed in both the ballads and the uptempo numbers - he was just that good. The other - Sad Songs and Waltzes - is one of the finest tributes to country tradition ever recorded. And while Whitley may have drank himself to death, you have to wonder - after hearing these two records - if it wasn’t the simple and absolute power of his enormous vocal gift that scared him into the bottle. Mesmerizing. Sad.

Johnny Cash - Waters From the Wells of Home: Pulling out some of his own old songs and choice covers - all about family, devotion, and longing, and then inviting the likes of Glen Campbell, Hank Jr., Waylon Jennings, The Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, daughter Roseanne, and Paul McCartney to help them flourish made for the finest post-Cash Cash record ever. While Rick Rubin may have made the man in black hip again, this record from 1988 showed the depth and breadth of his musical genius.

Waylon Jennings - Dreaming my Dreams: Buddy Holly’s bass player did all right for himself, didn’t he now? Waylon recorded an awful lot of music but never before and never after Dreaming my Dreams did he reveal so much of himself through his music. An astonishingly honest work that stands up beside any of the greatest country records.

Lyle Lovett - Pontiac: The most country of Lovett’s varied offerings, also the most concise, the most intelligent, and he very best - which says an awful lot considering his consistency. Funny, erudite, and a perfect amalgam of the past and present of country noises.

Merle Haggard - The Lonesome Fugitive: The Merle Haggard Anthology (1963-1977): I generally tried to stay away from the obviousness of a “box set” type collection - but this one is essential. If you ever wondered where old timey country met modern electric music..if you ever were curious about vagabond outlaw music…if you ever wanted to hear where rockroll dripped like a leaky faucet from the wells of country music’s best sounds - well, here it all is. At time silly, at times brilliant, Haggard has done everything anyone wlse has ever tried with the form.

Rodney Crowell - Diamonds and Dirt: One of the original 80’s artists to not even try to pretend that rock and roll didn’t play a major part in his past. Crowell not only took the Brit-pop of the Beatles and the Stones to heart, he had also obviously listened to the Kinks, the Who, and all of the Stiff Records stuff that poured out of the late 70’s. Somehow he took it all and turned it into country pop. It sounds familiar now, but at the time it was pure revelation.

Steve Earle - Guitar Town: Although I fell he’s only gotten better and better, this is the place it all starts (and for better or worse, where alt country got rollin’). This is where Earle first took all the dirty fingernails glory of Bruce Springsteen and tossed a little twang into it - and it came out more perfectly than I am sure even he imagined.

Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Almost Blue: For all of those who’d always written this one off I challenge you to go back now…and listen to what you missed the first time around. From the blue tint anguish shot that graces the cover to the dead perfect Attractions support right on through to Costello’s “I absolutely believe in this music” vocal enthusiasm, you’ll hear the sort of impassioned imperfect perfection that country was originally supposed to be.

Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline: Yes, it’s an obvious choice (but the superior one to the Byrds Sweetheart of the Rodeo), but there’s nothing quite so obvious about Dylan doing “Girl from the North Country” with the audibly excited Johnny Cash. Only about 27 minutes long, with nearly a third of that coming across in three brilliant songs - “Girl from the North Country”, “I Threw it all Away”, and “Lay Lady Lay” - those 27 minutes did more for country music to rockroll crossover than any other record in history.

Joe Ely - Honkytonk Masquerade: Now this is Texas! With Honkytonk Masquerade Joe Ely defined new Texas country - perhaps forevermore - with his wit, reverence, and intelligence. Revving up tempos, guitars, percussion, and the dusty winds of his homelands, Ely conjured up a sense of place through his music that is damn near still unmatched today.

___________________________________________________

To reach any other page contained in this month's update on Fufkin.com, read the home page for the appropriate link and click on it. You can also search the site from any page using the search box located at the top of each page. Merely type in the word, phrase, name of the band, recording, name of the Fufkin writer that you are looking for or Whatever in the search box, and then click on "Search". If you would like to e-mail us, go to the About Us page for a list of e-mail addresses.

Go back to the home page by clicking here

____________________________________________________