Archive for April, 2008
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
This song by Bucky Covington has the potential to be his biggest hit to date. It has everything that mainstream country music programmers clamor to spin—an inoffensive production and an inspirational story.
“I’ll Walk” is a typical three verse song that uses the title phrase in three different ways as an attempt to jerk some tears from its listeners. As Kevin mentions in his review of Covington’s album, the three act form is similar to Kathy Mattea’s “Where’ve You Been” and Joe Nichols’ “I’ll wait For You”, among countless other country songs. While it is far more superior to “I’ll Wait For You”, it lacks the sweetness of “Where’ve You Been.” Instead, it plays like an after-school special or a Chicken Soup For the Soul story.
Call me heartless and perhaps I’m simplifying, but the story goes like this: The boyfriend and girlfriend get in a fight on prom night. She makes him stop the car so that she can walk. Although he doesn’t want her to walk, he lets her out of the car anyway. Because it’s dark outside and she’s wearing a black dress, she is hit by a car. When the boyfriend arrives at the hospital, she assures him that she will, indeed, be able to walk again. After months of physical therapy and the boyfriend standing by her side through it all, he proposes. Then we come to the wedding scene. Instead of rolling down the aisle, she tells her dad that she’ll walk.
While I realize that many people will defend this song to the bitter end and Covington’s vocal performance is strong, the production is bland and the lyrics are too predictable for me to give this song a higher grade.
Written by Lonnie Fowler & Brent Wilson
Grade: C-
Listen: I’ll Walk
Buy: I’ll Walk
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#75
Sharon and Cheryl White (The Whites)
One of the coolest success stories of the eighties. The Whites are a family bluegrass group made up of father Buck and daughters Sharon and Cheryl. Dad had been playing bluegrass in Arkansas in the sixties with his wife Pat, and his young daughters both caught the bug. Finally, they convinced him to sell their home and move to Nashville for their shot at the big time.
Back in Arkansas, they had been performing with another family as the Down Home Folks, and even had recorded some bluegrass albums. But in the early seventies, when they started making the rounds in Nashville, mom retired from the group. The act became a dad and daughter one named The Whites.
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Friday, April 18th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#76
SHeDaisy
When SHeDaisy hit the scene in 1999, they seemed like a quirky pop-country hybrid, two parts Shania Twain and one part Dixie Chicks. From the beginning, they were used for target practice by staunch traditionalists and industry cynics alike. But clever songwriting and infectious production have kept these sisters around, and their music is as interesting as it’s ever been.
SHeDaisy takes their name from a slang word in the Navajo language that means “my little sister.” Kristy, Kelsi and Kassidy Osborn hail from Utah, and started singing together as kids. For a long time, their performing name was The Osborn Sisters. They quickly made a name for themselves in their home region, and when they moved to Nashville, they signed with RCA records in 1989, while all three were still in their teens.
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Friday, April 18th, 2008
It’s a bit too quiet around here, so I’m thinking we need a discussion thread.
I’d say my iPod is about 65% country. I have more than 13,500 songs on it, though. so as you can imagine, there are a lot of non-country artists that I like. Honestly, most of my non-country stuff is old school: sixties pop and rock, Motown, Top 40 from the 80′s and 90′s. My friend Charlie (of The Widening Geier fame) has introduced me to a ton of hip-hop that I really enjoy.
But there’s only a handul of artists I’d consider my favorites that are both outside of country music and relevant recording artists today.
One of them is Green Day. I was a casual fan through the Warning album, but they really hooked me with American Idiot, where they fused so many genres together while also pulling off a coherent storyline. It’s the only concept album I’ve ever heard where I have the slightest idea what’s going on. (Sorry, Willie and Emmylou.)
Lately, I’ve really dug Pink. A friend of mine sent me a copy of her I’m Not Dead album a while back, but I never got around to listening to it until much later. It’s one of the best pop albums I’ve ever heard. I’m a big fan of “Who Knew” and “Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)” in particular. I went back and purchased her earlier albums Missundastood and Try This, and they’re both rock solid.
My favorite non-country artist by a long country mile is Madonna. Even when I was listening almost exclusively to country music in the mid-nineties, I was always paying attention to what she was doing. She gets so much more attention for her media exploits, but what I’ve always loved about the new Hall of Famer is her songwriting. It’s sharp, vulnerable and nakedly honest. She’s also the best live performer I’ve ever seen.
Plus, she’s always mixing it up. Every album sounds completely different from the last. My typical reaction to her lead-off singles goes like this. First listen: “Wow. That sounds weird.” Second: “KInda interesting, though.” Third: “Great, now it’s stuck in my head.” Fourth: “Add it to my favorites.” Her new single with Justin Timberlake, “4 Minutes” is no exception. That song’s on such a loop in my head these days that it’s practically a Shania/Mutt confection.
So, those are some of my favorite non-country artists. How about you?
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#77
Helen Cornelius
The grand tradition of the male-female duet is a long and storied one in country music history. Porter & Dolly. Johnny & June. Loretta & Conway. If you look at the list of award-winning duos during the seventies, you’ll see plenty of familiar faces. But one duo – Jim Ed Brown & Helen Cornelius – has been largely forgotten, which is a shame, since their backstory is almost as interesting as their music.
Helen Cornelius was a songwriter first. Her husband encouraged her in the craft, pushing her to keep writing and eventually moving with her and their three kids to Music City. Her talent was soon discovered, and she became a staff writer for Screen Gems in 1970. That same year, she was a winner on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour. By the time her publishing company folded, production legend Jerry Crutchfield had heard her demo tape and offered to sign her to MCA Records.
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Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#78
Goldie Hill
The feminist ideal is often described as freedom of choice. It’s interesting to think about that ideal when considering the career of Goldie Hill. In the early fifties, she became one of the few female stars of the early radio days. But she chose to walk away from her success to raise a family, leaving many wondering about the music that might have been.
Goldie was born in Texas in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. When her older brothers left the family farm to become country singers, Goldie tagged along, but it didn’t take long before little sister was outshining her elder siblings.
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#79
Margo Smith
One of the long-held beliefs in the country music industry was that a woman couldn’t be too sexual with her image. If she did, the female audience that made up the lion’s share of the format’s fans would see her as a threat, and wouldn’t buy her records. Now, Shania Twain certainly put that silly theory to bed, but Margo Smith is one singer who can claim from her own experience that there might have been some truth to that theory, at least in the late seventies and early eighties.
Margo Smith couldn’t have had a more wholesome image when she launched her career in 1975. She had spent the sixties as a kindergarten teacher, singing little songs to her young students. From childhood, she had been a yodeler, and she always worked that sound into the songs she wrote. She recorded a demo that started to circulate around Nashville in the early seventies, and when she signed with 20th Century Records, she had a top ten hit right out of the gate with “There I Said It.”
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Monday, April 14th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#80
Jessi Colter
The original female outlaw.
Jessi Colter has been immortalized as the only female on the legendary country album Wanted: The Outlaws, where she shared billing with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and hubby Waylon Jennings. But long before that – many years and a husband before that – she had established herself as a songwriting force to be reckoned with.
Jessi was raised in a musical church-going family, and she got her first big break in the music industry when she met and married rock legend Duane Eddy. She spent many years trying to get her foot in the door as a singer, recording for independent labels with little success, but she thrived as a songwriter. Artists as diverse as Don Gibson and Nancy Sinatra cut her songs, and Dottie West actually charted with one of them (“No Sign of Living.”)
However, it was her second marriage to Waylon Jennings, shortly after her divorce from Eddy, that helped her find her voice as an artist. Jennings became not only her life partner, but her singing partner as well. She scored her first hit when they collaborated on a cover of the Elvis Presley hit “Suspicious Minds.”
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Sunday, April 13th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#81
Deana Carter
An overnight sensation, more than a decade in the making. Deana Carter was born in 1966, the daughter of legendary country session guitarist Fred Carter, Jr. She developed a love for music early, and was ready for the big time long before the big time was ready for her.
She first tried to secure a record contract at the tender age of 17, but even with her dad’s connections, she found no takers. So she spent a few years developing her style, a subtle mixture of seventies light rock and acoustic country-pop. When she finally landed a record deal with Capitol Records in the early nineties, she recorded her debut album, which was bizarrely released in Europe only, and was shelved as label president Jimmy Bowen exited.
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Saturday, April 12th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#82
Marie Osmond
“I’m a little bit country…” Those words were sung by Marie Osmond when she opened her variety show with her brother, Donny & Marie, during their four-year stint on ABC from 1976-1979. At the time, she was able to hang the credibility of that line on only one hit from earlier that decade, but a surprise comeback a few years later would cement her as one of the more popular female country artists of the mid-eighties.
Marie Osmond was only three years old when she made her first television appearance, hamming it up with her big brothers on The Andy Williams Show. But when her brothers became bonafide pop sensations in the early seventies, their label saw potential in their younger sister, and signed her up, marketing her as a country act.
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