If you've been following my dilemma, you know that I was torn between an essentially historical tome and another novel.
I've decided that fiction wins. I like the notion of a third book to place alongside my other two novels, and it's frankly more interesting to write.
If I'm going to write (and you know I am), it shouldn't be drudgery. I may go back to the non-fiction idea at some point, but for now I will plug away at my novel.
It's going to be a challenge -- a complete story taking place in the span of one weekend -- but if it wasn't for the challenge, I don't know why I would do it.
So, one day, and I hope it's sooner rather than later, I'll have one more image to place on this blog -- a trifecta.
The thing about the early-to-mid-nineties in country music was that one simply couldn't go wrong. Turn on the radio and you would be smacked in the ears with one good song after another after another. Ahhh, that's when I loved music. If the music pouring from the speakers had any one common denominator, it was that it was...country! Other genres that hadn't yet taken hold didn't seep into the steel guitar twang; didn't interrupt a twin fiddles solo with a sudden record scratch. Classic rock wasn't apparently classic enough yet for country acts to begin re-recording its hits. Country music had an identity. Sure, it was always looked down upon by self-styled hipsters, but country fans were used to that and we tended to mingle with our own kind. And sure, I lived in flyover country and we were "simple folk", but even the young kids coming up begrudgingly admitted that some of that "old-time music" wasn't horrific.
I lived in a relatively small town, even though it was the capital city of my state, and there weren't many distractions. If we wanted to have a summer get-together, it was easy to reserve a shelter in one of the city parks. Teenagers hung out at the sandbar on the Missouri River; adults traipsed the mall. At home after work, we turned on CMT and watched the hot acts perform live on Ralph Emery's Nashville Now. And there was the radio -- always the radio.
The CMA nominee roster in 1995 was ripe with shining stars. It must have been hell for the members to narrow down their picks. I didn't agree with all of the choices, but ask me tomorrow and I could go another way. I loved most of the artists nominated. What do they call it -- an embarrassment of riches? It was.
The nominees and winners:
Female Vocalist of the Year
Reba McEntire
Pam Tillis
Mary Chapin Carpenter Alison Krauss
Patty Loveless
This is so hard, because I love (love!) three of the five nominees. Couldn't they have had a tie?
Here is the recording that won Alison the statuette:
Here are a couple of alternatives for your consideration:
(Apparently the closest Dwight Yoakam would get to being on the CMA stage until 2016.)
Male Vocalist of the Year
John Berry
Alan Jackson
John Michael Montgomery
George Strait Vince Gill
People with little knowledge of the past don't understand how huge Vince Gill was in the nineties. Trust me; he was huge. Who on this list has stood the test of time? Well, you can judge for yourself. There was a joke going around about John Michael Montgomery singing live without auto-tune and the result was undesirable. John Berry? Trust me; I'm not trying to be mean, but I have absolutely no cognizance of this man. I'm sure he must have had a hit song.
But back to Vince: One of my(self-appointed) assignments for my mom and dad's fiftieth wedding anniversary surprise party was to create a tape (yes, tape) of fifty years of music that meant something to them. I made several trips to the record store in order to fulfill that task, but I loved doing it. After Dad, then Mom passed away, I came into possession of those two tapes. I'm afraid to play them, though, for fear I will break down in sobs. I ended the compilation with this:
Now that I've had my cry, let's move on to peppier and sillier things.
Music Video of the Year
Any Man of Mine - Shania Twain Baby Likes To Rock It - The Tractors
I Don't Even Know Your Name - Alan Jackson
The Red Strokes - Garth Brooks
When Love Finds You - Vince Gill
What else could possibly win Video of the Year? The Tractors never had another hit. They didn't need one.
I don't generally feature the Musician of the Year because the musician nominees usually don't have videos to showcase their talents. But in 1995 they did.
Musician of the Year
Eddie Bayers
Paul Franklin Mark O'Connor
Brent Mason
Matt Rollings
The winner (as an added bonus, Steve Wariner!):
The Single of the Year was "When You Say Nothing At All" by Alison Krauss.
Song of the Year (award to the songwriter)
Gone Country - Bob McDill Independence Day - Gretchen Peters
How Can I Help You Say Goodbye - Burton Banks-Collins and Karen Taylor-Good
Thinkin' Problem - David Ball, Allen Shamblin, and Stuart Ziff
Don't Take The Girl - Larry Johnson and Craig Martin
Yup:
Brooks and Dunn won Vocal Duo of the Year and the Vocal Group of the Year was The Mavericks. 1995 wasn't Brooks and Dunn's best year (don't worry; I'll be featuring them; count on it). The Mavericks, boy, let's give 'em credit where it's due, and they were due in 1995:
The Horizon Award, given to best newcomer, went to Alison Krauss, but my heart will always be with David Ball. I loved this song because it was so blatantly country, so "in your face country". My kids hated when the song came on the radio and I would flip the volume up, so I tended to torture them with it, just for fun:
After everything that's come before, it's almost anti-climatic to talk about the Entertainer of the Year, but that's the big one, after all.
I saw Alan Jackson in concert -- he wasn't the most scintillating entertainer -- but for hit records alone, he deserved to grab this award.
Of all the years I've featured in this CMA retrospective, 1995 has to be one of the greatest. I'm awed by the talent here. Awed and sentimental.
Well, "going" is a relative term. I've been diddling around with a new novel for eight months and I'm only on Chapter Five -- and they're short chapters.
Obviously, I haven't committed.
Subsequently, I had an idea to write a non-fiction book about country music. So I started that. It's not going entirely how I envisioned it. I want to write about artists who influenced my love of the country music genre, but I find that I don't know every (or any) minuscule detail of their lives, and I'll be damned if I'll write a book based on Wikipedia articles.
I'm wondering now if either of those ideas were rational.
I'd really like to have a third April Tompkins novel; kind of a boxed set, if you will; to go with the other two novels nobody's purchased. The three of them would look nice side-by-side on Amazon, and I'm all about aesthetics. Plus, three is simply a more appealing number than two, and I'd have better bragging rights (to myself).
The thing about writing novels that no one reads, though, is that at some point it begins to feel like a time-intensive slog; quixotic. A waste of the few brain cells I have remaining. I loved Radio Crazy -- no one else (agents; publishers) seemed to. I think, in fact, I might purchase it and download it to my Kindle. I might even read it again for the seventy-fifth time, but this time with fresh eyes.
So, I'm uncommitted. Obviously I need to write or I wouldn't be tapping out these words tonight. Writing soothes my nerve endings that jangle for forty or fifty hours every week.
My question to you is, would you rather read a novel about a dysfunctional family and a main character who's carrying around a big secret or an anthology of the past fifty years of country music?
Holly Dunn passed away this past Monday, November 14. She was 59; younger than me. Those things shouldn't happen.
I liked Holly's recordings -- she was a soprano, whereas I was always more drawn to more earthy voices like Patsy Cline's -- but Holly Dunn was country and that's what mattered. I've always liked my country to be...well, country...call me crazy; and 1987 was that kind of year. Holly fit right in.
At the CMA's that year, Holly won the Horizon Award, the award given to best new artist. She deserved it.
Holly wrote, produced, and performed her own songs, which was, in 1987, let's say unusual. As a pseudo-songwriter, I know how monumental that is.
“I think this gives me a real legitimacy, a genuineness,” she told The
Associated Press in 1990. “I’m not just up there standing where they
tell me to stand, singing what they tell me to sing.” (source)
In 2003 Holly retired from recording, just like that. She said that country no longer wanted what she had to offer, and she was right. Country music gave up the ghost somewhere around 2001 and it's never come back. I once thought it would -- everything being cyclical -- but I was wrong. It never came back. Nineteen eighty-seven was a watershed year. Let's revisit it...
Horizon Award
T. Graham Brown
The O'Kanes
Restless Heart
Sweethearts of the Rodeo
Holly Dunn
Female Vocalist of the Year
Emmylou Harris
Kathy Mattea
Rosanne Cash
Dolly Parton
Reba McEntire
There was no denying that the late eighties was Reba's time. It was before she went off on her costume-changing frenzy (although I never actually witnessed it in concert, it made all the popular publications, like People Magazine) and while she still had the frizzy perm and an iota of country in her blood. Like this:
If I'd still been a CMA member in 1987, though, I would have voted for this:
You tell me which song holds up better. It's not even a fair contest.
Male Vocalist of the Year
George Strait
Randy Travis
George Jones
Ricky Skaggs
Hank Williams, Jr.
I'm not going to quibble with this one, although my heart lies with George. Randy Travis was and is a voice beyond measure.
Single of the Year
The Right Left Hand - George Jones (I have no recollection whatsoever of this song)
Walk The Way The Wind Blows - Kathy Mattea
All My Ex's Live In Texas - George Strait Forever And Ever, Amen - Randy Travis
Can't Stop My Heart From Lovin' You - The O'Kanes
Nineteen eighty-seven was a great year! I'd forgotten how good it was. In the interest of diversity and fairness, I'm going to include one of the singles that didn't win:
Song of the Year (award to the songwriter) Forever And Ever, Amen - Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz
All My Ex's Live In Texas - Lyndia Shafer and Sanger D. Shafer
Can't Stop My Heart From Lovin' You - Kieran Kane and Jamie O'Hara
Daddy's Hands - Holly Dunn
On The Other Hand - Paul Overstreet and Don Schlitz
To be different, here's:
Vocal Group of the Year
Asleep At The Wheel
Exile
Restless Heart
Alabama The Judds
This is a tough category. I would have given it to The Judds in 1985, and maybe they did win it then. I don't have photographic memory! (A-Ha! They did! I just checked!) I love The Judds, especially for their early hits, but sadly, I find that Restless Heart never won the vocal group of the year award. That's shameful. Since they never won, I guess I can pick any song, from any year, I want. I pick this one:
Randy Travis won Album of the Year (naturally); fiddler Johnny Gimble was Instrumentalist of the Year; Vocal Duo of the Year was a bust (for the record, it was Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White); the Music Video of the Year was "My Name is Bocephus" by Hank Williams, Jr.; which leads me to the strangest award of the night:
Entertainer of the Year
The Judds
Reba McEntire
George Strait
Randy Travis Hank Williams, Jr.
I'm not sure what happened. Perhaps it was a nod to an era that was ending. I'm not proud of it, but the only concert I ever walked out on was Hank's. I liked him once; thus, I bought a ticket to see him. This, unfortunately, was the time when Junior decided to "become his own man". The people who liked Lynryd Skynyrd, I'm sure, loved this concert. I hated it. Hank's thing was writing and singing songs about...Hank. Listen to any of his songs, and they're all egocentric. All good, if you like that sort of thing.
I checked Hank's discography, trying to discern which record, exactly, earned him the award. I'm truly perplexed. So, I'm just going to guess this one...
So, 1987 was a tremendous year in country music -- not necessarily a tremendous year for the CMA's. They got some things wrong and some things right. But I'm sure it was hard, with so much talent to pick from.
And God bless you, Holly Dunn. Thank you for the music.
The first year the CMA Awards were televised was 1968. NBC broadcast the show and Kraft was its sponsor. It used to be that October was country music month -- it was decreed throughout promos for the show: "October is country music month." Today country music month is...ehh, whenever.
The commercials between the performances and the award-handing featured a honey-voiced announcer extolling the fun, warm family desserts one could make with Kraft caramels. Ahh, caramel apples, crackly leaves of burnished orange dusting the sidewalks, the kids skipping home from school, greeted at the door with a tender hug from Mom.
Dad nursing a whiskey sour in his easy chair; Mom, her arms crossed, nursing time-worn resentments. The kids huddled in their rooms cranking their radios up loud to muffle the inevitable screaming match to come.
Oh, maybe that was just my house.
Is it any wonder I wrapped my head and arms around the CMA's?
Before 1968, the only awards shows on TV were the Emmys and the Oscars. Today, pick a week and you'll find one or two statuette grabfests to suit your tastes. "Winning an award" is a mundane exercise. Shoot, I bet I've even won an award for something and I don't even know it (I'm thinking I probably sent my "representative" to scoop it up for me.)
Forty-eight years of televised CMA's has wrought some changes. There's no longer a category for Comedian of the Year or Instrumental Group. Vocal Group used to encompass not only groups but duos. Frankly there weren't that many vocal groups making records in 1968.
And we (okay, I) think today's music reeks? Take a gander at the nominees (and winners) of the various awards in '68:
Album of the Year
Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison - Johnny Cash
By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Glen Campbell
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette
Gentle on My Mind - Glen Campbell
The Best of Merle Haggard - Merle Haggard
Female Vocalist of the Year
Tammy Wynette
Lynn Anderson
Loretta Lynn
Dolly Parton
Jeannie C. Riley
Male Vocalist of the Year
Glen Campbell
Eddy Arnold
Johnny Cash
Merle Haggard
Charley Pride
Single of the Year
Harper Valley PTA - Jeannie C. Riley
By The Time I Get To Phoenix - Glen Campbell
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Tammy Wynette
Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash
Honey - Bobby Goldsboro
Song of the Year
Honey - Bobby Russell (sorry, but one of the worst songs ever written)
D-I-V-O-R-C-E - Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman
Harper Valley PTA - Tom T. Hall
Little Green Apples - Bobby Russell (Is this guy gunning for the title of worst songwriter ever?)
Skip a Rope - Glen Douglas Tubb and Bobby Moran
Vocal Group of the Year
Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton
The Stoneman Family
Archie Campbell and Lorene Mann (?)
Bill Anderson and Jan Howard
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
Entertainer of the Year
Glen Campbell
Eddy Arnold
Johnny Cash
Merle Haggard
Charley Pride
FYI - the Instrumental Group of the Year was the Buckaroos (richly deserved) and the Comedian of the Year, if anyone cares, was Ben Colder (I guess you had to be there).
So, if we're (okay I'm) appalled by Beyonce performing on the 50th anniversary show, in 1968 we were appalled (appalled!) by Glen Campbell, who wasn't country, walking away with the biggest awards of the night.
I like Glen Campbell a whole lot -- now. I think Glen Campbell is a national treasure. That doesn't negate the fact that By The Time I Get To Phoenix wasn't country. It was...I don't know...easy listening, I guess. It sucked.
And don't even get me started on that musical blemish, "Honey". Oh. My. God. Horrible, horrible song.
Hindsight, though, is omniscient. Of course we know now that Tammy and Merle and...I guess that's about it from the above list...are majestic. Merle would have his day, and his arms full of awards, in 1970. Tammy started a long run in '68 that flowed into subsequent years. Porter and Dolly were royalty -- Dolly still is.
But if you can stand the cringe-worthiness, let's take a close look back, shall we?
(She was kinda dumb and kinda smart.)
For pure kitsch:
Here's some royalty:
Not to give 2016 short shrift, here's, I'm guessing, the best performance of the night:
Forty-eight years. A lot has changed and a lot hasn't. Talent is talent. The cool thing of the moment isn't cool at all.
I've suddenly got a craving for some Kraft caramels.
I have lots of thoughts about fifty years of the Country Music Association awards, and I'm the one to share them, because I watched the very first telecast in 1968.
I didn't watch this year, but I'll catch up on the videos. I'm prepared to be disappointed, but who knows? Maybe I won't be. But I think I will.
Fifty is a momentous milestone. Fifty years of country music!
I remember 1970, when Merle Haggard collected every award except female vocalist of the year. I remember a tipsy Charlie Rich pulling a lighter out of his pocket and setting fire to the card that read, "John Denver". I remember Alan Jackson stopping in mid-song and breaking into a rendition of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" in protest of George Jones not being invited to perform on the awards telecast. I remember when Alabama was a foregone conclusion to be named Vocal Group of the Year and the other four bands just filled out Alabama's dance card. I remember Rodney Crowell winning Album of the Year in 1988 for "Diamonds and Dirt", and thinking, I guess the CMA members do have taste after all.
His name might not be familiar to you, but it certainly is to me. Putman was a songwriter extraordinaire.
I suppose Curly Putman first entered my consciousness the same way all behind-the-scenes guys did for me in the sixties -- from reading the backs of album covers. I obviously wasn't a songwriter then, but I was fascinated to learn who wrote the songs I liked best. If they wrote at least two of my favorites (I had kind of a low bar) they were "good". Naturally, like most of my country music discoveries, I first found Curly's name on the back of a Tammy Wynette album. He was co-writer, with Bobby Braddock, of this:
And he wrote this one, again featuring Tammy Wynette, with David Houston (sorry, no David Houston live videos exist, apparently):
I just posted this video last week, and here I am again! I mistakenly thought Dolly wrote the song -- I hate when I mess up like that.
Give credit where credit is due:
Tanya Tucker was a revelation to me, at thirteen, because she was thirteen -- and I didn't do anything except go to school and play records, while she made records. Life wasn't fair. I digress, though. Curly wrote this song:
You know me; I like to throw in a few obscure songs every now and then just to flummox everyone. Actually, no, I like to relive songs that I like and haven't heard in decades. Nobody seems to remember Charlie Rich (I do). Here's another Curly Putman song, sung by Charlie:
Songwriters never know which songs will strike a chord. And how could we? We love our babies; we think they're cute as a button, while strangers take one glance and turn their heads away. Instead, they fixate on the mangy cat balled up in the corner of the living room, huddled under the end table, its fur askew. The cat we picked up at the shelter on a whim because we felt sorry for it. The cat that's howling out this melody:
Speaking of ugly children: this song isn't actually a homely child; it's just not the best country song ever, although many think it is (they're wrong). But like the Green Green Grass of Home, it will live forever, and a songwriter will gladly live with that.
Curly, I'm guessing, wouldn't have cited this as his favorite composition (I'd love to know which one he thought was his best), but ten million fans speak louder than pride, or something. Here is George Jones:
Curly wrote more than two of my favorite songs, so that makes him a great songwriter. One great song makes one a great songwriter. Curly Putman cleared that bar easily.
