Country Music – Page 11 – Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

HE ALREADY HAD COUNTRY HITS. THEN JIM REEVES STOPPED SINGING LIKE HE HAD TO FILL A DANCE HALL—AND “FOUR WALLS” TURNED A QUIETER VOICE INTO ONE OF THE SOUNDS THAT REMADE NASHVILLE. When Jim Reeves signed with RCA Victor in 1955, he sang much like many country performers of the period: strong, bright, and built to carry across noisy rooms. He already had hits, including “Mexican Joe” and “Bimbo,” and joined the Grand Ole Opry that same year. But the style that would make “Gentleman Jim” internationally recognizable had not fully appeared yet. The change came with “Four Walls” in 1957. Instead of projecting hard, Reeves dropped into the lower part of his baritone and sang intimately, close to the microphone. The quieter approach changed the emotional scale of the record. Rather than sounding like a performer reaching across a dance hall, Reeves sounded like a man speaking to one person in a nearly empty room. “Four Walls” reached No. 1 on the country chart and No. 11 pop. More importantly, Reeves had found the voice that would define the rest of his career. He moved increasingly toward smooth ballads and restrained arrangements, becoming one of the central artists in the emerging Nashville Sound and helping demonstrate that country records could cross into pop without abandoning their emotional core. “He’ll Have to Go” pushed that approach even further in 1959. Reeves delivered the song almost conversationally, and it became another massive crossover success. Records such as “Welcome to My World,” “Adios Amigo,” and “Am I Losing You?” followed the same path. By then, the cowboy clothes were giving way to tailored jackets, and the hard-country singer from East Texas had become “Gentleman Jim.” The important breakthrough was not that Reeves learned to sing louder or reach higher. It was discovering how much authority he could create by doing almost the opposite—letting the microphone carry the voice while he concentrated on what happened inside the words.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” JIM REEVES ALREADY HAD COUNTRY HITS. THEN HE…

Country Music

“DESPERADOS WAITING FOR A TRAIN” SOUNDED LIKE A WESTERN MYTH. IT WAS REALLY GUY CLARK SAYING GOODBYE TO THE OLD OIL DRILLER WHO HAD TAUGHT HIM HOW TEXAS MEN LIVED, DRANK, AGED—AND DISAPPEARED. Guy Clark grew up in Monahans, Texas, where his grandmother ran the Clark Hotel. One of the men living there was Jack Prigg, an oilfield worker and wildcatter who became a grandfather figure while Clark’s father was away during World War II. Clark later said Prigg was the main male presence around him during those years. Prigg took him into a world children were not usually invited to see. There were oil fields, domino games, pool halls and the Green Frog Cafe. He taught Clark to drive and let him trail behind older men telling stories about jobs, women, drinking and whatever version of the truth sounded best that night. Clark watched him grow old. The powerful driller became an elderly man with tobacco stains on his chin, sitting around playing games with other retirees. To Clark, the change was difficult to understand. A childhood hero had started looking like just another old man. Near the end of Prigg’s life, Clark visited him. That relationship became “Desperados Waiting for a Train,” which Clark later described as being as close to the truth as he could make it. Jerry Jeff Walker recorded the song first on Viva Terlingua in 1973. David Allan Coe, Rita Coolidge and Tom Rush followed before Clark finally put his own version on Old No. 1 in 1975. Then the story traveled even farther. In 1985, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson recorded it as the Highwaymen, taking the song to No. 15 on the country chart. By then, Jack Prigg had been dead for years. But the world he showed one Texas boy — oil wells, back rooms, old men and fading heroes — had become part of the vocabulary Guy Clark passed to everyone who came after him.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” “DESPERADOS WAITING FOR A TRAIN” SOUNDED LIKE A…

Country Music

RODNEY CROWELL PRODUCED ROSANNE CASH’S BREAKTHROUGH RECORDS, WROTE WITH HER, RAISED A FAMILY WITH HER — THEN SANG A NO. 1 DUET WITH HER WHILE THEIR MARRIAGE WAS ALREADY BEGINNING TO COME APART. Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash married in 1979, just as both were trying to establish careers of their own. Crowell had recently left Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band; Cash was still emerging from the shadow of her father’s name. Their marriage quickly became a working partnership. Crowell produced Cash’s early Columbia records, including Seven Year Ache in 1981. The title song went to No. 1 on the country chart and crossed into the pop Top 40. “My Baby Thinks He’s a Train” and “Blue Moon with Heartache” also reached No. 1, helping establish Cash as one of the strongest new voices in country music. The two built a family while their careers accelerated. They had three daughters together, and Cash also helped raise Crowell’s daughter from an earlier marriage. Touring was often limited by family life, but the music kept moving. By the late 1980s, both were near commercial peaks. Cash’s King’s Record Shop produced four No. 1 singles in 1987. The following year, she joined Crowell on “It’s Such a Small World,” a duet from his Diamonds & Dirt album. It went to No. 1. The timing carried an irony the record itself could not show. Their marriage was already under strain. Cash later poured much of that tension into Interiors, the stark 1990 album she produced herself. The songs dealt openly with relationships coming apart and marked a turn away from the polished Nashville sound that had made her a star. Crowell and Cash divorced in 1992. By then, their creative partnership had already left fingerprints across some of the most important country records of the 1980s. What survived was not simply a catalog of love songs. It was the sound of two ambitious writers learning, for more than a decade, how to make each other better even when they could no longer make the marriage work.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” RODNEY CROWELL PRODUCED ROSANNE CASH’S BREAKTHROUGH RECORDS, WROTE…

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BY 41, RAY WYLIE HUBBARD HAD OUTLASTED A BROKEN MARRIAGE, COCAINE, ALCOHOL AND A CAREER THAT HAD NEARLY RUN INTO THE GROUND. THEN STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN TOOK HIM TO HIS FIRST AA MEETING. Ray Wylie Hubbard had already written “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother,” watched Jerry Jeff Walker turn it into a Texas anthem, and spent years moving through the same outlaw-country world as Willie Nelson and the Austin crowd. But by the late 1980s, the life behind the songs was collapsing. His first marriage had failed. Both of his parents had died. Alcohol and cocaine had become part of the routine, and Hubbard later described himself as depressed, delusional and drifting through increasingly small gigs. At one point, he was opening for lingerie models at a club near Dallas Love Field. Then Stevie Ray Vaughan showed him another way. Vaughan had recently gotten sober himself. Hubbard remembered him as the first musician he knew who had cleaned up without becoming dull or losing the fire in his playing. Hubbard asked what it was like to perform without drinking or drugs. Vaughan told him sobriety had made him play better, not worse. He eventually took Hubbard to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Hubbard was 41. The change did not instantly turn him into a star. It did something more useful. He began listening again. Without alcohol and cocaine between himself and the instrument, Hubbard started rebuilding his guitar playing, writing more seriously and stripping away the parts of his career that had never fit him. The slicker Nashville ambitions faded. The darker Texas blues, folk and country underneath them came forward. The second half of his career became far stronger than the first. Albums such as Loco Gringo’s Lament, Dangerous Spirits and Growl gradually rebuilt his reputation. Younger Texas writers began treating Hubbard not as the man behind one novelty outlaw anthem, but as an elder whose late work kept getting sharper. He also met Judy through the recovery community; they married in 1989 and later built a family and working life around the music. Stevie Ray Vaughan died in 1990. Hubbard kept going. Decades later, the most important thing Vaughan had given him was not a guitar lick, a tour slot or a famous introduction. It was proof that getting sober did not mean losing the music.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BY 41, RAY WYLIE HUBBARD HAD OUTLASTED A…

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AT 72, AFTER A KIDNEY TRANSPLANT AND HEART TROUBLE, DONNIE FRITTS ASSUMED HIS RECORD-MAKING DAYS WERE OVER. “SEVENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD MEN DON’T GET RECORD DEALS,” HE SAID. THEN JOHN PAUL WHITE HEARD HIM SINGING ALONE AT AN OLD WURLITZER. Fritts had spent most of his life standing beside other people. He had helped shape the early Muscle Shoals scene, written songs recorded by Waylon Jennings, Dusty Springfield, Ray Charles and others, and spent decades playing keyboards behind Kris Kristofferson. Yet by 2015, he had released only three solo albums in more than forty years. His health had also taken a toll. A kidney transplant and heart problems had slowed him, and Fritts did not expect another label to come looking. Still, he believed he had one good record left in him. John Paul White heard it almost by accident. White, formerly of the Civil Wars, had become friendly with Fritts around the 2013 premiere of the Muscle Shoals documentary. During a visit to Fritts’ home, he listened as the older musician sat at his weathered Wurlitzer and played songs he loved. Some were not even Fritts compositions. It did not matter. White heard something in the bare combination of that worn voice and electric piano that decades of sideman work had never fully exposed. He told Fritts that if they made a record, he wanted to start with exactly that sound. The project became Oh My Goodness. White and Ben Tanner produced it, keeping Fritts and the Wurlitzer at the center while friends and admirers including John Prine, Jason Isbell, Brittany Howard, Spooner Oldham and Reggie Young gathered around him. Fritts revisited songs connected to Arthur Alexander, John Prine and Dan Penn, but also recorded newer material such as “Tuscaloosa 1962.” He later said something surprising about the result. After more than half a century around studios, he felt he had finally found his own voice. Oh My Goodness arrived in October 2015. For decades, Donnie Fritts had been the man whose keyboard, songs and friendships helped other records become part of American music. This time, the younger musicians came into the room for him. And instead of asking the old Muscle Shoals veteran to sound young again, they built the record around everything age had put into his voice.

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TOM BRUMLEY JOINED BUCK OWENS’ BAND AS A REPLACEMENT. MONTHS LATER, ONE PEDAL-STEEL SOLO ON “TOGETHER AGAIN” BECAME SO DEFINITIVE THAT JERRY GARCIA LATER POINTED TO IT AS AN INSPIRATION TO LEARN THE INSTRUMENT. Tom Brumley was not the first steel guitarist in the Buckaroos. He joined Buck Owens’ band in 1963 after Jay McDonald left, stepping into a group that was rapidly becoming the defining sound of Bakersfield country. Don Rich was already shaping the guitars and harmonies. Buck had the songs. Brumley’s job was to find a place inside that sound without softening it. Then came “Together Again.” Buck recorded the ballad in early 1964 as the flip side of “My Heart Skips a Beat.” The faster song looked like the obvious hit. Brumley changed the balance. In the middle of “Together Again,” his pedal steel answered Buck’s vocal with a slow, aching solo. It was restrained, melodic and full of the crying bends the instrument could produce when the mechanics and the player’s touch worked together. Music theorists have since singled out the passage as a classic example of how the pedal steel can deepen the emotional meaning of a country song. The B-side did not stay a B-side. “Together Again” reached No. 1 on the country chart, interrupting the run of “My Heart Skips a Beat” at the top. The two sides effectively traded places as hits. Brumley’s solo became part of the record’s identity. It was later cited among country music’s finest pedal-steel performances, and Jerry Garcia pointed to “Together Again” as one of the recordings that inspired him to take up steel guitar before playing the instrument with New Riders of the Purple Sage. Brumley stayed with the Buckaroos through most of the 1960s, during the band’s peak years, before leaving in 1969 and later spending more than a decade with Rick Nelson. His distinctive playing became known among steel players as the “Brumley Touch.” Buck Owens supplied the voice and the song. But for a few measures in 1964, Tom Brumley gave “Together Again” the part listeners would spend decades trying to reproduce.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” TOM BRUMLEY JOINED BUCK OWENS’ BAND AS A…

Country Music

TOM T. HALL WENT TO MIAMI BEACH FOR THE 1972 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION. LATE ONE NIGHT, AN OLD HOTEL JANITOR TOLD HIM THE ONLY THREE THINGS THAT NEVER LET A MAN DOWN — AND HALL TURNED THE CONVERSATION INTO A NO. 1 COUNTRY SONG. In 1972, Tom T. Hall traveled to Miami Beach during the Democratic National Convention that nominated George McGovern. He was already known as one of Nashville’s sharpest story-song writers, but the song he brought home did not come from politics. It came from a hotel bar after hours. Hall later said he met an elderly janitor or porter who was cleaning up. The man was nearing his 66th birthday and began talking with Hall about age, disappointment and the things he had learned to trust. Hall listened. The old man talked about friends who disappear when money runs out, lovers who move on, and the few things he believed were still dependable. Old dogs. Children. Watermelon wine. Hall did not need to invent much beyond the frame. The power was already in the conversation. He carried the encounter back to Nashville and turned it into “(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine,” recording it in July 1972. Released later that year, the song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart in January 1973 and became one of Hall’s signature recordings. The record barely behaves like a conventional hit. Hall mostly talks his way through it, recreating the room, the old man and the pauses between observations. There is no dramatic chorus designed to explode on radio. The tension comes from waiting to hear what the stranger will say next. That was Hall’s gift. He could stand beside someone most people would pass without noticing and recognize that the story was already there. Years later, “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine” remained one of the songs most closely associated with “The Storyteller.” The man who inspired it apparently never became famous. For a few minutes in a nearly empty Miami hotel, he did not need to be.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” TOM T. HALL WENT TO MIAMI BEACH FOR…

Country Music

TOM T. HALL SPENT DECADES WRITING HITS FOR NASHVILLE. THEN HE AND HIS WIFE DIXIE TURNED THEIR FARM OUTSIDE TOWN INTO A STUDIO WHERE BLUEGRASS MUSICIANS COULD MAKE RECORDS OF THEIR OWN. Tom T. Hall had grown up playing bluegrass in Kentucky long before Nashville knew him as “The Storyteller.” By the 1970s, country music had made him famous. He had No. 1 records, an Opry membership and songs being cut across Nashville. But bluegrass never disappeared from his life. Hall and his wife Dixie lived at Fox Hollow, their farm in Williamson County outside Nashville. Over time, the property became more than a home. The Halls built publishing companies and a recording studio there, creating a place where bluegrass musicians could write, rehearse and record away from the usual commercial machinery. The timing mattered. By the mid-1990s, Hall had stepped back from full-time touring. Dixie returned deeply to songwriting, and the two began writing together with increasing frequency. Younger singers and veteran pickers passed through Fox Hollow, and the studio became part of a small bluegrass community built around songs rather than chart positions. One early beneficiary was singer Nancy Moore. Her 1999 album Local Flowers was produced by Dixie at Fox Hollow, with all twelve songs written by Dixie and/or Tom. Other artists followed, and the Halls became known not just for their own catalog but for helping keep traditional bluegrass writing alive. The partnership eventually produced albums of their own songs as well. In 2004, the International Bluegrass Music Association gave Tom and Dixie a Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2018, they were inducted together into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. By then, Hall’s career had already supplied country music with some of its most famous stories. Fox Hollow showed what happened after the storyteller stopped needing every story to belong to him. He built a room where other voices could leave with one of their own.

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RALPH MOONEY’S WIFE LEFT HIM BECAUSE OF HIS DRINKING. HE SAT DOWN WITH A GUITAR AND WROTE “CRAZY ARMS” — THEN RAY PRICE TURNED IT INTO A NO. 1 HIT THAT HELPED RESET THE SOUND OF HONKY-TONK. In 1949, Ralph Mooney was living in Las Vegas, playing steel guitar at night and drinking hard enough that his marriage was beginning to break. One day, after he stopped for a drink while out with his wife, she had enough. She took their young daughter and left for Los Angeles. Mooney went home alone and wrote the song that became “Crazy Arms.” He later recalled that the opening lines came quickly, pulled directly from the shock of watching his family leave. The song did not become famous immediately. Wynn Stewart recorded an early version in 1954, but it was not released. Mooney later sold the song, and another small-label recording found its way onto radio in Tampa. A disc jockey there played it for Ray Price and urged him to cut it. Price recorded “Crazy Arms” in Nashville in 1956. He changed more than the singer. The record used a walking bass, fiddle, steel guitar and a hard 4/4 shuffle that pushed country away from the older two-beat feel. “Crazy Arms” went to No. 1 and stayed there for twenty weeks, becoming one of the records most closely associated with the rise of the Ray Price shuffle. Mooney’s own name stayed mostly outside the spotlight. He went on to play steel with Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and, for roughly two decades, Waylon Jennings. His sharp, crying style became one of the most recognizable sounds behind West Coast country and outlaw-era records. Waylon would sometimes simply call out, “Pick it, Moon,” and leave space for him. By then, Mooney had already done something rarer than writing a hit. A private disaster had become part of the rhythmic language country bands would use for years after it.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” RALPH MOONEY’S WIFE LEFT HIM BECAUSE OF HIS…

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BUDDY EMMONS DIDN’T JUST PLAY PEDAL STEEL BEHIND ERNEST TUBB AND RAY PRICE. HE REWORKED THE PEDALS AND ADDED STRINGS — AND COUNTRY STEEL GUITARS ARE STILL BUILT AROUND IDEAS HE HELPED CREATE. Buddy Emmons was still in his teens when he became good enough to work professionally on steel guitar. By the mid-1950s, however, playing the instrument was not enough for him. Pedal steel was still evolving, and Emmons kept hearing musical moves the hardware could not easily make. So he changed the hardware. In 1956, Emmons helped separate two pitch changes that had previously been operated together, creating the split-pedal arrangement that became standard on E9 pedal steel. He later recalled first using the setup on Ernest Tubb’s “Half a Mind.” That same year, he and steel guitarist Shot Jackson formed Sho-Bud, combining their names and building instruments for a generation of country players. Emmons later developed additional mechanical ideas and eventually co-founded the Emmons Guitar Company. The innovations followed him onto records. In 1962, after joining Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys, Emmons added two higher strings to his E9 setup, helping establish the ten-string tuning that became standard. Price soon made him bandleader. Then came Willie Nelson’s “Night Life.” Ray Price recorded it in 1963, and Emmons opened the track with a dark, blues-heavy steel line that sounded far removed from the bright country clichés often associated with the instrument. His fills and solo became one of the defining sounds of the recording. Emmons spent the rest of his career refusing to stay inside one vocabulary. He played hard country, Western swing and jazz, recording with artists ranging from George Jones and Roger Miller to Gram Parsons and Ray Charles. By then, younger steel players were not simply learning Buddy Emmons licks. They were sitting behind instruments whose basic language had already been altered by his hands.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BUDDY EMMONS DID NOT JUST PLAY PEDAL STEEL…

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