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Country Music

THE SESSION WAS ALMOST OVER. THE MUSICIANS DID NOT KNOW THE SONG, AND GENE WATSON HAD ONLY ENOUGH TIME TO SHOW THEM THE CHORDS. FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, “FAREWELL PARTY” WAS FINISHED. Before Nashville knew him, Gene Watson spent his days repairing wrecked automobiles in Houston and his nights singing in Texas clubs. He recorded for small regional labels and built a local following without leaving the body shop. Even after “Love in the Hot Afternoon” became a national Top Five hit in 1975, Watson remained closer to working musicians than to the polished machinery of Music Row. In 1978, he entered the studio to make the album Reflections. Near the end of one session, there was time left for one more song. Watson chose “Farewell Party,” a death-haunted ballad written and first recorded by Lawton Williams. Little Jimmy Dickens, Johnny Bush and Waylon Jennings had also recorded it, but none had made it permanently their own. The studio band did not know the arrangement. Watson got down on one knee with his guitar and showed the musicians and backing singers the chords. There was no time to build the performance piece by piece. They ran through it once. According to Watson, the recording took about 15 minutes. What listeners hear is that single take, without overdubs. The song appeared on Reflections in 1978 and was released as a single the following year. It reached No. 5 on Billboard’s country chart and became more closely identified with Watson than several songs that had placed higher. “Farewell Party” demanded nearly everything his voice could do. The melody began low and controlled, then climbed toward notes that sounded as though the singer were trying to remain dignified while imagining his own funeral. Watson did not oversing it. The power came from how long he delayed the break. Audiences began requesting the song at nearly every appearance. Watson eventually named his road group the Farewell Party Band, turning the title into the public identity of the musicians who traveled with him. The song also changed how other singers regarded him. Watson became known as a “singer’s singer,” admired for the range, control and restraint required to deliver hard country without smoothing away its pain. His career produced dozens of charted records, but “Farewell Party” became something larger than a signature hit. It became a test. For decades afterward, younger singers could learn the melody, reach for the high notes and copy the phrasing. But the song still exposed who could carry heartbreak without turning it into spectacle. That became Gene Watson’s lasting place in country music. Not simply the man who recorded “Farewell Party,” but the singer other singers used to measure themselves.

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DAVID OLNEY STOPPED DURING HIS THIRD SONG, SAID, “I’M SORRY,” AND CLOSED HIS EYES. THE OTHER SONGWRITERS THOUGHT HE WAS PAUSING. HE HAD DIED ONSTAGE. David Olney spent nearly five decades writing from places most songwriters never entered. He could tell the Titanic story from the iceberg’s point of view, write history through forgotten witnesses, or build a love song around someone other writers would have treated as a villain. The method kept him outside mainstream country, but earned deep respect among Nashville writers. Born in Rhode Island, Olney moved to Nashville in 1973 and entered the same loose community as Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Rodney Crowell. He later fronted the X-Rays, appeared on Austin City Limits and released more than twenty albums across folk, rock, country and Americana. His songs often traveled farther in other voices. Emmylou Harris recorded “Deeper Well.” Linda Ronstadt, Steve Earle, Del McCoury and Tim O’Brien also drew from his catalog. Townes Van Zandt performed “Illegal Cargo.” Olney kept working without waiting for wider recognition. Beginning in 2008, he posted a weekly video series, You Never Know, performing songs, explaining how they were built and sometimes reciting poetry. He continued until January 2020. On January 18, 2020, Olney appeared at Florida’s 30A Songwriters Festival, seated beside Amy Rigby and Scott Miller. During his third song, he stopped, apologized, lowered his head and closed his eyes. There was no dramatic fall. For several moments, the musicians beside him believed he was holding the silence before continuing. He had suffered an apparent heart attack. David Olney was 71. The manner of his death became the headline, but his work had always moved attention away from himself and into the lives of strangers, criminals, objects and people history had overlooked. In 2024, fellow musicians released Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney, carrying his catalog into new voices. That became the more fitting continuation. A writer who had spent his life entering other people’s stories was gone. The people he influenced stepped forward and kept the characters alive.

Country Music

THE ALBUM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE RECORDED IN A STUDIO. JERRY JEFF WALKER TOOK THE BAND TO LUCKENBACH INSTEAD. By 1973, Jerry Jeff Walker could have tried to become a normal Nashville success story. “Mr. Bojangles” had already carried his name far beyond Texas. MCA wanted another album. He had moved to Austin, fallen in with the musicians who would become the Lost Gonzo Band, and found a scene that did not care much for polished edges. The songs were loose. The nights were long. The line between the stage and the audience was never very clean. Then came Luckenbach. Jerry Jeff and the band did not go there to make a careful studio record. They set up in the old dance hall in August 1973, with people in the room, beer in the air, and the kind of Texas noise that would have been edited out anywhere else. Gary P. Nunn was there. Bob Livingston was there. Hondo Crouch’s little town was there too, half real place, half running joke, and just strange enough to hold the whole thing. They recorded ¡Viva Terlingua! live. The album did not sound like a man trying to behave for a label. “London Homesick Blues” came out of it. “Gettin’ By” came out of it. So did the rough, communal feeling that made Austin’s progressive-country scene sound less like an industry plan and more like a room nobody wanted to leave. It became Jerry Jeff’s signature record. It also helped turn Luckenbach from a tiny Hill Country town into one of the holy places of Texas music. Four years later, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson would make the name even bigger with “Luckenbach, Texas,” but Jerry Jeff had already put the room on tape. Some records are made to clean up a singer. ¡Viva Terlingua! caught Jerry Jeff Walker before anybody could.

Country Music

IN 1953, GOLDIE HILL BECAME ONE OF COUNTRY MUSIC’S FIRST WOMEN TO REACH NO. 1. FOUR YEARS LATER, SHE MARRIED CARL SMITH AND LARGELY WALKED AWAY FROM THE ROAD TO RAISE THEIR FAMILY. Goldie Hill came from a cotton farm outside Karnes City, Texas. Born Argolda Voncile Hill, she picked cotton with her brothers before the family began performing around San Antonio as the Texas Hillbillies. By her late teens, she was singing on radio and working with established country acts including Red River Dave and Big Bill Lister. In 1952, Decca Records signed her. Her first release failed, but the next one changed her place in country history. “I Let the Stars Get in My Eyes,” written by her brother Tommy Hill and Slim Willet, answered the hit “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.” Released late in 1952, Goldie’s record reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country jukebox chart in 1953. At a time when Kitty Wells had only recently broken country radio’s resistance to female solo performers, Goldie became one of the first women to reach the top of the country charts under her own name. She was soon known as the “Golden Hillbilly.” Goldie appeared on the Louisiana Hayride, the Grand Ole Opry and the Ozark Jubilee. She also recorded successful duets with Justin Tubb and Red Sovine. Alongside Kitty Wells and Jean Shepard, she was helping establish that women could carry country records without being attached to a male bandleader. Then, in 1957, she married Carl Smith. Smith was already one of country music’s biggest male stars, with a long string of Top 10 records. He had recently divorced June Carter. Goldie entered the marriage with her own hit career, her own stage name and a No. 1 record behind her. After the wedding, she virtually stopped touring. There were later recordings and occasional returns, including a brief comeback during the 1960s, but the momentum of her early career was gone. Goldie and Carl settled on a 500-acre Tennessee ranch, raised two sons and a daughter, and remained married for 47 years. The decision made her difficult to place in the usual country story. She was not a forgotten singer who had failed to break through. She had already broken through. Nor was she pushed aside before radio heard her. The record had reached No. 1, the major stages had opened, and the industry had given her a nickname built for stardom. She simply stopped organizing her life around it. Goldie occasionally returned to the microphone, but she never tried to reclaim the position she had held in 1953. By the time later generations of women became major country stars, one of the singers who had helped clear the path was living mostly outside Nashville’s public memory. Goldie Hill died of cancer in 2005. Carl remained on the ranch until his own death five years later. Inside the house were nearly five decades of marriage and a family that had grown during the years when Goldie might otherwise have been chasing another chart record. Her largest hit lasted two minutes and thirty-five seconds. The life she chose afterward lasted 47 years