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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

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TOMMY COLLINS HELPED BUILD THE BAKERSFIELD SOUND, THEN WALKED AWAY TO BECOME A PREACHER. YEARS LATER, MERLE HAGGARD PUT HIS REAL NAME INTO A SONG AND BROUGHT HIM BACK INTO COUNTRY MUSIC. Before Buck Owens became the face of Bakersfield and before Merle Haggard carried its sound nationwide, Tommy Collins was already making records that sounded nothing like polished Nashville country. Born Leonard Raymond Sipes in Oklahoma, he moved to California in 1952 after leaving the Army. Ferlin Husky helped connect him with producer Cliffie Stone, and Capitol Records soon recognized both his voice and his songwriting. Collins broke through in 1954 with “You Better Not Do That.” His records were lean, funny and driven by the sharp guitar of a young Buck Owens. Songs such as “Whatcha Gonna Do Now” and “It Tickles” helped establish the hard, uncluttered style later known as the Bakersfield Sound. Other singers were already using his material. Faron Young turned “If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’)” into a hit in 1954. Decades later, George Strait took the same song to No. 1. Then Collins stepped away. After a religious conversion, he began recording sacred music and enrolled at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in 1957. By the end of the decade, he was serving as a pastor while the California sound he helped create was becoming a national force. Buck Owens kept the songs alive. In 1963, he released Buck Owens Sings Tommy Collins. The album reached No. 1 on the country chart, even as Collins remained largely outside the business. Collins eventually returned and scored another hit with “If You Can’t Bite, Don’t Growl” in 1965, but his career never regained its earlier momentum. His larger second act came through Merle Haggard, who recorded Collins songs including “Carolyn” and “The Roots of My Raising.” Both reached No. 1. Then Merle wrote about the man himself. In 1980, Haggard recorded “Leonard,” a biographical song tracing Collins’s journey from Oklahoma to California, through success, religion and disappointment. He did not use the stage name printed on the old Capitol records. He used Leonard. The song became a hit in 1981 and brought Collins renewed attention. He moved to Nashville, worked with Mel Tillis’s publishing company and continued writing. Tillis later charted with Collins’s “New Patches.” Collins was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1999 and died the following year at 69. By then, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Faron Young and George Strait had all carried his songs into different eras. The records said Tommy Collins. Merle’s song preserved the man beneath them.

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HE WROTE “SEVEN BRIDGES ROAD” FOR THE EAGLES AND GAVE WAYLON JENNINGS “LONESOME, ON’RY AND MEAN.” BUT STEVE YOUNG REMAINED FAR LESS FAMOUS THAN THE SONGS THAT HELPED DEFINE COUNTRY ROCK AND OUTLAW COUNTRY. Steve Young never fit comfortably inside one branch of American music. Born in Georgia and raised across the South, he absorbed gospel, country, blues, folk and rock. He later called the mixture “Southern music,” but record companies preferred categories they could place on a shelf. Young moved through the folk scenes in New York and California before joining the country-rock group Stone Country. By 1969, he had released his first solo album, Rock Salt & Nails. That record contained “Seven Bridges Road.” The song came from a road near Montgomery, Alabama, but Young turned the place into something half remembered and half imagined. Other artists began carrying it forward. Dolly Parton recorded it. Joan Baez recorded it. The Eagles eventually made it one of their best-known harmony performances. Young’s own name never traveled as far as the song. The same thing happened again with “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean.” Young wrote and recorded the song before Waylon Jennings used it as the title track of his 1973 album. Waylon was fighting RCA for control over his sessions, musicians and sound. With his own band finally allowed into the studio, he delivered Young’s song with the frustration of a man who had spent years being told how country music should be made. The album became a turning point in Waylon’s transformation from Nashville recording artist into outlaw-country figure. Young had supplied the words that named the new identity. Other songs followed similar paths. Hank Williams Jr. recorded “Montgomery in the Rain.” Willie Nelson charted with “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way.” Young’s catalog moved through the voices of artists with larger audiences, while his own albums earned admiration without producing lasting commercial security. Part of the problem was Young himself. He resisted being reshaped into a conventional Nashville performer. His records moved too freely among country, folk, gospel and rock, and he repeatedly protected the music even when compromise might have brought a wider career. Admirers later described him as a country-rock pioneer and an early outlaw before the term became a profitable Nashville brand. Young continued recording through the 1970s, including Honky Tonk Man, Renegade Picker and No Place to Fall. Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle were among the songwriters and musicians who respected his work. But he remained a songwriter’s songwriter: influential inside the room, rarely recognized outside it. That distance widened as the songs took on lives detached from their author. “Seven Bridges Road” became associated with the Eagles’ stacked harmonies. “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” became inseparable from Waylon’s beard, leather vest and newly liberated sound. Young kept performing them in smaller rooms. He died in Nashville on March 17, 2016, at 73, after suffering a head injury in a fall. The obituaries called him a pioneer, but the recognition arrived after decades in which audiences had often known his songs better than his voice. By then, one composition had become part of the Eagles’ live legacy, and another had helped give outlaw country its name. Steve Young left behind no single public image large enough to compete with either record. What remained was his handwriting beneath both titles

Country Music

HIS SONGS OUTLIVED HIM IN THE VOICES OF COUNTRY LEGENDS. BUT AFTER BLAZE FOLEY WAS SHOT DEAD IN AUSTIN, HIS FRIENDS HAD TO HOLD A BENEFIT JUST TO PAY FOR HIS BURIAL. His real name was Michael David Fuller. He grew up singing gospel with his family, survived childhood polio and eventually remade himself as Blaze Foley—a wandering Texas songwriter who repaired his clothes with silver duct tape, slept wherever friends would let him and wrote songs too tender for the life he was living. Foley moved through Georgia, Chicago, Houston and Austin without ever building the kind of career Nashville could measure. He played small clubs, drank heavily, lost relationships and sometimes slept beneath pool tables after the bars closed. He was close to Townes Van Zandt, another Texas songwriter who understood how a brilliant song could exist inside a life that refused to become stable. Yet Foley kept writing. One of those songs was “If I Could Only Fly.” Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded it together in 1987, but their version did not become the kind of commercial event “Pancho and Lefty” had been. Foley remained mostly unknown outside the Texas songwriter circuit. He had written something two country giants considered worth singing, but he was still struggling to preserve his own recordings and pay his own way. Other songs waited even longer. John Prine would eventually record “Clay Pigeons.” Lucinda Williams would write “Drunken Angel” about Foley. Lyle Lovett, Gurf Morlix and generations of Texas musicians would help carry his name forward. But most of that recognition arrived after Foley was no longer there to receive it. On February 1, 1989, Foley was at the Austin home of his elderly friend Concho January. Foley believed Concho’s son, Carey January, had been taking his father’s pension and welfare money. The confrontation turned violent. Carey shot Foley in the chest with a small-caliber rifle. Blaze Foley was 39 years old. Carey January admitted firing the shot but argued that he had acted in self-defense. A jury later acquitted him. The people who knew Foley continued to dispute the picture of him presented at trial, but the legal verdict remained unchanged. Foley left behind almost none of the protections normally associated with a professional career. There was no major estate. No long catalog of successful albums. No money waiting to carry him home. Friends organized a benefit to cover the cost of his burial. A cassette recorded live at the Austin Outhouse was released only after his death. At the funeral, his friends reportedly covered his coffin with duct tape—the same cheap material Foley had used to hold together his boots and decorate his clothes. Even after that, the stories did not stop. Townes Van Zandt later told a wild tale about going to Foley’s grave because Foley had died carrying the pawn ticket for one of Townes’s guitars. Whether every part of that story happened exactly as told became less important than what it revealed: even among men who owned almost nothing, guitars, songs and debts still had to be recovered somehow. Blaze Foley never became a country star. He became something harder to manufacture: a songwriter whose work escaped the wreckage of his own life. Years after his friends needed to raise money to place him in the ground, singers who had outlived him were still standing on stages and singing the songs he had left behind.