I have something to confess. Um, I love country music.
Wait, don’t laugh.
It was the soundtrack of my childhood until I became a teenager and latched on to the likes of Queen, Zep, U2, The Police. But even then I listened to country music secretly when my friends weren’t around because amongst my peers country music was not socially acceptable.
But I couldn’t help it. It was in my blood. I loved it when Kris Kristofferson sang in his gravelly, sorrowful voice “Loving Her Was Easier” or “Help Me Make It Through the Night”…
Take the ribbon from your hair.
Shake it loose and let it fall.
Layin’ soft against my skin.
Like the shadows on the wall
Or when “outlaw” Waylon Jennings crooned about the hard life of a woman who loved a man in a hillbilly band:
Amanda, light of my life,
They should have made you
A gentleman’s wife.
Surrounded by the massive snow-covered peaks of the Rockies, walking in the spring by the Elk River as it raged toward the U.S. border, carrying with it the whispers and songs from the mining town where I was born, I listened to the songs from Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Loretta Lynne, Waylon Jennings, Ray Charles and Willie. These artists spoke to the experience of growing up in the mountains in a way no rock artist could quite capture.
The deep music, the real country music that emerged from the sons and daughters of sharecroppers and miners, from Acadian fiddlers and steel guitar pickers, was far from sappy. It contained the sorrows of early death, the sharp crack of hearts breaking, the lonely wails of trains running through the mountains, and a sense of hope because, even though life was hard, there was love.
In my hometown, we had one radio station and so I never knew about the great rock revolution rolling over the Western world until I was about eight and we first visited Vancouver with its hippies, Hare Krishnas and psychedelic mini skirts.
Over the years my tastes have broadened to include classical, blues, a wee bit of opera and, yes, rock but I have a special place inside for country music, especially the lyrics of the great Jimmy Webb whose many masterpieces were sung by Glen Campbell.
One of his greatest classics, written in ’69, is about a soldier going into battle and thinking about the woman and city he loves. It’s called “Galveston.”
Galveston, oh Galveston,
I am so afraid of dying
Before I dry the tears she’s crying
Before I watch your sea birds flying in the sun
At Galveston, at Galveston
Webb said he wasn’t thinking about Vietnam when he penned the song. He had imagined it taking place during a battle of the Spanish-American War. Yet like all great songs, it had the ability to transcend time and space. The song could as easily have been written about a soldier in Vietnam. I used to lie on my bed and listen, imaging a soldier standing on the beach with the waves washing over his army-issued boots and seagulls crying on the wind.
Another Webb classic sung by Campbell is “Witchita Lineman,” a song about a guy just doing his job and thinking about his life and the woman he loves.
I am a lineman for the county.
And I drive the main road.
Lookin’ in the sun for another overload.
This song contains four of the greatest lines ever written in a country song:
And I need you more than want you,
and I want you for all time,
and the Witchita lineman,
is still on the line.
Then there’s Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, the ferryman of the human spirit.
Every time I listen to a Johnny Cash song, I hear something new in his lyrics and I remember the sound of the train at night slinking through the mountains like a hard-breathing animal. I hear the train a-comin’, it’s rollin’ round the bend…
This son of a dirt-poor sharecropper, with his mournful eyes and deep, resonant voice, became a voice for the downtrodden, the dispirited, the prisoner, the American Indian. He was the antithesis to the phony but false image of country music as squeaky clean. He famously performed at Folsom Prison and was never a prisoner himself despite singing I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
One country singer who was the darling of my coal mining family was Loretta Lynn, who grew up in Butcher Holler, near a mining community in Kentucky. Like Johnny Cash, she grew up in poverty but with her rich voice, long dresses and beehive hair, she captured the heart of the Grand Ole Opry.
Yeah I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter
I remember well the well where I drew water
Country music blends traditional and popular musical forms found in the Southern U.S. and Canada’s Maritime region. People began calling it country music when the term hillbilly music was deemed an insult. It evolved as people when people from different ethnic groups came together with their instruments to create the music of the people. They brought Scottish and Irish fiddles, German dulcimers, Italian mandolins, Spanish guitars, West African banjoes, Southern guitars, accordions and even washboard, old saws and hair combs.
Some people tell me country music is sappy. Some of it is. But so is some music in other genres. In the rock genre, for instance, how do you compare REO Speedwagon to Led Zeppelin, though they both are often played on the same Oldies stations?
Real country is a poem of survival, an ode to the human spirit and the people who get up no matter how many times they are kicked, to love again no matter how many times their hearts have broken. In the Jimmy Webb classic “Gentle on Mind,” sung by Glenn Campbell, is the story of a hobo, a wanderer, thinking of a woman:
I dip my cup of soup back from the gurglin’
Cracklin’ caldron in some train yard
My beard a roughning coal pile and
A dirty hat pulled low across my face
Through cupped hands ’round a tin can
I pretend I hold you to my breast and find
That you’re waving from the backroads
By the rivers of my mem’ry
Ever smilin’ ever gentle on my mind.
And it’s a funny thing. The older I get the more I think about those old country songs and wonder how much they shaped me. Because the heart of a girl who has lived in the city for many years now — and loves her high heels and bling — is still steeped in the values shaped by country roads, waking up each morning to look at my mountain, and hearing in my mind the soundtrack of a simpler time, before life got so “danged” complicated.
When I hear that sappy old song “Take Me Home Country Roads”, I still see my grandma hanging wash on the line in the mining town where women raced the coal dust to keep their homes clean.
All my memories gathered round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water…
…or my grandfather fishing in the creek for rainbow trout, casting as if to heaven… or my beautiful mom singing Tammy Wynette or Patsy Cline as she drove along the highway in her old blue Maverick.
I hear her voice in the morning hours
she calls me
the radio reminds me of my home
far away
and drivin’ down the road I get a feeling
that I should have been home yesterday
yesterday
Videos Worth Watching…
Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson singing “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
Waylon Jennings singing “Goodhearted Woman
Loretta Lynn performs “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at the Grand Ole Opry
Glen Campbell sings “Witchita Lineman”
Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson performing “Loving Her Was Easier”
Photo Credits
“Fly My Guitar” The Rocketeer @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
You’ve hit a chord, so to speak. Country music, for many of us, was the soundtrack we grew up to. Kerry, have you read Composed, the memoir by Rosanne Cash? You might find it of interest – she of course grew up somewhat resenting her legacy as Johnny’s daughter but came to respect and honour that heritage – as is evident in her latest release, The List.
Wonderful!
Likewise, when I was growing up, no one confessed to loving “country.” But on road trips in old beaters with dead radios, what did we sing to sweeten the miles? Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, and Glen Campbell songs—and somehow we knew the lyrics by heart….
Anne M. Kelly
I like, make that love, country because, like jazz, it comes from the place where it was born- Jimmy rodgers “waitin for a train” .Before nashville became Nashville the music spoke of real stuff in simple ways…simple is so much more difficult than it seems…and these days too much of country raises the question, to paraphrase Waylon Jennings ” i wonder if ol’hank did thisaways?” Me, i am a huge fan of texas country, Billy Joe shaver, Ray Wiley Hubbard, Lucinda williams and all them ol’ boys and gals. Once met and hung out with Jimmy Webb. Asked him about those great songs, he played em for us in the studio while were hanging out…mostly what i remember is that the kid doing our arrangements had a tune go top 20…Webb looked up at him, his eyes far off, and told him Kid, it will change everything” and we went back to doing the bad stuff we did in those days.
You’re preaching to the choir, Kerry! I have loved country music for many, many years. Amanda – maybe one of the all time greatest waltz songs you could ever dance to! I remember every song you mention here, and very fondly! I’ll add Charlie Rich “Behind Closed Doors” to those wonderful classics. I think I loved them all so much because they were just so danceable!
I went to Gilley’s during the Urban Cowboy craze, and didn’t have to go buy a hat to go there – already had one! We’d been closing the Winchester country dance place in Houston for years! We’d talk the girls from church into meeting us there after choir practice on Thursday nights, and dance ’til it closed! Back when they still did the cotton-eyed joe and shottish every night!
Thanks for the reminder of the fun and wonderful music, and the fond memories it brings up! 🙂
Hey Dan, I will admit to a love for Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors.” Funny though, I first heard it when I was a kid and could not for the life of me figure out what they did behind closed doors. I figured they must be playing a game they weren’t supposed to be playing…LOL! I wasn’t far off. Glad someone else loves this stuff. Thanks for reading.
Isn’t that funny, Kerry, not knowing what they did behind closed doors as a kid! I can see wondering about that! I was old enough when I first heard it, that I knew already! 🙂
Yup, I do love the country music as well!
Kerry, I too love these songs although I wasn’t really exposed to this music until I worked on the Tommy Hunter show in the 1980’s in Toronto. I was lucky enough to meet and hear perform, Glen Campbell (one of my all time favourite’s) and Waylon Jennings amongst others. Glad to know someone else is still listening too…which I usually do on my own as my children and husband don’t share my passion!
Sandra, wow, you worked on the Tommy Hunter Show! He had so many good performers. I remember my family always had to watch it and I remember when Tommy Hunter came to town and we went to see him. I would love to have seen some of these guys live.