the
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
the
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Honky tonk honey Gram Parsons loved being in the spotlight. Whether he was singing and strumming on stage or posing for the camera in fancy finery and eyeliner, he was always the most exotic cat in the room. With his pretty face, Southern charm, and puppy-dog charisma, I believe he might have been just as adept at acting as he…
I’ve read six books about a singer/songwriter that some of you may barely recognize or recall: Gram Parsons. Six books. And three more that feature him prominently. I begin each book hoping to understand how and why such an enormously gifted musical visionary chose, or was predestined, to recklessly self-destruct at such a young age. The biographies present a wealth of information: about how this well-mannered Southern boy pioneered and popularized the merging of country sounds with rock, rhythm and folk...about his influence on artists as diverse as The Rolling Stones and Elvis Costello...about how he put Emmylou Harris on the map. But all the books end the same way: with Gram dead at age 26 from a heroin overdose in a bleak desert motel room on September 19, 1973. His tragic-romantic personal history rattles my brain. His music rattles my soul.
"People would say ‘You shouldn’t be sayin’ that. You should be talkin’ about country music.’ And I said, ‘Why not? It’s the truth! Why can’t I say I’m a Beatles fan?’ I used to get criticized for that." Those words are from country music great Buck Owens, who would have turned 86 today. He was responding to the country purists who accused him of selling out by adding rock elements to his repertoire in the mid-'60s. Most rock fans know that The Beatles recorded a version of Buck's 1964 hit "Act Naturally," which featured cowboy-loving Ringo on vocals. But few realize that Buck was a fan of The Beatles even before they chose his song as the B side of "Yesterday."
Woody Guthrie, born 103 years ago today, is best known as the dust bowl balladeer who wrote many of America's most beloved songs, including "This Land Is Your Land." He was a free spirit and a sprite, a vagabond minstrel who spent his 55 years on earth using music to empower the common man. He wrote of the roads he traveled and the characters he met, of "dusty old dust" and the places he lived on "the wild, windy plains." He also wrote about a land and a culture far removed from his Tom Joad roots, a place "where the halvah meets the pickle, where the sour meets the sweet." Yes, folks, it turns out that Woody Guthrie had a Jewish mother-in-law! And folk culture is all richer for it.
What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Rockabilly King Carl Perkins? Yes, "Blue Suede Shoes." Congratulations. I hope no one out there thinks that Elvis wrote this rockin' ditty. His version seems to be the one everybody remembers. Chalk it up to hair and hips. But it was the El's buddy Carl, the poor 'ol sharecropper's son from Tennessee, who wrote and first recorded it. Since its release in January 1956, there's never been a shortage of blue suede in the world of rock. The song has been covered by everyone from The Beatles and Buddy Holly to Bill Haley and Pat Boone. But I'll bet you didn't know that some rather unlikely artists have also recorded and performed this most sacred of rock tunes. Here's a smathering of some rather outré Blue Suede renditions, plus covers of other Perkins classics.