IT'S CMA AWARD SEASON

 

There was a time when the Country Music Association awards were the only game in town, and that town was Nashville. For a serious country fan (when country wasn't cool, but was at least country) the CMA's were akin to the Fourth of July. 

When I was a pre-teen I couldn't wait for the NBC (and later, CBS) broadcast. I'd park myself on the floor in front of our big console TV and snarl at anyone who dared try to change the channel. Seeing my favorite artists dressed all fancy in long gowns and tuxedos was a far cry from watching their taped performances on Hee Haw. If not for that cornball show, country singers would only exist in our imaginations or on Saturday afternoon syndicated programs like The Bill Anderson Show or The Porter Wagoner Show. The only times the big three networks featured a country act was when they were "sort of" country, like Glen Campbell or heaven forbid, John Denver. No twang allowed!

But there, on my screen, were Merle Haggard and Connie Smith and Dolly Parton and Charley Pride. That's not to say that the networks that carried the awards were perfect. Whereas now the Entertainer of the Year award is the last announcement of the evening, in the sixties the last award presented was to the newest Country Music Hall of Fame inductee. Unfortunately, in 1968 by the time the presenter got done extolling the latest initiate's achievements it was about nine seconds before ten o'clock. Since it took Bob Wills eight seconds to make his way to the stage, all the viewing audience saw was a single-second shot of his smiling face before the program cut to the local news. Rather a disrespectful ordination. But the networks were disdainful of country music fans, since the only things we bought were straw brooms and buckets of coal. 

Nevertheless, sitting cross-legged on the floor, I could barely contain my excitement. Who would win Entertainer of the Year? Would Merle Haggard sweep? In 1970 he kind of did, and my superior musical taste was affirmed. 

There were a couple of categories back then that were eventually retired -- Comedian of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year. Turned out that no one actually cared about those markers except the individuals involved, although don't get me wrong -- backup bands were exalted for a time. Merle Haggard's Strangers, Buck Owens' Buckaroos, Bill Anderson's Po' Boys; all of them released albums, all of which I owned and loved. On the other hand, I was never a fan of cornball humor, although my dad got a kick out of some of the gags on Hee Haw. I only watched Hee Haw for the musical performances and cringed at the hokey skits. Each recitation went something like, "This city slicker stopped by the store the other day and he asked me if I had any foie gras, and I said, 'Well, I ain't sure what fwaa gwaa is, but did you know your gol'dang tire is flat?'" Every joke involved the hillbilly one-upping the supercilious stranger, sort of the way we country fans disdained country haters, but didn't dare voice. Still wasn't funny, though.

They did add a new category, the Horizon award, in 1981. It turned out to be hit-or-miss. The first recipient was Terri Gibbs, who had one chart hit and was never heard from again. On the other hand, other winners were The Judds, Randy Travis, Travis Tritt and Mark Chesnutt. In 2007 the name was changed to New Artist of the Year, although I think "horizon" had more cachet. Video of the Year was added in 1985 when CMT and TNN became hot commodities. I loved country music videos. They weren't as innovative as the ones featured on MTV, but they didn't need to be. This was country, not a Jackson Pollock canvas.

1968 was the first year the awards were telecast and it struck me, a twelve-year-old, that I, too, wanted a say in who claimed those glass bullet trophies. Somehow I learned that in order to qualify as a CMA member, one must be involved, in some manner, in the music industry. Easy enough. I would apply for membership as an employee of a radio station. Really, all they asked for was my fifteen-dollar money order and I was in. They sent me a first-round ballot that essentially listed every single singer and song that existed in the previous twelve-month period. Just in case the compilers missed anyone, there was also a write-in space. Once that first ballot was tabulated, the potential nominees dwindled to ten in each category. The third and final ballot was the biggie, where I had to make a final decision among the top five vote-getters. I treated it like a mixture of acetone and a blow torch. As long as I made the exact right selection in each category, the world as we knew it would survive. Few of my choices actually triumphed, because unlike me, those other music professionals had really bad taste. Johnny Cash? Come on.

My most memorable CMA broadcast was 1975's, when this happened:

In hindsight, yes, Charlie Rich was drunk, but his gesture spoke for all of us. A friend, the one who'd immersed me in country music in the first place, told me one day over the phone that she really liked John Denver. I was appalled. That effete folky guy? Who was her favorite female country artist, Roberta Flack? Those, like me, who still revered actual country music saw Denver for who he was, an interloper. (I've since softened on him.)

As time moved on, I gave up my coveted CMA membership. I was only a bona fide member for about three years before other pursuits claimed my attention (and my negligible dollars), but I continued to watch the broadcast faithfully until 2001. Now I have no idea what goes on. Are they still televised? Or does one need to stream them on YouTube? That would kind of dilute the glamour. 

I scanned this year's list of nominees and I only recognized a few of the names. I did find it amusing that "Fast Car", originally released in 1988, was nominated for both single and song of the year. I promise I will check out all the names and songs and I will post critiques soon.

I owe the CMA's at least that.

 

 

 

 

 

 WHAT IS IT ABOUT GEORGE STRAIT?

I've never before written about George Strait. It's like trying to write a Merle Haggard missive ~ what's left to say? I've penned articles about George Strait singles, George Strait albums; but never about why the artist himself made such an impact on me. As a novice music journalist, I don't know any of the tricks to make my writing compelling; thus, I rely on things I can relate to; snippets that have relevance to my own life. 

As the seventies wound to a close, I abandoned country music completely. That may sound like a capricious decision, but ever since I became old enough to recognize music I'd been consumed by it. So, no, it wasn't a random impulse, like deciding to paint my living room purple, it was a long contemplation. I told myself, just give country another month; maybe it'll turn around. "You wouldn't want to regret this decision!" 

I don't necessarily remember the exact song that made up my mind; it was more a conglomeration. The Kenny Rogers singles, Dolly Parton's pop releases; but it may have been Charley Pride's remake of a current pop hit (I can't even remember what it was) that was the final straw. I asked myself how long I was willing to put up with all this. And that's when I permanently tuned my car radio to the rock station and didn't look back. MTV was just becoming huge, and I began watching rock (pop?) videos. Huey Lewis and The News, Robert Palmer, WHAM, Genesis, even that cartoon video by A-Ha. I loved 'em all. The artists may have been synthetic, but at least they didn't pretend to be something they weren't. 

Then one Friday evening, when I was in the neighborhood after doing a bit of shopping, I decided to stop by my mom and dad's house. They were sitting in their living room watching a VHS tape of some country guy I'd never before laid eyes on. I sat down and caught a bit of his act, contemptuous. Yea, he was okay, but I didn't know him ~ didn't even know his name ~ and besides, country music was so passe. I became irritated when my parents couldn't even manage to tear their eyes away from the screen. "Who's this?" I finally asked, and my mom said "George..." somebody. I didn't catch his last name. "Isn't he good?" she asked, "Yea...he's okay," I said, to spare her feelings. Soon, as no other conversation seemed forthcoming, I excused myself and went home. And that was that. I never gave the guy another thought.

At work I still tuned my desk radio to Y93 and bathed in the familiarity of the Top 40 hits. Then one day as I pulled into a parking spot in front of my kids' elementary school and waited for the bell to ring, Y93 queued up something I didn't care for, so I punched the radio button to the country station. And I heard this:

I had no idea who was singing, but I swooned. When the song ended, I was desperate to hear it again. The disc jockey said, "George Strait" and suddenly it all clicked. "Oh, this is that guy! The one my parents couldn't take their eyes off!"

This was what country was supposed to be! Not that pseudo-country that Kenny Rogers croaked. This had steel guitar and upfront drums and Wow! That voice! When he scaled all the way up on the last chorus, I was thunderstruck. What the heck had I missed on that VHS tape?

It took a while ~ it was a slow transformation. I didn't want to give up my MTV, and anyway, how did I know if other country music was as good as this George guy? Maybe most of it still sucked and Strait was an anomaly. But I dipped my toe in the water. I tuned to the country station more frequently and I heard singles that didn't make me queasy. Truth be told, though, I was just waiting to hear "The Big One" again. But I stopped into Musicland and picked out a couple of country cassettes at random ~ The Sweethearts Of The Rodeo and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I'd never heard of the first group and didn't have a favorable impression of the second, but it turned out I liked the tapes, especially NGDB. And that turned me. I was firmly back into country. And it was all thanks to "that George guy".

I had some catching up to do. I wanted to acquaint myself with his older songs, but he had so many good new ones coming out that it was a frenzy just trying to keep up.  

Why do I like him so much? Above all is The Voice. George Strait isn't simply a stylist; he's a singer. There are guys with range ~ not many, but some. George has range. Maybe he doesn't employ it as much anymore, but if you listen to a ballad like "Last In Love" from the Pure Country soundtrack, he's amazing. It's actually easier to hit the high notes on a two-stepper like "The Big One" than it is on a ballad, where the singer's voice is laid bare. I recently listened closely to that track and George doesn't strain; he's a natural.  

 

Number two, he can pick songs. I know Strait has begun writing again in recent years, but his real talent lies in spotting a perfect song and envisioning just the right way to record it. Of course he recorded a lot of Dean Dillon songs, but my favorites are those written by another writer he seems to have a fondness for, Jim Lauderdale.

Three, he doesn't let you forget real country. Some of my favorite George Strait tracks are album cuts, where he includes a classic country song you sort of remember, but never done like this.  

Four, The Ace In The Hole Band. These guys are tight, and right at home with George. They should be, since they've all been together since the seventies when Strait was the lead singer of the band then known as Stoney Ridge. There's a lot to be said for continuity, not to mention loyalty. And I don't know who the background singers are, but kudos to them. They add meat to those recordings!

Five ~ Let's face it, Strait's voice is as comfy and cozy as a fleecy blanket. That's what happens when somebody's been your constant companion for more than forty years. How many singers even last that long? I'll give you a minute....

I've had a few favorite singers throughout my life. Merle Haggard will always reign supreme, well, because he's Merle Haggard. For the longest time if anyone asked me which singer I liked the best, I answered, Faron Young. Thinking about it, he had a lot of the same attributes as King George. (I always had good musical taste.)

But if I am in need of some musical sustenance, something to comfort me, make me feel happy and warm, I'm picking George Strait.  

There's no one in country more perfect.

Here ya go:

 

 

 

 

 

 MUSIC CONVEYANCES

The first music conveyance I could truly call my own was bestowed upon me at age six, when I tore the wrapping off my Christmas present and found a beautiful record player inside. It was baby blue and opened and closed with buckles. I didn't even own any records, but my mom and dad let me spin one of the two albums they owned. Thereafter, I borrowed 45's from my big sisters' collection from time to time. I was happy.

But being record-poor, I mostly relied on the radio for new, wondrous music. My mom had a Philco in the kitchen, and of course there was the radio in my dad's Ford Galaxie, and eventually I acquired a tiny transistor (with that single earphone). KRAD played all the hits of the day, and thus my transistor became my new best friend. It walked with me down country roads; it slept under my pillow at night. When I stayed overnight with my friend from town, we each carried our own matching transistors, tuned to the exact same station (Voila ~ stereo!) 

Sometime around the age of ten I got a job (dusting around the house) for which I was paid twenty-five cents a week and I was able to save up to buy my own 45's. And somewhere along the line I came into possession of a battery-powered record player. It was sort of an elongated egg-shape, and orange, I think. It required four D batteries that died too soon, and Dad wasn't pleased when he found his flashlight unnaturally lightweight because I'd stolen the batteries out of it. On the plus side, I became adept at sneaking into my big brother's room when he was away and pilfering his albums, which probably accounted for the short life of my Evereadys. It was all fun and games until one day my brother came home unexpectedly and I whisked the covers over the record player perched on my bed, subsequently forgot about it and sat down, breaking the arm.

I didn't get a decent stereo system until I was sixteen and had an actual summer job. By decent, I mean a hundred-dollar JC Penney setup, with speakers that could be separated, an upgraded turntable and an AM/FM radio. By now I had quite the album and single collection, plus I could stay up late and try to tune in WSM in Nashville or WBAP in Fort Worth. The clearest and closest great overnight station, however, was WHO in Des Moines. That's where I heard new music; not on my dinky local station.

For some reason I mostly bypassed the cassette phase, probably because I didn't own a player, but I briefly flirted with eight-tracks, due to inheriting my parents' old console stereo, which had an eight-track player built in. Overall, however, I stuck with vinyl. 

I don't remember when I became fed up with the inferior sound of the old console, but I became determined to buy a nice stereo system, which I did (on credit) in 1980. The salesman spotted a mark the second I breezed through the door and talked me into also slapping Stonehenge-sized B&O speakers (They're Swedish!) on my credit card, too. And granted, my new sound system was awesome.

I bought my first CD player in 1990, and I had to start my whole collection over! But I loved the convenience and the relative durability of CD's and thus I had to keep buying bigger and bulkier CD shelves. I don't know exactly how many CD's I own now; I would estimate five hundred, a lot of them boxed up, because really, unless you're an old-money baron with a silk-lined library, who has room for all those? And even the ones still resting on shelves never get played. I don't even own a CD player anymore.

At some point I began utilizing my Windows Media Player and uploaded all my best CD's, which was exhausting but convenient once the project was complete. Then my computer died and my external hard drive went kaput, so all my effort was for nil. 

For a while I made do with SiriusXM on my desktop. We already had it in the car, so I paid a few bucks extra for home service. That got irksome really fast. Sirius rarely changes its playlists, so the same songs were on repeat...over and over. Finally I could take no more. But saying goodbye wasn't easy. You think they just let you leave? Oh, no. I tried and tried and the chat-bot just kept arguing with me. Finally I had to make a phone call (an activity I hate) and turned on the "pitiful poor me" routine. The poor girl on the other end had no rejoinder, but she did offer to send me a home kit at no charge, just in case I ever wanted to re-subscribe.

I don't know when I first sampled Spotify; probably when I was looking for Sirius alternatives. Like anything new, I didn't spot all its possibilities at first. I definitely knew, however, that I hated its commercial breaks. When I discovered the playlist options, I quickly signed up for the premium service. Now it's my sole music conveyance. I love, love controlling my listening experience! And almost all my favorite albums are there! 

I still own my albums from the sixties for sentimental reasons. I know every tear in every binding, I recognize the wear marks on the covers. I like seeing my handwritten name and year on the backs. If I was to spin any of them today, I'd know just where every skip happens, how to nudge the phonograph needle past it. Which album doesn't want to move past the first wide groove and instead keeps spinning 'round and 'round with little hiccup sounds until I pick up the arm and place it in front of the first track. I know which albums are a little warped but still play if you're gentle with them. I know without looking who wrote the liner notes. I know if Hargus "Pig" Robbins played piano on the record. But my sixties and my seventies and my eighties stereo systems are long relegated to a forgotten landfill, and if I wanted to play those physical albums ever again, I'd have to lay out some bucks and find some physical space, both of which are in short supply.

But if I want to hear "Let Me Tell You About A Song" or "With Love, From Lynn" or "Pickin' Wild Mountain Berries", I can click on my Spotify album library and there they are!

Sometimes technology is wonderful.

 

 COUNTRY MUSIC IN THE SEVENTIES

 

(just kidding)

The seventies were a schizophrenic decade for country music. In retrospect it was a generational clash ~ stone country stalwarts versus (mostly) record producers who salivated from afar as Olivia Newton-John hit the stratosphere with "sort-of country" singles and asked themselves, "Why can't I sign me one of those Olivia Newton-Johns? That would be outasite!" What imitation misses, though, is that one can never replicate the indefinable magic that made the original thing so special. Newton-John was never considered a country singer by fans and she herself never tried to be one. She was country the way The Eagles were country, only less so. Her producer slapped a steel guitar onto a couple of her singles and voila! But her 1974 CMA win scared industry bigwigs, and they panicked. Below the radar, however, that same year an unknown singer named Emmylou Harris released an actual country single (with an assist from Charlie Louvin) called, "If I Could Only Win Your Love". It didn't get the press that Olivia garnered, but true country fans noticed.

Thus, country in the seventies wasn't a battle, per se, but a splintering. On one hand we had "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Rub It In"; on the other, "(I'm A) Stand By My Woman Man" and "Drinkin' My Baby (Off My Mind)". Radio listeners didn't have much choice, though. Unless you had enough money to be an audiophile, you were relegated to AM radio, and AM radio followed the prevailing winds. (By the way, why do so many people consider "Jolene" to be a quintessential country song? I find it fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoying.)

All the pop hits masquerading as country I was bombarded with ultimately pushed me away from country music, and for the longest time I considered the seventies a lost decade. What our memories often do, however sadly, is fixate on the bad, to the detriment of the good. Once I finally re-evaluated, I ashamedly had to admit that the seventies kind of rocked (in a country way). One's just gotta pick through the chaff. 

Thus, Hitsvilly is embarking on a quest to name names ~ the most impactful country artists of the nineteen seventies.  

Stay tuned!

Michelle Anderson, Senior Country Editor

 

Country In The Nineties

We at Hitsvilly are told that nineties-style country music is making a comeback. We say, did it ever go away?

As music documenters we often ponder the "whys" of certain phenomena, and more times than not they boil down to the state of society. The nineties (and for that matter, the eighties) were an optimistic time. That optimism is reflected in the music. Even the sad songs were joyous.

Nobody was morose. Take a look at the hit TV shows of the time. Friends, Seinfeld. The characters squabbled over silly everyday annoyances ~ they were hardly culture warriors, wagging their fingers at their friends over micro-aggressions. They got miffed when one of their mates claimed credit for buying a Big Salad or they ribbed their friend for donning a too-tight pair of leather pants. You know, like real life.

Of course, optimism doesn't entirely explain why country music in the nineties seeped into listeners' bones. For an aspiring country songwriter in the nineteen nineties, Nashville was the place to be. It was the golden age of songwriting. There weren't twelve artists competing to record the one lone good song ~ hundreds of great songs spilled from the sky; enough for everybody lining Sixteenth Avenue to clasp at least one in their palm. 

Another factor was simplicity. Your humble Hitsvilly editor is hardly an expert on today's country music, but she's sampled enough to know that it's awful. Did everybody forget how to write songs? The current trend this songwriter has noticed is the compulsion to cram as many words into one line as bizarrely possible. What's the damn rush? It smacks of insecurity. A good writer takes his or her time. An honest emotion can be conveyed in a six-word line of lyrics. 

I cross my heart
And promise to
Give all I've got to give
To make all your dreams come true
In all the world
You'll never find
A love as true as mine

 

Which brings me to...emotion. Today's hits leave me...empty. They're either listicles, invoking fans' supposed favorite things (instead of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, it's big tractor tires and moonlight fishin' holes) or they namedrop Strait and Hank and Willie, trying to convince the listener that this really, really is a country song. Did you catch all the names? If an honest song smacked them in the ass, today's artists would choke on their espresso and spew a few choice epithets. "That ain't commercial, bro!"

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
Time don't matter to me
'Cause I'm a thousand miles from nowhere
And there's no place I wanna be

I got heartaches in my pocket
I got echoes in my head
And all that I keep hearing
Are the cruel, cruel things that you said

 

"What? I don't get it. Is he drivin' a pickup truck with a lift kit? Am I supposed to feel, like sad or something? I'm jus' here for the party, dawg."

Finally, country music is a unique genre. With that comes some expectations. One, the beat. The ideal country song is two-step danceable. Two, instrumentation! Yes, a country song needs steel and fiddle, a Telecaster and real drums. And two-part harmony. Nineties country, almost without fail possessed all those things.

Clearly, today's listeners (and not just the old fogies) are craving all those things. It's too bad they're not getting them, at least not on Top 40 Country radio. No wonder they've begun searching out old nineties releases.

 

In the weeks ahead, we'll be featuring some of the best nineties country albums, for those who don't know where to start. In the meantime check out our "Best Of" list of nineties country artists.

 

 

Sasha Stewart, Executive Editor

 

 

 1965 ~ A Musical Obsession Begins

In 1964 at age nine, I had no disposable income. It could be that my mom figured I had no use for money of my own, and she was probably right. After all, every Sunday morning after Mass my mom and dad would drop my brother and me off at the Knick Knackery, and they'd give me a quarter with which to buy one comic book and one candy bar (I assume my brother, who was sixteen, had his own damn money). I usually went with a Caspar comic and a Three Musketeers bar. But as far as shopping for "needs", my mom presumed I had none. 

Once I turned ten, Mom's presumptions were proven wrong, I needed records.I was sick to death of spinning my older sisters' crappy Bobby Rydell and Ricky Nelson 45's, and all my brother bought were albums, which I didn't dare touch anyway, for fear of my life. What I needed were today's top hits, in particular Beatles hits. The Beatles had become everything to me the year before. None of us in fourth grade had even seen the guys' faces, but their voices were all over the radio air waves. I stood out on the sidewalk in front of Valley Elementary after school one day and engaged in a spirited debate with Debbie Lealos over which Beatle was the best singer. I insisted it was Paul, but having never seen the band in the flesh, I'd confused Paul with John. I'd conveniently combined the cutest guy in the pictures with the one with the best voice. Nine-year-old girls are superficial that way.

When Ed Sullivan announced on his show that The Beatles would be appearing the following Sunday night, it was the most earth-shattering news my friends and I had ever heard in our less than one decade of life. My parents always watched The Ed Sullivan Show, which was actually awful. The spasmodic Sullivan invariably showcased some opera singer and a guy who balanced plates on a stick and a Spanish man who conversed with the linen-gloved puppets on his hands. Every once in a while a doo-wop group like Dion and The Belmonts showed up and faithfully lip-synched to their latest hit. The studio audience was comprised of women in sequined gowns and bow-tied dandies.

But this particular Sunday night, February 9, 1964, I staked out my spot directly in front of our TV screen sometime around 6:00, my hand hovering near the dial to guard against anyone even considering changing the channel. My mom and dad were bewildered by all the fuss, but since Ed's show was their regular go-to program, they simply shrugged. Mom finished washing the supper dishes and Dad stepped out on the porch for a smoke. At seven they each settled into their chairs in the living room and I fidgeted through the opening acts, some family of acrobats and a guy doing Kirk Douglas impressions. 

Then at last:

Music fans can wax poetic about their favorite concert; you know, the one showcasing their all-time favorite artist. They can reminisce about the first time they heard Led Zeppelin on the radio. But very few ever experienced something completely new, the rumbling of a musical earthquake.

I did.

And I was nine. 

Nothing was ever the same again.

Thus, by the time I turned ten I sorely needed money to buy Beatles singles. I proposed the idea of an allowance to my mom. Twenty-five cents a week for dusting the furniture and straightening up around the house. She guessed that would be okay. Four weeks of minimal effort and I could traipse over the bridge to Popplers Music and pick out one precious '45.  

When those four weeks rounded the corner, though, I found that my decision was more difficult than I'd envisioned. There were so many pop hits I really, really liked.

Two that I bought with my lackadaisical earnings:

California Girls ~ The Beach Boys

 

I loved - loved! that track. I even wrote my own alternate version, called "English Boys" I spun the grooves off that single, dancing the jerk in front of the big upstairs dresser mirror with a hairbrush microphone, warbling my substitute lyrics.

I Can't Help Myself ~ The Four Tops

And my big brother helped me fill in the gaps. He forked over money to buy me singles I wouldn't have bought on my own, like this one that had a sleeve with three women posing in elegant jewel gowns:

My brother also bought me a few albums. Birthdays and Christmas were a guarantee of something new to add to my collection of -- count 'em -- three LP's. He is the one who bought me If You Can Believe Your Eyes And Ears by The Mama's And The Papas, and also Heart Full Of Soul by The Yardbirds, one of his few selections that missed the mark. I didn't like it. I liked maybe one song on the entire album, but I never told him that. 

My main treasure trove of musical listening, however, was sneaking into my brother's room when he was away and pilfering a few of his many, many albums. I knew it was a fraught excursion, but I couldn't help myself. My brother owned anyone who was anyone. He had all The Beatles LP's and he had Bob Dylan and Johnny Rivers' Live At The Whisky A Go Go. All I owned was an orange oblong phonograph with a clamp-on lid, unlike the sophisticated stereo system of my brother's, but I was extremely careful to only drop my needle on the bands and not cause any inadvertent bumps or jostles. Then, when I was done, I'd slip the album back into its curated slot on my brother's bookshelf and he was none the wiser.

There was one singular album my brother owned in 1965 that became my obsession ~ Help! I filched that LP approximately 5,000 (okay, maybe 50) times. Anytime I saw, through my upstairs window, my brother zoom out of the yard in his blue Ford Fairlane, I'd watch for a bit to make sure he didn't inexplicably come back; then I'd pad into his room and pinch the album out from its space and sit on my bed with my record player and spin the grooves out of it ~ over and over ~ until it was time to cast a watchful eye out the window again.

There was simply something about that album ~ to my ten-year-old ears, it was perfect. I even created a musical featuring all its songs. I never actually put pen to paper, but I certainly had the song order set in my mind. Help! was my obsession. 

1965 was also the year that Shindig! became my must-see. Shindig! (apparently everything ended in an exclamation point back then) aired every Wednesday night on the ABC network, and it featured essentially every act that had a hit record. Even The Beatles made an appearance. The Righteous Brothers were regular performers, but if one wanted to see any hit of the day live, here it was. One or two-hit wonders like Freddie And The Dreamers, Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs, and The Honeycombs, along with multiple hitmakers like The Animals, The Turtles, Sonny and Cher, and The Lovin' Spoonful all showed up. The problem for me was, my weekly accordion lesson was on Wednesday night. I already resented having those stupid lessons foisted on me, and now my frustration was multiplied. I couldn't miss Shindig! (!) My mom, however, always managed to get us home in the nick of time. I waved off supper and instead parked myself in front of the TV. Mom wasn't normally accommodating, but she sometimes allowed me to chew my pork chop and boiled potatoes on a TV tray in the living room, with all the lamps switched off, the better to view the magnificent black and white of this wondrous show.

In December, four months after Help! first appeared on my horizon, The Beatles released their sixth album, Rubber Soul. Of course my brother bought it, and of course I "borrowed" it. Was there no end to the awesomeness of these guys? While Help! would always claim a special place in my heart, Rubber Soul was pretty good! I loved almost every track, except for the one named after me, which was embarrassingly bad. I lost count of the number of adult strangers who, upon learning my name, spouted the clever line, "Oh, like MEE-chelle, my belle?" On the other hand, Norwegian Wood, You Won't See Me, and In My Life were astoundingly good. 

In 1965 I finally felt in control of my own musical tastes. I could buy a 45 every four weeks, sometimes sooner if my uncle flipped me a quarter for no discernible reason. I had a treasure trove of magnificent albums only a few footsteps away ~ I just had to be stealthy enough to snag them. 

And music felt brand-new; thrilling. Even tracks I now wonder how I ever favored felt at the time like shooting stars.

From Billboard's Top 100 hits of the year, these still hold up:

• California Girls ~ The Beach Boys
• I Can't Help Myself ~ The Four Tops
• Ticket To Ride ~ The Beatles
• Back In My Arms Again ~ The Supremes
• Help Me, Rhonda ~ The Beach Boys
• Do You Believe In Magic ~ The Lovin' Spoonful
• Like A Rolling Stone ~ Bob Dylan
• Baby, The Rain Must Fall ~ Glenn Yarbrough

Of course, who could know at ten? But in hindsight,1965 birthed my proclivity for writing my own lyrics and for big-picture thinking. Shoot, it beat trying to master math. Fourth grade was a trial I'd had to endure, and thus '65's sunburned summer was ripe for musical abandon. The dream world was always superior to real life anyway. 

What better to nurture a dream than a tumble of newborn, succulent music? 

 

 

Michelle Anderson, Senior Country Editor

 

 1964 ~ Mercy!

In 1964 at the age of nine, I moved to a tiny town in southeastern North Dakota called Lisbon. My bachelor uncle had purchased a business there called Triple Service that consisted of a café, a service station, and a bar with a colossal dance floor, all chained together in one elongated building; thus “triple” service. My uncle Howard was intimately familiar with bars, but he barely knew how to fry up a hamburger. He needed someone to flip pancakes and baste easy-over eggs, so he convinced my mom and my aunt Barbara to leave their respective farms and work alternate weeks as short order cooks. Logistics demanded that they bring their kids with them—after all, my dad and my uncle Arnold had all they could handle plowing and planting and harvesting. And thus my cousins Paul and Karen and I settled in for the school year in Lisbon, North Dakota.

I absolutely loved it! I’d always been a country kid and had missed out on the fun things I imagined my town friends got to do every day, liking walking to an actual store. The only place my walks ever took me to were another crumbling farmstead or a solitary grove of cottonwood trees. It’s not that in Lisbon we actually resided within the town limits—Triple Service was situated down Highway 27 on the rural outskirts where no law enforcers bothered to poke and prod for violations. But it was the place to be on a Saturday night. Women with red-stained lips and their dates sporting bolo ties stepped across the threshold, the thumping bass of a country trio echoing in their ears. Uncle Howard hung behind the bar with his second lieutenant, Big Al, and served up gin fizzes and whiskey sours; and eventually a twosome chanced out onto the dance floor, soon to be followed by couples more timid.

Where was I?  Well, some nights my cousins and I cloistered inside the liquor room, where my cousin Paul, all of eleven years old, grew quickly bored and began sliding square ice cubes onto the dance floor, or executing his coup de grace—letting a hapless frog loose to terrorize the dancing couples.

Triple Service was a revelation, but my time at Catholic school was excruciating. My mom could never afford to enroll me in parochial school, so given the opportunity she pounced on it. I don’t know if she had a premonition that I would turn into a debased heathen, but regardless, I didn’t like having a nun with a blue coif standing at the front of the room conducting religious studies. It felt weird and alien. My cousins were Catholic school veterans, so they thought nothing of it, but I noticed the subtle digs the sisters would murmur—“Oh, you live at the place,” they’d say. Uncle Howard had a burnt-wood sign tacked to the wall of the café that read, “There’s no place anywhere near this place, quite like this place, so this must be the place”. And I’d look up at that sign and chuckle.

I divided my current life into halves — one half was St. Aloysius School with its nineteenth century rituals — and the other half was Triple Service and actual life.

A bar is a different world when the neon sign isn’t flashing. Kids of nine or ten could waltz inside, unimpeded. They could study the songs on the juke box and memorize them. If a couple of early-morning drinkers were claiming the bar stools, they were at least amiable and they mostly ignored Karen and me.

Karen and I whiled away our Saturday mornings twirling around on the café’s swivel stools and dreaming up unique diversions. Her big idea was to coat oyster crackers in various toppings—chocolate syrup, garlic powder, A1 steak sauce; and dare the other to consume them. My idea was more ambitious. “What if we make a comic book?” Drawing from the title strips on the jukebox, I determined that our comic would be about “artists when they get old”.  Thus, Bobby Bare transformed into an old grizzly bear; Bent Fabric, who had a hit with the song “Alley Cat”, was a bent, jagged hunk of cloth tumbling down a flight of stairs. I did all the drawings and, to my recollection, all the characters’ witty sayings, but I’m sure Karen contributed something. She was definitely the cute, charming one, but I was the brains of that outfit. We stapled our project together and Uncle Howard thought it was a hoot. He passed it around to the guys at the bar and suddenly everybody wanted a copy. That was a problem. There were no mimeograph machines with which to reproduce our (my) masterpiece, so although we promised copies would be forthcoming, they never in actuality panned out.

One sunny autumn day, Karen and I decided we should climb up on the roof and perch ourselves between the big red wooden letters that spelled out “T-R-I-P-L-E S-E-R-V-I-C-E” and warble “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” to unsuspecting patrons who were simply trying to fill up their gas tanks and be on their way. The customers glared up at us—they clearly didn’t appreciate our efforts. We, on the other hand, considered ourselves the coolest rubes this side of Fargo.

Our big venture, however, was to employ our little trio to entertain Uncle Howard’s bar patrons on their way to grabbing a Grain Belt. Underage as we were, we couldn’t legally inhabit the bar, so we did the next best thing—we set up in the vestibule of the service station, which was situated right between the café and the bar, where thirsty farmers would have to alight before they could breathe in the smoky saloon air. Our accordion teacher had established our act, with Paul on accordion, Karen on guitar, and me on “drum”. Yes, a snare drum—with brushes. I was apparently considered the drudge of the group, but I definitely could keep time, so take that, Miss Alderink! We had a limited repertoire, our big “hit” being “Bye Bye Love”, for which I am proud to say I got to sing the leadoff verse. “There goes my baby with someone new.”

We wore western shirts and our moms had sewed black felt skirts with white fringe for Karen and me. We even had black plastic cowboy hats. Uncle Howard’s customers loved us! They threw money at us—fives and ones and showers of quarters—so much so that we had to venture into town and purchase brown-glass piggy banks at Ben Franklin in which to store our booty. We were suddenly, to our amazement, rich! I eventually blew my plunder on sparkly objects—pencils with fluttering confetti trimmings and shimmering trinkets dug out of a glass jar on the counter. Karen, no doubt, still has her original earnings.

Weekends at Triple Service were a thrill, but the weeknights too much resembled actual life. Each of us had homework to complete, so we plopped down on fat easy chairs inside Uncle Howard’s attached apartment and completed our arithmetic assignments in the dim light of a living room pole lamp. I lost track of which woman was my mom of the week—my actual mom or my Aunt Barbara—but it really didn’t matter. Each of them spent their evenings grilling up cheeseburgers and shoving frozen pizzas into the oven, and we hardly ever caught sight of them.

What we did do, once homework was done, was turn off all the lights and flip on Uncle Howard’s black and white TV and tune into THE big music show, a syndicated program called The Lloyd Thaxton Show. Lloyd Thaxton featured every hot new artist. I saw Paul Jones shaking maracas, standing in front of Manfred’s electric organ belting out “Do Wah Diddy Diddy”. I also caught a bunch of middling acts, like the Newbeats and Chad and Jeremy and Dick and Dee Dee.

But the performer who zapped me like a thunderbolt was an average guy clad in all black wearing sunglasses—standing in the middle of a dark stage.

Suddenly there was a thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack of a snare drum, followed by a dangerous guitar intro—like something out of a James Bond movie—and then came that voice.

“Pretty woman, walkin’ down the street; pretty woman, the kind I’d like to meet”.

And that growl— RRRReeeYowwww!

I bolted upright in my chair, transfixed.

Then came the bridge, which I didn’t know was called a bridge, with its pretty piano glissando accompanied by those drum rolls.

Be mine tonigh---igh---IGHT! in an operatic tenor.

Mercy!

The man was almost inert on the stage, but that only made me home in on his spotlighted presence more. And though his body never moved, his voice dipped and climbed like a moonflower.

When the song was over, I continued to stare at the TV, silently willing it to play the song again. Then I glanced at my cousins, but neither of them were swooning or appeared at all captivated. I thought, “What is wrong with you people?”

I had already fallen hopelessly in love with The Beatles, but this song was no “All My Loving” or “Do You Want To Know A Secret”. It was so much more sophisticated—every scintilla of that recording had been honed to smack the listener square in the gut.

I don’t know when the thought zapped into my brain that this was the quintessential rock ‘n roll song, but I was right. Almost sixty years later, it still holds up.

Sometime around the end of December my little journey into musical Neverland ended. My mom missed her two youngest too much to continue the enterprise, and my eighteen-year-old sister was no substitute for a real mom. I went back to Valley Elementary where I was no longer the smartest kid in class, but where my Beatles obsession only grew.

But I have never forgotten that singular thrill. Even today when I hear Oh, Pretty Woman, I hear it in black and white.

In the dark. 

 

 

 

Michelle Anderson, Senior Country Editor