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This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
"OK, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Gram Parsons, blah blah blah..." | 0:00:06 | 0:00:10 | |
No! This is the story of how country music | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
constantly has to reinvent itself, to adapt to a changing culture. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:18 | |
The reason country music survives is because someone always comes along, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:25 | |
takes what's been done before and adds something original, | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
something unique. This is what it's all about, | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
the musicians who made a difference, | 0:00:32 | 0:00:33 | |
who gave us great songs that stand the test of time. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:38 | |
You see, people, if you're going to write a hit song, | 0:00:38 | 0:00:41 | |
you have to find your target audience. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:44 | |
Fortunately, I have found mine. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:46 | |
Am I right, ladies? Thanks for coming out tonight. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:49 | |
This one is just for you. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
It's called The Border Collie Song. Are you ready? | 0:00:53 | 0:00:56 | |
Show's up here, ladies. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:58 | |
# I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, let's go! | 0:01:00 | 0:01:03 | |
# What's the hold-up? I am ready to work, let's go | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
# I am ready to work, I'm ready to herd | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
# I'm ready to go, just say the word | 0:01:08 | 0:01:10 | |
# In case you dogs have not heard, I'm a working dog | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
# Now I've got issues, I'll admit, I basically don't know when to quit | 0:01:15 | 0:01:19 | |
# My one and only occupation, keep those herds in a tight formation | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
# Missing heifers, wayward strays, it tends to put a damper on my day | 0:01:22 | 0:01:25 | |
# It's in my blood, what can I say? | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
# Boys, get out of my way | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog. # | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
# I've been drinking all day long, taking in the town | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
# I've done spent my whole pay cheque just a honky-tonkying round | 0:01:44 | 0:01:50 | |
# I don't have enough to pay my rent | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
# I ain't going to worry, though | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
# I got time for one more round | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
# And a six-pack to go... # | 0:01:58 | 0:02:03 | |
How could he not afford to pay his rent? | 0:02:03 | 0:02:05 | |
The guy's got a hit song on the radio. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
You see, this is the glaring contradiction in country music - | 0:02:08 | 0:02:13 | |
a lot of rich guys and girls singing about how hard their lives are. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:17 | |
That's why a lot of people don't like country music. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:20 | |
They think it's phoney. But here's what you need to understand, | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
a country song is never about the singer, it's about the listener, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:28 | |
because a country song evokes the life of the blue-collar worker. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:32 | |
You know who I'm talking about, that heavy-equipment-lifting, | 0:02:32 | 0:02:35 | |
Dodge-Ram-2500-driving, beer-drinking, critter-hunting, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
frustrated-with-the-government good old boy. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:43 | |
# Please, bartender, I want a six-pack to go | 0:02:43 | 0:02:47 | |
# I been drinking all day long... # | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
Country music is the music of working-class America. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
Why? Because it speaks to the heart of rural existence, | 0:02:54 | 0:02:57 | |
and embraces a simpler life. | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
A good country song is only believable when it's authentic. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
# One six-pack to go. # | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
Now, most folks will tell you that country music's origins consist of | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
ballads and dance tunes with very simple chord structures | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
played mostly by stringed instruments. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
It's influenced by the Scots, the English, Irish, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
Scandinavian and European immigrants who settled in the Appalachian parts | 0:03:28 | 0:03:32 | |
of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
# Way down, way down... # | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
What you have in the Appalachian South | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
is a mixture of those ballad traditions. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
You have fiddling traditions, | 0:03:48 | 0:03:52 | |
you've got the German influence of folks coming to Pennsylvania | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
and then migrating down. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
You've got African-American influences in the region, | 0:03:57 | 0:04:01 | |
and you've got Native American influences. So the culture of that | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
was created from this interconnection of a lot of | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
different people, created music traditions that are a little bit | 0:04:08 | 0:04:12 | |
different from other parts of the country. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
I think it's way too easy to assume that country music just trickled | 0:04:20 | 0:04:23 | |
down from the hills of Virginny, or came up from Deliverance country. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:27 | |
The music that Americans brought over from the old country was | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
incredibly diverse. There were gospel songs and parlour songs | 0:04:31 | 0:04:35 | |
and fiddle dance tunes | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
and minstrel songs, and even comedy novelty songs, | 0:04:37 | 0:04:40 | |
and every one of those styles had many, many variations. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
Let's just take, for instance, one instrument - the fiddle. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
Now, what is that? | 0:04:52 | 0:04:54 | |
Is that a French quadrille? Is that a German waltz? | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
Is that an Irish air, is that a Scottish reel? | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
Why, only an old-timer like Ivy could tell you. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:03 | |
Fiddle music essentially came from the Shetland Islands, or Norway, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:09 | |
where even today one in three schoolchildren plays one. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
That music flowed south, through the British Isles, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
across the ocean to Newfoundland, | 0:05:16 | 0:05:17 | |
and then drifted south through Dixie and into Texas, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
so it stands to reason there must have been a lot of riverboat workers | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
playing the thing. It was portable and floatable, | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
and at every stop in the rivers, folks picked it up, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
screeched the bow across the strings | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
and eventually managed to coax a tune out of it. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
Fiddling was actually like a regional dialect. Heck, you could | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
tell where people were from by their style of fiddling. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:38 | |
That's why Appalachian fiddling | 0:05:38 | 0:05:40 | |
is different than Texas double stop fiddling. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
I'd say you were from about 30 miles north of Nashville. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:51 | |
So, with all these fiddle tunes and blues ballads floating around | 0:05:53 | 0:05:57 | |
the South, what was needed was someone to record it. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
A few rudimentary commercial recordings had been made | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
in the early 1900s, but in 1927 a record producer named Ralph Peer | 0:06:03 | 0:06:07 | |
arrived in a small town called Bristol | 0:06:07 | 0:06:10 | |
on the Tennessee-Virginia border. He set up his equipment | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
and the songs he recorded | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
became known as the big bang of country music. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:18 | |
That is the genesis of country music as we know it today. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
Ralph Peer paid folks 50 | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
a side for their recordings, plus royalties. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
So, at the time, that was unprecedented. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
It felt very lucrative for the people who came and made records, | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
especially the Carter family, and Jimmie Rodgers. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
Jimmie Rodgers was known as The Singing Brakeman. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:42 | |
Ralph Peer saw the potential in his music, and later, in 1927, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
invited him to make further recordings. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
One of those recordings was called Blue Yodel, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
and though the word "hit" wasn't really an applicable term to music | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
in those days, that's exactly what Blue Yodel was. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
It made Jimmie Rodgers the first recognisable country star. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:02 | |
# T for Texas | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
# T for Tennessee-hee | 0:07:05 | 0:07:10 | |
# T for Texas, T for Tennessee... # | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
Rodgers' career was tragically short. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
In 1933, at the age of 35, he died of respiratory failure, | 0:07:17 | 0:07:21 | |
but his legacy and his music would live on, cementing his importance | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
not only to country music but to the entire American song book. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:30 | |
# And T for Thelma | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
# The gal that made a wreck of me... # | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
HE YODELS | 0:07:37 | 0:07:39 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
# T for Texas | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
# Gimme a T for Tennessee... # | 0:07:55 | 0:07:58 | |
Often a song will go through many reincarnations before it finds | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
its perfect musical bed. With my song Working Dog | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
I thought I'd give it the bluegrass spin, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
because bluegrass is up-tempo and manic, just like a Border collie. | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
'So I rounded up a handful of the finest bluegrass musicians | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
'Nashville has to offer.' | 0:08:18 | 0:08:20 | |
Is this the essence of Bluegrass here, to play round one mic? | 0:08:20 | 0:08:23 | |
A lot of people do. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:24 | |
-Yep. -I'll just play through my crap version of it, | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
and then you guys will make it sound stunning, all right? | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
So... | 0:08:32 | 0:08:33 | |
# I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, let's go! | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
# What's the hold-up? I am ready to work, I'm ready to herd | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
# I am ready to go, just say the word | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
# In case you dogs have not heard, I'm a working dog... # | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
So if anybody has any arrangement ideas, feel free to throw them in. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:01 | |
But that's just... that's the crux of it. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
You want to... | 0:09:03 | 0:09:05 | |
Maybe kind of like a swingy type of kick-off thing into it? | 0:09:05 | 0:09:08 | |
So let him do that, and then you come, like...da-ri-ri-ri-ri. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
You know? Just follow. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
Yeah. Does that sound... Is that bluegrass? | 0:09:29 | 0:09:33 | |
Bluegrassy, yes. Does it sound like what you want? | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
Is it encapsulating the thinking of a Border collie? | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
This is a manic, a manic, hyperactive Border collie. | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
-I guess... -Over the same chord structure, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
so you end up doing something like that. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:48 | |
HE RIFFS | 0:09:48 | 0:09:50 | |
# Ready to go, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go, hey! | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
# What's the hold-up? I am ready to work, I'm ready to herd | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
# I'm ready to go, just say the word | 0:10:02 | 0:10:04 | |
# In case you dogs have not heard, I'm a working dog... # | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
Was that good? I think we got it, right? | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
The enthusiasm for bluegrass music often seems to rise and fall | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
on the release of Southern-themed films, like Deliverance, | 0:10:47 | 0:10:50 | |
or the Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
# I am a man of constant sorrow | 0:10:53 | 0:11:00 | |
# I've seen trouble all my days... # | 0:11:00 | 0:11:06 | |
Set in 1937 in rural Mississippi, | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
it features scenes where George Clooney | 0:11:09 | 0:11:11 | |
and his Soggy Bottom Boys play their requested hit on the radio. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
The soundtrack from the film sold millions. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
# The place where he | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
# Was born and raised... # | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
Scores of people suddenly rediscovered America's truest | 0:11:24 | 0:11:28 | |
and oldest form of country music. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
The only problem is this is complete bullshit. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
Bluegrass music hadn't even been invented in 1937. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
It didn't come along until the early '40s, | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
when Bill Monroe joined the Grand Ole Opry and needed to create | 0:11:41 | 0:11:44 | |
a sound that would make acoustic instruments relevant, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
because electric instruments were starting to take over. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
Monroe borrowed from the endless catalogue of traditional folk | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
and gospel songs, songs about momma and the old country church, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:02 | |
and the watering hole and the one-room schoolhouse - | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
stock Americana images - | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
and he ramped them up to 4/4 time with a double stop fiddle | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
and a tub-thumping bassline. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:12 | |
No-one called it bluegrass. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
That term didn't even come in until the 1950s. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:27 | |
It was just fast hillbilly music | 0:12:27 | 0:12:29 | |
designed to get people at the Grand Ole Opry to tap their feet. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
So when somebody who's been newly slobbering over bluegrass' balls | 0:12:32 | 0:12:37 | |
because they watched a George Clooney film | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
sits down and tries to tell you it's America's truest and purest form | 0:12:40 | 0:12:44 | |
of music because it's always played clean and unamplified | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
and sung in a high, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
lonesome hog-pitched voice... | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
punch that person in the epiglottis, | 0:12:53 | 0:12:55 | |
and the sound that comes out of their throat will be an authentic | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
hillbilly whine. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
"Ahh." | 0:13:00 | 0:13:02 | |
One of the strange things about America in the '20s and '30s | 0:13:12 | 0:13:15 | |
was there was complete segregation of schools and churches | 0:13:15 | 0:13:19 | |
and restaurants and public transport, but music | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
was the one thing that flowed across cultural lines, | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
because both blacks and whites sang gospel in churches. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
# Are you lonesome tonight? | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
# Do you miss me tonight? | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
# Are you sorry we drifted apart? # | 0:13:35 | 0:13:41 | |
Some of these songs would become future top 40 hits. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:45 | |
Are You Lonesome To-night? - 1960 Elvis Presley hit. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
Well, grandma was singing it back in the '20s, | 0:13:48 | 0:13:50 | |
sitting on the front porch, | 0:13:50 | 0:13:52 | |
playing a little Martin parlor guitar, drinking mint juleps. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:55 | |
But when the mint juleps were done and the moonshine came out, | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
things got a lot darker. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
There are a lot of different kinds of songs, you know, in these early | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
recordings, and if you really look at the content of them... | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
..you can see how people are singing about, you know, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
things that are important to them or emotional to them or whatever. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
But you also see a lot of songs that are about... | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
disasters and current events, and a lot of songs about betrayal, | 0:14:21 | 0:14:26 | |
and, yeah, murder ballads. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
People were fascinated with any song that told a morbid tale, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
and murder ballads made up a notable portion of traditional music. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:37 | |
One of the most famous was made popular by Fiddlin' John Carson. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:42 | |
Carson recorded a song called Little Mary Phagan, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
about a girl killed in a pencil factory. The song was based on | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
a sensational murder trial taking place at the time in Georgia, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
and the convicted killer was a Jewish man named Leo Frank. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:56 | |
In the song, Carson accuses the Governor of Georgia of taking | 0:14:56 | 0:15:00 | |
a million-dollar bribe from a New York bank | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
to have Frank's sentence commuted from life in prison to lynching. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:07 | |
So the Governor of Georgia had Carson thrown in jail for slander. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
# Little Mary Phagan, she went to town one day | 0:15:14 | 0:15:19 | |
# She went to the pencil factory to get her little pay | 0:15:19 | 0:15:24 | |
# She left her home at seven | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
# She kissed her mother goodbye | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
# Not one time did the poor child think that she was going to die... # | 0:15:29 | 0:15:35 | |
This is the contradictory basis of all country music - good versus bad, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:39 | |
piety versus hedonism, | 0:15:39 | 0:15:41 | |
rambling versus home, family versus individuality. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
# He sneaked along behind her till she reached the metal room | 0:15:45 | 0:15:50 | |
# He laughed and said, Little Mary, you've met your fatal doom... # | 0:15:50 | 0:15:56 | |
Every country song is a three-minute soap opera. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
Oh, it might be sweet on the outside but it's bleeding on the inside. | 0:15:59 | 0:16:04 | |
So if you're a country artist | 0:16:04 | 0:16:06 | |
and you're trying to put out an album with 12 songs on it in a year, | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
you've got exactly one month to get drunk, | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
depressed or heartbroke to find your inspiration. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:17 | |
Leave me or I'll find someone who will. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
That's the motto of country music. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
# Oh, he taught me to love him and promised to love | 0:16:22 | 0:16:29 | |
# And he cherished me over all others above | 0:16:29 | 0:16:35 | |
# How my heart is now wondering no misery can tell | 0:16:35 | 0:16:40 | |
# He's left me no warning, no words of farewell... # | 0:16:40 | 0:16:46 | |
After recording for Ralph Peer at the Bristol sessions in 1927, | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
the Carter Family were an instant sensation. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:53 | |
They would go on to be the most influential group | 0:16:53 | 0:16:56 | |
in country music history. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:58 | |
# Oh, I long to see him and regret the dark hour | 0:16:58 | 0:17:03 | |
# He's gone and neglected this pale wildwood flower. # | 0:17:03 | 0:17:11 | |
The wholesome crinoline and orchids image of the Carter Family | 0:17:11 | 0:17:15 | |
belied the darkness of a lot of their music. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
Wildwood Flower, the most enduring country song ever written, | 0:17:17 | 0:17:21 | |
was about waking up to find out you've been dumped. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:23 | |
If you know anything about country music, | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
you're aware that the Carter lineage stretches from old AP, | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
through Maybelle, Sara, June Carter, Johnny Cash, Nick Lowe, | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
Carlene Carter, | 0:17:35 | 0:17:36 | |
more probably being incubated somewhere in Tennessee right now. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
The Carter family instilled all the virtues on the surface | 0:17:40 | 0:17:43 | |
of country music - purity, decency, domesticity and, most importantly, | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
they projected the idea that country music | 0:17:47 | 0:17:49 | |
is a family participation exercise. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
And like so many musical families that would follow, you know, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
the Jacksons, the Beach Boys, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
perceived unity generally hides a nest of domestic abuse. | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
AP and Sara Carter pretended to be married, | 0:18:02 | 0:18:04 | |
even though they lived separately. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
AP served as a kind of musical director, hand-picking the songs, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:11 | |
controlling their schedules, often taking credit for composing a song, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
you know, generally inflating his own sense of self-importance. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
But the real beauty of the Carters was in their music, their vocals, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
their singing arrangements. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:24 | |
Oh, God, people love to hear about those green hills of Virginny, | 0:18:24 | 0:18:28 | |
and that little poplar log house, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:31 | |
and that big home in heaven waiting for them, | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
where there is always 50 miles of elbow room. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:37 | |
# I'm going where | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
# There's no depression | 0:18:40 | 0:18:43 | |
# To the lovely land | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
# That's free from cares... # | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
In the cities of America, the Great Depression had arrived, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
suddenly and devastatingly. But country folks had been living out | 0:18:52 | 0:18:55 | |
the Great Depression for the last hundred years, and the music | 0:18:55 | 0:18:59 | |
of the Carter Family seemed to shield them | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
from the evils of the big bad world. | 0:19:01 | 0:19:03 | |
But for a big chunk of their career, | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
the Carters were singing those songs about the green hills of Virginny | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
while actually living in Del Rio, Texas, | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
broadcasting from a seedy border town radio station called XERA. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
And it was stations like this that played a vital role in bringing | 0:19:19 | 0:19:22 | |
country music to a wider audience. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
The music of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family and Bradley Kincaid, | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
country music's pioneers, was very limited and very regional, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:33 | |
and it was broadcast over low watt stations | 0:19:33 | 0:19:35 | |
throughout the Appalachians. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:37 | |
How it earned a wider listenership is a very bizarre story, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
but here it goes. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
This guy, JR Brinkley, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
a quack doctor from North Carolina | 0:19:45 | 0:19:47 | |
who had been systematically ran out of every state | 0:19:47 | 0:19:49 | |
he ever attempted to practise in. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
He'd never earned a medical diploma, never been to medical school, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
never owned a licence to practise. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:57 | |
He was a snake oil salesman. | 0:19:57 | 0:19:59 | |
Brinkley moved to a small town called Milford, Kansas, | 0:19:59 | 0:20:02 | |
and set up a practice with a phoney mail order diploma. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:06 | |
One day, a patient came in and complained that he was impotent. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
Brinkley had a great idea. See, he'd been observing these goats | 0:20:09 | 0:20:13 | |
and noticed how randy they got when they were mating. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
He suggested to the patient that if he had a goat's libido, | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
he could drive the ladies wild. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:22 | |
For some reason, the patient thought this was a stonking good idea, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
and agreed to have Brinkley insert goat's testicles into his scrotum. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:30 | |
Brinkley performed the operation with home-made anaesthesia | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
and unsterilized equipment, and sure enough, two weeks later, | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
the guy came back to announce that he was now a bona fide stud. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:41 | |
Pretty soon, Brinkley was inserting goat testicles into dozens | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
of patients, claiming that it cured prostate cancer, flatulence, | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
catarrh, headaches, impotence, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
and to broaden his appeal | 0:20:52 | 0:20:53 | |
he purchased a 50,000W radio station, KFKB, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
and started advertising goat gland treatments on the radio. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
-ON RADIO: -You men, you're holding back, many of you, right now, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
listening to me, and you know you're sick. You know your prostate's | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
infected and diseased, and you know that unless some relief comes to you | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
that you're going to be in the undertaker's parlour, | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
on the old cold slab, being embalmed for a funeral. Come at once to | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
the Brinkley Hospital before it's everlastingly too late. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
In between infomercials he played country music, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
both live and recorded. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
Because of this frankly irresistible mix of country music and goat ball | 0:21:28 | 0:21:32 | |
testimony, KFKB soon became | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
the Midwest's most listened to radio station. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
But then the Kansas State Medical Board decided to investigate | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
Brinkley, and soon discovered he wasn't remotely qualified | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
to be a doctor. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:45 | |
Then the Federal Radio Commission retracted his licence to broadcast. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:50 | |
Brinkley left Kansas and he moved to Del Rio, Texas. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
Then he bought a 50,000W Mexican radio station | 0:21:54 | 0:21:56 | |
right across the border in a village called Villa Acuna, | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
and cos there were no regulations in Mexico about signal strength, | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
he upped the wattage to one million watts. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:07 | |
Then he invited the Carter Family down from Virginia and more or less | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
made them the house band. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
To give you an idea of how powerful one million watts is, | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
birds were flying past the XERA transmission tower and exploding. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:21 | |
You didn't need a radio to listen to XERA, | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
you could hear it off an electric fence, or the head of a shovel. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:27 | |
People were walking around with metal fillings in their teeth | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
listening to the Carter Family | 0:22:30 | 0:22:31 | |
sing Wildwood Flower inside their craniums. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
XERA and its line-up of Texas musicians could be heard throughout | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
a good portion of the United States, | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
and that is how regional country music spread through | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
this great country of ours. True story, hand to God. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
# The sign says welcome to Nashville | 0:22:58 | 0:23:04 | |
# From whatever road you've been down... # | 0:23:04 | 0:23:08 | |
Nashville, Tennessee. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
People call it the country music capital of the world. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
Music City. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:16 | |
Home to the Country Music Hall of Fame, | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
annual Country Music Awards Festival, and, of course, | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
the Grand Ole Opry. | 0:23:22 | 0:23:24 | |
# Where idols and legends have stood... # | 0:23:24 | 0:23:29 | |
The greatest musicians, the greatest producers, the greatest studios, | 0:23:29 | 0:23:33 | |
the greatest songwriters are in Nashville, Tennessee, still today. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
# Hollywood | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
# But it's lonely at sundown in Nashville... # | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
You can't get away from Nashville and country music. It's not just | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
where the business is, but it's where so many great players are. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
# Each evening at sundown in Nashville | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
# They sweep broken dreams off the street... # | 0:23:54 | 0:23:59 | |
So how did Nashville become country music USA? | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
In 1932, it was just a sleepy | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
southern town with a church on every corner, and its biggest industry | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
was printing bibles and gospel sheet music, but it did have one thing | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
going for it - it was home to one of the largest radio stations in | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
America, one of the few that could compete with border blaster XERA - | 0:24:16 | 0:24:21 | |
WSM. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:23 | |
50,000W. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:25 | |
A month after it began broadcasting, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:27 | |
WSM ripped off a show outright from WLS in Chicago, called Barn Dance, | 0:24:27 | 0:24:32 | |
and aired it live on Saturday nights. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
If you wanted to hear Patsy Montana, Red Foley, Hank Snow or Roy Rogers, | 0:24:35 | 0:24:40 | |
you tuned into Barn Dance, | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
and the WSM Barn Dance is the main reason that Nashville - not Atlanta, | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
not Bristol, not Shreveport - Nashville - | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
became the centre of commercial country music in America, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
especially after the show changed its name to the Grand Ole Opry. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
In 1940 the Opry was the only show in town, | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
and its biggest star was Mr Roy Acuff. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
# From the great Atlantic Ocean to the wide Pacific shores | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
# From the queen of flowing mountains | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
# To the south belles by the shore... # | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
Champion fiddler with a big booming voice, he would stride out on | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
the Opry stage and sing about the Wabash Cannonball. | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
# As she rolled into the station | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
# You could hear all the people say | 0:25:22 | 0:25:25 | |
# There's a girl from Tennessee | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
# She's long and she's tall | 0:25:28 | 0:25:32 | |
# She came down from Birmingham | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
# On the Wabash Cannonball... # | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
At this point, there were more songs | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
about trains in America than actual trains. | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
The Wabash Cannonball invoked the Great Depression, | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
when destitute men rode the rails. That mythical Cannonball would | 0:25:47 | 0:25:50 | |
transport them to the land of milk and honey. Roy Acuff made a fortune | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
singing about poverty, and he was a very astute businessman. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
I think the beginning of Nashville | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
as a true music recording centre | 0:26:04 | 0:26:07 | |
comes with the establishment of Acuff-Rose in 1942. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:12 | |
Roy Acuff went to Fred Rose and said something to the effect of, | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
"I've got some money that I've saved up that I want to invest, | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
"I want to start a publishing company and I'd like you to run it." | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
The Acuff-Rose partnership reinvented the publishing game. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:27 | |
Instead of just selling the sheet music songs were printed on, | 0:26:27 | 0:26:30 | |
Acuff and Rose sold the songs themselves - in other words, | 0:26:30 | 0:26:34 | |
they copyrighted their own music and chose who they wanted to record it. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:38 | |
They set up an office on 8th Ave South in Nashville. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
One day Fred and his son Wesley | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
were engaged in a fierce game of ping-pong | 0:26:43 | 0:26:46 | |
when a gangly, near-sighted man from Montgomery, Alabama, walked in. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:51 | |
That man's name was Hiram King Williams, | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
or as he called himself, Hank. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:56 | |
# Say, hey, good lookin' | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
# What you got cookin'? | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
# How's about cookin' something up with me? | 0:27:02 | 0:27:07 | |
# Say, hey, sweet baby, don't you think maybe... # | 0:27:07 | 0:27:12 | |
Now, when I was a kid and would hear Hank on the radio, | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
I always thought I was listening to a 60-year-old man singing, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
because his songs reeked of alienation, drifters, love, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
the fear of God and sometimes just good-looking ladies. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
But he sang hard, pushing the inherent limits of country music | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
as far as it would go. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:28 | |
# So if you want to have fun, come along with me | 0:27:28 | 0:27:30 | |
# Say, hey, good lookin' | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
# What you got cookin'? | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
# How's about cookin' something up with me? # | 0:27:36 | 0:27:41 | |
When Hank came along, that was a whole different story. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
Hank was a tough character to deal with when he was drinking, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
but he sold huge numbers of records. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:52 | |
# So how's about saving all your time for me? # | 0:27:52 | 0:27:57 | |
For all the mythology surrounding Hank Williams, | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
one crucial thing is often overlooked. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:02 | |
Up to this point, most artists did not write their own songs. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:06 | |
They had very little control over what they recorded, | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
pretty much up to the behest of the producers and the publishers, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
but not Hank Williams. He was a true singer-songwriter. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
That's why he had a very direct influence on his audiences. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
It's hard to explain the sway | 0:28:20 | 0:28:21 | |
that Hank Williams held over his audience, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
because, you know, the guy didn't sway. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
He wasn't one of those hip-shakers like Elvis, | 0:28:26 | 0:28:29 | |
who would come along later. | 0:28:29 | 0:28:31 | |
He just stood there and sang. | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
# I try so hard, my dear | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
# To show that you're my every dream... # | 0:28:38 | 0:28:44 | |
Most of his songs were written in perfect metre. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
In fact, they were so meticulously constructed that when one day, | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
out of the blue, he announced he wanted to record a song | 0:28:50 | 0:28:52 | |
called Lovesick Blues, Acuff and Rose were thrown for a loop. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:57 | |
Lovesick Blues was written by | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
a couple of Tin Pan Alley-type songwriters, | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
and Hank's singing that song as part of his repertoire, | 0:29:02 | 0:29:06 | |
and every time he'd do it, the crowd went wild. | 0:29:06 | 0:29:09 | |
I think they really just loved, you know... | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
# I got a feelin' called the blues... # | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
# I got a feeling called the blues | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
# Oh, Lord, since my baby said goodbye... # | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
Hank was determined to cut the song | 0:29:23 | 0:29:25 | |
because he thought this thing could be tremendous, | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
so they were cutting in Cincinnati. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:30 | |
They had about half an hour to go | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
and Hank says, "Let's cut that Lovesick Blues thing," | 0:29:33 | 0:29:37 | |
and Fred was not interested in it, or Fred didn't like the song. | 0:29:37 | 0:29:42 | |
Fred said, you know, it's all out of metre, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:44 | |
and he and Fred really argued over it. | 0:29:44 | 0:29:48 | |
He said, "I get encore after encore down at the Hayride, | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
"they love this." | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
Fred finally gave in. I think Fred understood either he was going to | 0:29:54 | 0:29:58 | |
cut another song on this session or he was going to argue for | 0:29:58 | 0:30:01 | |
a half-hour with Hank for the rest of the session. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:05 | |
Lovesick Blues was the song that | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
made the first country superstar a superstar. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:12 | |
# I got the lovesick blues. # | 0:30:12 | 0:30:17 | |
See, when it comes to writing a hit song, | 0:30:17 | 0:30:20 | |
nobody knows a god dammed thing. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:21 | |
Lovesick Blues shot right to number one, | 0:30:21 | 0:30:24 | |
catapulted Hank Williams into the superstar strata, | 0:30:24 | 0:30:27 | |
and in his short career he had over 30 hit singles, | 0:30:27 | 0:30:30 | |
11 of which went to number one. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
More importantly, a lot of them crossed over into other genres | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
when more mainstream artists recorded them. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
# Hey, good lookin' | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
# What you got cookin'? # | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
Hey Good Lookin', | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
Cold Cold Heart, | 0:30:46 | 0:30:48 | |
Your Cheating Heart, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
Jambalaya, all became hits for big-time top 40 artists. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
They were all window dressed and slicker than snot on a door knob, | 0:30:54 | 0:30:58 | |
but they were originally written as a modest country ballad. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:00 | |
Now, not every country song can transcend to other genres, | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
but any song can be countrified. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:06 | |
# I think it's gonna be a long, long time | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
# Till touchdown brings me round again to find | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
# I'm not the man they think I am at home | 0:31:12 | 0:31:15 | |
# Oh, no, no, no | 0:31:15 | 0:31:18 | |
# I'm a rocket man | 0:31:18 | 0:31:21 | |
# Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone... # | 0:31:21 | 0:31:26 | |
The saddest thing about Hank Williams is how his tragic | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
lifestyle always seems to overshadow | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
his incredible contribution to music. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:38 | |
He is often cited as the first proto-rocker, because, you know, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
he was a road warrior, and an adulterer, | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
and an alcoholic since teenage, | 0:31:44 | 0:31:47 | |
and because he suffered from spina bifida, often imbibed in a triple | 0:31:47 | 0:31:50 | |
cocktail of morphine, chloral hydrate and whisky. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
He died on New Year's Eve 1953 | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
at the age of 29 in the back seat of a Cadillac | 0:31:56 | 0:32:00 | |
on the way to a gig in Ohio. | 0:32:00 | 0:32:02 | |
On the floor, they found empty liquor bottles and some lyrics | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
to an unfinished song, and a strange bruise on his head | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
that no-one's ever been able to explain. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
It was a stupid, mundane way to die, | 0:32:11 | 0:32:13 | |
no matter how you try to romanticise it. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
In fact, in 2016, a British actor by the name of Tom Hiddleston | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
made the disastrous decision to try and portray Hank's life on screen, | 0:32:20 | 0:32:25 | |
somehow convincing himself that his astute RADA training could capture | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
the essence of a pain-wracked, hard-lived, | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
morally-ambiguous Alabama troubadour. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
Oh, Hiddleston plumbed the depths | 0:32:35 | 0:32:37 | |
and nuances of Hank's life in a way not seen since Dick Van Dyke's | 0:32:37 | 0:32:42 | |
total immersion into Cockney culture in Mary Poppins. | 0:32:42 | 0:32:47 | |
The film was called I Saw The Light, | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
and indeed I did, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:51 | |
after five minutes, and the light read "exit". | 0:32:51 | 0:32:56 | |
# You killed all the love I ever had... # | 0:32:56 | 0:33:01 | |
When you're listening to those classic songs of early Nashville, | 0:33:01 | 0:33:04 | |
songs like Bye Bye Love by the Everly Bros, | 0:33:04 | 0:33:07 | |
or Oh, Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison, | 0:33:07 | 0:33:09 | |
chances are it was owned by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose. | 0:33:09 | 0:33:13 | |
They were the kingpins of Nashville publishing. | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
And because it always begins with a song, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
the writers are the true spine of country music. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
# Well, I've been hounding her for such a long time | 0:33:21 | 0:33:26 | |
# Trying to impress her with my hillbilly whine | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
# But she told me I was barking up the wrong tree | 0:33:29 | 0:33:33 | |
# She liked every kind of music but country... # | 0:33:33 | 0:33:37 | |
In Nashville, songwriting is built around the idea of a hit. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:41 | |
You want to have something that is compact, that is very succinct | 0:33:41 | 0:33:46 | |
and that has hooks in it. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:48 | |
Nashville songwriting tends to happen in teams. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:51 | |
You really can't get a hit in Nashville any more | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
unless you've co-written that song with somebody. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:57 | |
# She said listening to music was her favourite pastime | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
# But she told me I was trying to swim upstream | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
# She liked every kind of music but country... # | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
How many albums did you make in Nashville? | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
I guess two and a half. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:11 | |
And were you pressurised into, like, sitting down with other songwriters? | 0:34:11 | 0:34:15 | |
Totally. They introduce you to people | 0:34:15 | 0:34:18 | |
who are strangers, and you sit in a room, and one guy goes... | 0:34:18 | 0:34:23 | |
Like, one of the first guys I got paired up with took a copy | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
of Time magazine, and the cover said Flying Blind. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
He said, "That's a good phrase, let's write Flying Blind today." | 0:34:28 | 0:34:31 | |
"And how does that relate to a relationship?" | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
"OK, she has, uh... | 0:34:34 | 0:34:36 | |
"She's strayed from the marriage and now he's flying blind, | 0:34:36 | 0:34:40 | |
"but he wants to fly back to the runway where..." | 0:34:40 | 0:34:43 | |
And you just, like, build on a metaphor, | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
a romantic metaphor, and it's, | 0:34:46 | 0:34:48 | |
I mean, it's an amusement, a bit like a crossword puzzle, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
but, you know, as you can probably see from that illustration, | 0:34:52 | 0:34:58 | |
the authentic emotion is quickly drained from that exercise, | 0:34:58 | 0:35:02 | |
as you sit with a stranger and bounce words around. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:05 | |
Try to come up with a hook. | 0:35:05 | 0:35:07 | |
# She liked everything about me 'cept for one thing | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
# She liked every kind of music but country | 0:35:10 | 0:35:14 | |
# Yeah, she liked everything about me 'cept for one thing. # | 0:35:14 | 0:35:19 | |
-Do you have a dog? -Yeah. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
-What kind? -It's a pit bull. -OK, this is not a song about a pit bull. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:31 | |
It's a song about a Border collie. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:34 | |
# Fuck you, poodles, toys and schnauzers | 0:35:34 | 0:35:36 | |
# Round these parts I wear the trousers | 0:35:36 | 0:35:38 | |
# You want to fight me, get in line | 0:35:38 | 0:35:39 | |
# I'd kick your butt but I ain't got time | 0:35:39 | 0:35:41 | |
# Go fetch a stick and lick your balls | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
# I bet you squat to pee because you don't know what it's like at all | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
# To be a goddamn working dog | 0:35:46 | 0:35:48 | |
# Off my porch, get out of my way, I'm a goddamn working dog. # | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
That comes from experience, that tune. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
I'm thinking of giving it to Ray Wylie Hubbard, | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
I think he would record. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:05 | |
I think you would have to throw some dirtier words into it | 0:36:05 | 0:36:09 | |
than simply "fuck", but, yes, | 0:36:09 | 0:36:10 | |
I think Ray would be interested in that. | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
And then there's...what's her name? Taylor Swift might, I can hear. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:17 | |
No, no, I'm thinking of country artists. | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
-Oh, God, country, you should have said! -Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:24 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog. # | 0:36:24 | 0:36:25 | |
# Crazy... # | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
"Everything is cyclical" has become a common refrain, | 0:36:28 | 0:36:32 | |
especially when referring to artists who believe in the traditions | 0:36:32 | 0:36:35 | |
of country music. Country music always wears its influences | 0:36:35 | 0:36:38 | |
on its sleeve, and it doesn't try to hide it. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
When someone says, "Oh, that gal, that guy is an original," | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
they probably haven't looked hard enough. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:48 | |
What a country artist does is finds | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
a wellspring and diverts it to his own backyard. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
Hank Williams walked into that ping-pong match and he demanded | 0:36:54 | 0:36:58 | |
that Roy Acuff listen to his music | 0:36:58 | 0:37:00 | |
because Roy Acuff was his childhood hero. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
He had the Roy Acuff syndrome, | 0:37:03 | 0:37:04 | |
and Roy was flattered and offered to record Hank Williams, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
and then Hank took what Roy did and took it further. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:11 | |
He sang harder and he partied... | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
more darkly. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:16 | |
Now, somewhere that lineage is expanding - | 0:37:16 | 0:37:19 | |
a place called Littlefield, Texas, | 0:37:19 | 0:37:20 | |
a contemporary of the great Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:25 | |
High school dropout, part-time juvenile delinquent is succumbing | 0:37:25 | 0:37:29 | |
to the Hank Williams syndrome. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:31 | |
You see how this all links together? | 0:37:31 | 0:37:35 | |
# Somebody told me | 0:37:35 | 0:37:37 | |
# When I first got to Nashville | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
# You've finally got it made | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
# Ol' Hank made it here | 0:37:43 | 0:37:44 | |
# We're all sure that you will | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
# But I don't think Hank done it this way | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
# I don't think Hank done it this way... # | 0:37:49 | 0:37:53 | |
Waylon was always going to have a major influence on country music. | 0:37:56 | 0:38:00 | |
He had the demeanour, he had the authenticity, | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
and as a kid he used to sneak into a black blues joint in Littlefield | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
called Jaybirds. Do drop in. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
The man who called himself Chuck Berry Junior, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:11 | |
who wasn't Chuck Berry, taught Waylon how to play Lovesick Blues, | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
but with the emphasis on the blues part. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
He told Waylon to replace the top E string of his guitar with a banjo | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
string to bend it easier, | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
and to shave down the frets on his guitar to get a lower action, | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
and that is where Waylon got his unique sound from. | 0:38:25 | 0:38:28 | |
Once he discovered the wonders of a phase shift and a drummer who played | 0:38:40 | 0:38:44 | |
slightly behind the beat, his style became even more pronounced, | 0:38:44 | 0:38:47 | |
but his lifestyle was channelling Hank, | 0:38:47 | 0:38:51 | |
right down to the drug addiction and the lonesome and mean persona. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:56 | |
# I've always been crazy | 0:38:56 | 0:38:58 | |
# And the trouble that it's put me through | 0:38:58 | 0:39:02 | |
# I've been busted for things that I didn't do... # | 0:39:04 | 0:39:11 | |
So, this lineage of influence just continues. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:14 | |
For instance, today a lot of people might say that a fellow named | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
Sturgill Simpson is a Waylon doppelganger. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:21 | |
# Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
# North Korea, tell me where does it end? | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
# The bodies keep piling up with every day | 0:39:27 | 0:39:30 | |
# How many more are they gonna send... # | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
Sturgill has a very literate style, | 0:39:33 | 0:39:34 | |
and damn if he doesn't have that Waylon timbre in his voice. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:38 | |
# Well, son, I hope you don't grow up | 0:39:38 | 0:39:40 | |
# Believing that you've got to be a puppet to be a man... # | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
But he's not Waylon, he just sounds a bit like him, | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
and in country music, a little bit of connectivity goes a long way. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:50 | |
The secret is to replicate, not regurgitate. | 0:39:50 | 0:39:53 | |
Hey, I'm not going to lie to you, folks, there's a heck of a lot of | 0:39:53 | 0:39:56 | |
regurgitation going on in Nashville right now. This town goes through | 0:39:56 | 0:39:59 | |
phases of creativity and stagnation, and right now, | 0:39:59 | 0:40:02 | |
woo, it's stinkin'! | 0:40:02 | 0:40:04 | |
A lot of fake hillbillies singing about what they think country people | 0:40:04 | 0:40:08 | |
want to hear about. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:09 | |
# You can buy me a boat | 0:40:09 | 0:40:12 | |
# You can buy me a truck to pull it | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
# You can buy me a Yeti 110 | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
# Iced down with some silver bullets... # | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
Pretty much the inspiration for any modern country song can be found at | 0:40:22 | 0:40:25 | |
your average dry goods store. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
Come on, pick a row, any row. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:30 | |
# You turn me on | 0:40:30 | 0:40:33 | |
# Girl, you know you do | 0:40:33 | 0:40:35 | |
# But you tear me up | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
# Even better than the blues. # | 0:40:38 | 0:40:42 | |
# I ain't cut out to high line poles but | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
# I'm pretty good at drinking beer. # | 0:40:46 | 0:40:49 | |
# Just look for the girl in the blue bandana... # | 0:40:49 | 0:40:55 | |
A lot of the songs I hear on the radio, whether it's Texas | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
or Nashville today, I can't tell what artist it is. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
When we were coming up, if Waylon came on the radio, | 0:41:01 | 0:41:05 | |
you didn't have to wait for the DJ to say that was Waylon Jennings, | 0:41:05 | 0:41:08 | |
you knew it was a Waylon song. | 0:41:08 | 0:41:10 | |
But nowadays, to me, the production is just so middle-of-the-road safe | 0:41:10 | 0:41:15 | |
that you can't always tell. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:17 | |
# Hey, get rhythm | 0:41:17 | 0:41:19 | |
# When you get the blues | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
# Come on, get rhythm | 0:41:22 | 0:41:24 | |
# When you get the blues... # | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
The current creative deficit in Nashville is nothing new. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:30 | |
Back in 1964, it was Johnny Cash and Buck Owens keeping this town alive, | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
that was it. There were no new Brenda Lees or Elvis Presleys | 0:41:34 | 0:41:38 | |
or Everly brothers coming along, | 0:41:38 | 0:41:40 | |
and worse, The Beatles had invaded. Yeah, The Beatles. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:44 | |
You'd probably imagine Nashville would consider four floppy-haired | 0:41:44 | 0:41:47 | |
Liverpudlians singing homolytic triads of "yeah yeah yeahs" to be | 0:41:47 | 0:41:51 | |
a bit of a joke, but by the end of the year, when The Beatles had | 0:41:51 | 0:41:55 | |
nine of the top 100 songs in America, | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
Nashville knew they needed someone to match The Beatles in terms of | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
musical articulation. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
And that man, of course, was Roger Miller. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
# Well, atta boy, girl | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
# Atta way to make me cry | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
# Atta boy, boy, you make me wish I could die... # | 0:42:13 | 0:42:17 | |
Roger Miller had been hanging around Nashville as a songwriter for years. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:21 | |
He'd scored some modest hits for Jim Reeves and Ray Price, | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
and he had a reputation in Nashville as a brilliant lyricist. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:29 | |
Often, songwriters would be in a bind, and they would call up | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
old Roger, and he would quote them a killer lyric right on the spot. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
# All you do is make me sit around feelin' blue | 0:42:35 | 0:42:39 | |
# Atta boy, girl, atta way to hurt my pri-ide... # | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
The only thing was, he had no real passion for country music. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:46 | |
He wanted to move to California and be an actor. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
He had a small recording contract with Mercury Records, and he asked | 0:42:48 | 0:42:52 | |
for an advance of 1,600 so he could move to Los Angeles. | 0:42:52 | 0:42:55 | |
The head of Mercury said, | 0:42:55 | 0:42:57 | |
"Yeah, I'll give you the money if you'll give me 16 songs." | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
So Miller went into a studio | 0:43:00 | 0:43:01 | |
and cranked out 16 songs that were primarily | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
syncopated gibberish, titles like Chug-a-Lug, Do-Wacka-Do and Dang Me. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:09 | |
# Dang me, dang me | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
# They oughta take a rope and hang me | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
# High from the highest tree | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
# Woman, would you weep for me? # | 0:43:17 | 0:43:21 | |
Dang Me shot to number one on the charts and stayed there | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
for six weeks. Later on, Chug-a-Lug became a massive hit, | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
not just on the country chart, on the pop charts as well. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:31 | |
# Bllll-bbbb, I done a double back flip | 0:43:31 | 0:43:33 | |
# Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
# Make you want to holler hi-de-ho | 0:43:35 | 0:43:38 | |
# Burns your tummy, don'tcha know | 0:43:38 | 0:43:41 | |
# Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
# Tacka-ticka-tacka-waaaah. # | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
See, one man had made Nashville relevant again, | 0:43:46 | 0:43:50 | |
and just to prove that he wasn't just a series of do-wacka-dos | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
and dippy-lippy-do-dos, a year later | 0:43:53 | 0:43:56 | |
he recorded the greatest drunk-proof karaoke song ever - | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
King Of The Road, a song that anyone can sing, | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
no matter how smashed they are. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
That was the genius of Roger Miller. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
Look, I don't want to get pedantic or anything, | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
but the essence of any great country song is always the lyrics. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
There has to be a narrative, | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
something that explores the, I don't know, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
the fragility of life, family, relationships, | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
the fact that there is no easy solution to the contradictions | 0:44:54 | 0:44:58 | |
of life, rural values or dogs. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
When country music gets away from that essence, those core values, | 0:45:01 | 0:45:06 | |
it sucks. Roger Miller's lyrics were basically sending up the banality | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
of country music at the time, but he wasn't a novelty act. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
He'd written great songs, brilliant songs, | 0:45:13 | 0:45:16 | |
songs like Husbands And Wives, or It Only Hurts When I Cry. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
And he knew a good song when he heard one, which is why in 1969 | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
he recorded a song by a young songwriter named | 0:45:22 | 0:45:25 | |
Kris Kristofferson, | 0:45:25 | 0:45:27 | |
who was hanging out here at the Exit/In on Elliston Place. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
He'd only just arrived in Nashville, and he'd written a song called | 0:45:30 | 0:45:33 | |
Me And Bobby McGee. | 0:45:33 | 0:45:35 | |
# Feeling good was easy, Lord | 0:45:35 | 0:45:38 | |
# When Bobby sang the blues | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
# Feeling good was good enough for me | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
# Good enough for me and Bobby McGee... # | 0:45:47 | 0:45:52 | |
Kristofferson was one of those prodigal golden children who always | 0:45:52 | 0:45:56 | |
seemed to show up in Nashville when they need him the most. | 0:45:56 | 0:46:00 | |
# Bobby shared the secrets of my soul... # | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
When Johnny Cash recorded | 0:46:03 | 0:46:04 | |
Kristofferson's Sunday Morning Coming Down | 0:46:04 | 0:46:07 | |
it immediately went to number one, and when he started telling anyone | 0:46:07 | 0:46:10 | |
who would listen that Kris Kristofferson and | 0:46:10 | 0:46:13 | |
Mickey Newbury were the two hot new songwriters in town, | 0:46:13 | 0:46:16 | |
then Kris Kristofferson was anointed. | 0:46:16 | 0:46:19 | |
Do you understand? | 0:46:19 | 0:46:20 | |
Patronage is a very, very important part of country music's endurance - | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
people support each other. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:26 | |
You don't get those knock-down, drag-out feuds that always involve | 0:46:26 | 0:46:30 | |
Taylor Swift and Kanye West, or Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj, | 0:46:30 | 0:46:35 | |
or Taylor Swift and every boyfriend who's ever dumped her. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
The point I'm making is that nowhere, | 0:46:38 | 0:46:41 | |
by any stretch of the imagination, | 0:46:41 | 0:46:43 | |
in any realm, in this or any other universe, | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
is Taylor Swift a country artist. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
# There's a road in Oklahoma... # | 0:46:49 | 0:46:54 | |
Kristofferson and a group of friends - Willy Nelson, Waylon, | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser and Billy Joe Shaver - had taken to | 0:46:58 | 0:47:01 | |
viewing themselves as rebels within Nashville's music immunity. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:05 | |
By rebels, I mean that their stuff wasn't exactly flying out of | 0:47:05 | 0:47:08 | |
the record bins, but they had cultivated an outlaw image, | 0:47:08 | 0:47:10 | |
and that brought in a whole new fan base, | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
made up of some of the more marginalised members of society. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
# I pushed that load | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
# From here to someday... # | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
The outlaw image was poles apart from that Carter Family | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
wholesome country music. It was a reaction | 0:47:26 | 0:47:28 | |
to the slick Nashville sound, but the irony was that | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
Nashville itself was about to cash in on the movement. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:35 | |
The head of RCA Nashville, Jerry Bradley, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
was about to get shit-canned. He wasn't selling any country albums, | 0:47:38 | 0:47:43 | |
but he did own a back catalogue of Willie, Waylon, | 0:47:43 | 0:47:46 | |
Jessi and Tompall material, | 0:47:46 | 0:47:48 | |
so he thumbed through a Time Life book on the Old West and found | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
a wanted poster, took it into RCA's design department and said, | 0:47:51 | 0:47:55 | |
"Hey, let's put Willie and Waylon on a wanted poster." | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
Then he chucked on 11 songs that he just kind of had laying around. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
The album had all the production values of a blown speaker | 0:48:04 | 0:48:07 | |
in the back of a Mexican Chevy, but wouldn't you know, | 0:48:07 | 0:48:11 | |
it would become the biggest selling album in the history | 0:48:11 | 0:48:13 | |
of country music. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
# Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
# Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
# Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such... # | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
That album and its follow-up, which featured Willie and Waylon | 0:48:27 | 0:48:31 | |
singing Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
created a new legion of country converts. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
# Even with someone they love... # | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
Never mind that this scheme was cooked up by RCA, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
pretty much the quintessential embodiment of corporate thinking, | 0:48:43 | 0:48:46 | |
it didn't matter. These guys were selling records, | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
so they played up the image to the hilt. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
There's still no-one that I'd rather introduce than my musical comrades, | 0:48:52 | 0:48:57 | |
Kris Kristofferson, | 0:48:57 | 0:48:59 | |
Waylon Jennings, and the baby-faced kid from Texas named Willie Nelson. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:03 | |
They call us The Highwaymen. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:05 | |
# I was a highwayman | 0:49:10 | 0:49:12 | |
# Along the coach roads I did ride | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
# With sword and pistol by my side... # | 0:49:17 | 0:49:20 | |
The distinction of original bad boy, of course, belongs to Johnny Cash, | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
who would team up with Willie, Waylon and Kris to form | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
The Highwaymen, a country supergroup | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
that took the outlaw motif to its natural conclusion. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
Now, Cash didn't actively promote a bad boy image, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
but neither did he try to deny it. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:38 | |
There were rumours he'd been in prison. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:40 | |
Not true. The only brushes he'd ever had with the law was when his | 0:49:40 | 0:49:44 | |
Winnebago somehow accidentally set a camp ground on fire, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
and once for possession of painkillers, | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
but to America he was The Man In Black. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
Again, not to evince an aura of bad-assness, | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
he just wanted to dress like one of his heroes, | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
the human rights activist and calypso singer Harry Belafonte. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
# Perhaps I may become a highwayman again | 0:50:02 | 0:50:06 | |
# Or I may simply be a single drop of rain | 0:50:08 | 0:50:12 | |
# But I will remain | 0:50:14 | 0:50:16 | |
# And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again... # | 0:50:17 | 0:50:22 | |
In the homogenised world of country music, | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
Johnny Cash will always stand alone. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
He sang in that deep baritone, he married into a pedigree family, | 0:50:28 | 0:50:33 | |
he is revered in folk circles as much as the Nashville scene. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
In fact, people who hate country music love Johnny Cash. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
Love him! And Dolly Parton. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
People would love country music a lot more if it would maintain | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
some kind of constant standard, but it never does. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
In the 1980s, one man single-handedly reduced | 0:50:49 | 0:50:53 | |
country music to a bovine cesspool of boot-scooting, | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
line-dancing vulgaria. | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
That man's name was John Travolta. | 0:50:59 | 0:51:03 | |
Hey. How you doing? | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
-Fine! -Anything I can do for you? -Not yet. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:10 | |
Are you a real cowboy? | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
Well, that depends on what you think a real cowboy is. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:19 | |
The movie Urban Cowboy came along and just really screwed it up, | 0:51:19 | 0:51:23 | |
cos then it wasn't about the music, it was about mechanical bulls, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:28 | |
you know? Like a country disco, you know, line dancing and all that. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:32 | |
It just... It kind of ruined it, I thought. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
Country music had become a backing track for scores of big-haired | 0:51:37 | 0:51:41 | |
secretaries and weekend Wyatt Earps to join together in a drunken | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
lockstep, and slip and slide through puddles of Margarita, | 0:51:45 | 0:51:48 | |
while Johnny Lee sang. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:50 | |
# I was looking for love in all the wrong places | 0:51:50 | 0:51:55 | |
# Looking for love in too many faces... # | 0:51:55 | 0:51:59 | |
Nashville desperately needed to get back to its roots. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:02 | |
Ricky Skaggs, a musical prodigy with the fingers of Bill Monroe | 0:52:02 | 0:52:07 | |
and the head of Conway Twitty, | 0:52:07 | 0:52:08 | |
believed that country music needed to pay more attention to its elders, | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
to dance with the one that brung you, so to speak. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:15 | |
# Well, these Highway Forty blues | 0:52:15 | 0:52:18 | |
# I've walked holes in both my shoes | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
# Counted the days since I've been gone | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
# And I'd love to see the lights of home... # | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
It was a combination of vintage stylings, carefully crafted vocals, | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
and, most importantly, superb musicianship. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
The country acts who followed in the late '80s - Vince Gill, | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
Randy Travis, George Strait - were a new generation of musicians who had | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
grown up in the age of rock and roll. They didn't strum guitars, | 0:52:42 | 0:52:45 | |
they played the everlasting shit out of them. | 0:52:45 | 0:52:48 | |
FAST RIFF | 0:52:48 | 0:52:49 | |
But if you put in the time and the shoe leather, | 0:52:54 | 0:52:56 | |
eventually you may find yourself on stage with Albert Lee, | 0:52:56 | 0:52:59 | |
one of the greatest country guitarist ever, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:01 | |
who just happens to be English. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:04 | |
At that point, you've been benighted. | 0:53:04 | 0:53:06 | |
If there's one certainty in this world, | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
it's that Nashville will always survive. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
It has a formula and it sticks to it, | 0:53:20 | 0:53:23 | |
but the best country music hasn't been coming from Nashville. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:27 | |
It's been coming from a place 850 miles west of Nashville. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
# Screw you, we're from Texas | 0:53:30 | 0:53:34 | |
# Screw you, we're from Texas... # | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
Austin, Texas, calls itself the live music capital of the world, | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
and since the 1970s it's really become an alternative to Nashville. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
# We're from Texas | 0:53:45 | 0:53:47 | |
# We're from Texas | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
# Ah, screw you... # | 0:53:49 | 0:53:51 | |
We tend to think of Nashville songwriters as being craftsmen, | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
and we tend to think of Texas songwriters as being poets. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
# Now don't get me wrong, I love the USA and the other states | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
# Yeah, they're OK... # | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
Texas is very much a conservative state, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
but Austin is very much a liberal bastion. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:09 | |
# We got Willie and Jackie and Jack, Robert Earle | 0:54:09 | 0:54:15 | |
# And a whole lot more So screw you... # | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
Austin is really probably | 0:54:18 | 0:54:20 | |
a more important music town than Nashville now. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:23 | |
# Screw you, we're from Texas | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
# We're from Texas, screw you... # | 0:54:27 | 0:54:31 | |
What does a town need to become musically vital? | 0:54:31 | 0:54:34 | |
It needs a lot of competing styles, that's what. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:36 | |
In and around Austin in the 1960s, you could hear folk, honky-tonk, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:40 | |
bluegrass, Cajun, zydeco, Tejano, and even some rocking German oompah. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:45 | |
If that sounds like an impossible stew of cacophony, it is. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:49 | |
One of the great things about being a Texas songwriter is that you have | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
the wellspring of Texas tradition to draw from, always, right, | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
and so if things seemed to get to be a little too commercial | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
or a little too out of touch with reality, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:01 | |
you can always go back and dig into cowboy songs and cowboy mythology, | 0:55:01 | 0:55:05 | |
or go back to the blues roots to reinvent your work, | 0:55:05 | 0:55:10 | |
or to reinvent the music that's coming out of that community. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:13 | |
The whole thing about the Texas thing is there's this whole | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
independent history of Texas, you know, being very independent, | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
"don't tell us what to do." | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
You know, like, we didn't have to depend on a record label saying, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:26 | |
"Yes, we'll give you a deal, and here's the money," you just did it. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
And that's the great thing about | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
a lot of the songwriters and musicians that come down here. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:35 | |
They have this incredible freedom to write. | 0:55:35 | 0:55:39 | |
-I've written a song for you. -OK. -You want to hear it? -Yeah. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:43 | |
You're going to like this, you're going to want to record this. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:46 | |
-OK. -It's called The Border Collie Song. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:51 | |
That's a good title. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:52 | |
# I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, let's go! | 0:55:55 | 0:55:58 | |
# What's the hold-up? I am ready to work, I'm ready to herd | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
# I'm ready to go, just say the word | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
# In case you dogs have not heard I'm a goddamn working dog | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
# Working dog, you son of a bitch I take my bath in a drainage ditch | 0:56:11 | 0:56:14 | |
# Wait one second Let me scratch this itch | 0:56:14 | 0:56:17 | |
# I'm back | 0:56:17 | 0:56:18 | |
# Yippee-ki-oh, yippie-ki-yay | 0:56:18 | 0:56:19 | |
# I can do this all damn day, get off of my porch, get out of my way | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog | 0:56:22 | 0:56:24 | |
# Off my porch, get out of my way, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:26 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog. # | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
-I like it. -It's yours! | 0:56:33 | 0:56:37 | |
# I'm a rolling stone from Texas | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
# Rolling stone from the plains... # | 0:56:40 | 0:56:44 | |
Texas has always been an incredibly conservative state. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:47 | |
It's Republican ground zero, but Austin has two things going for it - | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
it's the state capital, and it's home to the University of Texas, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:55 | |
so if there was ever going to be any semblance of progressive thinking | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
in the Lone Star State, it was going to be in Austin. | 0:56:58 | 0:57:01 | |
Every time there's a new generation of young people coming to town, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:04 | |
there's a new musical revolution, | 0:57:04 | 0:57:05 | |
there's always something new, something fresh. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:08 | |
And this is the reason Austin was able to develop a music scene | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
that was different to Nashville. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:16 | |
In the late '60s, it was attracting hippies, activists, baby boomers, | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
people looking for an artistic oasis. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
They had to build their own scene in Austin, | 0:57:23 | 0:57:25 | |
so that they could have long hair | 0:57:25 | 0:57:27 | |
and smoke a little marijuana and listen to the music | 0:57:27 | 0:57:30 | |
that they cared about, and still be safe doing it. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:33 | |
# My baby... # | 0:57:33 | 0:57:38 | |
Now, in the early '60s, | 0:57:38 | 0:57:40 | |
listening to counterculture music in Texas consisted of coming down here, | 0:57:40 | 0:57:45 | |
tapping your penny loafers to a sizzling hot folk trio | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
at Threadgill's. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:50 | |
In 1933, this place had been a gas station, | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
and a fellow named Kenneth Threadgill worked there. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
He pumped enough gas to eventually buy the joint | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
and turn it into a hootenanny tavern. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
After World War II, he started running open mic nights, | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
basically so he could get up and yodel with the musicians. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
There was no stage. The musicians just sat amongst each other | 0:58:06 | 0:58:09 | |
and played, and then old Kenny would wander over and start yodelling. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:12 | |
HE YODELS | 0:58:12 | 0:58:17 | |
This literally was the beginning of the Austin scene. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:21 | |
A little dive bar kind of on the outskirts of town that had been open | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
since the '30s, it was the first place to get a beer license | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 | |
after Prohibition, and they have these things, | 0:58:28 | 0:58:30 | |
they called them hootenannies, and they would sing folk songs, | 0:58:30 | 0:58:35 | |
and they would trick cheap beer and eat cheap hamburgers | 0:58:35 | 0:58:37 | |
and have a nice time a couple of days a week. | 0:58:37 | 0:58:40 | |
And you had people who were, you know, aspiring folk singers, | 0:58:40 | 0:58:44 | |
people who were interested in Jimmie Rodgers' songs, | 0:58:44 | 0:58:46 | |
going all the way back to the beginnings of country music, | 0:58:46 | 0:58:49 | |
and people who were interested in the blues. | 0:58:49 | 0:58:53 | |
But all these styles emphasised a point. This was music about | 0:58:55 | 0:58:59 | |
Lone Star heritage, played by Texans for Texans. | 0:58:59 | 0:59:03 | |
In the mid-1960s, two musicians | 0:59:03 | 0:59:05 | |
from a band called Hootenanny Hoots were on their way here to perform. | 0:59:05 | 0:59:08 | |
They picked up a scruffy hitchhiker along the way, | 0:59:08 | 0:59:11 | |
and she accompanied them to Threadgill's. | 0:59:11 | 0:59:13 | |
Notably, as so many hitchhikers did at the time, | 0:59:13 | 0:59:16 | |
she was carrying an autoharp. | 0:59:16 | 0:59:18 | |
# Don't you know that you're nothing more than a one-night stand... # | 0:59:18 | 0:59:22 | |
She was a University of Texas student with a relaxed approach | 0:59:22 | 0:59:26 | |
to personal hygiene and a fondness for Pearl beer. | 0:59:26 | 0:59:29 | |
At UT, she had actually been voted Ugliest Man On Campus. | 0:59:29 | 0:59:33 | |
Her name was Janis Joplin. | 0:59:33 | 0:59:36 | |
Wednesday night at Threadgill's, and that's where everybody heard | 0:59:36 | 0:59:39 | |
Janis Joplin sing in public regularly for the first time. | 0:59:39 | 0:59:42 | |
And that was right here? | 0:59:42 | 0:59:43 | |
And that was right here in this little space. | 0:59:43 | 0:59:46 | |
# Don't you know that you're nothing more than a one-night stand... # | 0:59:46 | 0:59:51 | |
Soon people were packing Threadgill's on a Wednesday night | 0:59:51 | 0:59:55 | |
to watch Janis perform. She would | 0:59:55 | 0:59:57 | |
of course go on to become the pre-eminent blues rock singer | 0:59:57 | 0:59:59 | |
of the '60s, Queen of the West Coast psychedelic movement, | 0:59:59 | 1:00:03 | |
and when she OD'd in 1970, | 1:00:03 | 1:00:04 | |
kind of a poster child for rock and roll excess. | 1:00:04 | 1:00:07 | |
She's not really associated with the Texas music scene, | 1:00:07 | 1:00:11 | |
but that was the thing about Kenny Threadgill - | 1:00:11 | 1:00:13 | |
he would let anybody who wanted to, perform. | 1:00:13 | 1:00:17 | |
The general consensus is that her excessive lifestyle | 1:00:17 | 1:00:20 | |
is what led to Janis's demise, but actually that is not true. | 1:00:20 | 1:00:23 | |
Her autopsy confirmed that so many little pieces of her heart | 1:00:23 | 1:00:27 | |
had been taken that she could no longer function. | 1:00:27 | 1:00:31 | |
# Take it | 1:00:31 | 1:00:32 | |
# Take another little piece of my heart now, baby | 1:00:32 | 1:00:36 | |
# Break it | 1:00:36 | 1:00:38 | |
# Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, yeah... # | 1:00:38 | 1:00:41 | |
Tragic, just tragic. | 1:00:41 | 1:00:44 | |
This was the crazy thing about the emerging Austin scene. | 1:00:45 | 1:00:48 | |
There was such an eclectic mix of people and music, | 1:00:48 | 1:00:50 | |
no-one could quite define what it was. | 1:00:50 | 1:00:53 | |
In the late '60s, Texas music had a problem | 1:00:53 | 1:00:56 | |
converting rednecks into hippies. | 1:00:56 | 1:00:58 | |
See, rock and psychedelia were sweeping the coast, | 1:00:58 | 1:01:01 | |
but Texas was resistant, | 1:01:01 | 1:01:03 | |
and the Threadgill's vibe needed a bigger format, a place to expand. | 1:01:03 | 1:01:07 | |
# There's a place every one of us can go to | 1:01:07 | 1:01:11 | |
# Maybe you have been there once or twice... # | 1:01:13 | 1:01:17 | |
This place would be the Armadillo World Headquarters. | 1:01:17 | 1:01:20 | |
Struggling promoter Eddie Wilson opened its doors in 1973 | 1:01:20 | 1:01:24 | |
to anyone who wanted good music and cheap beer. | 1:01:24 | 1:01:28 | |
Our job was to find a place to play so that we could have a payday | 1:01:28 | 1:01:32 | |
every now and then. And I had discovered a huge, empty building, | 1:01:32 | 1:01:36 | |
it looked like a National Guard armoury. | 1:01:36 | 1:01:39 | |
We set out to try to fill it up, | 1:01:39 | 1:01:40 | |
and it stayed empty most of the time for the first couple of years. | 1:01:40 | 1:01:45 | |
It was lonely and miserable, and... | 1:01:45 | 1:01:49 | |
I felt sorry for myself. | 1:01:49 | 1:01:51 | |
But then gradually people heard about it, | 1:01:51 | 1:01:53 | |
-and then they sought it out. -Were you a fan of music at this time? | 1:01:53 | 1:01:57 | |
Did you know what you were doing, did you know who you were booking, | 1:01:57 | 1:02:00 | |
-or could anybody play? -I didn't know anything at all | 1:02:00 | 1:02:02 | |
about the contemporary music scene. | 1:02:02 | 1:02:05 | |
It was an education by submersion, | 1:02:05 | 1:02:09 | |
and luckily I came up before I drowned. | 1:02:09 | 1:02:12 | |
# The doorman winks at you on your way out... # | 1:02:12 | 1:02:18 | |
The Armadillo World Headquarters | 1:02:18 | 1:02:20 | |
would have a huge effect on Texas music. | 1:02:20 | 1:02:23 | |
It was a venue where the world of the hippie and the world of | 1:02:23 | 1:02:26 | |
the redneck collided, for better or worse, and the artists who were | 1:02:26 | 1:02:29 | |
looking for an alternative to Nashville started drifting there. | 1:02:29 | 1:02:34 | |
One singer-songwriter | 1:02:34 | 1:02:35 | |
forever associated with this town would write a song | 1:02:35 | 1:02:38 | |
that somehow brought it all together. | 1:02:38 | 1:02:42 | |
In 1972, a Dallas-born musician named Michael Martin Murphey sat on | 1:02:42 | 1:02:47 | |
a rooftop in New York City and composed the song Cosmic Cowboy. | 1:02:47 | 1:02:51 | |
When I left Los Angeles, | 1:02:51 | 1:02:54 | |
I had been through a lot, and I said, | 1:02:54 | 1:02:58 | |
# Burial grounds and merry-go-rounds are all the same to me. # | 1:02:58 | 1:03:04 | |
I'd been living close to Disneyland, | 1:03:04 | 1:03:07 | |
and a lot of my friends were dying, from drugs. So... | 1:03:07 | 1:03:11 | |
# Burial grounds and merry-go-rounds are all the same to me | 1:03:11 | 1:03:18 | |
# Horses on posts and kids and ghosts | 1:03:18 | 1:03:22 | |
# The spirits they all are set free... # | 1:03:22 | 1:03:26 | |
Now, he was homesick for Texas, | 1:03:26 | 1:03:28 | |
he was clearly fed up with the music recording business, | 1:03:28 | 1:03:30 | |
and he was probably stoned, | 1:03:30 | 1:03:32 | |
but the song envisioned a mythical place where a musician can thrive | 1:03:32 | 1:03:36 | |
free of competition and creative restraints, | 1:03:36 | 1:03:39 | |
you know, a place where he can ride and rope and hoop. | 1:03:39 | 1:03:42 | |
# I just wanna be a cosmic cowboy | 1:03:42 | 1:03:48 | |
# I just want to ride and rope and hoop... # | 1:03:48 | 1:03:53 | |
My second album was based on trying to describe this movement | 1:03:56 | 1:04:00 | |
that was beginning to come together. | 1:04:00 | 1:04:03 | |
Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, | 1:04:03 | 1:04:06 | |
we had a cosmic perspective, and it was very poetic. | 1:04:06 | 1:04:10 | |
So that's why I called them the Cosmic Cowboys. | 1:04:10 | 1:04:13 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 1:04:13 | 1:04:16 | |
You had the cosmic cowboy hippie thing going on, | 1:04:26 | 1:04:29 | |
and then the country thing, | 1:04:29 | 1:04:31 | |
and when they kind of meshed, you had these long-haired, you know, | 1:04:31 | 1:04:36 | |
dope-smoking hippies wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots, you know? | 1:04:36 | 1:04:40 | |
And it was very cool. | 1:04:40 | 1:04:42 | |
Now, Murphey had grown up on cowboy songs, | 1:04:49 | 1:04:51 | |
so he was very enamoured with the imagery of the south-west, | 1:04:51 | 1:04:54 | |
and he worked it into a modern scenario, | 1:04:54 | 1:04:57 | |
that of a frustrated musician | 1:04:57 | 1:04:58 | |
going back to an earlier time in a simpler place. | 1:04:58 | 1:05:02 | |
He invoked a lot of very specific Austin references, | 1:05:02 | 1:05:05 | |
like Hippie Hollow, which is a local skinny-dipping spot, | 1:05:05 | 1:05:09 | |
or Lone Star beer, Armadillo World Headquarters. | 1:05:09 | 1:05:12 | |
In other words, he made Austin both specific and mythical, | 1:05:12 | 1:05:16 | |
and he recorded a song with a very imprecise, spontaneous background | 1:05:16 | 1:05:20 | |
that kind of rejected the Nashville slick style sound. | 1:05:20 | 1:05:25 | |
It wasn't Murphey's intention to galvanise the subculture, | 1:05:39 | 1:05:42 | |
but that's kind of what happened. | 1:05:42 | 1:05:43 | |
Now, if you were a Baptist-raised, backsliding Texan | 1:05:43 | 1:05:47 | |
who'd somehow succumbed to the wiles of grade A weed, | 1:05:47 | 1:05:51 | |
you had a name to call yourself - Cosmic Cowboy. | 1:05:51 | 1:05:55 | |
Murphey struck a blow of independence for | 1:05:55 | 1:05:57 | |
all those songwriters looking to avoid Nashville, | 1:05:57 | 1:06:00 | |
and scores of Texas-born musicians took up the mantle. | 1:06:00 | 1:06:04 | |
Guys like BW Stevenson and Jerry Jeff Walker showed up | 1:06:04 | 1:06:08 | |
from California. Others, like Gary P Nunn's | 1:06:08 | 1:06:10 | |
Lost Gonzo Band, had never left Texas. | 1:06:10 | 1:06:13 | |
The underlying theme of so much of this early Austin music | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
was homesickness, and wistfulness, and escape. | 1:06:16 | 1:06:19 | |
Even if you've never been to Texas, | 1:06:19 | 1:06:21 | |
guys like Michael Martin Murphey | 1:06:21 | 1:06:23 | |
and Gary P Nunn made you feel like you are missing out on something | 1:06:23 | 1:06:26 | |
if you weren't here. They were creating a shit-kicking, | 1:06:26 | 1:06:28 | |
freewheeling oasis in a sea of Richard Nixon conservatism. | 1:06:28 | 1:06:32 | |
You only have to go up north to Oklahoma | 1:06:32 | 1:06:34 | |
to realise that country music was still the domain of conservatives. | 1:06:34 | 1:06:38 | |
One of the most popular songs at the time | 1:06:38 | 1:06:40 | |
was Okie From Muskogee by Merle Haggard. | 1:06:40 | 1:06:43 | |
# Leather boots were still in style for manly footwear | 1:06:43 | 1:06:48 | |
# Beads and Roman sandals won't be seen | 1:06:50 | 1:06:54 | |
# And football's still the roughest thing on campus | 1:06:56 | 1:07:01 | |
# And the kids here still respects the college dean | 1:07:03 | 1:07:08 | |
# And I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee... # | 1:07:09 | 1:07:14 | |
Nixon's America really cottoned on to Okie From Muskogee. | 1:07:14 | 1:07:18 | |
It was a backlash to all those commie pinko hippies | 1:07:18 | 1:07:21 | |
protesting the Vietnam War. But there's always been speculation | 1:07:21 | 1:07:24 | |
that Haggard wrote the song as a joke, | 1:07:24 | 1:07:26 | |
an accusation he's chosen not to clarify when interviewed. | 1:07:26 | 1:07:30 | |
You didn't have any tremendous inspiration, | 1:07:30 | 1:07:32 | |
-or motivation behind writing that song at the time? -No. -Of course, | 1:07:32 | 1:07:35 | |
you know it was controversial at the time, | 1:07:35 | 1:07:38 | |
and some people probably still hold it against you. | 1:07:38 | 1:07:41 | |
Yeah, I don't know, | 1:07:41 | 1:07:43 | |
maybe they do, I'll argue the point with them. | 1:07:43 | 1:07:46 | |
You know, I think what they were actually... | 1:07:46 | 1:07:50 | |
The main bitch during the time at which Okie From Muskogee came out | 1:07:52 | 1:07:57 | |
was the right to do whatever the hell you wanted to do. | 1:07:57 | 1:08:00 | |
I jumped out there and did it and they jumped on me. | 1:08:00 | 1:08:04 | |
Think about that a minute. | 1:08:04 | 1:08:06 | |
Whether Haggard meant it as a joke or not, a few years later | 1:08:06 | 1:08:09 | |
Ray Wylie Hubbard answered the song | 1:08:09 | 1:08:12 | |
with Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother, | 1:08:12 | 1:08:14 | |
a satire about rednecks who enjoy inflicting copious amounts | 1:08:14 | 1:08:18 | |
of whoop-ass on peace-loving hippies. | 1:08:18 | 1:08:20 | |
# He was born in Oklahoma... # | 1:08:20 | 1:08:24 | |
The song was alternately performed by Hubbard and another | 1:08:24 | 1:08:27 | |
influential Texas songwriter, Jerry Jeff Walker. | 1:08:27 | 1:08:30 | |
# It's up against the wall, redneck mother | 1:08:30 | 1:08:35 | |
HE YODELS | 1:08:35 | 1:08:37 | |
# Mother who has raised her son so well | 1:08:37 | 1:08:40 | |
-# So well -So well | 1:08:40 | 1:08:42 | |
# He's 34 and drinkin' in a honky-tonk | 1:08:42 | 1:08:46 | |
# Kickin' hippies' asses and raisin' hell... # | 1:08:48 | 1:08:51 | |
He thinks Johnny Gimble hung the moon. | 1:08:51 | 1:08:54 | |
In August of 1973, Walker recorded his Viva Terlingua album | 1:09:03 | 1:09:08 | |
entirely in this small Texas hill town | 1:09:08 | 1:09:11 | |
with intermittent electricity called Luckenbach. | 1:09:11 | 1:09:14 | |
He wanted to reject the formal approach to making albums, | 1:09:14 | 1:09:17 | |
so he invited a lot of musical friends, and they showed up with | 1:09:17 | 1:09:20 | |
some half-thought-out ideas and rough musical sketches, and about | 1:09:20 | 1:09:23 | |
18,000 gallons of sangria. | 1:09:23 | 1:09:25 | |
To me, like I said, that Viva Terlingua album | 1:09:25 | 1:09:28 | |
is still the definitive progressive country album. | 1:09:28 | 1:09:31 | |
-Did you record on that? -No, I didn't, I got lost. | 1:09:31 | 1:09:35 | |
I couldn't get down to Luckenbach that day, but they called me up, | 1:09:35 | 1:09:38 | |
and Bob called me up and said, | 1:09:38 | 1:09:40 | |
"Hey, man, Jerry Jeff is down here cutting this album, | 1:09:40 | 1:09:42 | |
"and we want to do the song Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother." | 1:09:42 | 1:09:45 | |
I go, "You've got to be kidding me?" He goes, "No, they want to do it." | 1:09:45 | 1:09:48 | |
And he said, "But we need a second verse." | 1:09:48 | 1:09:50 | |
So I said, "Well, he sure likes to drink...Falstaff beer," | 1:09:50 | 1:09:53 | |
so I wrote the second verse over the phone, with kind of what I was... | 1:09:53 | 1:09:58 | |
"He likes to drink it with Wild Turkey liquor" - | 1:09:58 | 1:10:00 | |
I just kind of looked around, and saw what was around me at the time. | 1:10:00 | 1:10:04 | |
# Sure does like to drink his old beer | 1:10:04 | 1:10:09 | |
# Chasing that down with Turkey Bourbon liquor | 1:10:09 | 1:10:12 | |
# Gobble, gobble, gobble... # | 1:10:12 | 1:10:15 | |
It was progressive, what they were doing, | 1:10:15 | 1:10:17 | |
cos nobody was really doing that. | 1:10:17 | 1:10:18 | |
I mean, Jerry Jeff really kind of meshed that country rock and roll. | 1:10:18 | 1:10:24 | |
You know, it wasn't just like country rock, it was rock and roll, | 1:10:24 | 1:10:27 | |
guys, you know, just showing up, | 1:10:27 | 1:10:28 | |
and just destroying the stage and leaving, | 1:10:28 | 1:10:31 | |
and just, you know, going crazy, and it was just an incredible band. | 1:10:31 | 1:10:35 | |
# He's 34 and drinking in the honky-tonk... # | 1:10:35 | 1:10:42 | |
Call it cosmic cowboy music, or gonzo music, or Armadillo music, | 1:10:42 | 1:10:47 | |
this emerging sound was like a musical travel brochure | 1:10:47 | 1:10:50 | |
for the state of Texas, you know, | 1:10:50 | 1:10:52 | |
full of specific references | 1:10:52 | 1:10:53 | |
and place names and incestuous name-dropping. | 1:10:53 | 1:10:56 | |
It was kind of a spontaneous approach to recording. | 1:10:56 | 1:10:59 | |
Now, Viva Terlingua wasn't some kind of defiant, | 1:10:59 | 1:11:02 | |
self-produced indie record. Much like The Outlaws' album, | 1:11:02 | 1:11:06 | |
it was actually financed by a large record company, MCA, | 1:11:06 | 1:11:09 | |
but they went along with Jerry Jeff's crazy, crazy idea, | 1:11:09 | 1:11:13 | |
and it was a success, | 1:11:13 | 1:11:14 | |
in the sense that it was critically well-received. | 1:11:14 | 1:11:17 | |
All the musicians made a bit of money off of it, | 1:11:17 | 1:11:19 | |
and it took a place no-one had ever heard of | 1:11:19 | 1:11:22 | |
and turned it into a household name. | 1:11:22 | 1:11:24 | |
In 1977, nearly four years after Jerry Jeff's Viva Terlingua album, | 1:11:24 | 1:11:29 | |
old Waylon Jennings had a hit with his own Luckenbach-inspired song. | 1:11:29 | 1:11:33 | |
# Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas | 1:11:33 | 1:11:36 | |
# With Waylon and Willie and the boys... # | 1:11:36 | 1:11:40 | |
Did Waylon move to Luckenbach? No. | 1:11:40 | 1:11:43 | |
The guy never even set foot in the place, but Viva Terlingua struck | 1:11:43 | 1:11:46 | |
a balance between creative freedom and commercial vitality, and it | 1:11:46 | 1:11:50 | |
showed that Texas music was about the people, not the studios. | 1:11:50 | 1:11:54 | |
# I've no regrets about the past | 1:11:54 | 1:11:57 | |
# There's nothing I can change | 1:11:57 | 1:12:01 | |
# But life's a road you walk just one way down... # | 1:12:01 | 1:12:05 | |
So this Texas music scene had clearly taken country music into | 1:12:05 | 1:12:08 | |
a new direction but it still needed something, someone to solidify it, | 1:12:08 | 1:12:12 | |
to pull it all together. | 1:12:12 | 1:12:14 | |
Texas has always been conservative, but it's also nonconformist, | 1:12:14 | 1:12:18 | |
and when these two disciplines meet, something mutant is going to emerge. | 1:12:18 | 1:12:22 | |
Let me explain it in terms of tribal electric friction. | 1:12:22 | 1:12:25 | |
If the static object is C, conservative Texas, | 1:12:25 | 1:12:29 | |
represented by guys with cans of Lone Star beer, Levi's, | 1:12:29 | 1:12:33 | |
starched white shirts and a Protestant upbringing | 1:12:33 | 1:12:37 | |
meets D, the drifting force, incense, tie-dye shirts, | 1:12:37 | 1:12:41 | |
and some pot-infused dream of becoming a cowboy, | 1:12:41 | 1:12:44 | |
then V is the vector where these farm boys have moved to Houston | 1:12:44 | 1:12:49 | |
or Dallas, and somehow think that Smokey And The Bandit, | 1:12:49 | 1:12:52 | |
about two idiot rednecks smuggling beer across state lines, | 1:12:52 | 1:12:56 | |
is the greatest cinematic achievement ever, | 1:12:56 | 1:12:58 | |
share a co-efficiency with romantic longhairs who want to get back to | 1:12:58 | 1:13:03 | |
the land, and think that Up In Smoke by Cheech and Chong | 1:13:03 | 1:13:06 | |
is the greatest film ever, because | 1:13:06 | 1:13:08 | |
it's about two idiot hippies smuggling dope across state lines, | 1:13:08 | 1:13:12 | |
then the result is an electrostatic charge, which, | 1:13:12 | 1:13:15 | |
when mixed with a flammable vapour, like alcohol and marijuana, | 1:13:15 | 1:13:19 | |
produces a gaseous cloud called Willie Nelson. | 1:13:19 | 1:13:23 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 1:13:23 | 1:13:25 | |
# On the road again | 1:13:29 | 1:13:31 | |
# I just can't wait to get on the road again | 1:13:31 | 1:13:34 | |
# The life I love is making music with my friends | 1:13:35 | 1:13:38 | |
# And I can't wait to get on the road again... # | 1:13:38 | 1:13:42 | |
What Willie did, what was his real genius, | 1:13:42 | 1:13:46 | |
was that he got the rednecks and the really conservative people together | 1:13:46 | 1:13:51 | |
with the really liberal people in the hippie generation, | 1:13:51 | 1:13:54 | |
and they all got along. | 1:13:54 | 1:13:56 | |
And he put on these events where everybody was there. | 1:13:56 | 1:13:59 | |
So Willie may not have been to Austin first, | 1:13:59 | 1:14:02 | |
but he picked up the football and ran, | 1:14:02 | 1:14:05 | |
when that ball was fumbled many times. | 1:14:05 | 1:14:07 | |
Back in Nashville in 1971, Willie was drowning in molasses. | 1:14:07 | 1:14:12 | |
This was a guy who'd written Crazy for Patsy Cline, | 1:14:12 | 1:14:14 | |
he'd written Funny How Time Slips Away, | 1:14:14 | 1:14:17 | |
Night Life, | 1:14:17 | 1:14:18 | |
tunes that would be standards in anyone's American song book, | 1:14:18 | 1:14:21 | |
but Nashville was killing Willie Nelson. | 1:14:21 | 1:14:23 | |
Every one of his albums would have two or three self-penned diamonds, | 1:14:23 | 1:14:26 | |
and then a whole lot of crap. | 1:14:26 | 1:14:28 | |
Then one day, thankfully, his house caught fire. | 1:14:28 | 1:14:32 | |
The story goes that he ran inside to salvage a pound of Colombian | 1:14:32 | 1:14:36 | |
as the house was burning. | 1:14:36 | 1:14:37 | |
He instructed his nephew to park a beat-up old car | 1:14:37 | 1:14:39 | |
in the garage so he could claim it | 1:14:39 | 1:14:41 | |
on insurance and then he headed to Bandera, Texas. | 1:14:41 | 1:14:44 | |
When he re-emerged, the old sport coat and turtleneck Willie | 1:14:46 | 1:14:49 | |
had been replaced. He had hippie hair. | 1:14:49 | 1:14:52 | |
He wore a Native American bandana, Jesus sandals and earrings. | 1:14:52 | 1:14:56 | |
This guy was appropriating so many conflicting cultures, | 1:14:56 | 1:14:58 | |
no-one knew what to make of him. And they didn't care, | 1:14:58 | 1:15:01 | |
because nobody on the planet doesn't love Willie Nelson. | 1:15:01 | 1:15:05 | |
# On the road again | 1:15:05 | 1:15:07 | |
# I just can't wait to get on the road again... # | 1:15:08 | 1:15:11 | |
The new Texas music up to this point was basically a celebration of | 1:15:11 | 1:15:14 | |
arrested adolescence. | 1:15:14 | 1:15:15 | |
Willie made it about arrested behaviour of an indeterminate age, | 1:15:15 | 1:15:19 | |
because nobody knows how old Willie Nelson is. | 1:15:19 | 1:15:22 | |
Might be 65, he might be 103. | 1:15:22 | 1:15:25 | |
In 1973, he organised the first Willie Nelson 4th of July picnic | 1:15:29 | 1:15:34 | |
in Dripping Springs. | 1:15:34 | 1:15:35 | |
Anyone with a beard and a small kitten was admitted for free. | 1:15:35 | 1:15:39 | |
The annual 4th of July picnics have become a staple of Texas music and | 1:15:39 | 1:15:43 | |
over the years, every kind of country musician has played there. | 1:15:43 | 1:15:46 | |
Which makes the event inclusionary! | 1:15:46 | 1:15:49 | |
I think I just made that word up. | 1:15:49 | 1:15:51 | |
So many of the performers are from Texas, | 1:15:51 | 1:15:53 | |
but because the event is held in Texas and it celebrates Texas, | 1:15:53 | 1:15:56 | |
it's exclusionary. To mainstream country music, that is. | 1:15:56 | 1:16:00 | |
You know, Nashville. | 1:16:00 | 1:16:02 | |
# Now, grab your partner and pat her on the head | 1:16:02 | 1:16:09 | |
# Jump on a man like a dog on a bone | 1:16:09 | 1:16:13 | |
# You gotta stay all night, stay a little longer | 1:16:13 | 1:16:15 | |
# Dance all night, dance a little longer | 1:16:15 | 1:16:18 | |
# Pull off your coat, throw it in the corner | 1:16:18 | 1:16:21 | |
# Stay a little longer... # | 1:16:21 | 1:16:23 | |
Willie Nelson is the absolute embodiment of Texas music. | 1:16:23 | 1:16:26 | |
He's got one of the greatest voices of all time and that unmistakable | 1:16:26 | 1:16:29 | |
quicksilver style of singing, | 1:16:29 | 1:16:32 | |
where he hangs behind the beat and slips right into place like your | 1:16:32 | 1:16:35 | |
grandmother's favourite slipper. | 1:16:35 | 1:16:37 | |
But he's more than just a musician. He's his own lifestyle. | 1:16:37 | 1:16:41 | |
From the moment he emerges from the cloud-filled bus, bandana intact, | 1:16:45 | 1:16:50 | |
guitar perforated, | 1:16:50 | 1:16:51 | |
to the end of a raucous show that invariably has the crowd doing | 1:16:51 | 1:16:55 | |
his backing vocals, Willie exudes a communal vibe. Not many musicians | 1:16:55 | 1:16:59 | |
can get 10,000 people to show up and help pay his back taxes, | 1:16:59 | 1:17:03 | |
and when farmers are going broke and transatlantic pipelines | 1:17:03 | 1:17:07 | |
need to be stopped and towns are blown up in fertilizer explosions | 1:17:07 | 1:17:11 | |
or schools for impaired children need to be built, Willie shows up. | 1:17:11 | 1:17:14 | |
Does the show for free. | 1:17:14 | 1:17:16 | |
For three hours. Everyone has a good time and somewhere, | 1:17:16 | 1:17:20 | |
Bono squirms just a little bit on that self-righteous cross | 1:17:20 | 1:17:24 | |
he's nailed himself to. | 1:17:24 | 1:17:26 | |
# Oklahoma City, you sure look pretty... # | 1:17:38 | 1:17:45 | |
Now, the other half of the term "country and western" is western. | 1:17:45 | 1:17:49 | |
And you can't talk about Texas music without mentioning western swing, | 1:17:49 | 1:17:53 | |
it's a form of country music that dates back to the early '20s. | 1:17:53 | 1:17:58 | |
During the '70s, while all those cosmic cowboys were doing | 1:17:58 | 1:18:02 | |
their thing, Ray Benson and Asleep At The Wheel | 1:18:02 | 1:18:05 | |
were boogying toward Texas from Pennsylvania. | 1:18:05 | 1:18:07 | |
They wanted to remind the world that Texans had been rocking | 1:18:07 | 1:18:11 | |
long before those armadillos invaded. | 1:18:11 | 1:18:15 | |
In western swing music we hear the blues, | 1:18:15 | 1:18:17 | |
we hear big band arranging, like Count Basie-style stuff, | 1:18:17 | 1:18:21 | |
and we hear the influence of the Czech polka. | 1:18:21 | 1:18:24 | |
So, musically speaking, that's where Western swing comes from. | 1:18:24 | 1:18:28 | |
# On route 60... # | 1:18:28 | 1:18:31 | |
Western swing music was challenging music. You've got to have | 1:18:34 | 1:18:37 | |
half a foot in country music and half a foot in jazz. | 1:18:37 | 1:18:40 | |
Right. Can you show us on the guitar | 1:18:40 | 1:18:43 | |
the difference between a country progression... | 1:18:43 | 1:18:46 | |
Yeah, hand me that blonde guitar there, on the wall. | 1:18:46 | 1:18:49 | |
It's like... | 1:18:53 | 1:18:54 | |
Well, there's no difference, it's the way it's played. | 1:18:57 | 1:19:00 | |
-Right. -So take a song like Your Cheating Heart. | 1:19:00 | 1:19:03 | |
Everybody knows Your Cheating Heart. | 1:19:03 | 1:19:05 | |
# Your cheatin' heart | 1:19:05 | 1:19:07 | |
# Will make you weep | 1:19:07 | 1:19:09 | |
# You'll cry and cry | 1:19:09 | 1:19:10 | |
# And try to sleep. # | 1:19:10 | 1:19:12 | |
Well, the western swing would be... | 1:19:12 | 1:19:15 | |
# Your cheatin' heart | 1:19:16 | 1:19:19 | |
# Will make you... # | 1:19:19 | 1:19:21 | |
And Hank Williams had a lot of Western swing in him, but it... | 1:19:21 | 1:19:24 | |
# And try to... # | 1:19:24 | 1:19:26 | |
As opposed to... | 1:19:29 | 1:19:31 | |
So there's different substitute chorus, they'd call it, | 1:19:34 | 1:19:36 | |
but it's jazz. Swing. | 1:19:36 | 1:19:38 | |
The king of Western swing, Bob Wills, was really a band leader. | 1:19:41 | 1:19:45 | |
Sometimes he sang, sometimes he played the fiddle. | 1:19:45 | 1:19:47 | |
Often, he threw solos to the piano player, the guitarist, | 1:19:47 | 1:19:51 | |
the steel guitar player or a guest vocalist, | 1:19:51 | 1:19:54 | |
all the while keeping the whole musical thing afloat. | 1:19:54 | 1:19:56 | |
# Well, it's all summer | 1:19:56 | 1:20:01 | |
# Trying to find my | 1:20:01 | 1:20:04 | |
# Little... # | 1:20:04 | 1:20:07 | |
But Texas swing has an unmistakable feel to it. | 1:20:07 | 1:20:11 | |
4/4, brush strums, walking bass, double stop fiddle. | 1:20:11 | 1:20:14 | |
There's nothing else quite as infectious. | 1:20:14 | 1:20:17 | |
Bob considered himself a big band, like the Dorsey Band, | 1:20:17 | 1:20:20 | |
like the Miller Band, but with fiddle, steel guitar and guitar. | 1:20:20 | 1:20:26 | |
But he was a band leader, in that ilk, and then you hired vocalists. | 1:20:26 | 1:20:30 | |
He patterned himself after the big bands, | 1:20:30 | 1:20:32 | |
but he was unique in that it was a Western big band. | 1:20:32 | 1:20:35 | |
-Yeah. -Bob was outrageous. | 1:20:35 | 1:20:36 | |
Bob was like the Mick Jagger of his time. | 1:20:36 | 1:20:40 | |
He pranced around on stage like a peacock. | 1:20:40 | 1:20:43 | |
He was nuts. | 1:20:45 | 1:20:47 | |
He was jumping around, hollering like this, going like this | 1:20:47 | 1:20:50 | |
and pointing out and he never did anything the same twice. | 1:20:50 | 1:20:54 | |
# So deep in love with you. # | 1:20:54 | 1:21:00 | |
Well, I couldn't leave Austin without channelling the spirit | 1:21:05 | 1:21:09 | |
of Bob Wills, so, with Ray Benson and Asleep At The Wheel, | 1:21:09 | 1:21:12 | |
I decided to give the old working dog a Western swing work-out. | 1:21:12 | 1:21:16 | |
All I would say as musicians is, don't think as musicians, | 1:21:17 | 1:21:20 | |
think as a border collie. | 1:21:20 | 1:21:23 | |
If we all get on that border collie page, then the feel will come. | 1:21:23 | 1:21:28 | |
Do we have to do that thing where they sniff the...? | 1:21:28 | 1:21:31 | |
-Yeah, yeah. -Get over here! | 1:21:31 | 1:21:34 | |
Tempo? | 1:21:34 | 1:21:36 | |
Fast! Fast. | 1:21:36 | 1:21:38 | |
It's a really hyperactive dog. | 1:21:38 | 1:21:40 | |
-Let's go. -All right. -We've got shit to do. | 1:21:40 | 1:21:43 | |
LAUGHTER | 1:21:43 | 1:21:45 | |
Hey! You can have this song. I'm giving this song to you. | 1:21:45 | 1:21:48 | |
It's a good one. | 1:21:48 | 1:21:50 | |
OK, play it and play along and see if you can... | 1:21:50 | 1:21:52 | |
Like a diminished, but not. | 1:21:56 | 1:21:58 | |
# I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, I'm ready to work, let's go! | 1:22:01 | 1:22:04 | |
# What's the hold up? I am ready to work, I'm ready to herd | 1:22:06 | 1:22:09 | |
# I'm ready to go, just say the word | 1:22:09 | 1:22:11 | |
# In case you dogs have not heard I'm a goddamn working dog | 1:22:11 | 1:22:14 | |
# Now, I've got issues, I'll admit | 1:22:42 | 1:22:44 | |
# I basically don't know when to quit my one and only occupation | 1:22:44 | 1:22:47 | |
# Keep those herds in a tight formation | 1:22:47 | 1:22:49 | |
# Missing heifers, wayward strays, tend to put a damper on my day | 1:22:49 | 1:22:53 | |
# It's in my blood, what can I say? I'm a goddamn working dog | 1:22:53 | 1:22:56 | |
# Get off my porch, get outta my way | 1:22:56 | 1:22:59 | |
# I'm a goddamn | 1:22:59 | 1:23:02 | |
# Working dog. # | 1:23:02 | 1:23:06 | |
Excellent! Thank you! | 1:23:18 | 1:23:20 | |
Asleep At The Wheel are constantly evolving, | 1:23:26 | 1:23:28 | |
which is exactly what country music needs to do. Because right now, | 1:23:28 | 1:23:32 | |
Austin is in some kind of tertiary stage where the city | 1:23:32 | 1:23:34 | |
is moving too fast, but the music is moving too slow. | 1:23:34 | 1:23:38 | |
It's looking a little ragged. | 1:23:38 | 1:23:40 | |
All those little musical roads that led to Austin, | 1:23:41 | 1:23:44 | |
they are now digital corridors. The South by Southwest festival | 1:23:44 | 1:23:48 | |
started out as a country music festival, | 1:23:48 | 1:23:50 | |
now it's just full of digital hipsters begging for start-up money. | 1:23:50 | 1:23:54 | |
The rents are sky-high. | 1:23:54 | 1:23:56 | |
This is Sixth Street. | 1:23:56 | 1:23:58 | |
This was supposed to be Austin's answer to Broadway in Nashville. | 1:23:58 | 1:24:02 | |
I don't mind telling you, folks, | 1:24:02 | 1:24:04 | |
it's a little bit shit! | 1:24:04 | 1:24:07 | |
Maybe a certain Texan by the name of Don Henley said it best | 1:24:07 | 1:24:10 | |
when he said, "Call something paradise, kiss it goodbye." | 1:24:10 | 1:24:15 | |
Whether your country music comes from Texas or Tennessee, | 1:24:15 | 1:24:18 | |
one thing is for certain, | 1:24:18 | 1:24:20 | |
a good country song will always stand the test of time. | 1:24:20 | 1:24:24 | |
Play, sing or recite a lyric | 1:24:24 | 1:24:26 | |
that you think is one of the greatest country lyrics... | 1:24:26 | 1:24:30 | |
Oh, gosh. Hang on one second. | 1:24:30 | 1:24:34 | |
-No question, I know exactly what I'm... -It can't be yours. | 1:24:34 | 1:24:37 | |
-Yeah, do you want it to be? -No, I don't want it to be mine. | 1:24:37 | 1:24:39 | |
It's not mine anyway. | 1:24:39 | 1:24:40 | |
# I'm a rolling stone | 1:24:44 | 1:24:48 | |
# All alone and lost | 1:24:48 | 1:24:50 | |
# For a life of sin | 1:24:52 | 1:24:56 | |
# I've paid the cost | 1:24:56 | 1:24:58 | |
# When I walk by | 1:25:00 | 1:25:04 | |
# All the people say | 1:25:04 | 1:25:06 | |
# There's another guy | 1:25:08 | 1:25:12 | |
# On the lost highway. # | 1:25:12 | 1:25:16 | |
-Hank Williams and Fred Rose. -Yep. | 1:25:16 | 1:25:20 | |
# It took her down | 1:25:20 | 1:25:22 | |
# Both her and David | 1:25:22 | 1:25:25 | |
# I said I'm gonna see you | 1:25:25 | 1:25:29 | |
# In your grave | 1:25:29 | 1:25:31 | |
# They laughed at me | 1:25:31 | 1:25:34 | |
# Until I shot 'em | 1:25:34 | 1:25:38 | |
# And put their cheatin', schemin' bones in Miller's Cave. # | 1:25:38 | 1:25:43 | |
So I love that whole song, | 1:25:43 | 1:25:44 | |
but that verse "they laughed at me until I shot them," | 1:25:44 | 1:25:48 | |
I like that a lot. | 1:25:48 | 1:25:50 | |
To me, one of the best written songs | 1:25:50 | 1:25:53 | |
I've ever heard was I Wanna Talk About Me. | 1:25:53 | 1:25:56 | |
"I want to talk about, want to talk about I, | 1:25:56 | 1:25:58 | |
"want to talk about number one, oh, my oh, my. | 1:25:58 | 1:26:01 | |
"What I think what I want... | 1:26:01 | 1:26:05 | |
"I love talking about you, you, you, usually. | 1:26:05 | 1:26:08 | |
"But occasionally I want to talk about me." | 1:26:08 | 1:26:11 | |
I think that's absolutely brilliant. | 1:26:11 | 1:26:14 | |
# Strap 'em kids in, give 'em a | 1:26:20 | 1:26:22 | |
# Little bit of vodka in a | 1:26:22 | 1:26:25 | |
# Cherry Coke, we're going to | 1:26:25 | 1:26:28 | |
# Oklahoma... # | 1:26:28 | 1:26:31 | |
There's a lot of my favourite lyrics but that comes right off the bat. | 1:26:31 | 1:26:37 | |
Oh, yeah. | 1:26:37 | 1:26:39 | |
Willie Nelson. "I'm going to get drunk and I sure do dread it cos | 1:26:39 | 1:26:43 | |
"I know just what I'm going to do." | 1:26:43 | 1:26:44 | |
# I'm going to spend my money calling everybody honey | 1:26:44 | 1:26:47 | |
# And wind up singing the blues | 1:26:47 | 1:26:49 | |
# Spend my whole pay cheque on some old wreck | 1:26:49 | 1:26:51 | |
# Brother, I can name you a few | 1:26:51 | 1:26:53 | |
# I am going to get drunk and I sure do dread it | 1:26:53 | 1:26:56 | |
# Cos I know just what I'm gonna do. # | 1:26:56 | 1:26:58 | |
My first musical memory, | 1:26:58 | 1:27:00 | |
I can remember hearing that on an 8-track tape, | 1:27:00 | 1:27:02 | |
that my dad had and that, for me, | 1:27:02 | 1:27:05 | |
that's country music as far as it goes. | 1:27:05 | 1:27:08 | |
-Yeah, the Dublin Blues by Guy Clark. -OK. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:14 | |
I think I know this. | 1:27:14 | 1:27:16 | |
# Well, I wish I was in Austin | 1:27:16 | 1:27:21 | |
# At the chilly parlour bar | 1:27:21 | 1:27:24 | |
# Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas | 1:27:24 | 1:27:26 | |
# And not carin' where you are | 1:27:26 | 1:27:30 | |
# But here I am in Dublin | 1:27:30 | 1:27:33 | |
# Rollin' cigarettes | 1:27:33 | 1:27:35 | |
# Holdin' back and chokin' back | 1:27:35 | 1:27:38 | |
# The shakes with every breath | 1:27:38 | 1:27:40 | |
# So forgive me all my anger | 1:27:40 | 1:27:43 | |
# Forgive me all my faults | 1:27:43 | 1:27:46 | |
# There's no need to forgive me | 1:27:46 | 1:27:48 | |
# For thinkin' what I thought | 1:27:48 | 1:27:51 | |
# I loved you from the git go | 1:27:51 | 1:27:53 | |
# I'll love you till I die | 1:27:53 | 1:27:56 | |
# I loved you on the Spanish steps | 1:27:56 | 1:27:59 | |
# The day you said goodbye. # | 1:27:59 | 1:28:02 | |
Now, that song talks about... | 1:28:02 | 1:28:05 | |
relationships, it talks about Dublin, about the elite... | 1:28:05 | 1:28:10 | |
and yet it's as country as can be, | 1:28:10 | 1:28:13 | |
but yet it's as sophisticated as can be. Guy Clark, the greatest. | 1:28:13 | 1:28:18 | |
I'll be honest with you, folks. | 1:28:18 | 1:28:20 | |
I can't cover country music in 90 minutes, it's not enough time. | 1:28:20 | 1:28:24 | |
I'm sure you've been watching thinking, "Where's Dolly Parton?" | 1:28:24 | 1:28:27 | |
Trust me, Dolly Parton gets plenty of oxygen. I've been trying to | 1:28:27 | 1:28:31 | |
convince you that true country music values its roots and its traditions. | 1:28:31 | 1:28:36 | |
Nobody writing country songs nowadays picks cotton or worked on | 1:28:36 | 1:28:40 | |
the railroad. It used to be the lifestyle created the music, | 1:28:40 | 1:28:43 | |
now the music creates the lifestyle. | 1:28:43 | 1:28:46 | |
But the good stuff stands the test of time. | 1:28:46 | 1:28:49 | |
It's authentic. | 1:28:49 | 1:28:51 | |
You know it when you hear it. | 1:28:51 | 1:28:53 | |
As for Working Dog, | 1:28:54 | 1:28:57 | |
my CD, | 1:28:57 | 1:29:00 | |
come on, I'm not going to get a cut, who am I fooling? | 1:29:00 | 1:29:03 | |
I'll tell you this, I'm not a fan of the term bucket list because that | 1:29:03 | 1:29:07 | |
implies you're trying to back load an otherwise uneventful life. | 1:29:07 | 1:29:11 | |
So what, you swam with the dolphins, you saw the Northern Lights, | 1:29:11 | 1:29:14 | |
who cares? But if someone told me I was going to have the chance to | 1:29:14 | 1:29:18 | |
record my song with Ray Benson and Asleep At The wheel... | 1:29:18 | 1:29:21 | |
..take me now, Jesus. | 1:29:24 | 1:29:27 | |
# Now, I've got issues, I'll admit | 1:29:30 | 1:29:31 | |
# I basically don't know when to quit my one and only occupation | 1:29:31 | 1:29:34 | |
# Keep those herds in a tight formation | 1:29:34 | 1:29:37 | |
# Missing heifers, wayward strays, tends to put a damper on my day | 1:29:37 | 1:29:40 | |
# It's in my blood, what can I say? | 1:29:40 | 1:29:41 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog | 1:29:41 | 1:29:43 | |
# Yippie-ki-oh, yippie-ki-yip | 1:29:46 | 1:29:48 | |
# No time to waste, gotta get there quick | 1:29:48 | 1:29:51 | |
# When the fur starts flying, the dust gets thick | 1:29:51 | 1:29:53 | |
# I'm nipping hoofs, I'm chasing tails | 1:29:53 | 1:29:54 | |
# I'm in the groove, the alpha male | 1:29:54 | 1:29:56 | |
# In case you dogs cannot tell | 1:29:56 | 1:29:57 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog | 1:29:57 | 1:29:59 | |
# Off my porch, get outta my way | 1:30:01 | 1:30:03 | |
# I'm a goddamn working dog. # | 1:30:03 | 1:30:07 |