history of ALt Country Part One Tue, 02 May 2000 12:28:45 EDT "Jeff Wall" http://www.twangzine.com The Originators of Alt-Country - It ain't who you think.... Written and plagerized by: Jeff Wall Image Consultant: Buddy "BuckRocket" Woodward Alt Country. No Depression. Y'all-ternative. You've heard the phrases. A new music format that is supposed to be the Next Big Thing. My ass. Alt Country ain't new, it wasn't invented by anyone. It's a natural aspect of country music that has been around for the last 60+ years. "Outlaw" stuff was happening long before Gram Parsons, Willie Nelson, or Uncle Tupelo. It was happening back in the late 30's. "Folk Music in Overdrive" In the 30's Country music (or "hillbilly" as it was derisively called) consisted mainly of ballads and waltzes. Mellow stuff. It was considered rural mountain folk music, confined to specialty markets. Then, along came someone who decided to change that. He liked to play fast and loud and in higher keys. His name was Bill Monroe. When Monroe auditioned for the Opry, he was told, "If you ever leave here, it'll be because you fired yourself!". When the people who tuned in to the Grand Ole Opry that fateful October Saturday night in 1938, they heard something new and unique. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys "plowed the audience flat" with their supercharged rendition of "Muleskinner Blues." The band came back for three encores, unheard of on the Opry. "I just wanted a style of music all my own," Monroe later said. In the forties, Earl Scruggs' three-finger banjo sound was added by Monroe to make up the music now known as Bluegrass. The Scruggs banjo style was considered quite radical and off the wall for the time. This new style of music didn't really fit into any category and the music scene was having difficulty determining just what style it was. Sounds familiar don't it? Monroe wasn't the only one redefining music. About the same time, big things were cooking down in Texas. "Texas Fiddle Bands" Frontier fiddling in Texas was similar to its Appalachian counterpart with its repertoire of breakdowns, waltzes and occasional rags. Texas was, for all practical purposes, an island. It was next to impossible in the 30's to get in or out. The Depression hit the area hard. Airplane travel was for the rich, trains were expensive, and trying to drive a car down the long, often single lane dirt roads that passed for highways in those days was a task left for the brave and foolhardy. If you lived in Texas, in many ways you were stuck there. The primary proof that anything existed outside of the state (an opinion still held suspect by some Texans) came from radio. Powerful stations from Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans, and Mexico could be heard throughout the area. Combining the Big Band jazz on the radio with the Blues, Ragtime, Dixieland, Cajun, Mexican, German, Country, and Cowboy music, a new sound began to be heard throughout dancehalls and honkytonks in the Southwest: Western Swing. There is some dissention as to who was the true founder of Western Swing, but it's really not important. Bob Wills is still the King. Wills was immensely popular in Texas, Oklahoma and the rest of the Southwest circuit. His outrageous personality and larger-than-life personae only helped to keep his name synonymous with Western Swing. Frequently with vocals by Tommy Duncan and "hollers" by the cigar-chomping Wills himself, his band, the Texas Playboys, combined jazz and string band elements into danceable fun like "Take Me Back To Tulsa," "Right Or Wrong," "Bubbles In My Beer" and, of course, their signature tune "San Antonio Rose." There is a story that the Musicians Union in Tulsa, Oklahoma once refused to accept Bob Wills' players for membership on the basis that what they played "wasn't music" and, therefore, they weren't musicians. The musician's union in Tulsa may not have wanted them, but the people in Texas did. Wills' band was one of the first to pioneer the use of electric instruments and drums in Country music. One of the things Wills did was use country instruments to play horn section parts - especially steel guitar and electric guitar duets. Tell me that wasn't "Alt-Country" at the time. As a matter of fact, at a rare Opry appearance master of ceremonies Judge George D. Hay and the Opry management threatened to bar Wills from the stage unless he ditched his drum kit. Only the intervention of Ernest Tubb saved the show, when they compromised - Wills agreed to put the drums behind a curtain. In the early 50's, Hank Williams was doing some dates with Lefty Frizzell. They'd flip a coin to see who would go on first. One day Hank looked at Lefty and said, "You need to join the Opry." Lefty replied "Look, I got the #1 song, the #2 song, the #6 song and the #8 song on the charts. And you tell me I need to join the Opry?" Hank thought about it for a few seconds, then laughed and said, "Darned if you ain't got a heck of an argument." The Grand Ole Opry was the Big Time. A successful artist just didn't turn their back on the Opry and expect to remain in the public eye, that wasn't how things were done. Lefty did eventually join the Opry - however, he lasted only a few months. The official word was that "I just didn't like it. It wasn't the dream I thought it would be." Lefty turned his back on the starmaking Grand Ole Opry. How "alt" is that? "Bakersfield" During this time, the few electric guitars that were used in Country music were usually big hollow bodied jazz guitars. In 1951, Buck Owens paid $30 for a used Fender Telecaster, and Country music was never quite the same. Created just three years earlier by Leo Fender, the Telecaster, a solid body instrument that featured a radical string-through-the-body design, similar to a steel guitar, gave Buck's' music a trebly, raw edge that distinguished what was later to become known as The Bakersfield Sound from the familar sounds eminating from Nashville. Owens rarely played anything else. Same for Roy Nichols, the legendary lead guitarist for Merle Haggard and the Strangers. Ditto for the late Don Rich, who was to Buck Owens what Lennon was to McCartney, or Keith was to Mick. "They should make a Fender Telecaster the size of the Washington Monument," says Marty Stuart, "and stick it right in the middle of Bakersfield." Buck shunned what was then the standard Nashville recording technique of lush arrangements and background singers, usually performed by the same group of studio musicians. Instead he recorded with his own band, and went for a driving, honkytonk meets rockabilly feel, mixed with a unique Western Swing-driven rhythm that he called the "freight train" sound. Having worked as a disc jockey, Buck knew the sound properties and limitations of radio, and so mixed his records using small speakers to get the best sound for car radios and portable record players. This caused Buck's records to "jump out" when played on radio. Buck Owens *was* Country music in the 1960's. He had 15 consecutive #1 records between 1963 and 1967 and a total of 20 chart-toppers between 1963 and 1972. Twenty-six other Buck Owens singles made it to the Top 10. The Beatles had an agreement with Capitol Records to have every new Buck Owens record shipped to them on the day of its release. Buck played everywhere from the Whitehouse to the Fillmore West to Carnegie Hall. Buck made country hip and cool. The March 1965 issue of the Nashville-based fan magazine Music City News carried a paid ad from Buck. In his "Pledge To Country Music," he stated: I Shall Sing No Song That Is Not A Country Song. I Shall Make No Record That Is Not A Country Record. I Refuse To be Known As Anything But A Country Singer. I Am Proud To be Associated With Country Music. Country Music And Country Music Fans Made Me What I Am Today. And I Shall Not Forget It. Shortly thereafter Buck released his version of Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee". Now tell me that ain't "alt"... Because I really love abuse, here's part two: Back about the time Buck Owens was watching Roy Nichols up on stage with Rose and the Maddox Brothers and thinking that being a Hillbilly singer might be a neat way to meet women, Something monumental was happening in the deep South. Where the Mississippi Delta met the Hills of the Ozarks and the Cumberland Plateau, a new form of music was being created. Although Blacks and Whites may have been segregated in just about every other aspect of American life, there was one area that intergration was in full swing. Music. Southern cities were typically highly segregated places which had literally no place the two cultures could mix. "Hoss" Allen and John R.of WLAC in Nashville were pioneers in exposing the youth of the South to black Rythmn & Blues music, opening the doors to race mixing. After dark, with it's 50,000 watt clear channel signal, WLAC's signal blanketed twenty-eight states and several foreign countries. The South was a great mixing pot of music. Hillbilly, Gospel, and Blues all came together. In 1953, a truck driver for Crown Electric in Memphis wandered into Sun Records on his lunch hour to record two songs as a birthday present for his mother. Sam Phillips, the owner, wasn't impressed. The young truck drivers name was Elvis Presley. In July of 1954 Presley was back in the studio and Phillips, finally recognizing the potential, knew he had the star he had been looking for. Specifically, Phillips had found a white guy who had the sound and feel of the black R&B artists he had been recording. And History was made. Elvis wasn't the first Rock and Roll star, he was just the first White Rock and Roll star. Blacks had been playing the same music for years. Elvis's first record was a hopped up version of Bill Monroe's Blue Moon of Kentucky. Carl Perkins was later to say "We were just playing Bluegrass Music with drums and electric guitar, Bluegrass was the original Rockabilly." If not for a tragic car wreck, Perkins would of been bigger than Elvis. Perkins suffered a serious car accident just before his debut on the Perry Como Show, and Presley was tapped to perform "Blue Suede Shoes" for him. Presley's cover of Blue Suede Shoes never matched Perkins success. Released in 1956, Perkins literally tore up the charts passing even Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel." "Blue Suede Shoes" distinguished Perkins as the first crossover White artist to hit on the Country, Pop, and R&B charts, an astonishing feat. It was Rock n' Roll's first big success. "That's what Rockabilly music, or Rock n' Roll was to begin with ... a Country man's song with a Black man's rhythm. I just put a little speed into some of the slow Blues licks." - Carl Perkins The Hurricane of talent at Sun was entering it's golden era, and Perkins was at the epicenter. Upon meeting Perkins for the first time after hearing his records on the radio, Chuck Berry remarked, "I thought fer sure you wuz a colored guy!" As Country and Pop music blended in Presleys' wake, Johnny Cash was one of the first Country musicians to score well on the Pop charts. Cash's unique sound was too sparse for the ultra conservative Country music establishment at the time, too slicked up to be considered hillbilly, yet certainly not Rock n' Roll. Johnny Cash was Rockabilly. In 1957 a piano pounding, seat kicking, ball of fire was unleashed at Sun, when a young hellraiser from Ferriday, Louisiana named Jerry Lee Lewis blasted the charts with "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On." Lewis' stage antics, and his marriage to his 13 year old cousin, Myra, resembled the Anti-Christ to most of the the 1950's general public. The 'Killer' was the Marilyn Manson of that time. He was also the first bona-fide Rock Star ."I know I'm wrong, cussin', carrin' on, screwing women, doin' everything, but I'm man enough to admit it. I'm a Rock n' Roll singer." Compared to the Killer, Gram Parsons and Ryan Adams are pussies. Only three records in history have ever became #1 on the Pop, R&B, and Country Western charts. They are Jerry Lee's "Whole Lotta Shakin'," Perkins "Blue Suede Shoes," and Presley's "Don't Be Cruel." Rockabilly and Rock and Roll were born. And try to say that it ain't Alt Country. Jeff Wall editor@twangzine.com 791 Prince Edward Rd Kernersville, NC 27284 336-788-3012 http://www.twangzine.com