Sad cowboys, outlaws and desperados waiting for a train
No country for old men
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Last month would have seen Phil Lynott hit 75 years of age (on the 20th August) if he had managed to stay with us and provide further cowboy tales from the trail, in his songs inspired by the Wild West.
Rory Gallagher was another Irish musician who enjoyed a cowboy tale, covering Leadbelly’s “Out On The Western Plain” about Buffalo Bill and Jesse James. It always comes back to that Western milieu with cowboys and an independent defiance, films portraying the endless blue skies and open spaces of the Wild West which was always so appealing especially to anyone growing up in a grey, rainy Catholic Ireland of the 70’s.
The film posters were so iconic, especially for any of the Western movies directed by Clint Eastwood and the ‘spaghetti’ Westerns directed by Sergio Leone with their exceptional soundtracks created by Ennio Morricone. (The Italian director in a BBC interview revealed that Eastwood wasn’t his first choice, “I really wanted James Coburn, but he was too expensive”, it is hard to imagine them with anyone else as the Man with No Name)
I still enjoy getting lost in the classic and contemporary Western movies. Most recently I watched the first part of Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga. After his success in Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone allowed him the opportunity to return to his Western genre film project that he had been looking to work on for 30 years. (Sheridan’s spin off series 1883, 1923 are both worth viewing.) I have also been bingeing and revisiting some of the Neo Western movies, returning to movies like the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men which has now become this genre’s quintessential example and Let Him Go which also starred Costner along with Diane Lane, the Taylor Sheridan trilogy of “the modern-day American frontier” with Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River. Hell or High Water has a great soundtrack made up from an original score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis along with some apt country song choices including Chris Stapleton’s “Outlaw State of Mind”. Logan was another which I had forgotten made such great use of the Johnny Cash song “When the Man Comes Around” over it’s closing credits.
Little did I know watching Star Wars IV A New Hope back in the late seventies as a kid, George Lucas’ references to The Searchers were flying over my head, as did Martin Scorsese’s hat tip to the movie Shane in his gritty, disturbing Taxi Driver when watching that for the first time in my late teens.
It took me a few different viewings over the years to really get the impact and understand why The Searchers is still regarded as one of the greatest westerns. For a particular generation Shane was a stellar Western favourite, my Dad was no exception idolising Alan Ladd along with many other Western stars and also the spectacular Lonesome Dove which was based on the maximalist work of Larry McMurtry. While he passed away back in 2010, I still get a great sense of comfort from watching these movies in his absence.
“You don’t get modern film without Westerns, any more that you get Led Zeppelin without Muddy Waters.” — Rich Hall, “How The West Was Lost” (2008) BBC
Sad cowboys
Back in April this year, I went to see Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker and the songs from her ‘Bright Future’ solo album sound even better live. It was refreshing to see an entertainer hold a room’s attention with just her voice and acoustic guitar. For the album version of song “Sadness as a Gift” there is a fiddle piece by Josefin Runsteen that threads in and out along with Lenker’s acoustic guitar which is tinged with a bittersweet feel and reminds me of old Irish folk airs.
Being Irish, that fiddle sound taps into something deep in my DNA and as part of the Waterboys the majestic fiddle player Steve Wickham could conjure up something magical while playing similar type melodies. Sadly, Wickham is no longer with the band who went full “outlaw” at one point back in the eighties abandoning the Rock ‘n Roll trappings for a rural cottage on the West Coast of Ireland to record their folk indie rock classic ‘Fishermans Blues’. I have just been to see the Waterboys perform live with Mike Scott donning his cowboy hat and boots, but it’s a different sound he is chasing these days without his sidekick alongside him.
Putting new words to old melodies
In an old RTE television documentary series Bringing It All Back Home, presenter Philip King attempted to trace the influence of Irish music (and the fiddle instrument) has had on musical genres including country, as he followed the journey of English, Irish, and Scottish settlers as their musical traditions were absorbed into the synthesis of American country music. Pete Seeger explained “Putting new words to old melodies” is what country and folk music thrives on.
One memorable interview that stands out for me from the series was with Irish folk singer Liam Clancy who unfolded a thread that tied some songs together starting with “The Patriot Game” which was written by Dominic Behan, brother of playwright Brendan. Clancy spoke of the song whose melody originally came from an old country ballad from the Appalachian mountains called “One Morning in May”, which was adapted and recorded by Jo Stafford and Burl Ives as “The Nightingale”. He went on to mention that they used to sing it in the NYC Village haunts with great fervor, where a young impressionable Bob Dylan would hang out and who would later transform the same melody into his folk anthem “With God on our side”. (John Denver would also cover the “One Morning in May” as a track on ‘One Man Dog’)
Over the years like so many others, at different ages and stages of life I have gone through listening phases of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan. At this point he has released 40 studio albums, spanning multiple genres but sometimes his sojourns across the country boundary were too far for me, especially any songs featuring pedal steel guitar. "I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight" on his John Wesley Harding comes to mind and some of the tracks on ‘Nashville Skyline’.
But that record also contains the sublime “Girl from the North Country” duet with Johnny Cash and also “Lay Lady, Lay” which happen to be two of my favourite Dylan tracks, his vocals aren’t immediately recognisable as apparently at the time he had given up smoking which had a impact on his singing voice. Lay Lady, Lay was initially written for the movie Midnight Cowboy but missed the inclusion deadline.
“the song came out of those first four chords.I filled it up with the lyrics then, the la la la type thing, well that turned into “Lay Lady, Lay” — Bob Dylan, Biograph liner notes
What Dylan did with those two albums was open up Nashville and country music to another wider generation of fans and highlight the songwriters and performers like Johnny Cash.
I think the vast country music genre unfairly gets a bad rap often overlooking gifted songwriters but it can be difficult for a music fan to identify and distinguish authentic country music from folk, bluegrass and Americana type genre labels. While I gladly embrace folk, and acknowledge getting drawn in by the sound of the fiddle and some country music, I have a odd relationship with the wider genre in general (and also alternative country music). In the book “Every song ever” author Ben Ratcliffe talks about:
“Genre is a construct for the purpose of commerce, not pleasure, and ultimately for the purpose of listening to less”
As a music and history fan the divergence of folk and country music as genres is something that has long interested me as they both originated from the same musical well. To satisfy my own curiosity I wanted to look back at American country music to tease out what elements appeal to me.
I love Southern rock and the slide guitar often used in blues based bands, everyone from Canned Heat, Little Feat, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top to Drive by Truckers, The Black Crowes and Kings of Leon, they all have that great mix of hard rock, blues and country. (Creedence Clearwater Revival too, although hailing from California would be considered Southern Rock sounding).
My aversion to country stems from the timbre of that pedal steel guitar and the “Twang” sound, which is the sound many country fans enjoy. The Garth Brooks era was typical of it and it is probably what forever alienated me from that particular type of mainstream country music. But the Twang sound is sometimes there in alternative country music acts that I adore, including some of Wilco’s tracks just not as the central element thankfully.
So many other country songs are build around this overly melancholic and mournful sound, with the bendy notes that the pedal steel guitar produces in that kind of vibrato, or fluctuation in pitch. For many this is what pulls them into the music it just has the polar opposite effect on me.
That sound evolved from a Hawaiian steel guitar created by Joseph Kekuke, which he played across his lap. In the early part of the 20th century, tent shows moved across America from town to town offering an introduction to this shiny steel instrument and it later became widely adopted by country acts.
Bud Isaacs is noted as the man who dramatically changed the steel guitar world when he invented the country pedals. In the late 40s companies like Bigsby, Gibson and Fender were all beginning to make these instruments. (Paul Bigsby is an intriguing figure who deserves a post in his own right, he moved from racing and building Crocker motorcycles to making musical instruments and is credited with the first successful design of what we know now as a tremolo arm for the electric guitar.)
Pedal steel guitars would evolve further and become more complicated with double necks, raised frets and multiple pedals. Alvino Rey was also influential in the development of the pedal steel guitar while Buddy Emmons and Jimmy Day would be considered legendary players.
The start of “hillbilly”
In the BBC documentary ‘Lost Highway the story of country music’, it digs a little deeper into the origins of country and tells the tale of a New York producer Ralph Peter who in the late 20s working for Victor Records recognised a money making opportunity. He changed their focus from classical records and began recording the sounds of mountain music of the south that he thought he could sell back to a white population as “hillbilly records” while packaging blues music to a black population as “race records”. These recordings took place in Bristol on the Tennessee, Virginia border. Technology changes had enabled the easier transport of recording equipment and Peer was innovative in his recording efforts on the road. Successful artists he was responsible for included Jimmie Rodgers, who became one of country’s first true stars and who tragically died at just 35.
“The most inspiring type of entertainment for me has always been somebody like Jimmie Rodgers, someone who could do it alone and was totally original.” -Bob Dylan, Biograph
Also, The Carter family who had gathered and collected hundreds of songs, ballads that had been passed down from the mountains from generation to generation documenting their daily country lives. The family members that put all that music down on tape were Sara Carter, her husband A. P. Carter, and her sister-in-law Maybelle Carter. (Maybelle’s daughter June would grow up as a second generation Carter country success in her own right and also married Johnny Cash). Sometimes unheralded, Blues musician Lesley Riddle traveled with A.P on his “song-catching” trips and is said to also have influenced Maybelle’s “bottleneck” style of guitar picking.
“If I could hear you sing, I could sing it too, I was his tape recorder. He’d take me with him and he’s get someone to sing the whole song. Then I’d get it and learn it to Sara and Maybelle.” Lesley Riddle
The singing Cowboy
The early 30s and the Great Depression shifted listening habits to the radio because people didn’t have money to squander on records and the phonograph recordings just weren’t of a high quality. With little in the way of entertainment options, a bond was formed between the radio and listener for those who congregated around to tune in especially on a Saturday night. At that time, live performances were the focus for performers as barn dances were being broadcast on radio stations like Chicago’s WLS.
In the documentary America’s Music-Roots of County Music narrated by Kris Kristofferson, he explains how early Hollywood movies including Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 The Great Train Robbery featured Westerns and cowboys. The studios took some artistic license with these early movies as they introduced the cowboy with the bigger Stetson type hat but that wasn’t the hat choice of cowboys back in the day, the preferred choice was the derby or bowler hat as captured in the early photograph of the infamous James Gang. Although historians estimate that one in four cowboys were Black, they didn’t appear in the features either.
In the later part of the 30s Hollywood introduced the singing cowboy, with Gene Autry. He was already a national radio show celebrity having been broadcast as part of Chicago’s WLS nationwide barn dances. He later appeared in 91 films and his music sold more than a reportedly 100 million units over his career. He visited Ireland back in 1939 on a promotional tour of cinemas.
Other stars included Roy Rogers & The Sons Of The Pioneers who reworked old songs of the trail and brought an new emphasis to harmonies, even yodeling to the old Jimmie Rodgers songs. WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee broadcast the Grand Ole Opry show and it helped catapult the city as the capital of country music, the show was created by George Hay who was insistent on a staged rural country look for performers. In 1932, WSM’s power jumped to 50,000 watts, stretching their audience much further.
I think this is also what started the diverging streams of music, where folk would evolve on its own with singer/songwriters like Woodie Guthrie and the growth of the “protest song” movement while radio and Westerns bolstered the rise of country music. The other impact that the silver screen singing cowboys was the influence of their Western ware, as their outfits became more ostentatious especially when designed by the Ukrainian-American rodeo tailor Nudie Cohn, along with Bo Riddle styled cowboy boots. Nashville would later adopt this look, and no more so than with the likes of Little Jimmy Dickens, leaving behind the rural hillybilly attire.
Bluegrass
In the 1940s, Kentuckian native Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, created a more distinct sound from other country forms that would become accepted as ‘Bluegrass’ (The nickname for the Kentucky state). Bluegrass singing is generally more high-pitched and Monroe came up with his “high, lonesome sound" along with his lean-in singing style to the microphone. The banjo also became integral to the Bluegrass sound, along with emphasis on the guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and bass. Earl Scruggs is the player credited with introducing a fast tempo banjo playing style with 3 fingers which is now recognised as that Bluegrass banjo sound.
Ricky Skaggs would go on to modernise the Bluegrass sound in the 70s with his mandolin playing, also being from Kentucky he was familiar with the associated harmony structures and joined Emmy Lou Harris’ band. Harris’ blended style in turn would influence Mid West fiddle player and singer Alison Kraus who is the complete opposite type of Bluegrass performer to Bill Monroe.
But what was curious in the documentaries was the lack of Black banjo players, as the “akonting” instrument was brought to America with African slaves and is considered to be the predecessor to the banjo as explained by Jake Blount.
Banjo playing star Rhiannon Giddens has been working to promote country music’s Black history and the African/Irish/German/English/Indigenous mix of influences.
Honky Tonk
Western swing came from a mixture of big band swing music, jazz and Western songs typified by Bob Wills and his ensemble, who were the antidote for worried people with the fear of darkness falling in Europe with the looming threat of the second World War.
The War brought American blues and country music to Europe with the American Forces Network(AFN), but back in the U.S more employment was available in California with the mass manufacturing of ammunition for the war effort. This added to the workforce migration of the mid ’30s where families from states like Texas and Oklahoma were forced to move west after the impact of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. Those folks were working in factories that ran around the clock and when they wanted to blow off steam those people wanted to drink, dance and yee-haw to country based music and ended up in honky tonk bars. The music had to be loud to be heard over the rambunctious din and honky tonk music sprang up from the electrification of instruments. Long before Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the water” Roy Acuff had a song by the same title.
Others of this genre include Red Foley, Eddy Arnold and most notably singer/songwriter Hank Williams, who provided much of the cry in your beer type country material written from his own turbulent life experiences. (Blues musician Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne was an mentor of Williams)
The new Rock n Roll
In 1956 when a young Elvis Presley from Memphis erupted on to the scene, “Honky Tonk” country music was left deserted by a generation of fans eager to now experience the new Rock n Roll.
“It’s not black; it’s not white; it’s not pop; it’s not country,” Memphis producer Sam Phillips on sharing Elvis Presley’s first single
For country producers such as Owen Bradley of Decca records and Chet Atkins of RCA, their answer was to offer a far from the farm alternative and to dampen down the “Twang”, dropping the fiddle for a more wider reaching palatable mix of crooner type pop country, with their new polished Nashville sound supported by a cast of session musicians and backing singers that were known as the Nashville A Team.
It was Bradley who encouraged Patsy Cline to sing WiIlie Nelson’s “Crazy” which became one of the genres most famous songs. Other examples of this sound included singers like Jim Reeves, with “He’ll have to go”, Brenda Lee’s “I’m sorry” which was a number 1 hit in 1960 and Eddy Arnold, who had left honky tonk behind with his “Make the World Go Away”
I didn’t care whether it was real country music or not, I was trying to sell records. Its like a baseball team you’re supposed to win, if you don’t win you’re out of business. I was in the studio trying to be successful as a recording artist and I was — Eddy Arnold
Bradley also produced Loretta Lynn who became the queen of country music who released 50 studio albums
“To make it in this business, you either have to be first, great or different, and I was the first to ever go into Nashville, singin’ it like the women lived it.”
Harmonies and Brothers as performers
Country singer Charley Pride is second in record sales only to Elvis Presley, one of the Top 20 best-selling country artists with over 70 million albums sold, he commented that the ingredients of American music were;
“Well I’m not saying I could sing anything I want to, but I do feel that I sing the basics of American music: country, gospel and the blues. I think I’m the epitome of all of that. And not only when you hear me, but when you see me, too.” Charley Pride NPR interview
Ray Charles was one of the first African American artists to merge the blues with gospel but I didn’t realise how many country albums he recorded outside of his acclaimed ‘Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music’ (he recorded 6 other country albums!) The impact of Gospel and particularly the church harmonies cannot be underestimated.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers, a group of African American singers established in 1871 were one of the first groups to sing spirituals outside of Black churches. Everyone from Elvis, Johnny Cash, to Glenn Campbell took something from Gospel singing.
While Rock n Roll affected the popularity of The Stanley Brothers, one of which was Ralph who was famous for singing “Man of Constant Sorrow” their song was later rediscovered in the 60s and again in 00’s when it featured on the movie soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou, the Depression road movie from the Coen Brothers. The movie soundtrack provided a huge boost to bluegrass and country, raising the profile of a number of musicians including Gillian Welch and Alison Kraus.
There is a long history of gospel harmony singing from brothers including quartet The Jordanaires formed by Bill Matthews and his brother Monty, The Louvin Brothers, the Statler Brothers, the Blackwood brothers and the Everly brothers while they were a more Rock n Roll Nashville sound their roots were firmly in Kentucky, their harmonies would heavily influence a young Lennon and McCartney, The Beach Boys Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Country Rock
Harmonies would also seep into 60’s country rock acts like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, The Flying Burrito brothers in their rose-embroidered, rhinestone-accented suits who also followed the earlier lead of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, with the steel pedal sound being prominent again. Capital Records’ Ken Nelson helped define the Bakersfield Sound and was responsible for producing both Haggard and Owens, who Ringo Starr was a big fan of and he covered his “Act Naturally” song for his selection on The Beatles ‘Help’ record.
Country rock would go on to influence a whole range of other acts from The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt to even Fleetwood Mac but what it also did was bring back the emphasis on the harmonies of the past, which would also seep through to other genres and glorious duets such as Californian Gram Parsons with Emmy Lou Harris, Iris DeMent and John Prine right up to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch, and to Taylor Swift and Bon Iver.
The Outlaws
Johnny Cash released 67 studio albums from 1954 to 2003 and brought country music back to a stripped back sound with his Live prison records. When asked about his dark side in a BBC interview he quoted a Roy Orbison song:
A diamond is a diamond and a stone is a stone
But a man’s not all good nor all bad
Cash was on the Columbia Records label for 26 years and released 59 albums, before being dropped unceremoniously in the 80s. After a brief stint on Mercury he went to Rick Rubin’s American Recordings where he won a Grammy for Best Country Album for 1998’s Unchained.
I traded in a few old records to get the colossal Johnny Cash ‘Unearthed’ box set from his American Recordings with Rick Rubin in my local used record store. It was like lugging a few old telephone directory books around, as it contains 9 vinyl records along with a coffee table book and I really didn’t need a gym workout after bringing that home. It contains some haunting covers with Willie Nelson, Glenn Campbell, Joe Strummer, Nick Cave and Fiona Apple.
Cash’s Live prison albums heavily influenced Merle Haggard who had spent time incarcerated and was mesmerised by Cash’s stage presence. Haggard had that desired common man authenticity from his prison experience, his “git-tar” and songs like “Okie from Muskogke” from his time moving west to California and feeling downtrodden appealed to both the hippies and country fans.
But the 70s also saw acclaimed song writer Willie Nelson move from Nashville back to his native Texas after struggling to fit in musically and commercially. With creative control back with Nelson, he recorded and released a dark western concept album ‘Red Headed Stranger’ which would change his career trajectory winning over both country and mainstream fans.
The red headed stranger had eyes like the thunder
And his lips, they were sad and tight
His little lost love lay asleep on the hillside
And his heart was heavy as night
Don’t cross him, don’t boss him
He’s wild in his sorrow
He’s ridin’ an’ hidin’ his pain
Don’t fight him, don’t spite him
Just wait till tomorrow
Maybe he’ll ride on again
He moved away from the clean cut look to growing his hair out long and beard, teaming up with Waylon Jennings and together they brought their version of country music back to the outlaws from the Western movies, as their central characters. RCA seized upon an economic opportunity and released the 1976 album designed like a Wanted poster which was a much a hit with hippies, bikers as with the outlaw country fans. Later Johnny Cash and Kris Kristoffersen joined up and they formed the Highway men.
Guy Clark was another songwriter who had a difficult relationship with Nashville and probably didn’t get enough recognition while he was alive. He influenced a new generation of song writers and on Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s new album, ‘Woodland’ it features a song “Hashtag” about Clark, who supported their early work.
To celebrate Clark’s induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, Jason Isbell performed the classic Clark song “Desperados Waiting for a Train”.
Isbell is one of the modern songwriters and also acknowledges John Prine’s influence and mentorship, he joked in an interview:
There’s a couple of places in “Traveling Alone” that to me sound just like “Hello in There,” the John Prine song. I asked John about it years ago. I was like, “Man, I’m sorry, I ripped you off in this song,” and he said, “I listened to it, and I didn’t hear what you’re talking about. But, I heard you rip me off in some other songs.” Isbell -Vulture interview
One of my favourite albums from 2023 was released by Isbell and the 400 unit, called ‘Weathervanes’. Since being kicked out of Drive by Truckers, where he provided some major songwriting contributions including “Decoration Day” and “Outfit” Isbell has become sober and recorded 9 studio albums but I think this is his best record yet and some of his best writing, from “Strawberry Woman”:
There’s a warm wind blowing through the laundromat
There’s a young man crying in a cowboy hat
He got square-toed boots, so he ain’t for real
Wouldn’t last five minutes on a pedal steel
The song “King of Oklahoma” written about opioid addiction will reasonate with anyone who has watched either of the shows Dopesick or Painkillers. I love that Isbell ended up acquiring Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Ed King’s legendary “Red Eye” Les Paul.
There is a documentary called “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed” which covers his creative process for the recording of his previous record ‘Reunions’. The documentary took 4 years from inception to completion, 15 days of recording and 30 interviews over the course of before and during the pandemic. It is a difficult watch at times, with the portrayal of his marriage troubles with musician Amanda Shires and neither come out in the best of light, the couple have since divorced.
Whenever I play the ‘Weathervanes’ album, my family have the same “Lord, what are you listening to” vibe and this record is too far across their country boundary maybe I can get them to read this piece and encourage them to travel a little further down the country roads or watch another Western.
Further reading and watching
“It Still Moves” by Amanda Petrusich on the quest for Americana music which is a very enjoyable and informative read that I would recommend, she had an interesting take on the Alt-Country genre and provided good background information and details on topics including Delta Blues, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson.
