A Word on Words; 4213; Michael Streissguth

fb and now from nashville public television's stood in the way of celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades but this is a word on workers with jobs still undone single welcome once again to award onward my guest today michael streit with author of eight books including johnny cash the biography is also written for publications such as the german funny music and mojo inundated all these brand new book out all wail and willie

chris limited's a national the late nineteen sixties people from all this country was straining international it was here that three trail blazing honest would rock the foundation was that was country music industry and redefine the jungle michael port right the heavier success it is here it is some book of it is somewhat i i have i've gone onto everything there was an old world music city usa about country music was but inside you do oh i love the way he opened a book and juxtapose social change so rights movement change the witch shook the foundations of this city in a very meaningful way and one on that help shape the foundation the country as regards to race and i

love the way you use that as a way to induce another earth shaking music was going to take place soon after where the idea come from the outlaw well it actually came from the film crazy heart starring jeff bridges i had to go and see the film and he reminded me so much of waylon jennings and that two thousand six two thousand seven whaling impasse than two thousand two hundred people are forgetting about whaling and so i began to investigate a biography about whaling and that led to the outlaws and they're kind of expanded the idea a little and i also going to do so the more liberal definition of about law and we we we often talk about the outlaw movement and think about whalen and william david allan coe people like that all around nashville but the fact of the matter is these were all artists who

recorded music the way it sounded in their heads according to their own vision and there were many other artists coming in many not well known in to nashville in the late sixties early seventies doing exactly that there was a very vibrant underground seeing here in the city the west and it was a lot like greenwich village and it's clear to me i've been coming to nashville for many years to write about music in the city and that story was not very well known and the ferment the artistic the social ferment in this town certainly influenced waylon jennings and willie nelson and they saw what was going on around them they saw artists who were they're producing their own music writing their own music and and they wanted that freedom within that in the context of the major label world where they lived and that that was in a nutshell the aisle in the house

hell they got the freedom from the establishment in these ago they're in the us and then it was it was a it was a breakthrough and i don't know i'm a i do know that song leaders in the industry had the sense they're here and they'll chet atkins clearly users one agent was men on music row in terms of asserting himself a very strong personality and same time not to mention william great guitarists of all time but talk a little bit about that determination that ease your own head they want to break away there was a there was a studio cd not not unlike the hollywood studio system in nashville in hollywood you were signed by studio the studio told you what films

you were on star in and who is going to direct you if you sign with a major label here in nashville columbia rca decca and you'll by large toll what songs you were going to record what session musicians you and work with and who's going to perdition and that formula there were exceptions that formula and they are the big exception frankly was johnny cash that he'd done things his own way for a long time and the city but that formula was too confining what willie nelson waylon jennings they wanted to break out of that and and they they were losing i think momentum the reagan signed rca both of them in the nineteen sixties they were not selling the way they thought they should sell and they frankly thought that proved the rca was not a very creative and that is that is true to a large extent i do have to say in reference to willie nelson anyway

chet atkins did recognize that the genius of his songwriting and if you go back and listen to that music in the nineteen sixties you can see the chet was trying very hard to find creative ways to present that music you know you'd he hired top notch rangers and you might get little embellishment slyke sitars and things of that nature but the by large they were frustrated and by the early nineteen seventies or waylon jennings is ready to pack it all in and go back to phoenix he's from texas but you had a successful club stand in phoenix he was ready to sharpen his guitar skills for session work and willie nelson had left nashville to go back to texas an austin winter song early on you quote willing as telling women nationally regular at the laws here and now do you is this great story and the one of a way was written but that are still believed he was with willie at willie's farm outside town here they just come back from a

tor and so they have not been treated very well by the promoters or that the audience and to have they were sitting by a lake and all these frogs are they're creating this the symphony and then willy is pointing out that they are the sopranos in the basses in the bare toes and he'd turn to billy ray says don't know what i'm going to do and not too long after his house burned down and he was campaigning back to texas and will where he discovered that he was a hero so sue these men were really ready to have to hang it up and finally both of them meet a man named neil russian who's an accountant in new york who also happen to manage represented miles davis would be a russian negotiated a very handsome contracts for both of them that demanded some artistic freedom particularly for a four way with willie left the label went to atlantic went to columbia away when all the sudden have the right to

record with whom he wanted to record as far as producing as far as session musicians and then the next thing you know behold our studio system in nashville just comes tumbling down artists begin to produce themselves they stop using the studios that the labels the label studios so you have engineers who once worked for major labels out of work i do have are seeing columbia closing down shutting down their image today as those labels become marketers of country music while all of the creative side is is controlled by the artist and that remains a template and even until even until today know again there's no where this term outlook on from that i read in your book game lead obituary thats a true story that is she founded secure an addiction or if they will smith

this oath is a smith who work in the glazer brothers sound studio which is where whalen like to record it was in the heart of the west and also close they were but he's never been a question and in town hall controlled his music and in wayland saw that model and he really wanted to be part of that but is smith was there was an office assistant and also book the band's when waylon spent on broadband we went out on the road in a disc jockey asteroid what's this music called and she grabbed the dictionary from under the desk and she saw the word maverick in maverick image stood out while living outside the law editor of course to be fair journalists have begun using that town in reference to work where women and willie and others and the suffolk risks to offer some the whale had done a song called ladies love outlaws event and so so that when i was out there but that she kind of drove it home and the next thing you know it becomes a marketing label here in town and i should

add that was important for me in the book to get into to mention into to drive home that there was an outlaws i taste in nashville it was already here there was a template and and that was primarily in as far as i'm concerned this civil rights leaders your that and diane nash john lewis and others will go broke the mold and that i think nashville gets credit for that as as wonderful was saved by david halberstam's of the children is describing that era national think sometimes is still painted with a broad brush that theater and certainly in the sixties many national reporters came to town and enter painted the city has this southern backwater buckle on the bible belt you can get good food soldier coming down from your brain your own canceling you quote that critically i don't know who he was he

really not the city's no no it was in the back of the eye and i had to figure out the mass of the back of get a fair shake no unless congress when there were there were there was there was is progress isn't here there was from that little ear and it and i'm not saying that kris kristofferson when jennings willie nelson were civil rights leaders at all but the city was changing to be the city was changing and they conformed to the times they understood that the time was right to ask for their own freedom or you point out that cruz it did have a political cause that he led that he related to says the shelters and the farm workers and then there's a photograph in the book of the two together but as an artifact of them

boogie is priceless photo well we might just take a look at three shots of fumbled just a layer that you look at that as willie surrounded by found friends fans and i think that's a classic picture and there's one in another classic picture and obama looked a little bit like outlaws strike there and that that then they are together it will is blaring unwilling to the king or unsure i mean you look at them as gross once again fit the image of the outlaw what you make of all let's talk about those stocks because you put willie and waylon together and their relationship with morsi and then you have this young captain who's committed off to west

point to teach here is found that show i love my show and knows that's where the song's been rewritten captain in the army just no father ranking officer and as well not jumbo by chris's a different he's a different cut although he did listen to those songs as a kid and that it captures imagination was talk about greece load ago they do you need a bowl certainly is unique and thirty he came to television say in mid sixties he was a fan of hank williams as a child and johnny cash and those country artists and mingled with those whom he studied in his literature classes the thomas hardy the novelist thomas hardy out of a william blake and so he comes to town with this kind of rambling verse that doesn't

quite it the formula and in nashville of the times we tried to temper that first and to make it more commercial of the finely he meets he meets jerry foster for fossil in the us and for a variety show that i'm wearing around town who are saying put fred foster and the whole thing about fred foster gave more reason his start when nobody else could do anything with them he had signed dolly parton before dolly parton with anybody he had recorded in the early sixties willie nelson in the setting that finally gave willie so much success in nineteen seventy five so he he was ahead of his time by ten years and in dealing with with willie nelson but he signs kristofferson the monument records and he signs into his combine music publishing company and finely chris has a stage and the combine music is very effective in getting his music two artists like roger miller

ray price and then of course johnny cash johnny cash becomes one of christopher sims great sponsors he records sunday morning coming down and makes it his own and he had the hits for the good times sent me and bobby mcgee helping make it through the night on the songs were different they they broke with them all to here in nashville they've talked about sensual love band and in wrestling with personal demons ins and songs very much rooted in the experiences they kristofferson were was happening here in nashville on the streets wrestling with the family of that that he was an effects slowly leaving behind as soon as he became more immersed in and rip rip recording industry so kristofferson reinvents the meaning of the songwriting here national so all the sudden country music disc jockeys begin to understand that you know what it might be

ok to play nice country songs without a lot like bob dylan songs i'm so sort of that really pushes the envelope he pushes the barriers he has artistic control and he has independence and so although ej never really it was marketed under the outlaw label that hazel smith and he nonetheless was or was a perk once again he was one of those people who and that worked according to his own formula end and you know you always be remembered in a nationalist as hadn't changed changed the way music was was written here for those of you just joining us we're talking with michael stipe group that has new book out long way on with a gruesome images of national that's a fan of rick in court there they all are the three outlaws oh my i haven't taken

the cantor was which to be a woman powell clear determination clearly their willingness to challenge the system clearly there and but in other times of trouble and whalen is the best example of an ad he does he does have a drug problem and and does have a difficult time shake it almost almost gets nail my own fortune and it's a it's a it's a sad moment to realize that all this talent is so much suffering as a result what is close to have it but the town is their own and that an advantage from laos i'll let me as too low

putting that aside in nineteen forty polish story with cameron sensitivity and that it deserves and the amazing thing about it is that some people ms roper date he gets busted his records are going through the roof and amazingly and it how to explain that well i think it's that the fact that some music fans like a little bit of danger associated with the recruitment and all the sudden as its gets kind of authentic and jerry bradley who ran rca international during the nineteen seventies he did say look the the fact that sinatra was associated with the mafia didn't necessarily hurt his career ended the same way like me said to this destroyed best is probably what helps and sell some records and i think he exploited that is just an observation

and indeed there were going to be in the national newspapers at the time they really were anonymous set of people chose to remain anonymous comments into music columnists that wave and so rep on a double and they did they did and now when people ask me about the end of the outlaw movement so when they all come to come to to an end and i think that arrests for for cocaine in nineteen seventy seven i did kind of signal the end that there had to be in them a great degree of the excess in the wake of of the outlaw movement in the outlaw thing became a formula of its own really and i think both way when willie began to chafe under that new formula that yes you have to seem rebellious you had to walk with a swagger you have to seem like you just stumbled out of a mexican or house and whalen in the in the wake of that bus tour he does not

immediately give up drugs that would take a few more years you see some of the songs began beginning to mellow you see them becoming more reflective view records the song called billy by tony joe white is which is a fabulous song about to arrange riders who were having to go their separate ways and end it it brings chills me right now just to talk about the song that way and does so well and then he's also recording songs one of in nineteen seventy eight called don't you think this outlaw a bit stunned up up up and then you know there's the prophetic it's reflective of what they deserve an end and i always our art wayland tears himself to me because he never took that too seriously than he always question that even as early as nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy three a whaling records the song it sure hank donat this way and heat heat he gets the

fact that there is this there is this industry that he's part of he's living up to the expectations of the industry government and about doubled real outlaws i never really i can remember when i lived through it and erica mcdermott played the book it resonated with something that i thought i remembered but lee harrison in i wasn't getting the newspaper at the time and i must have known about the murder but somehow escape me and here was a real bad guy talented no doubt it was awful tough and also our nose

and then winds up or killed by the guy who writes about green beret sergeant barry sadler yes an end it's a tragic case when it's really a jew yes the outlaws ready or an outlaw heroes to win and a boston but they were musicians and talented musicians in your cupboard out who had some talent any other baltimore band got it literally emerson had come to town and nineteen fifties and it had some successes you as you point out and he had to have written songs that marty robbins recorded on ruby and there's another hit called i thought i heard you calling my name and he also had a recording contract with columbia but he like the fight he had a short temper

and that meant that he was often on the streets of nashville was settling scores people remember him walking around with a trench coat and a bicycle chain is hidden hidden in the trench coat and it caught up with him at the was a heavy user of drugs he was arrested after shooting a man in memphis and then there was this great talent but he was he was he was brought down by this this this violent and as i said earlier i feel like there were all kinds of stripes of the outlaws in nashville an end and that he was a real criminal outlaw and as you say it ended tragically for him in the late nineteen seventies so when sergeant barry sadler suttles score with him and shoot him dead in a parking lot outside nashville or i'm just a couple minutes left and turn for hezbollah which we haven't found

it how the lead and what's the latest mlb oh you look back on this period as just one great moment where this talent was going out to explode unfortunately the talent was there and it did touch literally cause the whole nation i think that i think the legacy in country music anyway is is going to be the fact that we have many artists who pursue their own vision demand that artistic independence nashville nobody wrong still likes a formula there are plenty cookie cutter artists out there but they're also the ones who are going to do it the way way way and willie and christie according to their own their own recipe not conforming to any particular set of standards and i think anybody that are so jamie johnson zack

brown who very openly point to when jennings and willie nelson has as influences as well as kris kristofferson i think also that weren't were we gotta think about willie nelson himself in the book i say that that is one of the you know the most important legacies of the outlaw movement but he is a man who represents the heart soul country music i ease out their time together those those urban those times when the wind countries it really does do it well he's the link to some of the old classics crazy and funny how time slips away which he wrote and he's a link to the texas honky tonks where he performed and were country music lived for so long so it's a william self is very important i think also kristofferson zz and he continues to be very active in social causes he'd just continues to do concerts for the united farm workers and he although he would say that we first came to

nashville he had no awareness of the civil rights movement it wasn't particularly anti war which was it would surprise many many bp wasn't political but i took that lesson in which you very reminiscing about his own and people are questioning whether he had the talent iowa performing older movies sell them the better with barbra streisand we've run out of time michael thank you so much for doing this i just love talking about the outlawed it's my pleasure thank you very much and thanks to all of you for watching and johnson didn't offer a word on words reading in the heck it's

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