A Word on Words; 2416; Mccloud

in a word down worries the program delving into the world of books and their authors this week mary mcleod talks about the definitive country hero thorough or downwards mr johnson chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university so on guns in the once again welcome to word on words i guess today barron a cloudy talk about country definitive country welcome mary to have agents great daddy had a talk about this all dylan encyclopedia of country music and its performers brian clough has spent ten years putting together twelve hundred entries of bart of his of stars in country music passed and president lists of agents list of representative lists of countries stations radio stations i'm at it's all there how'd you get interested in this it started back in nineteen sixty four i been very much involved with rock

and roll yes and i also got involved in folk music man i just happened to hear an album by roy atrocity that was in nineteen sixty four sixty five around there had a song called saigon or michigan and hopefully to country music and about four years later i had a booking agency and first time ever manage was a bluegrass band and i started putting on promotions and barrier about on the blue tears that's in my book i didn't mean to interrupt you have a chapter from your own people the clay county travelers and i'm a i've doubted that ever been to clay county that first group the first great band action and i could hold their own now and then i kept that interest in country

music and rock music and music generally and around about eighty four eighty five i was doing a lot of liner notes for record companies and them found that i couldn't get the information i wanted it was on or inaccurate or inadequate starting making a few notes and then the pc came along and i was a bit like manna from heaven this and that created a database and very fortunately computers oh one of my interests and just thought it might be a lot of notes in a lot of interviews to win for the fabled having a few science is you know when i when i started looking through your book i thought well you know it'd be some people who aren't in here in maine we have red foley in their own way ever wake up and they're well roy was the king resident day long time or a lawyer short answer probably have what you will have the other not only

people whose names you would recognize living in the people unless you're a very old you probably never heard of are in there i mean you got a cousin cash and hillary's and elders iranian ricky in a rather un mandate and rebook and deli everybody wanna know about now how about accuracy in the biography is an annual as an awful lot of them right now these people over the years have been books written about some of them again again i hear from people like george jones that what has been written about me misrepresents what really happened to johnny rodriguez told me that the last time i ran into him how you make sure bury know what you i don't put all of our faith is accurate that it's they a fact based not braun fiction but i think you have to do what is called primus so states are surging which basically means talking to the people talking to people that know them

confirming information a classic case in point is jack clement the stories about cowboy jack clement oh apocryphal and i sat down with jack and we just chatted and in fact the truth is much more interesting years and which invariably is well indeed it is but just all the jack for medical cowboy jack is a guy who's had a lot written about him in having to he believes that an interview knowledge of song what is money not that we set down for about two hours i still have that state which includes these wonderful the rope line refugee people realize that is it an excellent musician bob hayes elijah i think i think about to begin again list music has gone through many manifestations of mini rebirths it's gone from

bluegrass to pick an unsigned in two years and a touch of folk and blues in a touch rock the huge wave of of new music chains a diamond i've talked about the bridge between country and rock and when you still come down with in most cases is country country country now wonder about the appeal of it there to quote slit you use of so set the stage for what's to come you called jimmy dickens of sighing i lived it and i love it when a new coal burning governors saying i'm really saw married to and i think that that it's true of the performers themselves you got hooked on it they get hooked on it and it really holds them beyond that though it holds his vest martin minion member fan club

but when you must a man was that being a deeply immersed in it now drop one is that it's so unique about that makes country music now that music of the country and i think there are a few things number one is country music has always been a reflection of the same socioeconomic situation if you go back to the twenties and thirties they reflected how much are the farms they reflected religion which is very much an early part of country music as people have changed and as their jobs or change you have you know you have the blue collar worker jennifer white collar workers so country music's appeal has changed sometimes not for the good sometimes it's slit a little bit too much into pop music but most of the time the stories and you know there was a sign in country music it all begins with a song it normally begins with a song ends with the song as long as there are

songs that are being written that reflect what people in history most mr mrs america lived want then they can be recorded and they can be country music however i think that the barriers between country music and rock music especially and folk music have blurred somewhat that role reflecting but they're reflecting for different age demographics and so as country music gets into young are not performers biggest country performers have always been young when i started i mean i know there was this lovely story from wayland jennings that have become to perform you have to be over forty you have to been divorced at least once police want to be in prison now i think yeah it's reversing to this thing where you have youngsters in that seems especially in bluegrass where you have some very very young performers people like kristi lee who's held his

avant akin who's fourteen he cut his first album of thirteen but that's nothing new because ricky skaggs was dermot marty stuart was doing it keith whitley was doing it well i mean let's go all the way back to the car the family and in when mom a bill decided she was going to put together the second generation a carter family i'm a knight i think that the june carter cash must have been early early came when she and her sisters began to sing with mama go and that's been that's been part of that all along as or you had failed and britain who was jimmy baker was part of the beverly hillbillies and he was in these things at the time so it is nothing new on across as musicians you sometimes feel that some of them have learned his amber years no zipper the mother and not only it's ok or whatever it needs to make a baby healthy the army swore the fiddle or a mandolin at the same time

you know owen loves to look to find all my old favorites know and that if she would ever say about red foley our send a large elisa that was the richest voice in country music follies was an unknown reason then came along to me always comes up one of the things about this music it seems to me is that while there must be some jealousies and there must be some tensions of us big competition i don't hear much about the you know really much about the stars at odds with one another but i'm reminded that because i and i know minnie pearl who's been ill and beautiful a queen country comedy and i'm an eye i heard from our very recently and she absolutely love like bjork and his music and his personality she now is pressing her

affection on to another another generation country music star and whenever i look at this this new wave this new generation it seems to me that they are different in many ways they sound different in some ways but also where the sign in there is is there's a strain in the storytelling that's inescapable and compelling and i think this is richer and i think it's no more true than in the bluegrass or one of things in amazement i was in owensboro recently the ibm i got in kentucky us and them were as most people shake hands when grasses hug and you know i never know bluegrass as welders have him in the army you know there is a well i always suspected bill monroe is used probably when i was a sign that you know it's very very unusual to have a good looking

bluegrass singer you have to be ugly as well not only did they play but then they fought munroe still affectionate towards everyone certainly amongst the new generation that seems to be much more of this sort of were part of the same thing and i think part of it is a fight that whereas you know if you come from say the older generation you pretty much said that your career was going on for twenty or thirty years now when you talk about the new generation when i thought well the minute i think of yoakam i think of love of ricky van shelton i think well travis tritt comes to your mind when you thought about the major areas that there's a whole bunch of them people like clay walker people like tynan tie herndon

faith hill martina mcbride that there's a lovely phrase that was given to me by bruce greenberg who's the general manager of liberty and it was the one time you actually come along on bone old x off the label now it's new act prompting new x off the label there is a very very big turn over on country performers and careers are you so after twenty or thirty years and i'll touch two or three years and that i think gives us a whole new perceptions or what is happening because as money becomes much more of a figure in the equation i've heard some veterans complain a little bit about that not out the personalities involved but there is some complain they're not that the public is fickle what that the people behind the scenes at the companies and addressed the bottom line that once a star the star star must be paid great deal of money and

so if there is a cycling of the stars it costs the companies less the record companies less publishing companies less on the other hand it does seem to me that real talent perseverance mean so the people i just mention it they have it to three years in the sun and then they go on and their careers continue even though they don't go to the top of the charts how do you react to that i think there are there's several says with number one is where coastal well our heroes to be at the top for as long as we want as in any form of entertainment near the king is dead along with the king that's as long been a philosophy i think as well that the influence on radio in particular certain consultants that basically tell the radio stations will play comply is having a great

influence on the record companies who are almost afraid to produce something because it will not get airplay and that a cautionary dangers of a ghost and now were talking about them incentives and everything else we could end up with this of star chamber something where you know this is a video do we get the vote now about we didn't get the vote it's bad as the end of it that i think is very very dangerous for country music because it basically turns it into a recyclable you know you can throw this in the garbage and old son up next week exactly the same thing but in a different form this i think your soul and country music performers and not allowed off them to be themselves you know it's but there was after having taught me by charlie mccoy the harmonica player is a heat related as far as session musicians were concerned that it also applies as far as performance and that is who is charlie mccoy the next stage is i must have charlie

mccoy the third one is i must have somebody like charlie mccoy a bit younger the fourth one is his charlie mccoy yes and i think we have that danger now the performers will be forgotten you know just be one that had that serious but we won some the younger monks have well i don't think that is a danger i it does seem to me though and that that is sad commentary on the industry's treatment of its of its stars on the other hand and it doesn't say anything about the viability of the writer all this is storytelling tom t hall not long ago and tom t hall and why they will in great creative writers of all time also great for performers and for as much anymore to tell me that he had been to florida for three months it's that the whole three

months writing songs and their new album is coming out as a result of this and i do believe that i do believe that the that that that the talent to create a genius and that's what it is that the writers have i'll know will sustain itself even though all the industry towns may be cruel to start for a year i think sadly songwriters are self perpetuating in that you write a song you have a hit and you come around in circles cause i think one of the major things is wrong with songwriting in nashville in particular is this basically putting people into little cause it's like i am you know this is the job i think that women as a somewhat i'm not inside songwriting should be a little bit of

inspiration not a job you know you don't say well i mean it's an hour fifteen songs as we do this because you know on the law of averages fourteen and opened the very good and won maybe but that doesn't stop all fifteen or sixteen or a hundred being recorded and you then start to get material that is not quite as good i'm you know there is this belief that each generation x sets a step below in mediocrity you believe that i think are very possible area i mean i listen to a lot of songs now on i think there are no class explain where i go back a generation or two and they were classics songs adele recorded time and time again has the fact that so many songs from the house already record i don't hear that many songs nowadays that one can turn now say yeah that is an absolute winner i think the last song i heard was set wind beneath my wings this when you just felt there was some something much ego about all i heard of something

some wonderfully forgettable on a country station last week and i'll tell you that is that it's a takeoff on help me make it through the night which i thought was one of the great show soul wrenching action songs to three hit and then occasionally i'll hear somebody trying to copy detroit city with something new something else and an occasionally i'll hear i'll hear somebody try to come up with a new country christmas song remembering when gene autry did with the rudolph the red nosed reindeer but mostly imitation i think fails yet i think it's become if you think of pulp fiction and compare that say to dickens are shakespeare on trump or whoever i think we have a danger that we are getting into the

act we're just coming out in coming out just ready for the sake of putting the airways there is a sort of the lowest common denominator and there are not that many people who one can say our absolute pasi rice's alan jackson i think is possibly one exception and to me he's the one who inherits the mantle of hank williams he writes good songs not everyone but a good ninety percent which is a pretty good batting average but a lot of the other songs of the aisle exercises in how many cones can i play to a bar which is is not really writing melodies and partially i love to hear melodies not long ago i was with seo i was with a group of people and country music and

a song came over they are a country music song came over the loudspeaker we were having lunch doesn't look that's all of anne in the new song and somebody there said bobby braddock and i said bobby braddock a nobody ballot this but most people wouldn't know who bobby braddock was i said how can you tell that is a bobby braddock songwriter some people write with identity that's ra ra dickey is one that anyone who wrote a song like i lost and then i found a book i mean i just love his wonderful that's right i mean some of these titles you you couldn't put on a over the people in libya means that he says doesn't die alone on it not be i'm still trying to work this one i feel like a dog the toolbox

of a wheelchair and i'm sure musta been written for jenkins and it's upstairs but what you don't stop visit the outset you don't stop with the performers themselves you go on to you wanted asians and representatives and in conversation i want it why did you do that what was the saw up there and again how did you decide what goes in what stays up because you you've probably had to make some judgments you couldn't make judgments about leaving of it out and you're going to try to be all inclusive with performance nationally than one hour it was one of the weird things i knew i had to get eleven hundred and fifty two pages because that apparently so uninformed is as large and get on the paper right without it forming a power isn't that i watch i you've done a good job with that there were they actually came out because i we did the layout says well mine and that we actually came out eleven hundred and fifty two pages exactly they did and i mean you know i can only say the good lord said what

will the computer which raised it expands that could be helpful when i could do in it and making it fit but we actually had em from the publish it we would dictate what size font we use and because as a say we did do the layouts and so they had finished material and them well obviously you have a lot of help you wrote an autobiography how do you decide who did was basically when i went to the other isis that it was a case of finding out what their expertise was and people like kim island tribe and charles wolfe i knew what their areas well i say it pretty much fell into place i invariably i'd end up with the ones that nobody else wanted to do and cajun performers which it normally rice's initial shrink away from this very forcefully and i have a friend in voice one that's why requisite venom and then had a lot of information through and on the songwriters of his way i

covered all of those and i work on the side a man he was a case of going through and getting a lot of information about all those sessions i'm talking with them people are really blurred and played with joe if you're sitting down with billy and discusses their lives are so unless you can remember the all roads to say come on india billy burden is you don't really appreciate belabor you know the other thing about an image from our vision dropped one name southside men and women have gone on to greater things and i think about a gallon who was and as a fiddle player and there with jeff greene who is a jagged really the drama series about a just to have minnick well i know that the book is selling iran not surprise hit selling but the price of the media have limited to two pages and it's a real bargain a twenty dollars in the paperback what we intentionally did that so that it would be accessible and that is one of the things

i do that we wanted to get across was the fact that there are a lot of performers people but when stuart but the public had just forgotten or perhaps never even really knew i'm jon lehr who randy rentschler volley beyond ups a lot of people and never ever heard of him that size of a way of introducing them the material they recorded especially a lot of the old time musicians and i hope perhaps you create a new interest for i'm there as you know top of one the things i've i now do is work with a booking agent says yes i'm this you know the box office is is a place that was the only open door as it were cash well i mean what i wanted to do was to show that the older performers could still find a place where they could get bookings i'm in a white ring in the book out as highlighted that because they've actually come up to me and said hey you know you remember this how about doing something for us i was banned from what i know it could be that great fun now what's next few i mean i know you

can't write a limited pages just putting out walking after a brutal the book while yeah i've actually written another book after this one which believe him on his wife throw up a pop up which is a total change of place and it is but it was fun doing it i'm not that definitive country we are taking into a twenty six part documentary series on television yes which jam that he signed a deal for a company called freedom based who again not from the states but from you know from the uk i hand them what i'm writing that with my partner less than the pandemic were also going cd rom on it and that is very very exciting to us is a whole bunch of things mary mcleod author of definitive country as ben our guest ana were down where its heroes to then john sigg and chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of

wbez in nashville to