Why we’re keepin’ it country
Tonight’s Late Late is a must-see for music lovers
ACCORDING to a recent report in hip fashion guide i-D magazine, ‘Country is cool again’. In Ireland of course, country music never went anywhere. And tonight sees an arguable high point in the Irish country music calendar roll around again: now in its third year, the Late Late Show Country Special is an audience favourite nationwide.
Lucky recipients of this year’s randomly allocated tickets can look forward to what the show’s makers are calling a ‘huge’ opening number.
And the death of Big Tom this week will, of course, bring an added poignancy to the show.
So what has us so enamoured of country music? Scratch the surface, and you’ll find no end of intriguing lore, lost love and legend behind many of its biggest hits. If you’ve ever wondered about the real stories behind these much-loved songs, read on…
JOLENE — DOLLY PARTON
Released in 1973 and written by Dolly Parton for her album of the same name, Jolene is the one song most recorded by other artists that Parton has written.
According to Dolly herself, the song was inspired by a red-headed bank clerk who flirted with her husband Carl Dean at his local bank branch around the time they were newly married. In an interview, she also revealed that Jolene’s name and appearance are based on that of a young fan who came on stage for her autograph. The song of course beseeches the stunning Jolene to not lure her man away, with the immortal lyric, ‘Please don’t take him just because you can’.
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU — DOLLY PARTON
Jolene isn’t the only time that Parton has worn her heart on her sleeve. During her interview for a Country Music Television special, Parton said: ‘Of course, I Will Always Love You is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.’
Parton was trying to break free from her role on Porter Wagoner’s TV show; Wagoner was a mentor, producer and longtime duet partner. He was reluctant to see her go. ‘We fought a lot,’ recalls Parton. ‘We were very much alike. We were both stubborn. We both believed that we knew what was best for us. Well, he believed he knew what was best for me, too, and I believed that I knew more what was best for me at that time. So, needless to say, there was a lot of grief and heartache there, and he just wasn’t listening to my reasoning for my going.’
In the end, Parton wanted to show her gratitude towards Wagoner, and to show that there were no hard feelings.
D-I-V-O-R-C-E — TAMMY WYNETTE
By 1968, Wynette was being hailed as a fresh voice in country music, singing with conviction about the lesser-heard female perspective. So when the heartbreak queen recorded D-I-V-O-R-C-E that year, it was an instant smash. The lyrics begin with that classic parenting trick of spelling out words that mothers and fathers hope their young children will not understand. In this case, the soon-tobe-divorcée spells out words such as ‘divorce’, ‘Joe’, ‘hell’ and ‘custody’ to shield her four-year-old son from the breakup of his mother and father. And given that Wynette’s own personal life had five marriages in it, it’s safe to assume she was singing this from a sincere and heartfelt place.
RHINESTONE COWBOY — GLEN CAMPBELL
Glen Campbell’s career was as storied as his life, and this 1975 classic remains one of his bestloved songs. Campbell immediately identified with the song, written by Larry Weiss, about a veteran artist trying to make it in the big city, and who has paid his due all the way.
Weiss was a Broadway performer and songwriter who had moved from Los Angeles to New York in 1971. The song is about the hope and frustrations found on the path to success, and in a bid to doff his cap to the cowboy film heroes of his youth, Weiss weaved in the term Rhinestone Cowboy after hearing it on a conversation.
Weiss recorded and released the song himself, with little traction, and Glen Campbell heard it on LA radio, and learned the song while touring in Australia.
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES — GARTH BROOKS
As a relatively unknown singer, Garth Brooks recorded the song, written in 1989 by Dewayne Blackwell and Earl Bud Lee.
The idea for the hit came one afternoon when Earl Bud Lee had lunch with friends at Tavern On The Row (though others swear the restaurant was LongHorn) in Nashville. The time came to pay the bill and Earl realised he’d spent more than was in his wallet. When his friends asked him how he would pay the bill, he told them that, as he was friends with the chef, he had ‘friends in low places’. Immediately, the term stuck and the lyrics for the hit were written then and there on paper napkins.
When the songwriters had completed the song, they came across Brooks, who was at that stage working as a shoe salesman. The song charts what it may be like for a man to show up unannounced to his ex’s black-tie affair. Brooks added a third verse in live shows, detailing how he felt someone might feel in that situation.
I WALK THE LINE — JOHNNY CASH
Can you believe that I Walk The Line was written in just 20 minutes? While Cash was touring with Elvis in the mid-1950s, he found himself tempted by young and very enthusiastic fans.
I Walk The Line was essentially a reminder to himself to stay faithful to then wife Vivian. ‘It was kind of a prodding to myself to “Play it straight, Johnny”,’ he was quoted as saying. Country music historians have also noted the song has a religious undertone, too. Although Sam Phillips at Sun Records said he wasn’t interested in creating gospel songs, Johnny got I Walk The Line past him with the story about being faithful to his wife.
WAGON WHEEL — NATHAN CARTER
Carter may have made it a modern day smash (as did Darius Rucker in 2013) but the song was written by Bob Dylan and Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. Secor was 17 at the time, and took Dylan’s unfinished sketch for a song called Rock Me Mamma, and wrote the lyrics and eventually, the chorus.
The song was so popular it helped get the Old Crow Medicine Show into the Grand Ole Opry. The song is about a hitch-hiking journey around the US, taking in New England, Virginia and Philadelphia to North Carolina, where the singer of the song hopes to find his lover.
ALWAYS ON MY MIND — WILLIE NELSON
In 1982 this song, made famous by Willie Nelson, was a barnstormer at the Country Music Awards and the Grammys.
Yet the song was penned by songwriter Wayne Carson, who told biographer Jake Brown that he wrote it when he was living in Springfield, Missouri. ‘In this case, Always On My Mind happens to be one of those things that, universally, everybody on the planet has been there, you know,’ he told Brown. ‘And it struck all at one time. Everybody touched base with that one. It was just magic that it was so simple and so right on the button.’
Originally, the song was written for Fred Foster at Mongoose Records.
‘We [Carson and friend Tips Smallman] were just like two school kids with a new invention, you know,’ he said. ‘I played it for Fred Foster and he said, “I don’t think the world’s ready for that.”
‘I said, “You’ve got to be … kidding me.” I remember the last thing Tips said about it was, “He’s going to rue the day he ever turned that song down, I’m telling you right now Wayne. That song is a big, huge song”.’
THE GAMBLER — KENNY ROGERS
Don Schlitz’s country anthem has been recorded many times – including by Johnny Cash – but Kenny Rogers is the man who made it a classic. Schlitz was at the time working as a computer operator and he wrote it in August 1976 after walking home from a meeting with his mentor Bob McDill.
‘I walked from his office over on Music Row to my apartment, and in that 20 minutes I wrote most of it in my head,’ Schlitz has said. ‘I didn’t write a last verse, had no idea what was gonna happen, thought it was an interesting story but it was a throwaway. I spent about six weeks trying to figure out what was gonna happen after the chorus.’
TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS — JOHN DENVER
Rather bizarrely, by the time John Denver was singing about being homesick for West Virginia, he’d never even been to West Virginia.
Denver wrote the song with his friends, a couple called Bill and Taffy Danoff who were married at the time. The Danoffs, who were in a band of their own called Fat City, created the nucleus for the song while driving through Maryland.
They had never been to West Virginia either. But Bill had a friend living there, who used to send him postcards, evoking a romantic and foreign place in his mind. In the end, Country Roads established Denver as a crossover artist who could set alight not just the country charts, but the pop and rock charts too.
YOU’RE STILL THE ONE — SHANIA TWAIN
Shania co-wrote this song with her husband Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange. According to lore, many in the industry believed that their marriage wouldn’t last; the age difference was vast, and there were rumblings that Twain was using him to further her career.
In a bid to address the criticisms, the two wrote You’re Still The One together.
In the end, the naysayers were sadly right: Twain and Lange divorced 12 years later in 2010 after Lange had an affair with her best friend.