As I continue to craft my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), I want to share this work-in-progress look at the beginning of my chapter on Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried." This is preamble, setting up the scene before I start discussing Haggard. The finished chapter will weave the Haggard story with my love-hate relationship with country music. Here's a look at how it starts.
An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
MERLE HAGGARD: Mama Tried
Written by Merle Haggard
Produced by Ken Nelson
Single, Capitol Records, 1968
One of the rules of the road is that the driver controls the radio. My brother Art was driving. That meant the radio would be playing country music.
It was 2004. My brother Rob had driven from his home in Albany to meet up with me in Syracuse. I took the wheel of my car (and my radio) to drive us from Syracuse to Columbus, where Art lived. From there, the three of us traveled in Art's car. Contemporary country music provided the soundtrack for our final trip to Missouri.
It wasn't our first trip; Heavens, no. We'd been there individually and collectively many, many times over the years. Our Mom was born in Southwestern Missouri, and our grandparents had remained there. Both Art and Rob are older than me, so most of their family visits to the Show Me State occurred before I came along. By the mid '60s, summer trips from Syracuse to Missouri involved just me, my sister Denise, and our Mom, with Dad remaining in Syracuse. Within just a few years, it was just Mom and I making that trek, as Dad and all of the older siblings had responsibilities elsewhere. The whole family went to Missouri for Christmas in 1970. It's the only time I remember all of us being there.
In 2004, Mom and Dad were already in Missouri as Art, Rob, and I made our way West. Denise had moved to England, too far away to accompany us. Grampa had passed away years before. And now Grandma was gone as well. My brothers and I would be pall bearers. Country music played on the radio. The driver controls the radio.
I hate country music. Sometimes I'm lying (or at least kidding myself) when I say that, and sometimes it's the truth. Three chords and the truth. You'd think a love of country and western would be an innate characteristic of a boy whose mother hailed from the buckle of the Bible belt. 'Tain't so. Art and Rob do love country music. Denise and I do not.
It wasn't always like that. As a kid, one of my very favorite records was Ben Colder's "Ring Of Smoke," a broad parody of the Johnny Cash hit "Ring Of Fire." Denise says my incessant playing and re-playing of (and singing along with) that MGM Records 45 knocked the country right out of her. I loved it. As a kid in the '60s, I wasn't yet aware of genres, of musical boundaries, of virtual barbed wire fences that suggested if you worked that land and played that music you weren't allowed to trespass on this land and play this music. It was all pop music. You heard it on the radio. The driver controls the radio, but the radio drives us all.
When did it change for me? Sometimes I used to watch Hee Haw on TV, engaged by the cute country girls, the corny banter, and Archie Campbell's weekly rendition of "PFFT! You Were Gone." Country remained a part of Top 40 radio, so my essential '70s AM atmosphere included Lynn Anderson, Charlie Rich, Donna Fargo, Conway Twitty. My memory may be clouded, but I think I was okay with country music.
Until I wasn't.
What happened? I guess it was some weird combination of introspection, self image, peer pressure, alienation, and teen reinvention. Being called "farmer" was a popular insult at school, and while I only recall hearing it directed at me when I wore Grampa's hand-me-down overalls, I was aware of its toxic condescension. Country wasn't cool. Neither was I, but while I would learn to dig in my heels and stand ground on behalf of comic books and pop music and other things I loved that others mocked, I had also come to think of country as uncool. I wanted to be urbane, witty, sophisticated, fast-paced, and elite, city-slicker rather than shitkicker. New York City, not Nashville or Bakersfield. And, in the post-Watergate world, I had no use for country's jingoism. By the time I fell for punk rock, twang was in my rear view mirror. Country music? I met another and PFFT! it was gone.
So yeah. I was a schmuck.
It took a long time for me to appreciate country music again. I knew of rock 'n' roll's roots in country, so I was always more than okay with The Everly Brothers, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, King Elvis I. I knew The Beatles' "All My Loving" was a straight-up country song, and I loved it anyway. In the early '80s, I thought Juice Newton's cover of the Dave Edmunds track "Queen Of Hearts" was the best thing on AM radio. By the end of the '80s, a local Syracuse group called The Delta Rays (led by Craig Marshall and Maura Boudreau, the latter now Maura Kennedy of the fabulous Kennedys) pried my closed mind wide open to Patsy Cline and George Jones, and to Mary-Chapin Carpenter. In the early '90s, I became a regular viewer of a Saturday night video program on CMT that showcased rockin' country. Nanci Griffith. Rosie Flores. The Sky Kings. The Mavericks. Joe Diffie. Jo Dee Messina. This was country music I could support.
For all that, I still couldn't listen to country radio, and I still can't listen to it now. Nails on a chalkboard. When I'm driving, my control of the radio spins the dial elsewhere.
My work as a pop journalist (and my quest for deliverance as a music fan) reminded me of the appeal of classic country, and my respect for that grew by leaps and bounds. Welcome back to my world, Johnny Cash. Hee-Haw and howdy, Buck Owens! And hello, Merle Haggard....
More to come. The work continues.
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Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.
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