You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.
Dec 31: New Year’s Eve — the first in 3 Chords a Day’s young life — is a good time for looking back, so let’s listen once again to our most-Googled post. I’m throwing in my fave as well.
3 Chords has generated a modest 3,600-odd page views, an average of about 30 per post. But the one most favored by the wide, wide world of the World Wide Web was 10 times that popular. It’s the tale of a warm summer’s evening, on a train bound for nowhere: Yes, 3 Chords followers have met up with The Gambler time and again. In fact, they often click on the Kenny Rogers classic more frequently than they do that day’s installment. Maybe that’s a testiment to the number of people who, like the song’s narrator, find themselves out of aces …
OK, that’s yours. Now here’s mine. No, HERE’S mine. Actually, this one is mine. Heck, I can’t decide. Just go back and listen to ‘em all. And come again in 2010, for more 3 Chords a Day. Happy New Year!
Click to listen
Dec. 30: It was 65 years ago today that Bob Wills rocked the Grand Ole Opry before he ever played a note. Listen to this rollicking number recorded six years earlier, then come back for the story.
Click to listen
Dec. 29: Most of you know this song from the monster 1978 hit by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Their version was a cover (with an extra “m” in the first word of the title). The first cut was made a few years earlier by the guy who wrote it, Ed Bruce. I like their record, but his is good, too. Take a listen, in honor of Bruce’s 70th birthday today. Check out his career story, too, along with his discography, plus info on his acting career.
Finally, some trivia: What TV public service announcement from the ’70s featured the voice of Ed Bruce and has since become a cult favorite? Watch and learn … just make sure you pick up after yourself.
Click to listen
Dec. 28: Listen to the crying steel guitar throughout this record, from the mid-’70s phase of Ronnie Milsap’s wonderful career. It’s a sound familiar to fans of Conway Twitty and Vince Gill, created with skill and feeling by the late John Hughey. Yesterday would have been his 76th birthday, so it’s a good time to recall one of the key figures on real country music’s signature instrument.
Click to listen
Dec. 25-27: Helen Steiner Rice adapted a German folk tale into a poem she titled “The Story of the Christmas Guest.” It was set to music in the 1960s by Nashville arranger Bill Walker, who shares writer’s credit on “The Christmas Guest” with Grandpa Jones and his wife, Ramona Jones. This is a favorite of mine from country’s Christmas canon.
Others have recorded the recitation, including Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire and Andy Griffith, but Everybody’s Grandpa offers the best reading I’ve heard. Enjoy it in good health, and have a Merry Christmas. 3 Chords a Day will return on Monday.
Click to listen
Dec. 24: By this time back in 1964, Connie Smith’s killer debut was nearing the midpoint of its eight-week run at the top of the Billboard chart — a feat achieved by no female country artist before or since. The record transformed the 23-year-old Smith from an Ohio housewife who occasionally sang to one of the top stars in country music.
Click to hear "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)"
Click to hear "Above And Beyond"
Dec. 23: Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. gave the world a great Christmas present 50 years ago today, when he recorded these honky-tonk classics in the same session. They’re both so great that I couldn’t choose just one. So, as Ernie Banks once said, let’s play two.
It was Buck’s fourth trip to the Capitol Tower studios in Hollywood as a solo artist, and a killer lineup of musicians — Ralph Mooney (steel guitar), Rollie Weber (guitar), Al Williams (bass), Pee Wee Adams (drums) and George French Jr. (piano) — helped him shine. And let’s not forget the fiddle player: Don Rich, in his first session with his friend Owens. Before long he would learn to play lead guitar, adding his hot Telecaster to the Buck Owens mix. He became chief Buckaroo and his boss’ right-hand man and best friend.
“Excuse Me” was a Buck composition; Harlan Howard is responsible for “Above And Beyond.” Both appeared on each album depicted here: Buck Owens (1960) and The Best of Buck Owens (1964). My father had a monaural copy of the latter, and I have fond memories of him playing it regularly. Its tracks represent the beginnings of the Bakersfield sound that helped put Buck Owens in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
