Dollywood Revisited

The queen is just one and her name is Dolly! Oooooooooooh yeah!

The sun was shining bright smiling to Sevierville, Tennessee on January 19, 1946 when Dolly Parton was born. She was the fourth of twelve children of the extremely poor family living in a one – room cabin of the rural South.

Dolly's divine soprano first developed  during the church services when she sang wholeheartedly.  The blond angel was soon discovered by a local radio station and at the age of thirteen she already recorded for a Louisiana label. As she met Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Jr. she focused on her homeland country music.

At first Dolly remained in the shadow as a songwriter for other singers. She also played various instruments, including harmony. Yet as bright a star could not stay unnoticed for long. Her first country single Dumb Blonde was released in 1967.

Later the same year Dolly was invited to The Porter Wagoner Show where she appeared till 1974 when the somewhat group character of the show started to be too limiting. Since then Parton started a solo career strictly speaking. She meant to combine traditional country with bits of contemporary pop, which although successful she abandoned in the late 1980s. The last decade of the 20^th century is a comeback to the roots, while the last couple of years Parton spent re-editing her works.

Apart from being a songwriter, singer and a multi - instrumentalist, Dolly Parton also played in numerous movies and TV series, including her own variety show Dolly!.

After her show business career kind of slowed down, Parton engaged in the touristic business in Tennessee and founded a philanthropic venture – Dollywood Foundation – concerned mostly with fighting illiteracy.

And now a couple of songs:

The Last Thing On My Mind, Light of a Clear Blue Morning, Here You Come Again, Heartbreaker, Baby I'm Burning, You're the Only One, Why'd You Come In Here Lookin' Like That, Yellow Roses, The Grass Is Blue. 

And a couple of movies/ TV series:

9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk.

Finally, curiosities:

• Dolly Parton married Carl Thomas Dean, an asphalt road surface paving business owner, a person equally mysterious as Thomas Pynchon.
• Dolly Parton is the godmother of Miley Cyrus.
• Surprise, surprise, Dolly Parton is said to be addicted to cosmetic surgeries.
• MacLean&MacLean recorded a country song entitled Dolly Parton's Tits.

"Because you're mine I walk the line."

When we started to write this country blog, we thought „Oh, we totally must say a lot about Johnny Cash!” Well, the headline clearly shows our admiration for him, but now it’s time for explanation. Why is he one of the few country artists that are listened both by country fans and country haters? Is it only about his wonderful music? Or also about his inspiring life and dark personality? The best answer for those who aren’t familiar with Cash may be the movie that made new generation of teenagers (including me) fascinated with Johnny. I’m talking of course about “Walk the Line.”

In 2006 I read about this movie in papers. It got wonderful reviews and I am a sucker for musicals. Plus, I remembered Joaquin Phoenix as a crazy Caesar from “Gladiator.” (And who didn’t? Come. On.)

The only problem was that every review stated it’s about a country musician. “Country? Oh, nooo…” But finally I decided to stand the supposed noise and enjoy the movie on the big screen.

When I left the cinema, I was a fan. The music was astonishingly great, more like rockabilly and rock and roll than stereotypical country. And as I really REALLY love rock and roll, I realized that not all country must suck – like every genre it has many variations. Plus, country has the Man in Black, also known as Mr. Johnny Cash.

Look, even posters for this movie are amazing! Some of the best movie posters from the 2000s in my opinion. (One of them even hangs in my room. Well, anyway…)

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I’m not going to tell you the whole plot. I just want to sincerely recommend it to you. Yes, it has elements of a standard Hollywood biopic (rise to fame, problems, fall, rebirth) and a standard Hollywood love story. It’s not a masterpiece. But I love it. The director James Mangold seems to create such movies, maybe not eminent, but loved by the public –“Girl, Interrupted,” “Identity,” “Kate & Leopold,” and “Cop Land” being the examples.

In fact the whole crew did the fantastic job. The costumes are just right from the times they are supposed to be and make us believe that we see real people, instead of performers in old-fashioned clothes.

But the real strength of “Walk the Line” are two leading actors. In my opinion Joaquin Phoenix should won the Oscar, as Reese Witherspoon did.  Their performances are equally great. The chemistry between Johnny Cash and June Carter, their fights and their love, all is believable and engaging. What is more – THEY PERFORMED ALL OF THE SONGS THEMSELVES, without being dubbed. They also learned to play their instruments (guitar and auto-harp, respectively) from scratch. (quoting IMDb). What can be more amazing than performing successively songs of the legends?

Check these songs out. Don’t compare, enjoy the music!

Johnny Cash - I Walk the Line
Joaquin Phoenix - I Walk The Line

Johnny Cash - Get Rythm
Joaquin Phoenix - Get Rhythm

June Carter - Juke Box Blues
Reese Witherspoon - Juke Box Blues

Johnny and June Carter - It Ain't Me, Babe
Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon - It Ain't Me Babe

All in all, Cash as depicted by Phoenix is a contradictory man. A strong man with troubled past and weaknesses. A simple man with traditional Christian background and rebellious rock star life style. A man who fails, falls, and destroys those who love him, but who can also give a hand to those of whom the world forgot (the prisoners!). A self-taught music genius and a suffering son. A lover and a traitor. A charismatic rebel and a child afraid of his father. Yet one gets to admire him, despite all the mistakes he made. Or maybe because of them? He is a believer, but not a saint. As Cash once said himself: “There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I'm the biggest sinner of them all” (The man comes around XX). I think that the movie succeeded in showing his many sides.

However, if you are one of those people who ask questions like “Was it really that way…?” and “What really happened…?,” check this website. It has a lot of information about the realism of this adaptation. Warning: it contains SPOILERS, so I recommend reading it after watching the film. If you want even more, IMDb Trivia is also a great source.     

To conclude, “Walk the Line” gets 9/10 grade from me. Watch it to begin the journey through the Cash universe (55 studio albums, 6 live albums, and 155 singles are waiting for you!).

Best wishes from the old white people

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

I will always love Kevin Costner

Hands up who didn’t cry watching “Bodyguard”!

Probably only Hannibal Lecter didn’t raise his hand. This is a kind of “ticket comes together with tissues” movie and the moment when your eyelids swell from crying, tears drop from your jaw together with your mascara, your lips contort and you sniffle disgustingly loud is when Whitney Huston sings “I will always love you” with flashbacks from Huston- Costner relationships on the screen.

The lyrics… well… it tells about… Precisely this is what it says.

The song has originally been written by Dolly Parton in 1973, who recorded it a year later and published it on the album “Jolene”. Since then, she re- recorded it numerous times, also in a duet with Vince Gill. With each new release, the song attacked the top of the Billboard magazine list and got to the first place a couple of times. Parton says the lyrics were inspired by her relationship with Porter Wagoner (hardly believable really).

However prized Ms. Parton was, it was Whitney Huston who made the song an international ever-green. In the “Bodyguard” version, she introduced the a capella intro, a pause (silence) in the middle of the song, a wider, more contrasted vocal scale and the saxophone. Till 1992, when Huston released her version, “I will always love you” seemed to be a sort of Dixie dance song, as almost all country then, coming from Nashville (not really a black region). Yet with the new version, it turned out how enriching the African- American input to Southern culture might be. 

The Huston's cover is memorable for one more reason, namely the video. Firstly, uhhhh, the suit, how I wanted to look like her in that suit! Secondly, Whitney sitting on the chair with her legs wide apart and a closeup on her lips vibrating! I don't think there's a vibratto in the song, but uhhhh, how I envied these red lips! And thirdly, Kevin Costner jumping to the freezing cold lake to save little Fletch - uhhhh, that's ridiculous!

Probably most of those who cried on “Bodyguard” felt that the song mirrors incredibly truthfully their own situation (particularly if these people where in their junior high schools and only understood the chorus part “And IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII will always loooove youuuuuuuu”). It’s probably one of the most popular wedding songs (of course far behind Stachursky, ay!) – what again proves the miserable command of the English language. Probably it’s also one of the most popular soundtracks to sexual intercourses (desire befuddles the comprehension skills). Undoubtedly, it is one of the saddest love songs. And it's country! Surprisingly, Dolly Parton had this bitter talent so contradictory to all this glitter and sequins of hers.

And who’s crying now?

On the origins of a specie

However unbelievable it may seem, country music was not always there. The Greeeks had to go without country, Medieval scholars, Mozart and Bach as well. That's why they are not on the TV. The birth of country, the moment since when nothing is the same, will be now investigated.
Country emerged right after the World War II. Out of numerous bad things that developed since than (e.g. my grandma's fish soup) country is a glorious exception. The post- War period caused a lot turbulence in the social and moral stratification - migration from rural areas to cities became a steady trend while the religious worldview regressed. Needless to say, sensitive individuals showed all of that in their music.
For one thing, the instrumental element in country music comes from the country music, that is the one played in the country. The other part of the mixture are the themes of lyrics which reflect the new dissapointments of city life (see the post from some time ago). Altogether we come up with a kind of popular, modern music with a certain sentiment - a music that looks back.
From where does it look back? From Nashville! What does it see? It sees four major persons who are to give basis and shape to the new music:
Bill Monroe - a guy who invented bluegrass music as a transition from the old rural tunes (associated with backwardness and embarrasment) to the possibly wide- spread genre.
Hank Williams - the founder of the Williams family and a person who put oppositions together. Man/ woman conflict? Clash them! Money vs. labor? Clash them! Desire vs. manners? Clash them! Black vs. white? Clash them!!!! All of the clashes had a down-to-earth, everyday basis, thanks to which it escaped the theoretical vagueness and naivety.
Patsy Cline- the lady of the radio era, with her country was in the air. She also introduced characteristic "Nashville style" background vocals and instrumentation.
Elvis Presley - the King took all the best from the black music and combined with top white music. Since then we got specific, black- inspired country imagery. And who, if not him, is the rockabilly person?
Ok, so that was lesson number 1. Class dismissed.

"Banda, Or What Can Come Out of Country"

Today a significant part of daily life in Los Angeles reflects the rhythms of rural Mexico, and a defining moment in Mexican culture draws its power and force from what happens in California. …  (p. 57) The talk is about banda music! George Lipsitz insisted on sponosoring this post, so here we go!
Banda music emerged as a subtle and significant register of the social dislocations engendered by the rapid mobility of capital and the mass migrations of low-wage workers across national borders in an age of hypermobile transnational capital. More than merely about music, the banda phenomenon served as the center of complex dynamics wherein identities appropriate to dramatically new political, economic, and social realities were in the process of being developed and deployed. Banda music and the practices attendant to it signaled a new cultural moment, one that challenged traditional categories of citizenship and culture on both side of U.S-Mexico border. New demographic and economic realities threw forth distinctive forms of social organization and style, of dance and dress, that spoke to the unique and singular conditions facing migrant low-wage workers in the United States. (p. 57)
Banda music in L.A. in 1990s was a collective community response to the social disapproval Mexicans experienced in the United States. Banda enabled them to celebrate their origins and flaunt their identities in the face of hate crimes and harsh policing, low-wage labor and unsafe working conditions. … Banda offered an area when Mexicanidad was honored, cherished, and prized. (p. 58)

Banda music uses mainly brass and woodwind instruments.
The lyrics of the banda songs that became popular in L.A. in the early 1990s only rarely addresses political or social issues. (p. 61) The most popular songs were the ones displayed by Banda Machos:
•   Un Indio quiere llorar (The Indian Wants to Cry) – “about a man rejected by his lover’s wealthy and non-Indian family because of his humble background”
•    Sangre de Indio (Blood of Indian) – about “the struggles of indigenous people, who make up a large proportion of the people in poverty in Mexico”

Banda artists preferred cowboy styles:
•    Stetson hats (called Tejanos)
•    fringed jackets
•    leather boots
•    jeans

Women dancers generally wore:
•    tight-fitting jeans or western skirts
•    belts with big buckles
•    black stretch tops
•    cowboy boots

Men dancers were dressed in:
•    button-fly jeans
•    fringed leather vests
•    straw or felt cowboy hats
•    shiny boots

Such clothing manifested the foreign and rural origins of many immigrants, turning what might have once seemed like a source of shame into a point of pride.

The titles of instrumental numbers and the lyrics of vocals in banda songs often referred to the rodeo or to the life on ranch. Dancers frequently carried a cuarto, a small horsewhip. (p. 63)

Banda music was one of the main factors that helped immigrants of Mexico to survive in the United States. The music transformed individuals into a community.

Clearly, banda music is not country but there are similarities. The most important of them is the community- creating function of such music. There emerges the question whether country/ banda create bonds that are later charished by the people or the bonded people create the music to have one more reason to stay togather. Or is it mutual?

Hillbilly bone down deep inside

This post ain’t gonna be boring and whiny, but full of old trucks, cowboy sweethearts, and banjo tunes.  It’s hillbilly music time! Or modern redneck party time! Or… Wait, before you think that I discriminate fans of country music, let me remind you that both hillbilly and redneck have derogatory meaning which is in the process of reappropriation (for quick reminder check Wikipedia). Hell, forget about those long terms and check the lyrics to know what I mean:

Brooks & Dunn - Hillbilly Deluxe

It’s hillbilly deluxe, slick pick-up trucks.

Big timin' in a small town.

Stirrin' it up right about sundown.

Black denim an' chrome to the bone with a little home grown.

A country girl cuddled up...

Hillbilly deluxe.

Still not convinced? For me it just takes a few music videos from 2000s to notice that things which are usually stereotypical attributes of rednecks are recommended, appreciated, and celebrated there. No more shame! Be proud of your big truck, dirty boots, bad manners, and rough style!

What I like is the appreciation of tradition (you remember where you come from), but still making innocent fun of cowboy common weaknesses while making equal fun of typical WASPs, completely lost in rural setting. As these videos show, a cowboy may seem vulgar at first, but he will get women and respect in the city. A WASP cannot do the same in a local town, despite his money and elegance.

Trace Adkins – Rough and Ready

Work boots - one blue suit

Size too small - won't wear at all

Unless somebody kicks gets hitched

It don’t fit and makes me itch

The rivalry seems like a common theme in country mythology. Men frequently drink and fight while their women seem not to mind. What is funny is the metaphorical language – “my car is bigger than your car”, “my tires are the highest,” etc. Pure poetry!  

As Blake Shelton’s song “Some Beach” shows, the city guys can be very annoying at times, yet a real cowboy stands everything, showing his disgust only by doing classy ‘facepalm’ gesture.

Blake Shelton - Some Beach

Driving down the interstate

Running thirty minutes late

Singin' Margaritaville and minding my own

Some foreign car drivin' dude with the road rage attitude

Pulled up beside me talkin' on his cell phone

He started yelling at me like I did something wrong

He flipped me the bird an' then he was gone

But when two singers like Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins meet, you know from the start who’s gonna win the confrontation with the city elite.

Blake Shelton feat. Trace Adkins  - Hillbilly Bone

Yeah, I got a friend in New York City

He's never heard of Conway Twitty

Don't know nothin' 'bout grits and greens

Never been south of Queens

But he flew down here on a business trip

I took him honky tonkin' and that was it

He took to it like a pig to mud, like a cow to cud

We all got a hillbilly bone down deep inside

No matter where you from you just can’t hide it

When the band starts bangin' and the fiddle saws

You can’t help but hollerin', Yee Haw!

I’ve got to admit I really like this song. Hillbilly bone somewhere?

So maybe another one that is catchy and fresh. It also shows another common theme - the hidden world that people from the outside don’t get and don’t have an access to. In this case this is the forest at night where pretty cowboy boys and girls dance, kiss, and sing while one of them holds a worn out American flag.

Dierks Bentley - Up On The Ridge

Hey now honey child we'd be runnin' free and wild

No one care what you do

Ain't no law to answer to

Dance around in the dirt

Listen to them crickets chirp

Hear old Jake start to howl

When he hears that ol' hoot owl

Give you all I got to give

That's how we live up on the ridge

All in all, I must say that though the message of these videos may be simple, it is a powerful and nice one. After all, do pop songs about similar things (let’s have a party and be ourselves) carry more message? Rarely. Popular country songs stand up against pretentious hypocrisy and admire simple guys from the neighborhood having fun their own way.   

Of course it's just a part of the large picture. As we had said in one of the first posts, country songs tend to tell sad and tearful stories, but I wanted  to show the mainstream songs that people dance to in bars. As all music genres, country has many variations, also in song themes.

What is interesting, I found out that also musicians playing mix of country and southern rock do not hide their hillbilly roots. So at the end I present to you some rock! Notice that themes of tradition, rivalry, manhood, big trucks and a hidden place also appear here, as in typical country videos!

Brantley Gilbert - Kick It In The Sticks

Welcome to the home of a hillbilly

Yeah baby

It’s a land of barbed wire, moonshine, whiskey

Park your car before you get it stuck

Go on grab you a beer

And get on up in the truck

It’s going down tonight

It’s all on me

It’s BYOB, and I got all we need

Yeah boy I’m bout to show me a city slicker

How to kick it in the sticks with the critters down on

Our side of a barbed wire

Money grows in rows

And if it don’t you’ve gone broke

So we

We hang out by the bon fire

Just some good ole boys having a dang good time

We crank it up down here

We get loud down here

Throwin down in the dirty dirty south down here

Be an all nighter with the hippies and the hicks

Jocks and bikers they all came to kick it in the sticks