Boy howdy. It takes all of 12 seconds to fly by in this new Jason James record before you decisively know that you made the smartest of all country music decisions by giving this young man your time and attention. Where have all those true sounds of country music gone? Straight into the lungs of Texas City’s Jason James.
Even though names like Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff, and The Carter Family loom large for many of country music’s devoted fans, they don’t necessarily rise to the level of household names like Ernest Tubb, and of course the great Hank Williams, who was the centerpiece of the third installment of the Ken Burns ‘Country Music’ documentary.
PBS is gearing up for the release of the extensive 8 part, 16-hour Country Music Documentary starting September 15th directed by Ken Burns. And ahead of the release, PBS is trying to engage the country music public by asking people to share who their favorite country music icon is. They started by asking Miranda Lambert, Vince Gill, & Ray Benson.
If you have a hankering for Hank and haven’t received your fill of music from the Hillbilly Shakespeare over the years, you’re in luck. BMG is getting ready to release a rare collection of Hank Williams archive material made in October of 1949 called “The Complete Health & Happiness Recordings.”
Country Music Hall of Famer, Bluegrass Hall of Famer, performer, executive, songwriter, and general country music advocate Mac Wiseman has passed away. He was 93-years-old, and was one of the last living links to country music’s golden era. He died on Sunday, February 24th.
For many years, the influence and contributions of African American musicians in country music went mostly overlooked, or overshadowed by their Caucasian counterparts. However there has been a recent trend by media and even some artists to overstate the influence of African Americans.
See, this is what they should have been doing with the Wal-Mart Yodeling Boy from the start, not sticking him in some studio with Joey Moi of Nickelback fame to record a song left on the cutting house floor after a Florida Georgia Line session. Mason Ramsey doesn’t even need to be singing original songs at this point.
Can you imagine having the #1 song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for the last six months—something Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, George Strait, and Kenny Chesney never came close to doing—and not even knowing about the massive present-day pop country band you collaborated with to pull it off?
Yeah, you’ve probably seen the video already, and probably a few times after it popped up in one or many of your social media feeds. But the ultimate lesson from the Wal-Mart yodeling boy is that America truly is starving for traditional country music.
We’re plenty well satiated on new music from Willie Nelson after the release of his latest album God’s Problem Child in May. In fact it might be one of Willie’s best recordings in many years, and certainly one of the better selections since signing with Sony’s Legacy imprint some years back. But there’s no rest for the wicked.
In the process of criticizing modern country music, sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture, or fall into “old man’s syndrome” where the past of the genre seems pristine and idyllic in our mind’s eye, and today’s smutty music perpetrated by sellout stars is an abomination to our beloved genre.
For the better part of two years now, country music fans with any sort of taste have been waiting not-so-patiently for the long-awaited arrival of the Dave Cobb-produced fourth album from 3rd generation performer Holly Williams. You can’t blame fans for their impatience after the performance she turned in on her 3rd record, ‘The Highway.’
Dear Sally Williams, To begin, let me offer my sincere congratulations to you for ascending to the position of not just the new General Manager of the most esteemed and storied institution in all of country music, but as the General Manager, and Senior Vice President of Ryman Hospitality’s new Programming and Artist Relations Division.
The story has been told for many years that The Allman Brothers initially didn’t want to record “Ramblin’ Man” or release it as a single because they were afraid it was too country. Today people take for granted that The Allman Brothers fit squarely in the Southern rock genre, but to start, they were very much a blues and jazz-based jam band.
Country music is not just a commodity or even a form artistic expression. It is an integral part of people’s lives and has been the foundation for their cultural identities for generations. It’s what binds them to their homes and ancestry, and is interwoven into the very fabric of who they are as people.
Not known by every country, blues, and Americana fan, but cherished deeply by the ones who did, songwriter and performer Bap Kennedy took his cross-Atlantic enthusiasm for roots music and became one of the most well-respected musicians and songwriters by his peers ranging from Nashville to Belfast during his nearly 40-year career.
Preserving the roots of country is not always just about paying homage. Sometimes it is about sowing disharmony or speaking out in protest to help force country music back on the right path. Music Row and the country music industry will always be about money first. The artists are the ones who must take the lead and reign the business in.
If you’re into country music and the history of it, you’re probably used to hearing about the “King” of this, or the “Father” of that. Since the history of country music is so important to keeping the lineage of the music alive, country pays special homage to the people who helped form or popularize the genre.
What is so striking about the album listening back to it after nearly 35 years of perspective is not just the big hits, the #1’s, and the now country standards that it contains. It’s the variety in Strait From The Heart that makes it the perfect study of where country music had been, where it was in the present tense, and where it would be going.
“I thought Tom Hiddleston did a superb job. I thought he captured the physical resemblance, the mannerisms,” Jett Williams says. “But I would have liked to see a lot more focus on the music, and why did he write those songs? … They did not ask anyone in the family anything.
The final chapter has been written on the highly-anticipated and much maligned movie on the life of country music icon Hank Williams, at least until the DVD is released. “I Saw The Light”—starring Tom Hiddleston as Hank, written and directed by Marc Abraham, and based off of the Hank biography written by Colin Escott—is a commercial flop. This is on top of receiving terrible reviews…
A natural phenomenon that has been baffling scientists at the University of Alabama for years has taken yet another strange “turn” over the past few months and days. At the grave site of Hank Williams—the legendary country singer who is eternally entombed at the Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery, Alabama—unexplained seismic activity has been occurring for many years.
Saving Country Music posted a total of 27 articles about I Saw The Light before it’s release. This will make #28. The reason such dedicated interest was shown to the film was because of the potential it carried for exposing the music and the legacy of Hank Williams to an entirely new generation, and to preserve and promote his legacy for generations to come.
It was nearly five years ago now that Saving Country Music first delved into the subject of whether there was indeed a legitimate fourth generation member of the most legendary name in country music history: Hank Williams. Of course we all know about the original Hank Williams, whose birth name was actually Hiram King Williams, and who was country music’s first superstar.