You show up with your chest puffed out, wearing funnyglasses with bunch of feathers shoved into the front of your Stetson, and telling everyone you’re slinging “Piss-hot freightlining country music,” then you better deliver, son. But Ellis Bullard has nothing to worry about.
A legend of country music songwriting, and one that put the painful experience of divorce into words and song like none other has gone to the great honky tonk in the sky. Sanger D. Shafer, known popularly as Whitey Shafer, passed away on Saturday, January 12th according to reports.
It’s always worth a chuckle when you hear someone say that country music must “evolve” to stay relevant, or hear an artist bellyache about how constricting country music is to their creativity. And then you put on a record like this and hear just how much a true artist can do with a simple message and melody, and three chords and the truth.