Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'm pleased to introduce our next guests, husband-and-wife team Chris
Carroll and Liz Mechem, authors of the newly released 'Legends of Country,"
a coffee table book thick with color photos, discographies and insider info
about country greats, past and present.

Leading the conversation with Chris and Liz is radio/radio record producer
and country music fan John Ross.
  

    

Chris Carroll is best known for his photographic work. "Rock stars, CEOs,
and toddlers have a lot in common," says Chris, who has shot many of each
during his 20-year career. "They all have high needs and a short attention
span." Iggy Pop needed his special hair gel, Jeff Bezos needed to take a
satellite call, and baby Shaniqua needed to be changed. 

Chris started fast, shooting celebrity editorial for the likes of SPIN, 
Rolling Stone, Esquire, and GQ while still in his twenties. He went on to 
work for numerous national magazines and advertising clients, and continues 
to hone his wryly observed style of portraiture.

Liz Mechem worked her way through grad school as a photostylist. "During
that time," she notes, "I learned how to blow dust off plates with a can of
air. I also got to see Al Roker and Martha Stewart in their underwear."
She's a San Francisco native, now transplanted to upstate New York, where
she and Chris live with their two daughters.

John Ross is host of The WELL's roots music conference, Bigballs.ind (named
for the old hoedown tune, "Big Ball's in Boston/in Cowtown/in Town"). He's a
fan and collector of American folk and country music, and a radio and record
producer. He has interviewed members of the Country Music Hall of Fame and 
other country music greats, from Patsy Montana and Snuffy Jenkins to
Hank Snow and Charlie Pride.

Welcome, Chris, Liz, and John! 
  

    
Thanks, Cynthia. "Legends of Country Music" contains profiles of about a
hundred well-known country music acts, so I'll begin by asking Chris and Liz
how they chose the performers that they included, and which ones to leave
out.

And in more general terms, what makes a performer a "legend?"
  

    
Hello, all. Nice to be here talking about country music, looks like John may
have a thing or two to teach us while we're here.

As for our list, we were brought in to this project by Hylas publishing.
THough they do publish things, in this case they had packaged and sold the
concept to another publisher (Dalmation, for those following along at home).
When Liz and I joined, the concept was already figured out, sample pages
were dummied up, and the list of Legends was already determined. We tweaked
it a little, replaced a couple of people we thought didn't really rate. I
added Steve Earle to the list for personal reasons, but mostly we accepted
their choices.

This lead to problems later when Liz and I would horse trade for who we'd
get/have to write about. "Alright, fine, I'll do Shania Twain, but you're
taking Rascal Flats..." I will say that of the hundred only a handful might
not be actual "legends" but I understand the commercial dictates of the
publishers so went along with their list. The best thing about the list was
that it was "one hundred" rather than an ordered list. Hard enough deciding
who to in- or exclude, would have been nigh impossible to rank them.
  

    
One of the things that really drew me to this project was the title,
with its promise of a focus on the great artists who created and
nurtured this genre of music. You can argue ad nauseum about what
qualities make an artist a legend, but they seen to boil down to
authenticity, a certain amount of fame, and a larger-than-life persona.
Most of the artists in the book have all these qualities, in various
proportions. Some, like Hank Snow, for example (an Opry star who hailed
from Canada) or Patsy Montana (the quintessential singing cowgirl
known for her song "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart") created nearly
theatrical personas that contributed to their legends.  Others, like
Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash couldn't run away from drama in their
lives even if they had a thousand bucks and a forty-day head start.
They were legends because the life, the troubles, the yearning and
misery and joy they sung about were particular to their experience;
this was the real deal. Still others are legends because of the sheer
number of records they sold, or because they catapulted country music
into a new level of mainstream exposure, for better or for worse.

It's been suggested that many of the people we included on the list
are newfangled "hat acts." Boy, compared to some of the acts being sold
off as "country" now, a guy like Garth Brooks looks downright rustic.
Anyway, long story short, we were asked to put in some of these new
people because of the target market of this book. And we did our best
not to mock the ones whose "legend" status we disagreed with.   
  

    
Liz, that raises another question: who is the target market? It seems like
much of the audience for country music today does not have a lot of
background knowledge about the artists who were important before they
started to pay attention. And apparently, that included the people who gave
you that list.

Do you feel like the book reinforces that lack of knowledge? It seems like
the only old-timers in the book are the ones in the Country Music Hall of
Fame, and even some important Hall of Fame members like Uncle Dave Macon and
Minnie Pearl are missing. Do you think the average fan of Brad Paisley or
Faith Hill cares about Mel Tillis or Rose Maddox?
  

    
Hi, John. Good question! Originally, the publishers had decided that
this was going to be a book sold exclusively in Wal Mart. We heard that
and thought, oh, jeez, we're really in for it now. We're going to have
to cowtow to some severely middle-of-the-road sensibilities. But once
we got started, we took up the challenge of trying to present the new
cheeseballs, as we came to call them, alongside important seminal
country musicians. We fought to put in people like Floyd Tillman,
bumping aside Carrie Underwood, for example, in order to include him.
The sad but not surprising truth is that no, probably the average Brad
Paisley fan *doesn't* care about Mel Tillis or Rose Maddox. But maybe
they'll buy the book and learn something. 

The story of how all these disparate strains of American roots music
came together in this moment in history  -- in the early 20th century
-- is really a great narrative. It wouldn't have happened without
certain technologies: the radio, the railroad, and recording. These
helped with the cross-pollination of musical styles (blues, British
folk music, jazz, railroad work songs and chants, cowboy ballads, hymns
and other gospel music, and even Hawaiian music), and then of course
with getting the music out to virgin ears. We hoped to keep emphasizing
this musical gumbo aspect of country music whenever possible. 

But then, along came MTV. And CMT. So just as these technologies of
the early 20th century helped create and disseminate country music, the
new emphasis on visual and performance slickness began to change the
face of the music. Though really, the showmanship angle that buffets so
many of the new acts I personally disdain is really not that far
removed from the Nashville sound/ Outlaw split of the 60s. I keep
coming back to this inherent dichotomy in country -- the establishment
vs. the outsider. Bill C. Malone, a great historian of country music,
set out this split in his book, Country Music, USA.  He takes it back
to the Bristol sessions: the Carter Family as progenitors of the
establishment strain of country, with its emphasis on family (albeit
broken, in the case of the Carters), community (the Opry),
responsibility and its burdens. Then Jimmie Rodgers is the opposite -
itinerant, individualist, afflicted. We hopefully can talk more about
this as the conference progresses. It may be oversimplifying to try to
fit all country musicians into one of these two strains, but I vote
Brad Paisley into the establishment camp, and an oddball eclectic like
Lucinda Williams into the outsider camp. 

One of the personal challenges for me writing some of the entries on
new artists I either wasn't familiar with or didn't particularly care
for, was to find the thing in their music or act that made them
popular. Our contract wasn't to write a critical book in which our
opinions came to bear on all the good and puffed-up alike; rather, we
were hired to give these pre-cast "legends" their due. So, we did. 

Uncle Dave Macon was a sad casualty of the pruning process; we had to
decide between giving him or DeFord Bailey a full page. I went with
Bailey because I think that having more black musicians included in a
book on country may help to tip the balance back to its proper place;
the contributions of black musicians to country music is a hugely
underreported story. Uncle Dave gets a mention on DeFord's page,
though. And Minnie Pearl gets a mention on the Hee Haw sidebar on Roy
Clark's page. 
  

    
The distribution of music, including country music, first on records and
later on the various "barn dance" radio shows (not only the Opry, but also
the National Barn Dance from Chicago, the Refro Valley Jamboree, and the
shows from Wheeling and Shreveport) was double-edged sword. As you say,
radio and records defined a genre of "country music," but it also
led many singers and musicians to give up "the old songs" and tunes infavor
of the stuff that they were hearing from outside their own communities.
Jean Ritchie described this in her book, "Singing Family of the
Cumberlands."

Is there a continuum from the great postwar singers (Hank Williams, Hank
Thompson, Patsy Kline, Skeeter Davis, etc etc) to today's stars? Or were
there one or more points in time when the general direction of country music
shifted direction?
  

    
(NOTE: Offsite readers with comments and/or questions may have them added to
this thread by emailing us at <inkwell@well.com>  )
  

    
Ok, you promise you're not going to make the topic disappear again?
;-)

I have a question.  As (in a former life) the only hippy in Rochester,
NY who listened to country music, I'm curious about how you got
interested in country music.  Did you grow up in the NYC area, or do
either or both of you have roots in the South or West?

And by the way, general kudos.  The book is very well written and
shows a deep appreciation for country music.  I particularly noted the
songs singled out for each artist, which were not always the biggest
hits but sometimes wonderful obscurities (for example "Sabu Visits the
Twin Cities Alone" by John Prine).

And as a country traditionalist, you're really helping me sort out all
the "hat acts" and similar critters.  Maybe I'll have to listen to
some of that newfangled country one of these days.
  

    
I grew up in Washington, DC, and Liz in San Francisco. My first
interest in country music was when I took a class (yes, for credit!) in
country music at UC Santa Cruz, on my Junior Year Abroad. As a guy
weaned on rock radio and stadium rock extravaganzas, it was  quite a
revelation. Growing up in the DC suburbs in the seventies, I'd always
kind of thought of country as hick music or something. But once I got
beyond the bad recording quality of those early records I found that
not only was this stuff really awesome music,it was clearly the basis
for a lot of the rock I was into at the time (like the Dead, or even
the stadium rock acts I'd grown up with like the Outlaws, the Eagles,
Lynyrd Skynrd).

And thanks for the kudos, Mark. Prine might well be my favorite
songwriter of all time, so that one was easy. I'll let Liz follow up
with John's question while I show my Well chops by answering an
entirely different one, that nobody asked.

We were brought in on this book after the concept had already been
sold. The list was mostly predetermined. Within the hundred artists
chosen we got to decide who the "top 5" (who'd get four pages) and
"sweet 16" (who'd get two) were, but beyond that we worked with what we
were given.

And working within the strictures of the "one page per artist" rule proved
quite difficult sometimes. I mean, four hundred words on John Prine,  Kris
Kristofferson, or Lefty Frizzell, well, it's just not enough. And then
eight hundred words on Shania Twain, well, that's just too many.
  

    
Yeah, I figured that the choices weren't exactly up to you.

That odd stop-and-start rhythm in "Sabu" is to die for, not to mention
the words.

Sounds like I'm half a blip older than you are, although we shared a
lot of favorite bands there in the mid 70s.  The Porter Wagoner show
was my first real taste of country, but it was too weird (I couldn't
get past the Nudie suits).  Mostly it was "Hee Haw" that did it for me.
 That drew me to the local country AM station that played country for
all the hicks in the farm country surrounding Rochester.

I think it's hilarious that a college course was your first exposure
to country.

So I'll toss out another question (and don't feel rushed to answer
everything at once).  Let's say you had a hypothetical friend who was
into traditional country on the raw end of things -- the Jimmie Rodgers
to Hank and Lefty to Merle line -- and had tuned out on everything
recorded in the last 20 or so years...  Which newer artists (and
specific recordings, if you have any) would you recommend to someone
who doesn't know George Strait from George of the Jungle?
  

    
Another WNYR listener, eh?

I went through a country music phase in Rochester in the late 1960s,
mainly Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell because they were on tv.
  

    
"Winner 68" wasn't it?  Yeah, that was my home on the AM dial.  
  

    
The main thing I remember is their SPID, which featured some sort of
early electronic sound processing -- "WNYR Radio, Yippee!"

I think I had to go to college before I learned there was such a thing
as FM. In high school I moved to WBBF.
  

    
We'll have to stop this Rochester radio nostalgia at some point, but
in high school, WCMF (underground FM) became my home.  But sure, a
little earlier, I did my share of listening to the WBBF "bee hive."
  

    
In fact, I still have a WBBF promo drinking glass, picked up at a
local gas station sometime in the mid '60s.  Improbably, it traveled
around with my parents as they moved all over the country, and at some
point in the 90s I found it, nabbed it, and it now sits in the fancy
glasses shelf, along with Grandma's Waterford champagne flutes.
  

    
wow!

I still have some records with WBBF stamps on them; I learned how to
demon dial back then and once won *ten* albums at once.

Do you remember the little paper slips you could pick up every week at
record stores that had the top ten list and then the lyrics to one
song? I used to pester my parents to take me around every week so I
could collect them.

I don't remember WBBF being associated with beehives though. What did
they think they were, Mormons? :)
  

    
Hah!  I do remember those sheets, although I hadn't thought of them
for decades.  

My glass doesn't have the "beehive" slogan on it, but on one side it
has "W [drawing of two bees]F."
  

    
Loving the digression! And I have a few more thoughts I wanted to get out
before getting to your questions. Here are a few paragraphs on the method to
our madness, which I'll follow with revelations on how the book actually
looks (hint: my bio indicates I'm a cranky photographer).

In addition to having to work within the structural guidelines, Liz and
I also were given a seriously impossible deadline to complete the
writing. I don't think any of us realized how ridiculous the deadlines
were. On the third day I got a chat from our pal Marjorie, who was
writing the rock book (the series had Country, Rock, and Pop): "We're
screwed."

At this point I'd only written one entry, Garth Brooks. And I'd taken a
couple days to do it. They asked for him first because they were going
to show it to him to try and get him to write (or put his name on, more
likely) the foreword. This was a tough one, as I was definitely
ambivalent at best about ol' Garth. Aparently I didn't do a good enough
job of hiding that wither, as he declined to endorse our little tome.

Anyhow, so Marjorie chats me about impending doom. I don't know why we
didn't quite grok this when we signed our contracts, but indeed, it was
going to be tough as hell to get all this stuff done by deadline. It
worked out to 1200 words a day. Which turns out to be a lot. Damn, in
addition to writing a book on a topic upon which I'm inexpert at best
I'm doing it on an insane deadline, Marjorie was right. I told her to
stop chatting me, as I couldn't afford to spend typed words on anything
but Legends.

So began the slog. Liz and I traded chapters, and had to go in
alphabetical order for production reasons. So we'd each take whichever
one was next, and grind it out. This meant we'd each end up getting a
fairly equal number of Legends we really dug and those we were perhaps
not so keen on. One problem with this accelerated schedule is that in
the end, a number of corrections and typos which we'd fixed on proof
never made it to the final copy. And for a guy who'd pretty much never
written anything professionally, it was quite intense to have to apply
seat of pants to chair and crank, crank, crank till my head hurt. And
hurt it did, most every day.

However, this method did provide an interesting perspective on the
whole thing. Not only was there no time to dawdle or linger poetically
over word choice, the alphabetical nature of the order gave us a sort
of single tree view of the forest. And as our angles changed with each
new Legend, we got a different view of the woods.

Like, Chet Atkins, right there in the A's. I'd always admired his
guitar playing, but as I researched his entry I realized he was
actually even more influential (Legendary, if you will) as a producer.
And then he kept popping up in subsequent entries. Through the
randomness of dealing with artists individually and alphabetically
patterns emerged that informed our opinions of the whole of Country
music. I had started this project thinking I knew some things about
Country, but learned many more through the lens of particular
personalities and careers.
  

    
The Well is all about digression, which we call 'drift.'

I have a question and I'm not sure how to ask it politely, so please
forgive me -- basically, if you weren't a professional writer and
didn't know much about country music, how'd you get the gig? :)
  

    
Yes, Sharon, I know from drift. And got the gig in the usual way: publisher
(packager, in this case) sold the book, then cast about for someone to write
it. Liz had been doing various editing and writing jobs for Hylas, and they
asked her if she wanted to write it. She thought that not only would she
like to write it, but she'd like to write it with me. I was a fan of
country, just not an expert, I'd say. Writing the book turned out to be an
excuse to become more of one. Liz got the actual contract, but claims she
told Hylas I'd be writing it with her. In the end, I wrote about two thirds,
because Liz got involved with another writing project towards the end.

And in fact, she's sitting right here saying, "well, you were always an
excellent writer, tell them how much you honed your writing on the Well..."
So, I may not be a country expert or a writer, but I play them on TV.
  

    
cool. so you were being modest when you said you didn't know much. :)
  

    
So this was a work-for-hire project; you get no royalties, correct? 
  

    
You got it. We even had to buy our copies from Amazon. So much for the
glamorous life of an author.
  

    
Yeah, I did a couple of books like that.