If you're in the area, head on over to Alpine, Texas this Friday and Saturday for the 26th Annual Texas Cowboy Poetry Festival . Hells bells, there's even a tribute to Marty Robbins on Friday morning! ( Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs was a major part of the soundtrack for Cold Splinters' Texas adventure. They even sold the album at the Panther Junction Visitor Center in BBNP.) Ima miss you Deep West Texas. MP3: Marty [...]
Seeing as the History of Country series is proving so popular, let us put on a Santa-red Stetson and have a country Christmas. This lot is old-skool: Ernest Tubb riffs (badly) on his 1941 honky tonk classic, Loretta Lynn socks it to it disagreeable Santa, while Brenda Lee aims to lassoo him, yee ha. George Jones goes X-Mas twisting, and Buck Jones provides some serious pathos. And if you had to choose one man to sing Little Drummer Boy, it would have to be Johnny Cash, right? Hey, even horrid old Jingle bloody Bells sounds good here! [...]
We've written about Marty Robbins here before, most notably on the anniversary of his recording of the Western revival, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs -- click on over to learn about the hi
Beck I wrote, and deleted, my original Thanksgiving editorial. I'm opting for this instead: a collection of live videos of artists that I like as much as I like cornbread dressing (no, not stuffing, dressing). Happy Thanksgiving. Steve Earle - "I Feel Alright" (Live) Son Volt "Catching On" (Live) Nikki Lane - "Gone, Gone, Gone" (Live) Merle Haggard - "Misery and Gin" (Live) Vern Gosdin "Chiseled in Stone" (Live) Jason Isbell - "Alabama Pines" [...]
Alvie Self - We Miss You Marty Robbins (3:15) Here's Alvie Self's Marty Robbins tribute 45, We Miss You Marty Robbins. Last time we heard from Alvie here on Beware Of The Blog, he was running down dirty hippies . So he loved Marty Robbins and despised hippies...my kind of guy! Robbins died in 1983, but if he were still with us he'd be cutting a slice of his 86th birthday cake today. Self held back on releasing his tribute to Marty until a full five years after his death, so his sincerity seems [...]
It was the age of the country songwriter, with people such as Harlan Howard (Heartaches By The Number), Hank Cochran (I Fall To Pieces), Roger Miller (Billy Bayou), Willie Nelson (Crazy), Mel Tillis (Detroit City), Tom T Hall (Harper Valley PTA) and the Bryants (Love Hurts) creating many classics. Some of them would become stars in their own right. None maybe more so than Kris Kristofferson, a man whose early biography reads like a far-fetched penny novel. Many of the songs he is known for were first recorded by others, sometimes several times. With the arguable exception of Me And [...]
Few TV shows ever have so accurately observed the condition of the suburban teenager as The Wonder Years did. One may regard the series, which ran for six seasons (from January 1988 to May 1993), as an exercise in nostalgia. Coming into the middle of a revival that celebrated the 1960s and the beginning of the '70s, it benefited from fortuitous timing, but as a story of growing up as told by an adult man, the timeframe made perfect sense. Some may accuse the show of [...]
Regular visitors to the GMC will have figured out by now that I sometimes write something related to books or movies I've recently enjoyed, although it can sometimes be a little challenging to find a musical connection. Lately I've been reading The Last Gunfight , a new book by Jeff Guinn that takes another look at the whole story behind Wyatt Earp and his brothers and their mis-adventures in Tombstone. Of course, most of us now realize that the countless books, movies, and TV shows that have been generated in the last century or so [...]
In Volume 9 of the country history series, we look at the glory years of country, a time when the genre was at its most self-confident and profitable. It was still a vibrant genre, as this collection shows, though the crooners were already beginning to define the genre, a situation that would give rise to the outlaw movement, the protagonists of which were inspired by several of the artists on this mix. It's difficult to say who was the biggest star in 1950s country. The crooner likes of Eddy Arnold were immensely successful, but in terms of sales [...]
Almost the weekend and I'm so sick of the suck up news people that I had to play a classic to ease my pain. This goes out to everyone who has been disparaged for asking reasonable questions and expecting reasonable explanations from the powers that be. Oh, and the gas prices haven't changed, nor has anything else of real consequence to the people. http://www.martyrobbins.com/
Have you seen the excellent blog the good folks at Hymie's find the time to maintain when they're not slinging selections from their collection of some of the most eclectic vinyl in town? I fre
I've been a Marty Robbins fan all my life, but I'd never listened to his rockabilly tunes until recently when I bought a Bear Family box set called "Country, 1951-1958." Robbins had such a flawless voice that I'd never even considered what he'd sound like if he rocked out. His voice is still great, but he stretches it and roughs the edges on tunes such as "Long Tall Sally,""Maybelline," "Tennessee Toddy" and "That's All Right Mama." Wow. Here's a taste:
Some rock 'n' roll from Country Hall Of Famer Marty Robbins.
Death has a very special place in American culture. America grew as a frontier nation in the constant shadow of death. Americans love dead heroes, from George Washington to Elvis Presley. Music and movie stars like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline have made much more money since their deaths than during their lives. Even to make it onto an American postage stamp you have to be dead for at least ten years. Every October 31st, on Halloween, normal American children dress up as ghosts, mummies, ghouls and vampires and make a party out of death. [...]
Some years ago, the brains at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley's debut single That's All Right, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup's song, over Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer). It is, of course, a fruitless mission to identify a "first" rock & roll song, because the genre is a jumble of diverse influences that convened, not always simultaneously, in an untidy evolution. One might [...]
My favorite albums from a half century ago.
Welcome to the 4th On The iPod feature. This feature was created about seven months ago, and I was hoping to make it a more regular feature, but, totally understandably, it takes people a while to prepare their list of what could be their Top 10 Songs of All Time. To refresh your memories, let me recap what this feature entails. We are asking people, be they artists, listeners, or fans, what they would do if they were stranded on an island with an iPod that held only 10 songs. Which songs [...]
Yes. I am one of those nerds. I loved the music from Fallout 3. I loved the music used in both Bioshock games. The classic songs that bring you back to a gentler, nicer time. Except, well, those games aren't gentle or nice. They're brutal, in fact. And that may be why I love them. Well, now with Fallout: New Vegas ? We get more of the classic sounds. Hell, I was so psyched for this game when I saw the initial trailer. It features one of the songs we're posting today. Check it out. [...]
In the history of country music, few artists could move as swiftly within the sub-genres of the format than the late Martin David Robinson. Better known as Marty Robbins , who was born 85 years ago tomorrow, he could do it all. During his three-decade plus career, he mined gold with such a dazzling variety of styles. Cowboy songs, honky-tonk, rockabilly….he did it all. As we remember this legendary singer, let's take a look back in time at five Robbins classics that show just how versatile he was. "That's All Right [...]
The grim reaper evidently is a big football fan, stepping up his reaping only after the World Cup concluded (taking, however, the great South African saxophonist Robbie Jansen before its conclusion), but then with a vengeance. The most notable musician this month may be Harvey Fuqua, whose impact on music was mostly behind the scenes. Fittingly, Marvin Gaye on the last track of his last album paid tribute to his mentor. Just a short while after Big Star's Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel died. A couple of session musicians who played on rock classics passed on. I usually don't [...]
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in ALL caps music blog
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