In the Autumn of my 17th year, I took a railroad zephyr out of Boston, changed trains in Chicago, got on a bus in Ponca City and rode into Stillwater to begin my college career at Oklahoma State University. I soon learned three important things about the Sooner state; everybody had a horse, rodeos were de rigeur and everyone listened to country music. Aside from the OSU fight song (“Cowboys a-riding, lassoes a-flying under the western sky”), there was no other known music. I learned to like it. As Darlene on American Bandstand might say, it had a nice beat and was easy to dance to.
At age 21, I rolled into Austin, Texas to bum around and help Gilbert Shelton put out the University of Texas humor magazine, The Ranger. When I walked in the door of Gilbert’s apartment, the stereo was blasting out “We Need A Whole Lot More Of Jesus And A Lot Less Rock And Roll” by the Greenbriar Boys, who promptly became my go-to group for Bluegrass and Country listening. I even saw them live one night years later in an after-midnight show in Greenwich Village, of all places.
In 1962, Austin was a musical eden. Folk music was in vogue, Bob Dylan had just made his way into our consciousness and the University of Texas student union hosted “folksings” every Wednesday evening. Local singers of folk, country and old Protestant church songs showed up at every party, and those Austin parties came almost nightly. A local bistro (which would never have called itself that) began featuring “Jazz in the afternoon,” and on the outskirts of town, a big-bellied man named Kenneth Threadgill, who had nothing but old Jimmy Rodgers songs on his jukebox, yodeled country songs in his fetching apron while the customers dined on cheese and Lone Star beer. A 19-year-old UT Art student named Janis Joplin stepped up on Threadgill’s stage one night and joined him in singing “Queen of the Silver Dollar,” autoharp in hand, and later her own composition, “What Good Will Drinkin’ Do,” a blues song and the first number she ever recorded.
In the 1970s, when Rock was the name of the game, I saw Earl Flatt and Lester Scruggs play at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan with my amigo Michael O’Hara Garcia, and faithfully trooped from bar to bar in Gainesville with Mike to watch Texas Tom & The Slick Pickers, a band he was promoting. I also wasn’t above putting a Greenbriar Boys album or one by the Dillards on the Subterranean Circus turntable, which was very jarring for my staff and confusing to the customers. “It’s a Bill thing,” my employees would assure the customers. “He’s normal most of the time.” So while I don’t pretend to be a dyed-in-the-wool cowboy, I was definitely an aficionado of the genre before Country was cool.
Later, when the Byrds came out with their Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, even holdouts like the hallowed Tom Petty had to admit they might have something there. The Flying Burrito Brothers brought more fans aboard, as did the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Eagles and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. And how could anyone not like Emmylou? In the year 2000, George Clooney put a cherry on the C&W cake with his offbeat countryish film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Despite Rap and Hip Hop and Techno and Punk and whatever shows up tomorrow, Country has prevailed and even dominates the music scene in 2023, just like yodeling Kenneth Threadgill knew it would in 1962. Big Ken is gone now and his bar was recently closed, but we sure would love to find that jukebox.
Mama Tried
“Mama tried to raise me better but her pleading I denied,
That leaves only me to blame 'cause Mama tried."---Merle Haggard
Johnny Paycheck, never a threat to win a Mr. Congeniality contest, wasn’t feeling the old Christmas spirit one late December night when he pulled into the North High Lounge near Greenfield, Ohio for a cold one. Barely inside, he was accosted by a fan named Larry Wise, who was thrilled to speak to his idol. Alas and alack, Johnny was even testier than usual after a long drive and the conversation quickly grew heated. Wise apologized and invited Paycheck back to his place for a home-cooked meal of “deer meat and turtle soup.”
“What do you think I am—some kind of country hick?” Johnny roared, pulling out his pistol and setting free a round, just grazing Larry’s scalp as all the customers hit the deck. An army of cops quickly arrived, captured Paycheck and hauled him off to the the slammer. J.P. was sentenced to nine years in jail. He did two before Country music fan and Governor Richard Celeste gave him a pardon.
The inimitable George Jones, the current record-holder for cancelled concerts due to excess, was in the middle of a multi-day bender when his second wife, Shirley Corley, left the house, taking the car keys. She should have hidden the lawn mower, as well. A thirsty and stranded Jones staggered out to the garage, fired up the mower and rode its 10-horsepower rotary engine all the way to Beaumont, Texas, eight miles away, where he finally found a liquor store. Finally sated, he turned around and headed back, logging a total of 16 miles. “I imagine the top speed of that old mower was about five miles per hour,” Jones said later. “It might have taken an hour and a half to get there and back but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Gram Parsons bought the farm at age 26, succumbing to an apparent mix of alcohol and opiates inside a hotel room at Joshua Tree National Park. The cosmic cowboy had previously confided to his road manager Phil Kaufman that upon his death he wished to have his ashes spread at Joshua Tree. Phil, ever the faithful friend, did what any pal would do—he swiped Parsons’ casket, body inside, before it could be shipped back to Louisiana, then took it out to the desert, doused it in gasoline and lit it on fire. And you thought the kids at Burning Man had all the fun. The body, or what was left of it, was eventually returned to Gram’s family and Kaufman was fined $750 for stealing the casket. For future reference, there is no law in California against stealing corpses.
Country & Western heroes like to sing about the Bible. (“You’d better start readin’ your B-i-b-l-e, there’s comfort, hope and joy in the book of G-o-d!”) Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass Music, was well-versed in gospel songs and an alleged reader of the Good Book and he usually had one laying around the bunkhouse, unfortunately for him.
A ex-girlfriend of Bill’s, returning to his home in Nashville to retrieve personal items after the breakup, alleged to police that Monroe whacked her in the face with a Bible while she was attempting to get him to swear on it that he’d not been seeing other women during their time together. The lady alleged that Billy also knocked her down, kicked and choked her and stole a box of Moon Pies from her car. Ten days later the charges were dismissed. “No damn fool would steal a box of Moon Pies!” averred the judge.
Hi-Ho, Silver!
A little horseplay can often lead to trouble. Minutes after wrapping up a performance at the George Strait Country Music Festival in upstate New York, Kenny Chesney swung himself into the saddle of a police horse belonging to a deputy sheriff. He then trotted around the parking lot to the great amusement of his tourmate Tim McGraw, ignoring all orders to halt and dismount. When the horse owner tried to remove Chesney from his mount and a second deputy came over to assist, McGraw jumped the man from behind, wrapped one arm around his neck and began choking him. A third deputy joined in the soiree, as did McGraw’s road manager, Mark Russo, resulting in a blur of fisticuffs and alleged injuries. Both Chesney and McGraw were arrested and detained for four hours but ultimately found not guilty by a jury one year later. “Ah for the days, horse thieves were horsewhipped,” lamented Erie County Sheriff Patrick Gallivan. “It’s a good thing for those warblers this didn’t happen in Texas.”
Wackos in Waco
Despite being the home of Bible-thumping Baylor University, Waco seems to have an inordinate amount of troublemaking. Billy Joe Shaver, despite being short a couple of fingers from his lumber mill days, was a leading practitioner of the arts. The erstwhile composer of songs like “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” was at a Waco bar with an ex-wife when a galoot named Billy Bryant Coker (the fellas like middle names in Texas) brandished a knife and ordered Shaver to meet him in the parking lot. “You damn betcha,” uttered Billy Joe, who whipped out a pistol and shot Coker in the face while he sat in his pickup truck. Then, as any law-abiding citizen would do, he tried turning himself in to Austin police, who were unaware of his warrant. Okay then, Billy thought, and he marched out and played his show. He was later acquitted of all charges when Willie Nelson turned up as a character witness. Coker turned over a new leaf and was last seen leading a prayer circle in Nacodoches before his untimely but predictable death due to stroke.
Yeah, But LAST?
You’d recognize Dolly Parton anywhere, right? She could show up in the middle of 100,000 people at a football game or a million on New Year’s Eve in Times Square and Dolly would stand out from the crowd. She’s often imitated but never duplicated….except maybe once. In Santa Monica, she entered a Dolly-themed lookalike contest for drag queens—and lost. “I just overexaggerated everything,” Parton admitted. “I made my beauty mark bigger, eyes bigger, hair bigger, everything. And I not only lost—I got the least applause.” Asked if she was disappointed, Dolly laughed out loud. “Are you kidding? You should have seen the winner. She looked more like me than I did.”
That’s all, folks….
