Hell-Bent for Music by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

“The Tennessee

Waltz” and Other

Country Sounds

ALONG ABOUT 1950 HANK WILLIAMS and I were talking backstage at a show in Montgomery, Alabama, and he said, “Pee Wee, I believe one of us is gonna have a pop record before long.” He was right. Soon Tony Bennett had made “Cold, Cold Heart” into a pop hit, and Patti Page had taken “The Tennessee Waltz” to the top of the pop charts. Then other pop singers—Kay Starr, Margaret Whiting, and others—were taking country songs to huge audiences. Of course, there had been some crossing over from one music field to another for a long time. One of the first country music stars was Vernon Dalhart, who had been trained as an opera singer. But before the 1950s there wasn’t much crossover from one kind of music to another. You either liked pop music or country music or blues or jazz or something else. You were either a pop musician or a country musician or something else. The performers and their audiences tended to stay with their own music. But I’ve never paid any attention to dividing lines. I’ve always felt comfortable crossing from one side to another, as the occasion required.

Beginning in the 1950s many singers and songs and bands crossed over easily. Marty Robbins was popular with pop audiences as well as country music fans. He had a smooth, easy, gentle voice that everyone liked whether he was singing a high school prom song or a western ballad about the dust and sun. Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Roger Miller are just four more country singers who played both sides of the street. With singers like them, country composers no longer had to depend on pop singers to make their songs big hits. On the other hand, there is Ray Charles, who at thirty-one surprised a lot of his fans when he did an album of country music called “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” with songs like “Bye, Bye, Love,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” and “Careless Love,” an old folk song that he wrote his own lyrics for. Bing Crosby recorded country and western songs for years. He’s like other talented performers: he could do different kinds of music in his own unique style, from rhythm and blues and jazz to pop and country. The time was, therefore, right when I started writing successful songs that could appeal to both country and pop audiences.

Like most musicians, I wanted to be a composer. I wanted to write my own songs. I knew that it was important to write my own songs, then publish them as sheet music, play them on the radio, get them recorded, and bring out a songbook to sell to fans. It was a good way to get recognition and to make money. There’s hardly any country musician you can name who hasn’t written—or tried to write—songs. Here in my basement study, I have dozens of pieces of sheet music and songbooks written by my friends in

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