The Lost Highway – Part Three
Beyond Nashville
Country worships cowboy pride – those who have gone their own way and taken chances. There’s a maverick streak, an independent spirit in the music that re-surfaces whenever country becomes too mainstream or too commercial for its own good.
This is the story of the outsiders from all over America who again and again have rejuvenated country by going beyond Nashville – from the Bakersfield Sound of the 1950s through to the outlaw movement of the 1970s to alt. country today.
The Bakersfield Sound: Migrants from the Texas and Oklahoma dustbowls in the 1930s kept their music alive in the honky-tonks and juke joints of California’s San Joachim Valley. By the 1950s their music had developed a hard edged amplified sound and a distinct freewheeling identity of its own that challenged the country music establishment. In the hands of Buck Owens, the Bakersfield sound evolved into a unique high-treble guitar sound that burst out of car radio speakers all round the world and was an early influence on the Beatles.
It was everything the syrupy arrangements of Nashville weren’t. Another great Bakersfield artist was the singer-songwriter Merle Haggard – a sometime inmate of San Quentin prison who had been inspired by seeing the ultimate outsider Johnny Cash play to fellow prisoners. Haggard spoke directly to America’s blue collar hinterland – the very people Nashville were desperate to leave behind.
He chronicled America’s painful journey from the conformist 50s to the libertarian 60s with songs like An Okie from Muskogee and Working Man Blues – and to his own amusement this dope-smoking ex-convict became an unlikely figurehead for the conservative America in the late 1960s.
Haggard is still one of the most revered and controversial figures in country and was an inspirational presence for another California-based artist Gram Parsons, who was the first performer to bring together country and rock. Country rock might never have happened without him, but he died of drugs overdose in 1973.
The Outlaw Movement: Throughout the 50s and 60s, there had been various attempts to recapture the grit and honesty of country but it was the outlaw movement, in the mid 1970s, spearheaded by the Texas duo of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, which really managed to restore something of the original maverick and rebel spirit to the music.
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson wanted creative and artistic control. They wanted to write their own songs, choose their own producers – things that were taken for granted by most rock musicians. Willie only achieved it by decamping to the hippy paradise of Austin, Texas; Jennings stayed in town and took on corporate Nashville head on. A compilation featuring their work, Wanted! The Outlaws became the first platinum record to come out of Nashville, rewriting the rules of Country music in the process.
New Country: In the 1980s new blood came in the form of the so-called New Traditionalist movement. A series of offbeat country artists issued new albums which had a freshness of approach and an honesty unknown since the heyday of honky tonk.
Among these newcomers were Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam, Randy Travis and Steve Earle. What bound each of these artists together was their unabashed admiration of older country music styles. As a disparate movement, they put the twang back in country music -and showed that country’s traditional strengths – great songwriting and performance – could still appeal to a young audience.
In their wake, record companies scrabbled to sign dozens of handsome, young, new country artists – a phenomenon sometimes tagged “white hat country”. The biggest hat belonged to Garth Brooks, whose stadium rock version of country music swept all before it in the 1990s. In September 1991, he made American music history when his album Ropin’ The Wind was the first to top both country and pop charts in its first week of release. He ended up second only to The Beatles in records sold. His success was so phenomenal that it changed country music permanently. Brooks raised the stakes to such an extent that record companies became reliant on “cookie-cutter” acts – safe, video friendly fodder targeted at a mass crossover audience.
Alt. Country: The most exciting movement of recent years, alternative country is a broad church committed to a back-to-basics, anti-corporate approach. In particular, alt. country artists see their spiritual forefathers as hardcore country artists – like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash – who have rebelled against sanitised but popular music in the past. Wilco, Ryan Adams and Hank Williams III all fit into this category, maverick performers who are once again re-making country from outside the limits and limitations of Nashville.
With contributions from artists: Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam, Randy Travis, Steve Earle, Hank Williams III and Trisha Yearwood.
Lost Highway – The Story of Country Music is a four part series produced by the BBC in 2003. The entire box set of DVD’s can be purchased right here.