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Country Music

JOHNNY DARRELL BUILT HIS BEST YEARS AROUND PEOPLE COUNTRY SONGS OFTEN LEFT IN THE SHADOWS: A PARALYZED VETERAN, A MOTHER DRIVEN INTO PROSTITUTION, AND A FATHER BEGGING TO KEEP HIS FAMILY TOGETHER. Johnny Darrell never became one of Nashville’s largest stars. But during the late 1960s, he developed a remarkable instinct for songs that went somewhere darker than ordinary heartbreak. In 1967, he took Mel Tillis’s “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” to No. 9 on the country chart. The narrator is a disabled war veteran, unable to stop his wife from leaving for the evening and imagining that she is going to another man. Tillis based the story on a World War II veteran, although the reference to an Asian war caused many listeners to associate it with Vietnam. Two years later, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition would turn “Ruby” into a major international crossover hit. Darrell had already shown that the story could work on country radio. Then came Dallas Frazier’s “The Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp.” Its narrator remembers a mother abandoned by an alcoholic husband and left with fourteen children. To keep them fed, she sells sex to men from the surrounding community. The song does not treat her as its villain; it is told by the son who understands what she sacrificed to keep the family alive. Darrell’s version reached the country chart before O.C. Smith carried the song to a much larger pop audience in 1968. Darrell followed with another uncomfortable domestic story. Bobby Goldsboro’s “With Pen in Hand” places the listener inside a collapsing marriage as one parent faces divorce and the possibility of losing daily contact with a child. Darrell released the first single version in April 1968, and it became his biggest country hit, reaching No. 3. Taken together, the records reveal why Darrell’s catalog feels different. He was repeatedly drawn toward songs about people trapped by circumstances larger than a conventional breakup: war wounds, poverty, prostitution, custody, shame and families coming apart. AllMusic later characterized his career as having an unusual knack for identifying songs that other performers would subsequently make more famous. Darrell never received the recognition those songs eventually did. But listen to his late-1960s records in sequence and another legacy appears: before some of these stories became standards, Johnny Darrell was already willing to put their most uncomfortable characters on country radio—and leave the listener alone with them.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” JOHNNY DARRELL BUILT HIS BEST YEARS AROUND PEOPLE…

Country Music

BEFORE MERLE HAGGARD BECAME A STAR, HE PLAYED BASS IN WYNN STEWART’S BAND. BEFORE “BAKERSFIELD SOUND” HAD A NAME, STEWART WAS ALREADY MAKING IT. Wynn Stewart never became as famous as Buck Owens or Merle Haggard, but both men emerged from a musical world he helped define. Born in Missouri and raised partly in California, Stewart was recording by the mid-1950s. His early records already leaned away from Nashville polish toward a sharper West Coast sound built on steel guitar, bright electric rhythm, and hard country phrasing. In 1959, Stewart took a regular job at the Nashville Nevada Club in Las Vegas. One of the young musicians who joined his band was Merle Haggard. Haggard had recently come out of San Quentin and was still trying to rebuild his life through music. Playing bass behind Stewart gave him steady work and placed him beside a singer whose sound was already pointing toward the style Haggard would later make famous. Stewart also had another important connection. Buck Owens recorded Stewart’s “Above and Beyond” in 1960 and took it to No. 3 on the country chart. The same West Coast circle of musicians, writers, clubs and studios was beginning to separate itself from Nashville long before anyone treated Bakersfield as a movement. Stewart scored his own breakthrough with “Wishful Thinking,” a Top 5 country hit in 1960. Then, in 1967, came “It’s Such a Pretty World Today.” The record spent two weeks at No. 1 and became Stewart’s signature hit. By then, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard were already major stars, and the sound Stewart had helped shape was being identified with Bakersfield itself. That timing partly explains why his name faded behind theirs. Stewart influenced the scene before the scene had a marketable identity. He gave Haggard work before Haggard had hits, supplied Buck Owens with material, and recorded the same lean, electric country that would soon define an era. History usually remembers the artists who carry a sound to its largest audience. Wynn Stewart belonged to the earlier moment—when that sound was still being built in clubs, before anyone knew it would need a name.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BEFORE MERLE HAGGARD BECAME A STAR, HE PLAYED…

Country Music

GUY CLARK HAD ONE LINE — “I WISH I WAS IN AUSTIN IN THE CHILI PARLOR BAR.” HE KEPT ASKING RODNEY CROWELL TO HELP HIM FINISH IT. CROWELL WOULDN’T. SO CLARK SAT DOWN ALONE AND WROTE “DUBLIN BLUES.” Guy Clark and Susanna had traveled to Ireland together. Then the trip split in two. Guy had to return to the United States for a golf tournament in Oklahoma. Susanna stayed overseas and decided to continue on to Italy, calling a friend to meet her in Ireland. The separation gave Clark exactly the kind of distance his songs often needed before ordinary places began carrying more weight. He already had one line: “I wish I was in Austin in the Chili Parlor Bar.” The place was real. Austin’s Chili Parlor was one of the joints Clark knew, and its cheap “Mad Dog Margaritas” gave him another piece of the song. He repeatedly tried to convince Rodney Crowell to write it with him. Crowell refused. Eventually Clark sat down by himself. He borrowed the melodic foundation from the traditional song “Handsome Molly,” something he later acknowledged openly. Clark loved the old melody and saw no reason to hide where it came from; preserving traditional songs by carrying pieces of them forward was part of the craft as he understood it. What emerged was not really a travel song. “Dublin Blues” moved through Austin, Dublin, Paris, Rome and other places, but geography was only the surface. Underneath was a man cataloging beauty, regret and distance while wishing he could be somewhere simpler with someone who was no longer beside him. Clark recorded it as the title track of his 1995 album Dublin Blues. The record arrived just as the newly organized Americana radio format was taking shape, and the album reached No. 1 on the Gavin Americana chart. The song became one of the moments audiences waited for in Clark’s shows. He said he could feel the room change when he began the opening line. By then, the Chili Parlor was no longer just a bar in Austin. Guy Clark had turned it into the place people imagined when they wished they were somewhere else.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” GUY CLARK HAD ONE LINE — “I WISH…

Country Music

IN OCTOBER 1951, LEFTY FRIZZELL HAD FOUR SONGS IN THE COUNTRY TOP 10 AT THE SAME TIME. ONE OF THEM, “ALWAYS LATE,” ALSO CAPTURED A VOCAL STYLE THAT WOULD ECHO THROUGH MERLE HAGGARD, WILLIE NELSON AND GENERATIONS AFTER HIM. Lefty Frizzell’s rise had happened almost absurdly fast. Only a year earlier, Dallas studio owner Jim Beck had heard him performing, brought him in to make demos, and helped get the recordings in front of Columbia producer Don Law. Frizzell’s first Columbia session in July 1950 produced “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” and “I Love You a Thousand Ways.” Both became major hits. Then 1951 turned into domination. “I Want to Be with You Always” spent eleven weeks at No. 1 on one Billboard country chart. “Always Late (With Your Kisses)” followed with a twelve-week run at No. 1. In October, Frizzell simultaneously placed four records in Billboard’s country Top 10—an extraordinary concentration for one singer. But the numbers only explain part of why Lefty mattered. On “Always Late,” he stretched syllables, delayed phrases and let notes bend around the beat rather than landing squarely on it. The Country Music Hall of Fame describes the performance as a defining example of his revolutionary vocal technique. That looseness became part of country music’s vocabulary. Merle Haggard later described Lefty as one of his deepest influences, saying singers learned from the way Frizzell held onto words before finally letting them go. Willie Nelson, George Jones, Keith Whitley and others were also shaped by that phrasing. Frizzell’s commercial peak did not last at the same level. By the mid-1950s the hits had slowed, though “Long Black Veil” restored him to the Top 10 in 1959 and “Saginaw, Michigan” gave him another No. 1 in 1964. His influence moved differently from his chart position. The four Top 10 records eventually disappeared from Billboard. The way Lefty Frizzell bent a line around the beat did not.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” IN OCTOBER 1951, LEFTY FRIZZELL HAD FOUR SONGS…

Country Music

DOTTIE WEST COULDN’T TURN STARDAY OR ATLANTIC INTO A BREAKTHROUGH. THEN JIM REEVES RECORDED ONE OF HER SONGS, TOOK HER TO CHET ATKINS—AND “HERE COMES MY BABY” MADE HER THE FIRST FEMALE COUNTRY ARTIST TO WIN A GRAMMY. Before Nashville knew Dottie West as a star, she spent years trying to make the city notice her. Living in Cleveland with her husband, steel guitarist Bill West, she sang on local television and drove to Nashville on weekends to build contacts. Starday Records signed her in 1959, but little came of it. After moving permanently to Nashville in 1961, she tried Atlantic and again failed to break through. The songs kept her in the game. In 1963, Jim Reeves recorded West’s composition “Is This Me?” and turned it into a hit. Reeves then brought the songwriter behind it to the attention of RCA producer Chet Atkins. This time, Nashville listened. Atkins signed West to RCA and produced “Here Comes My Baby,” written by Dottie and Bill West. The single reached the country Top 10 and helped earn her membership in the Grand Ole Opry. Then came the Grammy. At the 1965 ceremony, West won Best Country & Western Vocal Performance—Female for “Here Comes My Baby,” becoming the first female country artist to win a Grammy. Her career kept moving. “Would You Hold It Against Me” and “Paper Mansions” reached the Top 10, while she recorded successful duets with Reeves and Don Gibson. Years later, she also turned her songwriting toward advertising, composing twelve Coca-Cola jingles; “Country Sunshine” became a Top 10 country hit in 1973. There was a symmetry to the breakthrough. For years, labels had heard Dottie West sing and passed. It was only when another star sang her words that Nashville finally understood what it had been overlooking.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” DOTTIE WEST COULD NOT TURN STARDAY OR ATLANTIC…

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RODNEY CROWELL SPENT YEARS WRITING HITS FOR EMMYLOU HARRIS, WAYLON JENNINGS AND OTHERS. THEN IN 1988, DIAMONDS & DIRT GAVE HIM FIVE CONSECUTIVE NO. 1 SINGLES — THE ONLY FIVE CHART-TOPPERS OF HIS OWN CAREER. By the time Diamonds & Dirt appeared, Rodney Crowell had already spent more than a decade proving he could write songs other people could carry. He had played in Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band, written for Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, produced Rosanne Cash and built a reputation around Nashville as a songwriter’s songwriter. His own solo career had been far less certain. Then Crowell made the most deliberately country record of his career. Released in 1988 and produced with Tony Brown, Diamonds & Dirt leaned hard into honky-tonk, fiddle, steel and tight Nashville rhythm playing. It also brought together musicians including Paul Franklin, Mark O’Connor, Eddie Bayers and Vince Gill. The first single, “It’s Such a Small World,” paired Crowell with Rosanne Cash. It went to No. 1. Then “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried” did the same. So did “She’s Crazy for Leavin’.” Then “After All This Time.” Finally, Crowell covered Buck Owens’ “Above and Beyond,” taking that song to No. 1 as well. Over roughly seventeen months in 1988 and 1989, all five singles from the album topped Billboard’s country chart. At the time, it was an unprecedented run from one country album. “After All This Time” also won Crowell the Grammy for Best Country Song in 1990. The strange part was what happened afterward. Crowell never returned to No. 1 as a solo artist. Instead of spending the rest of his career trying to reproduce Diamonds & Dirt, he gradually moved away from the machinery that had finally made him a mainstream star. His later work became more personal, literary and increasingly associated with Americana rather than country radio. For seventeen months, Rodney Crowell had exactly what Nashville is supposed to promise. Then he spent the next three decades proving he did not need it.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” RODNEY CROWELL SPENT YEARS WRITING HITS FOR EMMYLOU…

Country Music

PATSY CLINE’S MOTHER PRETENDED TO BE HER MANAGER TO GET HER ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. PATSY THEN SANG A SONG SHE DIDN’T EVEN LIKE— AND TURNED “WALKIN’ AFTER MIDNIGHT” INTO A MILLION-SELLING BREAKTHROUGH. By January 1957, Patsy Cline had spent years chasing a break that refused to arrive. She had sung in Virginia juke joints, worked regional radio and television, appeared occasionally on the Grand Ole Opry, and recorded several singles for 4 Star Records. None had become a hit. At twenty-four, she was still far closer to regional performer than national star. Then her mother, Hilda Hensley, found a way into CBS’s Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. The program required contestants to be presented by a “talent scout.” Hilda reportedly posed as Patsy’s manager, helping secure her daughter a place on the January 21, 1957 broadcast in New York. There was another problem. Patsy did not particularly like “Walkin’ After Midnight,” which she had recorded the previous November. But that was the song chosen for the television appearance. She walked onto the national stage and sang it anyway. The studio audience erupted. The response was so strong that host Arthur Godfrey told her she had won before the competition was over. Decca rushed the song out as a single. Within weeks, “Walkin’ After Midnight” reached No. 2 country and No. 12 pop, eventually selling more than a million copies. For the first time, Patsy Cline had a national hit. But the breakthrough exposed another problem: her contract with 4 Star still restricted the material she could record. The Country Music Hall of Fame describes that six-year association as the greatest hindrance to her early career; Cline later alleged that label owner Bill McCall withheld earnings and supplied weak songs. So the woman who had just sold a million records could not easily follow the hit with another one. By the end of 1957, the momentum had faded. After giving birth to daughter Julie in 1958, Patsy returned to one-night engagements, sometimes working for about $50 a show while waiting for the 4 Star contract to expire. Her next major recording breakthrough would not come until Owen Bradley finally had greater control over her material at Decca in 1960. “Walkin’ After Midnight” proved Patsy Cline could reach a national audience. What followed proved something harsher: in Nashville, finding the audience and gaining control of your own career were not always the same victory.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” PATSY CLINE’S MOTHER PRETENDED TO BE HER MANAGER…

Country Music

WILLIE NELSON WAS SO BROKE HE OFFERED TO SELL “HELLO WALLS” TO FARON YOUNG FOR $500. FARON REFUSED TO BUY IT—HE LOANED WILLIE THE MONEY INSTEAD AND LET HIM KEEP THE SONG. By 1961, Faron Young was already one of Nashville’s major honky-tonk stars, with No. 1 hits such as “Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young” and “Alone with You.” Willie Nelson was still struggling. He had moved to Nashville in 1960 and found work as a songwriter, but his unusual phrasing had not yet made him a successful recording artist. One of the songs he carried around town was “Hello Walls.” Willie pitched it to Young at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the bar behind the Ryman where songwriters regularly brought new material to performers. Young immediately heard a hit. Willie, badly needing money, reportedly offered to sell him the song’s publishing rights for $500. Young refused. Instead, he loaned Willie the money and let him keep ownership of the song. Young recorded “Hello Walls,” and Capitol released it in 1961. The single spent nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart and reached No. 12 on the Hot 100. It became one of Young’s biggest records and Willie Nelson’s first Nashville No. 1 as a songwriter. The timing changed Willie’s position quickly. Billy Walker soon scored with “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and Patsy Cline turned “Crazy” into one of country music’s defining recordings. Nashville began recognizing that the struggling singer was also one of its most valuable songwriters. Young could have owned part of that future for $500. Instead, he made his money from the record and left Willie with the copyright. Years later, Young also offered Willie steady songwriting work while Young handled the touring. Willie declined. The songs were finally paying the bills. But Willie Nelson still wanted the stage for himself.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” WILLIE NELSON WAS SO BROKE HE OFFERED TO…

Country Music

BEFORE DOLLY PARTON EVER STOOD BESIDE PORTER WAGONER, MILLIONS OF VIEWERS ALREADY KNEW THE WOMAN IN THAT SPOT: “PRETTY MISS NORMA JEAN.” THEN SHE LEFT IN 1967—AND COUNTRY HISTORY REMEMBERED HER REPLACEMENT MORE THAN HER. Norma Jean Beasler had been performing long before Nashville television made her famous. Raised in Oklahoma, she was appearing on radio while still a child and later joined Ozark Jubilee, where Red Foley began introducing her simply as Norma Jean. By the time Porter Wagoner chose her for his new syndicated television show in 1961, she already had years of professional experience behind her. The Porter Wagoner Show changed her scale overnight. Norma Jean became the regular female singer beside Wagoner as the program expanded across the country. She toured with his road show, appeared week after week on television, and was part of the ensemble that helped turn Wagoner into one of country music’s most recognizable television personalities. At its height, the program reached nearly one hundred markets and more than three million viewers. Chet Atkins signed her to RCA Victor, and the records began working too. “Let’s Go All the Way” reached the country Top 15. “Go Cat Go” and Harlan Howard’s “I Wouldn’t Buy a Used Car From Him” both made the Top 10. Her 1965 album Pretty Miss Norma Jean reached No. 3 on the country album chart, and she earned a Grammy nomination as Best New Country & Western Artist. One of her strangest successes came in 1966. “The Game of Triangles” paired Norma Jean with Bobby Bare and Liz Anderson in a three-way domestic drama: husband, wife, and other woman trading lines inside the same record. It reached the country Top 5 and later earned the trio a Grammy nomination. By then, Norma Jean was not simply Porter Wagoner’s television partner. She had chart records, albums, national exposure, and her own audience. Then in 1967, she left the show after marrying Jody Taylor. Wagoner needed another female singer. The replacement was Dolly Parton. The transition was not instantly smooth. Parton later recalled that some audience members initially wanted Norma Jean back. But Dolly and Porter soon developed the duet partnership that produced fourteen Top 10 records and helped launch Parton toward a level of fame few country artists would ever reach. Norma Jean continued recording for RCA after leaving the show and remained active into the 1970s, but the television platform that had placed her in millions of homes was gone. That is what makes her story easy to misread. Dolly Parton did not replace an unknown singer waiting for her career to begin. She replaced a woman who had already spent years standing under those lights, selling records, earning Grammy nominations, and building the audience Dolly inherited. The camera simply kept rolling after Norma Jean walked off the set.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BEFORE DOLLY PARTON STOOD BESIDE PORTER WAGONER, MILLIONS…

Country Music

BONNIE OWENS DIVORCED MERLE HAGGARD IN 1978. NINE YEARS LATER, HE CALLED AND ASKED HER TO COME BACK ON THE ROAD: “AS LONG AS I’M UP THERE ON A BANDSTAND, I WANT YOU TO BE WITH ME.” By the time Bonnie Owens left Merle Haggard, their marriage had carried almost everything a country partnership could hold: duets, children, touring, hits, infidelity, and years spent inside the same moving operation. They had married in 1965, just as Haggard’s career was breaking open. Bonnie increasingly stepped away from her own recording momentum to sing harmony with the Strangers, help raise his children, and keep life functioning around a man whose ambitions rarely allowed the road to stop. By the mid-1970s, she had had enough. Bonnie spent less time touring as Haggard’s affairs and constant movement strained the marriage. She filed for divorce in 1976; it became final in October 1978. Haggard immediately moved into another marriage, while Bonnie gradually disappeared from his road show. By 1981, she was no longer traveling with him. Then the phone rang. Bonnie later told The New Yorker that around June 1987, Haggard called and asked her to return. His explanation was simple: as long as he was standing on a bandstand, he wanted Bonnie there too. She went back. Not as his wife. Not as someone trying to revive the marriage. She returned as the harmony singer who knew his phrasing, his music, and the rhythms of a Haggard road band better than almost anyone. By 1989, Bonnie was again riding the bus with the Strangers. The scene was remarkably ordinary. She played poker with the musicians, helped find missing supplies, tidied the bus, ate breakfast in motel coffee shops, and walked onstage to put the familiar harmony behind songs she had helped carry decades earlier. She was also clear about what had changed. Bonnie said she and Merle were friends but no longer close in the way they once had been. She could still read his moods, recognize when he was restless, and understand the machinery surrounding him without pretending the old marriage had somehow returned. That made the arrangement stranger—and perhaps more durable—than reconciliation. Most divorced couples did not spend their later years crossing America together on a tour bus. Bonnie and Merle could not preserve the marriage, but they preserved a musical language built long before the divorce papers. For Bonnie, the road had changed meaning. Once she had ridden it as Haggard’s wife, helping hold together the family and career around him. Years later, she came back with nothing left to prove about the marriage. When the band counted off the song, she simply stepped to the microphone and knew exactly where the harmony belonged.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BONNIE OWENS DIVORCED MERLE HAGGARD IN 1978. NINE…

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