The classic American movie Giant is an epic about a Texas cattle baron, Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), his wife (Elizabeth Taylor) and his family. The film, released in 1956, also features the late James Dean and is riddled with clunky foreshadowing, not least of which is a scene in which…
Solomon Burke is known by many names: Bishop, Reverend, the Doctor, the King. In fact, his official Web site is www.thekingsolomonburke.com. And he often has been referred to as the King of Rock and Soul, whatever that means. Considering his many diverse business activities, which include a string of funeral…
It’s going to be a banner season for comic characters, and if the pun in that phrase eludes you, you have a lot of catching up to do. But those who are familiar with Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk, might want to attend the first Phoenix Cactus Comicon on…
They came out of upstate New York by way of Canada, Arkansas and other newly paved parts of the heartland. Calling themselves The Band, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson arrived fully formed and well-rehearsed in 1968, looking a bit like Jesuit missionaries, and Bob…
It was the best of country, it was the worst of country. At least that’s what some folks will say after spending four days and nights at what is most certainly the biggest country music and camping event of the season. Cooking, concerts and mega-karaoke, which arrives in an 18-wheeler…
When Johnny Cash sang “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” he might have been singing about Johnny Paycheck’s life story. And when Paycheck sings “(Pardon Me) I’ve Got Someone to Kill” on this collection of Epic-r eleased tracks, one tends to take him at his…
There’s a note in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in which the character Vladimir “uses his intelligence.” In spite of all his efforts to obey the author’s parenthetical instruction, Vladimir admits a moment later, “I remain in the dark.” In an e-mail interview with Neal Pollack, author of The…
Once upon a time, in Memphis, Tennessee, there were a couple of brothers, Dorsey and Johnny Burnette. They grew up near Elvis and played the same jumbled Mississippi driftwood music: country, blues, boogie music that was like the covers of 1950s dime-store paperbacks and comic books, colorful and lurid. The…
How do you like your Cash served? Biscuits and sausage gravy, side of grits and hot coffee in some fleabite Southern truck stop? That’s not a bad metaphor, especially since Cash has come to represent almost 50 years of (small case) americana music. Diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, coffee and cooking…
It’s impossible to listen to Kasey Chambers without imagining the vast expanse of the Australian plains, the thousand and one nighttime noises, a train wailing across great distances — although I have no sense of whether that’s an authentic view or a projection based on press releases and interviews. Chambers…
There’s something comforting in knowing there’s a bar someplace where you will always be treated to a smile, a few kind words, and three fingers of your favorite bourbon or scotch. Where seldom is heard a track by Britney or J.Lo. Alan Jackson’s records are like that, and it’s no…
Funny how quick people are to crown Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell as the kings of honky-tonk, that crossbred country-goes-to-city sound that was born in the scant handful of years before Elvis ripped open a hole into an alternative universe. But where’s Webb Pierce in this party? Pierce had 13…
There was a time, early in Hank Williams’ recording career, in 1947, when Williams was swinging pretty hard, when lead guitarist Zeke Turner was permitted to show a degree of uptown flash that would not appear in the later records. And there was a long-standing rumor that Williams had recorded…
It’s Buck Owens month. Like daylight, it’s always Buck Owens month somewhere, leastways it ought to be. Driving down one highway or another, you can see the giant red, white and blue guitar that advertises country radio — that’s Buck’s old custom-made Mosrite. The stations may not play his music…
Delbert McClinton talks like he sings, like the songs he writes and the songs that inspired him, in simple declarative phrases that sound like children’s verse, but which rumble in the back of the mind like a passing train. “My stayin’ up all night days are long gone,” he drawls…
They’re headin’ for the hills in Hollywood — hillbillies, that is — banjos, mandolins. Which is a way of saying that three soundtracks have arrived in record stores everywhere, a few short steps and a million miles from Eminem, all loaded with country music and all worth owning. Of course,…
Nick Tosches, the distinguished writer and biographer of Dean Martin and Jerry Lee Lewis, once remarked, “I think Elvis Presley will never be solved.” For those who’ve stared at the sideburned sphinx for nearly half a century, folding, unfolding and refolding him like the steel in a magical sword, Elvis…
Dwight Yoakam confounds me. Here’s a guy who, with very little variation, has recorded and performed the same letter-perfect honky-tonk music for well more than a decade. Fiddle, steel, keyboards, bass, electric guitar and drums, all lined up behind Yoakam with OCD-like precision, a formula that worked for Hank, Lefty,…
There are a lot of country-music geezers, alive and dead, who have carved their craggy likenesses onto hillbilly history in various ways, as men of the soil, men sporting braids or pompadours, in Nudie suits or cowboy hats. A vast 75-year parade of city slickers and kids from the sticks,…
