The at-home soundtrack to my teenage years was standard C&W records
that my parents played. (Endlessly.) My dad had always
particularly liked country swing, so they tended towards people
like Ray Price, Hank Snow, Kitty Wells, but also liked the big
names who tended to have cross-over hits (Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves).
There was stuff in there by people who, in hindsight, seem to have
gained some musical credibility -- Merle Haggard/Loretta
Lynn/Waylon Jennings/Emmy Lou Harris -- and the middle-market ones
(Charlie Rich/Charlie Pride), but we also really liked some who I
think never managed to rise above "deeply un-cool" (the Statler
Brothers spring to mind).
I stopped listening to this when I moved away to grad school in the
early 1970s, and had forgotten a lot of this stuff; but lately
I've been listening in small bursts to accuradio's "Country
Heritage" on-line radio, which plays that era's records non-stop.
(It has to be small bursts: I can manage a pleasant wallow for a
half-hour or so, but anything more and I can feel my brain turning
to blancmange...)
Anyway, the last couple of days I've made a note of performers who
make me think "Gee; I remember liking that song, and in the 35-year
gap since I last heard this had completely forgotten I knew that
singer":
Ronnie Milsap
Don Williams
Johnny Paycheck
Billie Jo Spears
Tom T. Hall
Mel Tillis
Jeannie Pruitt
George Jones
Statler Brothers
Dave Dudley
Claude King
A good nostalgia wallow....in small doses.
--
Cheers,
Harvey
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