View From The Front Porch-September 3, 2012

Well, this has been an exciting year for me so far, with my induction into "The Cable Pioneers" by my contemporaries in the Cable Television Industry, at the National Cable Television Convention and Show in Boston, and my invitation to speak and present a program to Princeton University, for their James Madison Program for American Ideals. Professor Robby George invited me and then played guitar, banjo and sang along with the old classic country that I would intersperse during my presentation. Both events were great honors and I still feel the glow of appreciation. As I sit hee on the porch and watch the rain over Tennessee, I thought I would rewind and play again (in print) what I had to say about our classsic country music.

Country Music In American Culture

Country Music has been entwined with American Culture since the first Scots-Irish immigrants started settling in Appalachia. Music, homemade and heartfelt, sprang from the crude log cabins and hardscrabble living conditions, portraying a fierce pride, strong faith and sense of family, that somehow, seemed to make life a little easier. Years later, the music from the mountains has spread all over the world, but still maintains its roots in American heritage and culture, while entertaining, encouraging and striking a chord that still seems to make life just a little easier. It occurs to me, after 53 years of professional musicianship, that Country Music is indeed a noble profession, and has an important place in our American Culture.

My music career started at about age 8, around my mother’s old piano in the living room of our farm house in the Ozarks. She would play and have me follow the words in sheet music and sing along with her. That led me to wanting to learn to play an instrument so I could accompany myself on songs. Guitar was my choice and at age 12, my dad bought me my first guitar which was an youth model Gretsch. Along with the guitar purchase, at Ike Martin’s Music Store in Springfield, MO, came a couple months worth of guitar lessons. My guitar teacher, Efton Allen, set the stage for the rest of my music life by asking me, on the first day, if I wanted to learn to pick lead guitar, or just learn chords and rhythm so I could play while I sang. Of course, I immediately chose the chords and rhythm method and have rode that horse to a lifetime career in music.

Country music came from the hills and hollers of the mountains and started being heard on two new inventions that worked hand in hand with each other. Phonograph recordings and radio took America’s music to a whole new audience. Of course, Ralph Peer’s recordings, made on early recording machines in the late 1920’s, in such places as Bristol, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia and other remote regions, was the beginning of commercially available phonograph records and coincided with the early start up of clear-channel radio stations that even rural areas could listen to. WSM Radio in Nashville, in 1925 , started a barndance show that eventually became the show, Grand Ole Opry, and across the South and Midwest other radio shows with a barndance theme, with Chicago, Illinois, Fort Worth, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia being a few of the early ones. Country Music, although it was first known by descriptive phrases like mountain, hillbilly and folk to differentiate it from what was known as black “race” music, and early gospel music that was also surfacing, had found its delivery system in phonograph recordings and radio.

Early recordings by Riley Puckett, Vernon Dalhart, “Fiddling” John Carson, Ernest V. Stoneman, Uncle Dave Macon, The “Bristol Sessions” with The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, during the late 20’s and 30’s did a natural progression to Roy Acuff’ and Ernest Tubb in the 40’s.

During the period of 1929-1946, The Great Depression and the entry into World War II, gave Country Music and unexpected boost. People started leaving the farm and even the South to move to the industrial areas to try to find work. When World War II started, it not only ended the Depression but greatly grew the awareness of the music as the war years mixed the country boys with others from all over the country and country folks always seem ready to share their music with whom ever will listen so many people were exposed to it for the first time. I experienced this first hand when, in 1955, while in the Navy and deployed to Yokosoka, Japan, I heard a native Japanese band play the music of Roy Acuff, with so much perfection that you just wouldn’t believe it. Turned out they had learned the music from old phonograph records and sang it in perfect English, even though they did not speak a word of it. Music is a powerful communicator.

The early stars of Country Music were, in large part, string bands. The Fruit Jar Drinkers, Sam and Kirk McGee From Sunny Tennessee, Doctor Humphrey Bates and The Possum Hunters, followed by singing stars/musicians like Acuff, Uncle Dave Macon0, The Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and his brother Charlie, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Don Reno and Red Smiley, Mac Wiseman, Grandpa Jones, Stringbean, Lew Childre, which sang, wrote their songs and played instruments. Back in the 60’s, when I lived in Franklin, Tennessee, close to Sam McGee’s farm, he would come over to my home and sit in my basement music room and play his guitar for me and tell me about the old times. It is a precious memory of mine.

WLS Barndance and the Opry began making stars during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s on their strong radio signals. Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Carl Smith , Little Jimmy Dickens, Bill Monroe, breaking up with brother Charlie and both creating new bands, Kitty Wells, Stonewall Jackson, Lefty Frizzell, Ferlin Husky and Hank Williams all had surfaced by the start of the 50’s.

Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, MO created new stars and established stars grew bigger during the 50’s.-Red Foley, Porter Wagoner, Bobby Lord, Brenda Lee and Leroy Van Dyke were just some of the ones that enjoyed great fame during this time.

WWVA Wheeling Jamboree-Started in 1933 and featured many stars through the years including Hawkshaw Hawkins,Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper and the Osborne Brothers

New artists come to prominence during the 50’s and 60’s and I was blessed to be a part of it, arriving in Nashville in 1961. Bill Anderson, Bobby Bare, Jack Greene-Jeannie Seely, Cal Smith, Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed, Ray Stevens, Jeanne Pruitt, Johnny Cash, Dottie West, The Statlers, The Oaks, The Wilburn Brothers, The Louvin Bros, Marty Robbins, Tanya Tucker, Connie Smith, Roger Miller, Jimmy Dean, Carl and Pearl Butler, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Horton, Johnny Russell, Billie Jo Spears, Billy Walker, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Wynn Stewart, Charley Pride, Faron Young and Don Gibson created a legacy of music that I don’t believe will ever be forgotten.

New, young artists of the 70’s and 80’s, that were able to a younger audience, which coincided with the startup of CMT and giving an opportunity for me to break new artists to a new video audience. Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, Keith Whitley, John Anderson, Alan Jackson, Shenendoah, Alabama, Aaron Tippin,

T G Sheppard, Vince Gill, K T Oslin, The Gatlins, Vern Gosdin, Earl Thomas Conley, Billy Joe Royal, Barbara Mandrell, Reba, Patty Loveless, Johnny Duncan, Moe Bandy, Louise Mandrell and many others celebrated new sounds, new recording techniques, and yet most of them held true to traditional country music.

After all these years of building a country music industry, playing to a growing and loyal audience and achieving a world wide acceptance of a truly unique American music genre we seem to have reached an identity crisis. What are we now? Are we really country or have we morphed into something that is kinda hard to understand when you have walked with the giants of the 40’s-50’s-60’s-70’s and 80’s. Where are the voices now that you instantly recognize because they have such an identifiable sound? Where are the Tom Brumley’s who can turn a steel guitar intro and turnaround into the sound of “Together Again”? Oh, I miss them.

I miss Roy balancing his fiddle bow, I miss Stringbeans’ porkpie hat, I miss Miss Minnie’s “Howdee! I’m just so proud to be here”. I miss the tear in Red Foley’s eye when he looked out at us from a tv set and recited, “Old Shep”. I miss the voice of Vern Gosdin and Earl Thomas Conley when in the 70’s and 80’s they could break your heart with a ballad. I miss Marty’s happy laugh and mischievous look as he cut up on the last show of the Saturday night Opry, running the program late and driving the radio engineers crazy with their timing. I miss the beauty of Dottie West as I watched her in the wings of the Opry looking out at the other performers and totally unaware of just how beautiful she really was. I miss Ernest turning his guitar over to say Thank You to the audience and sitting on the edge of the stage to sign autographs when he was so tired and sick but never leaving till he had accommodated every fan. I miss Roger Miller’s unbelievably quick wit and genius songwriting. I miss Mickey Newbury closing his show with American Trilogy and just choking everyone in the house up with emotion. And I miss big old Johnny Russell saying, “Can y’all see me alright?” Oh, I miss them all.

Yes, you say, but Hitchcock you are just all wound up in the past….and I say yes, you are probably right…but, in the case of these heroes of music….I’ll gladly stay wound up in the past where the music was good, the words to songs were easy to understand, the voices rang true and on key, the folks were open and real and it was never imagined that the group KISS would be handing out awards at a country music award show.

God bless us all…..

Stan