The Faux Hat

Ok, Ok, I guess I'd better get these little irritations and natterings off my chest as they come up, otherwise I'll probably just break out in terminal hives.

        I don't even remember who it was, but I finally saw one too many faux cowboys with the  mandatory straw hat singing with that nasal twang about how his best friend stole his dog, had sex with his truck, and took the tires off his wife (or something like that).

        Wearing "the hat" if you're actually baling hay in the sun or rounding up cattle makes sense. Wearing it to a dinner dance while dressed in a tux is simply grotesque and screams "poseur!"
       
        Not talking Woody Guthrie or Jimmy Rodgers, or Carter family  here, (real country folk with legit roots who lived the life) but rather calling out the degree holding, non-farm working (ever),  dudes who want the unwashed to think they're "good ole boys." Who, you ask, fits this category? Here are some names of frat boy college grads who "took up the hat", apparently to augment their skills. Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw (PKE  UL Monroe), Garth Brooks( BA Advertising), Brad Paisley (BA  Business admin), Kenny Chesney (BA advertising , LCA frat).

          The notable exception in the above  is Garth Brooks, who has legit vocal chops, can sing without the whiny nasal shit kicker twang, and has sold more certified platinum solo artist albums than any other American male singer, including one, a respectable rock effort,  in his alter ego as Chris Gaines. Of course the 29X platinum country- rock (minus the twang/straw hats) Eagles Greatest Hits, album eclipses any two Brooks albums in sales.

         This is, I freely admit,  an acquired distaste on my part for the  vast majority of country music, since I was raised in western Maryland in Hagerstown, a town right across the Potomac River from West, by God, Virginia,  where there were two radio stations, one of which played what we then called "hillbilly" music, the other which played the most bland mix of syrupy pap available, and neither of which was about to play rock and roll in the later 1950s. Like the BBC until, believe it or not, 1964 ,  many US mainstream stations cared not a fig for what the listening public wanted  to hear, choosing instead to air what they thought listeners "should" like and, would grow to like if it was all that was available. (this was actually stated as policy by BBC bigwigs!)  This phenomenon continued in the UK to the extent that many BBC listeners were forced to change to Radio Luxembourg ("Pirate" Rock and Roll radio from ships) to hear  "the New Music" which American kids were gradually being allowed to hear on prime time local radio.

        WARK,  aka the  "hillbilly" station (AM/FM in a time when few listened to FM anyway,  shamelessly broadcast the twangy, nasal, crap most of the day, with an occasional listenable flare of Patsy Cline, who today would be Adele, or Eddy Arnold, who had a likeable enough, plain vanilla, baritone.  But at night, I discovered, like so many teenagers trapped in similar situations did,  the phenomenon  known as ionospheric bounce. It was life changing.

         For the uninformed (or younger, lol)  FM radio transmission range is roughly "line of sight", like TV and, like TV, have about the same range. At night, they don't change much, but shorter (lower frequency) AM radio waves undergo skywave bounce under most nighttime atmospheric conditions and can extend far beyond the transmitter's usual range.

       For a youngster hungry for better listening fare in a sea of shit kicker and schlock, this meant that some pioneering Rock stations like WLAC in Nashville and WKBW in Buffalo, both 50,000 watters, were actually listenable at night. So, Listening to "John R & the Hoss Man" in Nashville I was introduced to Rhythm and Blues of a sort which would have occasioned cross burnings in Hagerstown, Md. Tom Shannon on WKBW in Buffalo played early White artist efforts. Had I known of its existence I could also have heard Alan Freed's  WJM (Cleveland, OH)  "Moondog Rock 'n Roll House Party" It was Freed who began calling "Rythm and Blues," which carried the race connotation,  "Rock and Roll."

        My parents, both trained musicians, may not have cared for the genre, but they, bless their hearts, appreciated that there were different styles and tastes and,  never once even attempted to negatively influence my choices.  Although the first record I actually bought myself (45 rpm) was Rosemary Clooney's (you remember, George's aunt?) "C'mon a My House," a decidedly  bland mainstream disc, the second was "Earth Angel" by the Penguins, a Black R & B quartet, heard late at night from Buffalo.

         Meanwhile, in Nashville, late night jocks, John Richbourg ("John R") and Bill  "The Hossman," Allen, apparently  left to their own devices to sell  late night airtime, sold some to "race record labels" and Gene Nobles, another WLAC jock, began playing records brought to him by black students hungry to hear dance music they liked on the radio. This was a time when most Black owned or focused labels/artists did a lot of business via mail order because mainstream record stores simply didn't (or wouldn't) carry them. James Brown was quoted as saying "WLAC was all we ever listened to."

        To the young kid listening to late night radio in bed it was an introduction to music which wouldn't be played locally on air for another 4 or 5 years. Ruth Brown, Faye Adams, and others were a revelation, but it was Little Richard, whose "Tutti Frutti" was riveting to me. The lyrics were nonsense, but the beat was inescapably catching. That was followed up by "Long Tall Sally" which I actually bought. (Interestingly enough I would eventually own covers of both by Elvis Presley, a White singer who didn't sound like it.)  At the same time Ray Charles, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino were forcing their way into the airwaves.

        By 1956,  White crossovers were penetrating and making the R & B category somewhat  more homogenous with market penetrations by  Elvis, and Carl Perkins, while Chuck Berry's reworking  of a song called "Ida Red" into "Maybelline" rose off the R&B charts into the white dominated Pop charts. In the UK, the only way anyone could hear any these was the aforementioned Radio Luxembourg pirate broadcasts or the increasing number  of  records smuggled by travelers.

        The common thread in all this music was authenticity, which I find lacking to a shameless degree in much of what is currently called "Country" music.  Flatt and Scruggs played country music, The Carter family and Hank Williams did country. While there are some genuine talents in the field, many of these artists are seemingly at their best when they do more mainstream pop.  Carrie Underwood would be a star in any genre and Taylor Swift has landed far, far from her original style, while singers like Darius Rucker, whose monotone drone made Hootie and the Blowfish so execrable and forgettable, has gone to country to maintain a career. On  a final bright note, genius picker Vince Gill, he of the great six string  skills and nice tenor voice  (and never, never with the faux cowboy hat) has crossed into the light with The Eagles.

        If you have read this far and disagree, I don't care. This was an opinion piece with a history lesson in the middle.