We celebrate the birthday of Willie Nelson’s, who was born during the final minutes of April 29, 1933 (so that his birthday is sometimes reported as April 30) in Abbott, Texas. One of my favorite Willie Nelson CDs is Across the Borderline, which was produced by Don Was. The CD was released in 1993, during a traumatic period in Nelson’s life, a few years after his troubles with the IRS had come to a head. AllMusic rates the album highly and refers to it as an album surveying two decades of popular music by a wide variety of music writers. There are a number of guests on the CD, including Bob Dylan singing with Nelson on “Heartland,” a song the two legends wrote together. Despite the variety, though, there is a cohesion in the CD as the theme of loss weaves throughout the songs.
Every song on the album is excellent, but standouts include the cover of two Paul Simon songs, “American Tune” and “Graceland.” I cannot find an article about the background behind “Graceland” (so don’t quote me), but I recall Paul Simon saying in an interview that he had always wanted Nelson to sing “Graceland” ever since he wrote it. Simon, who ended up playing guitar and producing the Nelson version, had to persuade Nelson to record “Graceland.” Nelson finally agreed as he eventually saw the meaning underlying the song.
While I love Paul Simon’s version, Nelson’s voice really works well on the song, as he develops the aching notes of loss and sadness throughout the tune. When I hear Simon’s version, I think of the lyrics about the human trampoline bouncing into Graceland. But in Nelson’s version, I learned to see the loss in lines such as, “She comes back to tell me she’s gone/ As if I didn’t know that. . . As if I’d never noticed / The way she brushed her hair from her forehead.”
Throughout the album Across the Borderline and its themes surrounding life’s pain and wreckage, there are moments of hope. The album ends with “Still is Still Moving to Me,” a Nelson original that invokes Eastern and taoist beliefs in keeping on and accepting. Similarly, the song “Graceland” ends with hope out of the loss: “Maybe I’ve a reason to believe / We all will be received / In Graceland.”
The recording of the song on Across the Borderline is one of those rare moments when two musical geniuses are able to take what was already an outstanding song and make it powerfully relevant to a new singer. On the album, Nelson does all the singing, but in this version below, the two come together for a live performance to sing “Graceland” together. It is a a nice way to celebrate Nelson’s birthday today.
I am fascinated when I read about people who traveled around the United States in the early and mid-twentieth century discovering great blues musicians and folk songs. The music was always there, but more of it might have dwelled permanently in obscurity had the music not been recorded. Those tales seem stuck in the past, because with modern technology and the Internet almost anyone can post something on YouTube.
But there remains talented artists who fall through the cracks. These lost artists make one wonder if the future may hold a revival for some late in their careers or after they are dead — modern legends who are ghosts to us, just as Robert Johnson’s image and music embrace us across time. I hope that some day the world will rediscover Marty Brown.
Marty Brown’s Early Career
Marty Brown had some success in the 1990s with several outstanding albums. In 1990, he released his debut album, High And Dry which was not a big hit but did modestly well. One music critic gave the album an A+, saying Brown is “the sweetest surprise to ride the train in a long, long time and so authentically country he probably still has a tick in his navel.”
Small radio stations played his songs, but the big country radio stations ignored him, opting for less twangy artists. Brown’s voice and his heartbreak songs led writers to compare him to Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, such as on the title song to the album. But I first heard of Brown when I saw the video for “Every Now and Then,” perhaps playing on VH-1 or CMT, with his Everly Brothers-type vocals.
Marty Brown was born in 1965 in the tiny Ohio River tobacco farming community of Maceo, Kentucky featured in the above video. He began writing his own songs when he was fourteen, sneaking away with a friend to play music at honky-tonk bars.
Later, Brown began making numerous trips to Nashville seeking a record deal while sleeping in an alley on Music Row. In 1991, the CBS news magazine show 48 Hours featured the artist in a story on country music. The feature led to Brown’s record deal with MCA.
During the Autumn of 1991, Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine described Brown’s tour to promote High and Dry. During the tour, Brown rode in the record company’s 1969 Cadillac convertible to perform at fairs and Wal-Marts throughout the South. At each Wal-Mart, he performed on a small stage in a store aisle with little amplification. Fans brought him homemade cookies and fishing lures.
At that time, the 26-year-old was already divorced with two kids and living with his parents. Just months before starting the tour, he was working as a plumber’s helper, making $5 an hour. While on his first tour, he explained that his goals were to buy his dad a bean field, put his kids through college, get a nice trailer for himself, and “not live no highfalutin life style.”
The comparisons to Hank Williams continued. Somewhere around this time, Brown was filmed backstage at the Grand Ole Opry singing Hank’s “Moanin’ the Blues” for a German documentary about the country-music legend.
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Brown’s Excellent Next Three Albums
In 1993, Brown tried to reach a wider audience with the more diverse Wild Kentucky Skies, which is one of my favorite albums. The album features break-up songs like “It Must Be the Rain” and love songs like “God Knows.” A folk ballad he wrote about his grandmother’s death, “She’s Gone,” would not sound out of place on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. During this time, he toured with Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
The title song, below, features a more lush production than a lot of his other honky-tonk songs, but there is still an aching country sound. One of his family members told a story about how Brown kept the Nashville Symphony Orchestra waiting the morning of the recording because he had a craving for a Big Mac. But then he nailed the song on the second take. “Wild Kentucky Skies” should be the official Kentucky state song.
In 1994, Brown released another excellent album, Cryin’ Lovin’ Leavin’, making a run of three outstanding albums in four years. AllMusic rates each of his first three albums 4-5 stars out of 5.
Brown did not sound like slick Nashville country. But the record company still hoped for Brown’s widespread success because it was the early 1990s. During this time, other neotraditionalist and alternative country artists like Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam were breaking through and building audiences.
Brown received some critical acclaim. But again the sales were not as high as the record company wanted. MCA Records dropped him.
Brown then signed with the independent label Hightone and released Here’s to the Honky Tonks in 1996. For the most part, Brown wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on his four albums. And on Here’s to the Honky Tonks, he co-wrote almost all of them (including one track covered by Engelbert Humperdinck). The CD again garnered critical praise but weak sales.
He performed one of the songs from the album, “You Can’t Wrap Your Arms Around a Memory,” on Prime Time Country on TNN. On the show, he also explained that he was inspired to write the song while watching The Honeymooners late at night. [2015 Update: Unfortunately, that video is no longer available on YouTube.]
The Music Appears to Stop
And then after the four albums, that was it. Marty Brown disappeared. Only Here’s to the Honky Tonks remained in print. If you look him up on CMT or AllMusic.com or Wikipedia, the official story ends in 1996 with Here’s to the Honky Tonks.
In the early 2000’s, I found an address for a fan club in his hometown of Maceo, Kentucky, so I wrote to the address. But I never received a response.
But of course there is more to the story. As country music became more pop-oriented, Marty Brown disappeared from the limelight and did not perform except for family reunions. But he continued to write songs, and a few were recorded by other stars. He co-wrote 1998’s “I’m From the Country” for Tracy Byrd.
As time passed, Brown fell on some hard times as he fell out of the spotlight. In subsequent years the former local hero’s name occasionally appeared in the local newspaper in unfortunate stories unrelated to his music. For example, in 1997, just one year after Here’s to the Honky Tonks was released, Brown pleaded guilty in Indiana to a misdemeanor charge for taking an old engine block and selling it for scrap metal. He explained that he found the block in an alley, but he was fined and sentenced to probation.
Hope for a Comeback?
In the last few years, though, there have been signs of a career struggling to resurrect. Around 2008, a MySpace page popped up, selling a new CD he recorded with his son Marty Brown Jr. called Somethin’ Real. The website included some photos, showing that he had aged and was no longer the skinny kid in his early videos.
I ordered two copies of the new CD. When I received them, the cover label was merely a copy of the 1996 Here’s to the Honky Tonks cover, but it included an autograph. Despite the amateur packaging and non-major label recording, the new music still had some of the magic. On songs like the wonderful “She’s Beautiful Everywhere” he showed his voice remains one of the most authentic country voices around.
Today, a few years later, the MySpace page seems to be gone. Another webpage has information about buying the album and a mailing address. But it is unclear if the sales are still operating since the MySpace page linked to the site is gone. A Facebook fan page merely includes the abbreviated Wikipedia bio. [Update July 2011: See comments below for updated Facebook and other information.]
His son Marty Brown Jr. has a MySpace page but there is no mention of the music he made with his father. There are only a few Marty Brown videos on YouTube, and they do not fully illustrate his range.
Still, Marty Brown has not completely disappeared. In October 2010, he played at the Roxy Theater in Franklin, Kentucky. He still performs as a local celebrity, and he writes songs with new artists, as shown in this session with Michael Ray.
I suspect fans who live in his area appreciate his talent, and his work is influencing others, including his son Marty Brown Jr. as well as another talented young son who writes his own music. But Marty Brown should be getting national attention from genuine country music lovers.
What Happened?
Why did his national career die out in the 1990s? Not enough people connected with his music. You can blame that on several things, ranging from the promotion to his musical style.
I love his music, although I realize that his hardcore traditional country sound is not everyone’s cup of tea. For example, after I loaned a Marty Brown CD to a country fan friend, he told me he loved the CD but “my wife said she’d divorce me if I ever play that music again.” In the comments section under a Marty Brown video, one person wrote: “I never want to hear this song again.”
Maybe Marty Brown’s career stalled because the man was too authentic. He remained rooted in his small town, and even as his career was taking off, his dream remained to buy a trailer for his family. It is difficult to imagine him hanging out with the Nashville elite.
Some of my friends make fun of country music, but most Nashville singers can hang out with the big eastern city folk while at the same time maintaining some connection to the country. John Rich and Trace Adkins sing about being country boys, but they excelled in New York City on Celebrity Apprentice. I cannot picture Tim McGraw and Faith Hill doing yard work, but I can imagine Marty Brown mowing a lawn.
Many country singers come from small-town roots and they maintain that connection, but stardom takes them to another level. Even Steve Earle, authentic as they come and another brilliant artist who spent some years in the wilderness after encountering fame, moved to Greenwich Village.
Maybe Marty Brown would have moved on if he had he found lasting fame, but I cannot imagine him living in New York City or Atlanta or any other large city. He was always too attached to his roots, as shown by the video of “Every Now and Then.” He was and remains connected to his place and locked in time like many folk singers and old blues musicians. In spite of his amazing talent, destiny apparently prevented him from being a big star on a national stage.
Brown described his fear of obscurity in a 1992 Los Angeles Times article: “I’d go to bed at night, crying myself to sleep,” he recounted. “I’d ask the Lord why he gave me this talent to write these songs just to have them sit in a drawer.”
Maybe some day when Marty Brown is an old man playing acoustic guitar in a cabin in Kentucky, someone with recording equipment will go visit him to get one more album out of the music sitting in drawer. And when people hear the music, they will wonder why there were not more Marty Brown recordings — just like I wonder about the lost folk and blues recordings from the early 1900s. Do have any favorite artists who have disappeared? Do you know anything about Marty Brown? Leave a comment.
{June 2011 Update: See comments below for new developments since this post was published. If you are looking for news on upcoming performances by Marty Brown and his family, Shellie Brown has posted some information about shows in the comments.} {Update June 2013: Marty Brown returned to the national stage on “America’s Got Talent”!}
After additional pressure on President Barack Obama, he released the long-form version of his birth certificate this morning in an attempt to calm down all of the insane media attention largely driven of late by The Celebrity Apprentice’sDonald Trump. At the news conference this morning, though, I was a little disappointed that Bruce Springsteen did not show up to play “Born in the U.S.A.” as part of the spectacle.
It would not have been the first time that the song appeared in presidential politics. In 1984, during a presidential campaign stop in New Jersey, Pres. Ronald Reagan appeared to invoke “Born in the U.S.A.,” which was extremely popular at the time: “America’s future rests in a thousand dreams inside our hearts.” Reagan explained, “It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire: New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen.”
Although Springsteen was less active politically in those days than in recent years, he would make a few comments on stage and in interviews in response to the comments by Pres. Reagan, who would go on to win the 1984 election in a landslide over Walter Mondale.
But Springsteen’s most pointed response came a decade later in a re-working of “Born in the U.S.A.” around the time of his Ghost of Tom Joad tour. Where the hit version sounded like an anthem, and that helped make it a hit song, his new version was quieter, stressing the sadness in the words. Pres. Reagan had focused on the sound of the original and misinterpreted the hopeless defiance in the music as a message of hope. By changing the music but not the words into a bluesier version, Springsteen captured the despair faced by many Americans that was — and is — often overlooked in popular culture.
Bonus “Born in the USA” Information: “Born in the U.S.A.” originated in an acoustic form when Springsteen was working on his Nebraska album. Although he reworked the song with the E Street band into an anthem for the Born in the U.S.A. album, the acoustic version is available on the four-CD collection Tracks. I suppose that “Born in the U.S.A.” would be too sad to play at a press conference about our President’s birth, so maybe they could have asked Miley Cyrus to perform this song.
Is there another actor who has been in more classic movies from different film categories than Robert Duvall? If you consider various movie genres and the top handful of movies in each category, a large number of those groups include movies with Robert Duvall. Consider:
(1) Gangster Movies: Godfather I and II (2) Sports Movies: The Natural (3) Lawyer Movies: To Kill a Mockingbird (4) War Movies: Apocalypse Now (5) Westerns: Lonesome Dove (and True Grit) (6) Social Commentary: Network (7) Satire: M*A*S*H and Network. (8) Preacher Movies: The Apostle (9) Singer Movies: Tender Mercies (and Crazy Heart) (10) Cop Movies/Car Chase Movies: Bullitt
In each category, the movies listed are among the top few. And yes, we are using a loose definition of “genre,” and the list is starting to stretch for categories a little at the end. But we stopped before adding “Military Family/Angry Father Movies” (The Great Santini).
The list is for movies where he appeared, so To Kill a Mockingbird qualifies even though he had a very small (yet important) part. Also, Lonesome Dove was a TV mini-series, but it still ranks up there among the very top classic westerns, and Duvall has said it was his favorite role. But if you do not like that one, replace it with the original True Grit (see the Chimesfreedomcomparison of the two versions of True Grit). Two other Duvall westerns, Open Range and Broken Trail were excellent, but not top classic status.
Although Duvall is respected, he usually is not mentioned with quite the same respect as actors like Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. But few actors have the range of work shown from the genre list above, due largely to his ability to become a character besides “Robert Duvall.” In one great scene from Lonesome Dove where he embodies the classic character of Gus McCrae, you can see the pain in his face when he has to hang an old friend who has fallen in with a bad gang. In particular, he conveys a world of meaning in the first few seconds after the hanging just through his face and his body language. [Update: Unfortunately a clip of that scene is no longer available on YouTube, but another scene from the miniseries is below.]
The movies in the genre list are true classics, among the best in each category. Through acting skill, excellent movie choices, and some luck, maybe no other actor has accomplished a similar feat of being in classic movies in so many different categories.
What is your favorite Robert Duvall Movie? Can you think of another actor who appeared in Great Movies in so many categories? Leave a comment.
To those who celebrate Easter, Happy Easter! This post concludes for now the Chimesfreedom series on Best Gospel Songs by Pop Singers. Today, we feature a timeless pop hit, a relatively new country gospel song, and one of the most powerful performances ever recorded on film.
People Get Ready, The Impressions
“People Get Ready” was written by Curtis Mayfield. Mayfield performed the song well, as have others like Al Green, Eva Cassidy, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, Crystal Bowersox, and Bob Dylan. But the original version by the Impressions, with Mayfield on guitar, is what sticks in one’s mind when you think of the timeless song.
“People Get Ready” was released in 1965, and we associate the call for change with the social and Civil Rights movements. Indeed, the song was inspired by the 1963 March on Washington. But Mayfield’s music is straight from gospel, and the lyrics are also a testament to faith: “Faith is the key / Open the doors / and board them / There’s room for all / Among the loved and lost.”
In a Curtis Mayfield biography, Peter Burns described “People Get Ready” as “a song of faith really, a faith that transcends any racial barrier and welcomes everyone onto the train. The train that takes everyone to the promised land, really.”
The Impressions and Mayfield also performed something of a miracle in creating a hit record that also became a gospel standard covered by so many artists. Bob Marley incorporated the guitar riff and some of the lyrics into “One Love.” And Bruce Springsteen incorporated part of “People Get Ready” into his moving “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
Rolling Stone Magazine ranked the song as the twenty-fourth greatest song of all time. And one cannot really argue with that.
Can’t Even Walk, Marty Stuart
Marty Stuart has an interesting position in country music. He stands between the generations of authentic classic country music and the newer pop country music. As he has aged, he has generally chosen to reside in the former, paying tribute to the talented old guard of country, like Johnny Cash, while many other modern country singers try to emulate Billy Joel more than the Louvin Brothers.
Marty Stuart has recorded some excellent concept albums in recent years that are mostly overlooked. “Can’t Even Walk” is a beautiful song off his album of gospel songs, Souls’ Chapel (2005).
I thought that I could do a lot on my own; I thought I, I thought I could make it all alone; I thought, I thought of myself As a mighty, mighty big man; But I realize I can’t even walk Without You holding my hand
Unfortunately, there is only the above amateur video of Marty Stuart’s “Can’t Even Walk,” but give it a listen. Also, if you like the song, check out this very sweet version of the song sung by what appears to be a talented grandmother and grandson [2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available]. I love it and would have posted it here, but it would not be fair to put them adjacent to the next powerful professional performance. . .
How Great Thou Art, by Elvis Presley
Critics often give bad reviews to In Concert (1977), the album of Elvis Presley’s June 1977 performances recorded for a TV special. The recording of one of Elvis’s final performances may not be the quality of his earlier work when he was healthy, but the CD is worth it just for the recording of “How Great Thou Art.”
Here is Elvis, two months before he died. Overweight, sweating, with a body about to give out on him, but he still gave his gospel performances his all. The glitter on his jumpsuit seems inconsistent with the message of the song, and Elvis’s faith could not save him from his fated death.
But in his performance he finds something deep within himself to cry out for help in an incredible despairing voice. Starting at around 2:20, he builds to a note that will send chills down your spine. If you only watch one video in this series, watch this one.
We celebrate the birthday of Willie Nelson’s, who was born during the final minutes of April 29, 1933 (so that his birthday is sometimes reported as April 30) in Abbott, Texas. One of my favorite Willie Nelson CDs is Across the Borderline, which was produced by Don Was. The CD was released in 1993, during a traumatic period in Nelson’s life, a few years after his troubles with the IRS had come to a head. AllMusic rates the album highly and refers to it as an album surveying two decades of popular music by a wide variety of music writers. There are a number of guests on the CD, including Bob Dylan singing with Nelson on “Heartland,” a song the two legends wrote together. Despite the variety, though, there is a cohesion in the CD as the theme of loss weaves throughout the songs.
which was not a big hit but did modestly well. 
which is one of my favorite albums. The album features break-up songs like “
, making a run of three outstanding albums in four years. 
in 1996. For the most part, Brown wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on his four albums. And on Here’s to the Honky Tonks, he co-wrote almost all of them (including one track covered by 
album, the acoustic version is available on the four-CD collection 
. I suppose that “Born in the U.S.A.” would be too sad to play at a press conference about our President’s birth, so maybe they could have asked Miley Cyrus to perform 
biography, Peter Burns described “People Get Ready” as “a song of faith really, a faith that transcends any racial barrier and welcomes everyone onto the train. The train that takes everyone to the promised land, really.”
(2005).
(1977), the album of Elvis Presley’s June 1977 performances recorded for a TV special. The recording of one of Elvis’s final performances may not be the quality of his earlier work when he was healthy, but the CD is worth it just for the recording of “How Great Thou Art.”