Last April in “The Great Lost Career of Marty Brown,” I bemoaned the fact that country singer Marty Brown had not had a major label CD release since 1998, and I imagined how one day Brown would be rediscovered with a pile of songs he had been writing and recording for more than a decade. While I still wait for Brown to recapture the fame he deserves, the many responses to that post revealed that many people still love his music. Fortunately, Brown continues to perform at local venues and continues to write new songs at a healthy rate. He recently even put out a new homemade music video. And back in 2002, Brown put together a collection of songs on an album called American Son as a comeback of sorts, but it was never released. I recently discovered that Marty Brown and his wife Shellie Brown were making that CD available for the first time, so I ordered one immediately. I was not disappointed.
American Son is a collection of the type of songs fans might expect from Brown, as he sings about love (i.e., “Love Happens,” “Make My Heart Your Home,” “Where’d You Come From?”), country fun (“Work Hard Havin’ Fun,” “Crackerjack”), and perhaps influenced by the time the album was recorded not long after 9/11, a couple of patriotic songs, including the title song and the still relevant “P.O.W.’s at the V.F.W.”
Many of my favorite Marty Brown originals are his heartbreak songs, and that is true for American Son too. Brown always has had a great talent for turning a clever phrase and when he combines that writing skill with his great classic country twang, he cannot be matched by anyone recording today. His heartbreak songs on this album include “Friends,” where the singer tells a love that he cannot “just” be friends, and “The Devil Was an Angel Too.” The latter song has a refrain from the apologizing man that seems so clever I wonder why nobody else has thought of it. I also wonder why nobody else has covered the outstanding song.
I have had the CD on repeat play for the last two weeks, and today my favorite song on the CD is “Leavin’ Side of Me.” The title tells you what it is about, but when you hear Brown’s voice say, “And I think it’s time you saw/ The leavin’ side of me,” the vulnerability and pain breaks your heart like what you hear in the great songs of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, and Otis Redding.
Because the album was not an official release, there is no fancy CD packaging, but Brown will autograph the CD for you for free. More importantly, it is the music you want, and they did not skimp on the recording. The quality of the sound, the musicians, and Brown’s voice, are all top notch.
Conclusion? If you are not familiar with Marty Brown’s work, you may want to check out some of his other music first, but if you are a fan, American Son is another excellent CD to add to your collection (or a great holiday gift for someone who likes genuine country music). You may order American Son by emailing Shellie Brown at ilikeitthatwaymusic@yahoo.com for more details. They also have other new music from Marty Brown, including Marty Brown: All American Cowboy, Marty Brown Exclusive, and a Christmas CD. (FYI, I have no affiliation with the sales of the new CDs and am providing the ordering information as a service to other fans like me.) You may find updates on upcoming shows on Marty Brown’s Facebook page and in the comments to our previous post on Marty Brown’s career.
What is your favorite Marty Brown CD? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Although I have never been a big follower George Strait‘s career, like most fans of country music, I am surprised by how many songs of his I know. And I cannot dispute that he is a country music legend. Because of all that, I was sad to hear that he recently announced at a press conference that he is beginning his final tour, the “The Cowboy Rides Away Tour,” which will end in 2014. But he does not rule out making appearances after this tour ends. At the beginning of the press conference, several country music stars paid tribute to Strait.
So we wish Strait good luck as he embarks on this final tour. One of my favorite songs he recorded was a duet he did with Alan Jackson, “Murder on Music Row,” from the Latest Greatest Straitest Hits (2000) CD. The song laments the Nashville trend toward pop and away from traditional country music. Certainly, after Strait rides off into the sunset, there will be even less country music coming out of Nashville.
[2024 Update: George Strait did eventually tour again.]
Gram Parsons (1946-1973) created a lot of great music in his short life. His work as a solo artist and with bands such as The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers greatly influenced the country-rock and alt-country movements. He helped Emmylou Harris start her career. He was friends with Keith Richards and supposedly influenced some of the music made by the Rolling Stones. And he helped create the wonderful strangely named song “Hot Burrito #1.”
Burritos
Once upon a time you let me feel you deep inside
“Hot Burrito #1” appeared on the Flying Burrito Brothers Gilded Palace of Sin (1969) album. It was written by Parsons and the band’s bass player Chris Ethridge.
“Hot Burrito #1” is a great song with a horrible name. The song, of course, has nothing to do with burritos, and the band’s use of the word “burrito” was not limited to the one song. The band liked to play around with the “burrito” theme, naming their next album Burrito Deluxe. And yes, there is a “Hot Burrito #2.”
At one point, Parsons and Hillman had a house in San Fernando Valley that they called “Burrito Manor.”
Versions of “Hot Burrito #1”
“Hot Burrito #1” has been recorded and covered by other artists, including Raoul Mao, The Black Crowes, the Cowboy Junkies, and Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket. The song has been covered around the world, including a version by Japanese band Ma’am.
Elvis Costello recorded the song, but apparently he did not like the name so he renamed it, “I’m Your Toy.” Even though “Hot Burrito #1” is an odd name for a song, “I’m Your Toy” is not really better. Similarly, Jose Feliciano renamed the song with the forgettable title, “Not That Kind of Guy.”
One sign of the greatness of the song and the melody from Chris Ethridge is that it holds up well no matter who sings it. But it is especially powerful in the Parsons version.
The song starts out with the singer speaking to a former lover, telling her how she will miss him (“You may be sweet and nice / But that won’t keep you warm at night”). Then slowly you begin to hear the aching desperation in the singer’s voice and in the lyrics (“But I don’t want no one but you / To love me, no I wouldn’t lie”).
The A Side
Interestingly, even though we know “Hot Burrito #1” as a classic song, it was not released as a single, only appearing as the B side of the only single at the time, the less memorable “The Train Song.” “The Train Song” was recorded after The Gilded Palace of Sin was completed but released as a single.
While numerous cover versions of “Hot Burrito #1” are now on YouTube, the A side is not available there at all (you may hear a clip of The Train Song on Amazon). It just goes to show that you cannot judge a song by its initial release, or by its name.
Do you like the song? What is your favorite great song with a bad name? What other songs have cover artists renamed? Drop a comment.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly implied that “The Train Song” appeared on The Gilded Palace of Sin. Even though the song was released as a single to promote the album, it was recorded after the album was completed. The single “The Train Song” did eventually appear on Hot Burritos! The Flying Burrito Brothers Anthology 1969-1972 (2000). September 2013 Update: A live version of “The Train Song” is now on YouTube.
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”!}
American Son is a collection of the type of songs fans might expect from Brown, as he sings about love (i.e., “Love Happens,” “Make My Heart Your Home,” “Where’d You Come From?”), country fun (“Work Hard Havin’ Fun,” “Crackerjack”), and perhaps influenced by the time the album was recorded not long after 9/11, a couple of patriotic songs, including the title song and the still relevant “P.O.W.’s at the V.F.W.”
on Amazon). It just goes to show that you cannot judge a song by its initial release, or by its name.
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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.”
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, 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 