Anyone coming from a place called Cut Knife would have a lot going for them. Like his sound
-
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Enjoyed Morgan Wallens latest album a lot.
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Not sure why it looks like this, but plays correctly and looks like it should.
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Monocle
And the rebuild begins.
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I was so sad, actually I was super pissed and disappointed when Justin Townes Earle, died of his fentanyl-laced cocaine addiction.
He had an unbelievable grasp on the musical blend of music that encapsulated that mix: of country, soul, blues and how he captured Appalachian music to its core.
For the record I though Justin was extremely talented, I happen to be very fond of these songs of his:
Harlem River Blues
Look The Other Way
Halfway to Jackson
(Cant believe he was only 15 when he wrote Halfway To Jackson - check out the lyrics, man a 15 year old should not be able to or be put in a situation whereby they can craft ( through experience ), such pros, from real life experience at only 15.
And my favourite.
Maybe a Moment
I though he was trending in a high trajectory and believed that it was only a matter of time that he himself had a "Copperhead Road' song that he was to write and share with us all.
Sadly he never came back from that dangerous rabbit hole that his father often visited, and somehow managed to escape with life still intact, Justin was not so lucky.
I got and still am a very angry, that I never got to hear the best of his musical talent, as DRUGS, claimed another life way too soon.
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There’s an old interview of him talking about drugs and it’s chilling now cause he talks about how drugs now unlike when he was in his 20’s are being cut with shit like fent and how he feels sorry for kids etc.
Looking forward to this. Not sure if/when streaming here
americansongwriter.com
New Docuseries Explores Outlaw Country Music History, Featuring Interviews From 17 Artists Who Have Since Passed Away
'They Called Us Outlaws', an expansive docuseries exploring the history of outlaw country music, will premiere at the 2026 SXSW Festival.
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I saw Hardy a couple of weeks ago. Was a good show. He got out into the crowd and seemed pretty humble. Has a few big hits and switched pretty easily to his original hard rock.
Absolutely - his passing was such a waste and a great loss to music. He seemed to have inherited both the best of Steve Earle's and Townes Van Zandt's abilities and sensibilities - but also their vices.
In the Steve Earle history bit, I actually, in a stream of consciousness sort of way that I often zone into, wrote up quite a bit on Justin, only to cut it in the end for being off the primary topic and too long. Here's one segment from a 2011 interview, when he was living in NYC, that underscores your point - "He had an unbelievable grasp on the musical blend of music that encapsulated that mix: of country, soul, blues and how he captured Appalachian music to its core." -
"... Justin classifies his genre as Southern American rather than Americana or, God forbid, alt-country - “It’s either country or it ain’t,” he once told an interviewer). “What I always attempt to do on my records is to cover the South because we own all popular forms of music. They’re all inherently ours, because we created them all. (Okay, hip-hop, New York’s got that.) But we’ve got string music from the hills of North Carolina and Virginia and eastern Tennessee that moves over to bluegrass in Kentucky, country music in Nashville, blues in the Delta and all over the South, jazz in New Orleans, and like Levon Helm said in The Last Waltz, this all slides to Memphis and becomes rock ’n’ roll. So they’re all ours. It’s just all about my roots.”
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Not a country album but Johnny Blue Skies(Sturgill Simpson) leaked his up coming album to yt before mp3 versions were leaked online (won’t be released into streaming playforms). Despite it not being a country album it’s still some of Sturgills best work.
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I saw JTE a few years prior to his death at at a hall in Fremantle. Maybe Victoria Hall? He was incredible. Beautiful renditions of every song. He was warm, affable, guitar playing was magnificent, voice was beautiful.
I saw him at Mojos less then a year before his death. He was the same nice guy, but he was clearly suffering. He struggled to keep time with his guitar work and his singing. He was slurring. It was incredibly sad.
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Been getting into Corb Lund lately. He's got some great tunes, and I'm really loving this duet with Jaida Dreyer.
Her voice in this live acoustic version is amazing.
Her voice in this live acoustic version is amazing.
I'm back with another country great to add to the history series. Along with one other we've just seen in Steve Earle (posts # 1,242-1,248), today's artist both burst into stardom with their respective 1986 debut albums, which put the country world on notice. His "Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc, Etc" and Earle’s "Guitar Town" were the two best - well, my two favourite -country albums that came from the 1980s’ latter half.
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the latter '80s. Like his idols Hank Williams (# 205-219), Buck Owens (#456-463) and Merle Haggard (# 497-502), he never played by Nashville’s roots - consequently, as an outsider to Nashville, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, while respecting all of country's traditions, he twisted around the retro form enough to make it seem contemporary. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rockabilly and rock fans, not the mainstream country audience - apart from a newer younger audience he attracted. So he still frequently was able to chart in the country Top 10 and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous charting country artists well into the ’90s and even beyond.
Born Dwight Yoakam in the rural Appalachian heartland of Eastern Kentucky in 1956, the oldest of 3 children; soon after he and his family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he was raised through his childhood and teen years. His father worked several odd jobs, including factory work at Westinghouse, before becoming a petrol station owner. As a child, he was greatly influenced by the music his parents listened to on country music radio stations, as well as the songs the family sang to each other during their very frequent road trips back to their Kentucky Appalachian holler where Dwight's grandparents still lived. Despite growing up in the big(ish) northern city of Columbus, Ohio, Yoakam always identified with his Kentucky Appalachian birthplace - in much the same way as John Prine (# 685-691) also identified with his southern Kentucky family heritage, despite being born and raised in Chicago.
Young Dwight also listened to his mother’s record collection, honing in on the traditional country of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, the rockabilly of Johnny Horton as well as the Bakersfield honky tonk of Buck Owens. A black-and-white family snapshot shows the toddler Dwight barely holding on to a guitar taller than he is. He pulled the guitar around after him everywhere until one day he fell on it and broke it. When Dwight turned 9, they didn’t have the money to buy him another guitar, but he begged so hard that his dad hocked a shotgun for one. He then taught himself to play it and also wrote his first songs.
With his mother’s encouragement, Dwight joined his high school’s band as a drummer. He also joined drama class, where his natural talent and stage presence soon led him to play the lead roles in productions such as Flowers for Algernon. In his senior high school year, Yoakam and some classmates formed a rock and roll band to compete in the school's talent show, named Dwight and the Greasers,with Dwight as the lead singer and lead guitarist. The band won the talent show and went on to play in school assemblies, becoming locally well known enough to also perform at private parties and local dances.
Dwight's passion for theatre informed their gigs - he wore a custom-made gold-sequinned suit with a big hot-pink satin heart with a hidden pleat appliquéd on the back. He also added extra theatrics - ending each show with a sizzling rendition of 'Heartbreak Hotel', he’d turn his back to the audience and as he murmured into the mic - “I get so lonely, baby / I get so lonely / I get so lonely I could die”; he’d hunch his shoulders and that pink heart would dramatically split right in two - “... I knew when I saw Elvis that I was going to be a performer. I have always had this need to be the guy with the guitar, poised on the edge, waiting for it to happen. Every kid goes through that need to imitate a rock & roll star. Then they move on to something else. But that need never left me...”.
Yoakam went on to play with a variety of bands in Columbus, playing everything from country, pop to rock & roll. After completing high school in 1974, he briefly attended Ohio State University but dropped out from college and moved to Nashville in 1977 with the intent of becoming a recording artist. But at the time he moved to Nashville, the town, as we have seen in the history series (# 908-909) was in the throes of the pop-oriented urban cowboy movement and had no interest in Yoakam's updated honky tonk - just like George Strait and Randy Travis, he was told he was too country for Nashville! Still, he stuck around in Music City for 4 years, just one of the hundreds of musicians playing in the clubs and bars hoping for a break - but his insistence on sticking to hard-core country and honky tonk ensured that break never came in Nashville.
Finally, after 4 years of fruitless perseverance, Yoakam had had enough of Nashville and at the urging of a former member of his high school Greaser Band, Billy Alves, he moved out to LA, where he eventually found a more appreciative audience. In LA, Yoakam didn’t just play in the few country clubs there , but played the same nightclubs that punk and post-punk rock bands like X, the Dead Kennedys, Los Lobos, the Blasters, and the Butthole Surfers did. What Yoakam had in common with rock bands like X and the Blasters, was similar musical influences - they all drew from 1950's rockabilly and hard core honky tonk and country. In comparison to the polished pop-country music coming out of Nashville at that time, Yoakam’s stripped-down, direct revivalism seemed radical.
It took a few years of fronting groups like Kentucky Bourbon, but eventually LA audiences embraced Yoakam’s retro hardcore country, electrified bluegrass and deep rural groove. The cowpunks, as they were called, that attended Yoakam’s shows provided an invaluable support for his fledgling career - enough so that he recorded 10 demos in 1981 over the course of 6 months. He took this demo back to Nashville, trying to interest the labels there, but, not surprisingly at that time, none bit. Then it was straight back to LA, where Yoakam, initially unsuccessful there as well, met guitarist and record producer Pete Anderson at a bar in 1982. The two became friends when they realised they had common interest in honky tonk and musicians such as the Bakersfield pair, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Yoakam and Anderson, formed The Babylonian Cowboys (Babylon was a nickname for Hollywood) and soon became a fixture at the legendary North Hollywood honky tonk, The Palomino (more on The Palomino to come), along with acts such as Joe Ely, Rank and File and Lone Justice.
Things finally started happening. By 1984, Yoakam had written a large number of songs. Staking his own money on future success, he scraped up $5,000 to finance a 6 song EP which he titled "Guitars, Cadillacs Etc Etc". It included 5 self-penned songs and one cover - 'Ring Of Fire'. Only a few thousand were pressed on the tiny Oak label in late 1984, but they received substantial airplay on LA college and independent radio stations, creating enough of a stir to get Warner Brothers interested. Later in 1985, Yoakam was the opening act for The Blasters, which led to him being "discovered" by Reprise Records (a branch of Warner Bros) executive Paige Levy, who helped him sign with the label in 1986.
Reprise re-issued "Guitars, Cadillacs Etc Etc" in 1986 with 4 more tracks, thus making it Yoakams full-length debut album. Instead of re-recording those half dozen earlier tracks, Yoakam felt strongly enough in them to demand they be released as-is. He tacked on the 4 new songs, colourised the cover photo and the 10 tune album - 7 of which were written by Yoakam - hit the streets and was an instant sensation. Rock and country critics alike praised it and it earned airplay on college stations not just in California but across the U.S. More importantly, it then hit the country charts, as its first single, a cover of Johnny Horton’s 'Honky Tonk Man' climbed to # 3.
The release of "Guitars, Cadillacs…" further helped shake the country world out of its Urban Cowboy doldrums. It introduced the world to an artist who, at age 29 and having developed his sound over a dozen years of live performances, was ready to do traditionalism his own way. Yoakam's debut album topped the album chart in 1986 and would eventually go platinum and, in time, double platinum.
There was nothing subtle about Yoakam’s opening introduction to country radio. The leadoff cover of Johnny Horton’s ‘Honky Tonk Man’, featuring the opening lines of “I’m a honky-tonk man / and I can’t seem to stop / I love to give the girls a whirl to the music of an old jukebox ...” wasn't penned with Yoakam in mind, but it effectively consolidated his rugged, sexy persona in a few sentences and tacked it onto a hooky chorus. Many covers are almost too loyal to the originals for their own good, but Yoakam had the ability and distinct sound to always makes a cover sound like a Dwight Yoakam song and does so while also somehow remaining true to the original’s roots.
Horton’s original is classic (# 296) but doesn’t have that certain cool swagger that Yoakam gives it. Other artists would cover the song through the years, but it was Yoakam who brought the song to a wider influence with a cutting-edge sound, taking it to # 3 in the U.S. and all the way to # 1 in Canada - remarkable for a debut single, signifing the beginning of a sound that nobody had heard the likeness of in many years -
",,, It takes a purdy little gal and a jug of wine / That's what it takes to make a honky tonk mind /
With the jukebox a moanin' a honky tonk sound / That's when I wanna lay my money down / ..." -
The video for 'Honky Tonk Man' was the very first country music clip shown on MTV. Yoakam, with his interest in theatre dating back to high school, was also a country music pioneer in music videos. Right from the start, unlike nearly all of his country music contemporaries such as George Strait, who did them reluctantly, quickly and poorly, Yoakam took the time to make watchable, entertaining, quality videos. The second country music clip on MTV was Yoakham's second single.
The title track from his 1984 debut EP on Oak Records was the first stone-cold self-penned Dwight classic - retro and modern at once. It was this song more than any other that got Yoakam signed to a major label and showed LA’s punk community a vision of a different future when he started showing up on live bills with X and The Blasters. The title track from Yoakam's debut peaked at # 4 in the U.S. and # 2 in Canada on the strength of its vintage sounds - fiddle, honky-tonk guitar, strolling rhythms - and classic nostalgic sentiments.
'Guitar and Cadillacs' has all the ingredients of a classic country song - a thumping bass, twangy guitars and a honky-tonk bravado that was straight out of the George Jones/Johnny Cash playbook.Nursing a broken heart, the song's protagonist finds solace in the titular pastimes while lamenting his fate with his lovelorn twang. But another deeper interpretation is Yoakam himself, still a struggling artist when he wrote the lyrics, feeling a sense of alienation living in LA -
"... There ain't no glamour in this tinselled land of lost and wasted lives / And painful scars are all that's left of me / Oh, but thank you, girl, for teaching me brand-new ways to be cruel / If I can find my mind now, I guess I'll just leave..." -
Another part of the song’s success was the ultra hip video directed by the late Sherman Halsey.
Yoakam's 3rd single release from the "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album, the self-penned 'It Won't Hurt', basically plays out as a tribute to traditional honky tonk, with the unmistakable influence of Texan legend, Ray Price (# 269-275) along with Mel Street (#627-631) and Garry Stewart (840-842). Probably because this was so faithful to the honky tonk sub-genre, it only had limited success in the U.S., stalling at # 31, but the better educated Canadians took it to # 7. Being my favourite sub-genre (more a cultural than music taste as such with me), of course I had to include it here.
Yoakam's durable melodic sense and effortless way of telling a story is displayed on ‘It Won’t Hurt’. Here, in the true tradition of the honky tonk bar room lament, he takes the voice of a broken-hearted bloke who tries - unsuccessfully - to drown the sorrow of a wrecked relationship with copious amounts of whisky - which, of course, is the perfect accompaniment to traditional honky tonk like this (though not necessarily in copious amounts) -
Besides the 3 singles, the "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album also contains other gems. The self-penned 'South of Cincinnati' is a one such gem, one of the prettiest and saddest country songs of any era. It’s on ballads like this that Yoakam’s burnished vocal is especially evident. At first, this song sounds like it'll just be another song of yearning for the South. As we've seen in this history, especially with groups such as as Alabama (#1,009-1,016) - and I could throw in the great southern rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd - songs of Southern pride were much in vogue through the 1970's and '80's). But 'South Of Cincinnati' goes beyond just this southern yearning.
Look on a map and you will find that right on the Southern edge of the Cincinnati CBD is the Ohio River - and straight across the river is Kentucky. The river also marks the border between the Northern and Southern states, with their vast cultural differences. The hard-luck Kentucky region south of this border sent tens of thousands of of its citizens (and millions, both black and whites, from the South in general) north after WW2 to seek work in such factory hubs like Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, Dayton and Detroit. Dwight's family was amongst this flight to the North. But in many cases, it was only the married male that headed north to the factories, leaving his wife and children behind. All the alienation, loneliness and homesickness these immigrant “hillbillies” endured seep through in this recording, just as did in Bobby Bare's 'Détroit City in 1962 (# 464).
If 'South of Cincinnati' has its share of thematic cliches, it is no less effective for them - the wreck of a boozer who abandons his Kentucky roots and the love of his life to end up lonely and lost in a Chicago flophouse and his forlorn ex - back home, too proud to mail the letter that she rewrites daily, keeping it tucked inside the (biblical) Book of Luke, saying she’d gladly welcome him back -
“... He lies there drunk, but it don’t matter drunk or sober / He’ll never read the words that pride won’t let her send ...” -
The album closes with a honky tonk standard, the Harlan Howard written classic, 'Heartaches by the Number', originally made famous in 1959 by that titan of Texan country music, Ray Price, (the founder of the 4x4 shuffle "Ray Price beat" that underpins so much classic country, especially honky tonk (# 272). Here, because of Ed Black's steel playing, Brantley Kearns' fiddle, and Pete Anderson's guitar, the accompaniment is stronger and far edgier than the Ray Price version. 'Heartaches By The Number' especially benefits, not just because it’s a strong song, but also because that galloping rhythm, almost tripping over itself throughout, fits Dwight’s twang so goddamn well. -
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Yoakam's debut album. Not only did it introduce him as a fledgling yet, at age 30 (though he looked more like age 20) with a dozen years of performing live behind him, a seasoned talent with a yearning tenor voice that comes along once in a generation. He presented pure country of the Hank Williams Sr type, but amplified and energised to a new, younger audience. Yoakam found himself in the enviable position of being supported both by college and independent "alternative" stations and also the standard commercial country ones. It was also an auspicious beginning to a business and professional association with his lead guitarist and producer, Pete Anderson that lasted until 2001 and yielded Yoakam’s greatest commercial success.
So that's all for today, with a sample of Dwight Yoakam's 1986 brilliant debut "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album. Tomorrow we will follow Yoakam to see what he has to offer going into 1987.
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the latter '80s. Like his idols Hank Williams (# 205-219), Buck Owens (#456-463) and Merle Haggard (# 497-502), he never played by Nashville’s roots - consequently, as an outsider to Nashville, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, while respecting all of country's traditions, he twisted around the retro form enough to make it seem contemporary. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rockabilly and rock fans, not the mainstream country audience - apart from a newer younger audience he attracted. So he still frequently was able to chart in the country Top 10 and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous charting country artists well into the ’90s and even beyond.
Born Dwight Yoakam in the rural Appalachian heartland of Eastern Kentucky in 1956, the oldest of 3 children; soon after he and his family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he was raised through his childhood and teen years. His father worked several odd jobs, including factory work at Westinghouse, before becoming a petrol station owner. As a child, he was greatly influenced by the music his parents listened to on country music radio stations, as well as the songs the family sang to each other during their very frequent road trips back to their Kentucky Appalachian holler where Dwight's grandparents still lived. Despite growing up in the big(ish) northern city of Columbus, Ohio, Yoakam always identified with his Kentucky Appalachian birthplace - in much the same way as John Prine (# 685-691) also identified with his southern Kentucky family heritage, despite being born and raised in Chicago.
Young Dwight also listened to his mother’s record collection, honing in on the traditional country of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, the rockabilly of Johnny Horton as well as the Bakersfield honky tonk of Buck Owens. A black-and-white family snapshot shows the toddler Dwight barely holding on to a guitar taller than he is. He pulled the guitar around after him everywhere until one day he fell on it and broke it. When Dwight turned 9, they didn’t have the money to buy him another guitar, but he begged so hard that his dad hocked a shotgun for one. He then taught himself to play it and also wrote his first songs.
With his mother’s encouragement, Dwight joined his high school’s band as a drummer. He also joined drama class, where his natural talent and stage presence soon led him to play the lead roles in productions such as Flowers for Algernon. In his senior high school year, Yoakam and some classmates formed a rock and roll band to compete in the school's talent show, named Dwight and the Greasers,with Dwight as the lead singer and lead guitarist. The band won the talent show and went on to play in school assemblies, becoming locally well known enough to also perform at private parties and local dances.
Dwight's passion for theatre informed their gigs - he wore a custom-made gold-sequinned suit with a big hot-pink satin heart with a hidden pleat appliquéd on the back. He also added extra theatrics - ending each show with a sizzling rendition of 'Heartbreak Hotel', he’d turn his back to the audience and as he murmured into the mic - “I get so lonely, baby / I get so lonely / I get so lonely I could die”; he’d hunch his shoulders and that pink heart would dramatically split right in two - “... I knew when I saw Elvis that I was going to be a performer. I have always had this need to be the guy with the guitar, poised on the edge, waiting for it to happen. Every kid goes through that need to imitate a rock & roll star. Then they move on to something else. But that need never left me...”.
Yoakam went on to play with a variety of bands in Columbus, playing everything from country, pop to rock & roll. After completing high school in 1974, he briefly attended Ohio State University but dropped out from college and moved to Nashville in 1977 with the intent of becoming a recording artist. But at the time he moved to Nashville, the town, as we have seen in the history series (# 908-909) was in the throes of the pop-oriented urban cowboy movement and had no interest in Yoakam's updated honky tonk - just like George Strait and Randy Travis, he was told he was too country for Nashville! Still, he stuck around in Music City for 4 years, just one of the hundreds of musicians playing in the clubs and bars hoping for a break - but his insistence on sticking to hard-core country and honky tonk ensured that break never came in Nashville.
Finally, after 4 years of fruitless perseverance, Yoakam had had enough of Nashville and at the urging of a former member of his high school Greaser Band, Billy Alves, he moved out to LA, where he eventually found a more appreciative audience. In LA, Yoakam didn’t just play in the few country clubs there , but played the same nightclubs that punk and post-punk rock bands like X, the Dead Kennedys, Los Lobos, the Blasters, and the Butthole Surfers did. What Yoakam had in common with rock bands like X and the Blasters, was similar musical influences - they all drew from 1950's rockabilly and hard core honky tonk and country. In comparison to the polished pop-country music coming out of Nashville at that time, Yoakam’s stripped-down, direct revivalism seemed radical.
It took a few years of fronting groups like Kentucky Bourbon, but eventually LA audiences embraced Yoakam’s retro hardcore country, electrified bluegrass and deep rural groove. The cowpunks, as they were called, that attended Yoakam’s shows provided an invaluable support for his fledgling career - enough so that he recorded 10 demos in 1981 over the course of 6 months. He took this demo back to Nashville, trying to interest the labels there, but, not surprisingly at that time, none bit. Then it was straight back to LA, where Yoakam, initially unsuccessful there as well, met guitarist and record producer Pete Anderson at a bar in 1982. The two became friends when they realised they had common interest in honky tonk and musicians such as the Bakersfield pair, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Yoakam and Anderson, formed The Babylonian Cowboys (Babylon was a nickname for Hollywood) and soon became a fixture at the legendary North Hollywood honky tonk, The Palomino (more on The Palomino to come), along with acts such as Joe Ely, Rank and File and Lone Justice.
Things finally started happening. By 1984, Yoakam had written a large number of songs. Staking his own money on future success, he scraped up $5,000 to finance a 6 song EP which he titled "Guitars, Cadillacs Etc Etc". It included 5 self-penned songs and one cover - 'Ring Of Fire'. Only a few thousand were pressed on the tiny Oak label in late 1984, but they received substantial airplay on LA college and independent radio stations, creating enough of a stir to get Warner Brothers interested. Later in 1985, Yoakam was the opening act for The Blasters, which led to him being "discovered" by Reprise Records (a branch of Warner Bros) executive Paige Levy, who helped him sign with the label in 1986.
Reprise re-issued "Guitars, Cadillacs Etc Etc" in 1986 with 4 more tracks, thus making it Yoakams full-length debut album. Instead of re-recording those half dozen earlier tracks, Yoakam felt strongly enough in them to demand they be released as-is. He tacked on the 4 new songs, colourised the cover photo and the 10 tune album - 7 of which were written by Yoakam - hit the streets and was an instant sensation. Rock and country critics alike praised it and it earned airplay on college stations not just in California but across the U.S. More importantly, it then hit the country charts, as its first single, a cover of Johnny Horton’s 'Honky Tonk Man' climbed to # 3.
The release of "Guitars, Cadillacs…" further helped shake the country world out of its Urban Cowboy doldrums. It introduced the world to an artist who, at age 29 and having developed his sound over a dozen years of live performances, was ready to do traditionalism his own way. Yoakam's debut album topped the album chart in 1986 and would eventually go platinum and, in time, double platinum.
There was nothing subtle about Yoakam’s opening introduction to country radio. The leadoff cover of Johnny Horton’s ‘Honky Tonk Man’, featuring the opening lines of “I’m a honky-tonk man / and I can’t seem to stop / I love to give the girls a whirl to the music of an old jukebox ...” wasn't penned with Yoakam in mind, but it effectively consolidated his rugged, sexy persona in a few sentences and tacked it onto a hooky chorus. Many covers are almost too loyal to the originals for their own good, but Yoakam had the ability and distinct sound to always makes a cover sound like a Dwight Yoakam song and does so while also somehow remaining true to the original’s roots.
Horton’s original is classic (# 296) but doesn’t have that certain cool swagger that Yoakam gives it. Other artists would cover the song through the years, but it was Yoakam who brought the song to a wider influence with a cutting-edge sound, taking it to # 3 in the U.S. and all the way to # 1 in Canada - remarkable for a debut single, signifing the beginning of a sound that nobody had heard the likeness of in many years -
",,, It takes a purdy little gal and a jug of wine / That's what it takes to make a honky tonk mind /
With the jukebox a moanin' a honky tonk sound / That's when I wanna lay my money down / ..." -
The video for 'Honky Tonk Man' was the very first country music clip shown on MTV. Yoakam, with his interest in theatre dating back to high school, was also a country music pioneer in music videos. Right from the start, unlike nearly all of his country music contemporaries such as George Strait, who did them reluctantly, quickly and poorly, Yoakam took the time to make watchable, entertaining, quality videos. The second country music clip on MTV was Yoakham's second single.
The title track from his 1984 debut EP on Oak Records was the first stone-cold self-penned Dwight classic - retro and modern at once. It was this song more than any other that got Yoakam signed to a major label and showed LA’s punk community a vision of a different future when he started showing up on live bills with X and The Blasters. The title track from Yoakam's debut peaked at # 4 in the U.S. and # 2 in Canada on the strength of its vintage sounds - fiddle, honky-tonk guitar, strolling rhythms - and classic nostalgic sentiments.
'Guitar and Cadillacs' has all the ingredients of a classic country song - a thumping bass, twangy guitars and a honky-tonk bravado that was straight out of the George Jones/Johnny Cash playbook.Nursing a broken heart, the song's protagonist finds solace in the titular pastimes while lamenting his fate with his lovelorn twang. But another deeper interpretation is Yoakam himself, still a struggling artist when he wrote the lyrics, feeling a sense of alienation living in LA -
"... There ain't no glamour in this tinselled land of lost and wasted lives / And painful scars are all that's left of me / Oh, but thank you, girl, for teaching me brand-new ways to be cruel / If I can find my mind now, I guess I'll just leave..." -
Another part of the song’s success was the ultra hip video directed by the late Sherman Halsey.
Yoakam's 3rd single release from the "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album, the self-penned 'It Won't Hurt', basically plays out as a tribute to traditional honky tonk, with the unmistakable influence of Texan legend, Ray Price (# 269-275) along with Mel Street (#627-631) and Garry Stewart (840-842). Probably because this was so faithful to the honky tonk sub-genre, it only had limited success in the U.S., stalling at # 31, but the better educated Canadians took it to # 7. Being my favourite sub-genre (more a cultural than music taste as such with me), of course I had to include it here.
Yoakam's durable melodic sense and effortless way of telling a story is displayed on ‘It Won’t Hurt’. Here, in the true tradition of the honky tonk bar room lament, he takes the voice of a broken-hearted bloke who tries - unsuccessfully - to drown the sorrow of a wrecked relationship with copious amounts of whisky - which, of course, is the perfect accompaniment to traditional honky tonk like this (though not necessarily in copious amounts) -
Besides the 3 singles, the "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album also contains other gems. The self-penned 'South of Cincinnati' is a one such gem, one of the prettiest and saddest country songs of any era. It’s on ballads like this that Yoakam’s burnished vocal is especially evident. At first, this song sounds like it'll just be another song of yearning for the South. As we've seen in this history, especially with groups such as as Alabama (#1,009-1,016) - and I could throw in the great southern rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd - songs of Southern pride were much in vogue through the 1970's and '80's). But 'South Of Cincinnati' goes beyond just this southern yearning.
Look on a map and you will find that right on the Southern edge of the Cincinnati CBD is the Ohio River - and straight across the river is Kentucky. The river also marks the border between the Northern and Southern states, with their vast cultural differences. The hard-luck Kentucky region south of this border sent tens of thousands of of its citizens (and millions, both black and whites, from the South in general) north after WW2 to seek work in such factory hubs like Columbus, Cleveland, Chicago, Dayton and Detroit. Dwight's family was amongst this flight to the North. But in many cases, it was only the married male that headed north to the factories, leaving his wife and children behind. All the alienation, loneliness and homesickness these immigrant “hillbillies” endured seep through in this recording, just as did in Bobby Bare's 'Détroit City in 1962 (# 464).
If 'South of Cincinnati' has its share of thematic cliches, it is no less effective for them - the wreck of a boozer who abandons his Kentucky roots and the love of his life to end up lonely and lost in a Chicago flophouse and his forlorn ex - back home, too proud to mail the letter that she rewrites daily, keeping it tucked inside the (biblical) Book of Luke, saying she’d gladly welcome him back -
“... He lies there drunk, but it don’t matter drunk or sober / He’ll never read the words that pride won’t let her send ...” -
The album closes with a honky tonk standard, the Harlan Howard written classic, 'Heartaches by the Number', originally made famous in 1959 by that titan of Texan country music, Ray Price, (the founder of the 4x4 shuffle "Ray Price beat" that underpins so much classic country, especially honky tonk (# 272). Here, because of Ed Black's steel playing, Brantley Kearns' fiddle, and Pete Anderson's guitar, the accompaniment is stronger and far edgier than the Ray Price version. 'Heartaches By The Number' especially benefits, not just because it’s a strong song, but also because that galloping rhythm, almost tripping over itself throughout, fits Dwight’s twang so goddamn well. -
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Yoakam's debut album. Not only did it introduce him as a fledgling yet, at age 30 (though he looked more like age 20) with a dozen years of performing live behind him, a seasoned talent with a yearning tenor voice that comes along once in a generation. He presented pure country of the Hank Williams Sr type, but amplified and energised to a new, younger audience. Yoakam found himself in the enviable position of being supported both by college and independent "alternative" stations and also the standard commercial country ones. It was also an auspicious beginning to a business and professional association with his lead guitarist and producer, Pete Anderson that lasted until 2001 and yielded Yoakam’s greatest commercial success.
So that's all for today, with a sample of Dwight Yoakam's 1986 brilliant debut "Guitars and Cadillacs etc etc" album. Tomorrow we will follow Yoakam to see what he has to offer going into 1987.
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