The Country Gentleman

**The Country Gentleman** was an article in the Making Music magazine, published in May 1987, where Andy Kershaw was interviewed about his fondness for Country music and revealing some of his favourite country albums which are listed below and his comments about them: [1]

* Terry Allen: Juarez *("Terry Allen's from Lubbock, Texas, the same place as Buddy Holly. This early '70s LP is basically him and a piano, and occasionally a bit of guitar. He has one of them lived-in voices. There's something very bleak about it. I suppose it's an unfashionable thing to say, but it's a concept album. It's a good story about desperate people, and it's very witty too, memorable tunes, with a lot of wry Texan philosophy. It's so Texan... the thing about Texas is it's so vast. It was such a melting pot for different styles. It was a place that a lot of immigrants came to, settlers that had moved west from Kentucky and Virginia, and a lot of German and east European settlers who had moved in. That's why there's a tradition of Texan polka stuff.")*
* Carter Family: 20 Of The Best *("Their greatest hits. They recorded in the 1920s, and it's probably these people and Jimmie Rodgers who shaped country music as we know it today. This mountain stuff, coming from small communities tucked away in the hills; from this stuff comes the idea of community, of country music keeping people together. The recording's primitive, but because the playing and the songs are so strong, it still comes through. Probably the best known song here is 'Wildwood Flower', stunning, a really beautiful song. The guitarist basically plays just the bass notes, and the rest is done with vocal harmony and auto-harp. As with a lot of the best country music that seems quite gay and sprightly on the surface, there's this dark undertow going on.")*
* Flatlanders: One Road More *("Again, this is Texan, and more recent. It was recorded in the early 70s by these youths who went on to do things in their own right. Joe Ely's in it, Butch Hancock, and one of my favourite country singers ever, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. This is an all-acoustic band — they even have a musical saw — doing standards and their own material. One of my favourite songs is on this, Gilmore's "Did You Ever See Dallas From a DC9 At Night?" The playing and Gilmore's voice make this.")*
* George Jones: Heartaches & Hangovers *("Because that's what a lot of it's about, and if anybody knows about them, he does. He's more involved in the honky-tonk life styles where 'family morals' aren't quite so important. Honky tonks were bars, by the way, and honky tonk music's hard driving rhythms, high pitch vocals, and relatively brash guitar evolved so it would cut through the noise. It's just the voice that appeals with George Jones — a voice like no other. He could be backed by Bogshed and I'd still buy the records. George Jones stands for pain and loneliness: listen to this from 'Things Have Gone To Pieces Since You Left Me': "Someone threw a baseball through my window/And the arm fell off my favourite chair today". Pain!")*
* Kentucky Colonels: On Stage *("Breathtaking instrumentals. They're not as celebrated as Bill Munroe or Flatt & Scruggs, but they're my favourite bluegrass band. There's Clarence White, who went on to join The Byrds. On the cover of this he looks like he'd try to sell you a bible; on the Byrds' "Untitled", he looks more like someone who might sell you some drugs. But The Colonels were absolutely stunning, and a lot of it was down to Clarence White's guitar playing. So how do you produce a blue grass record? You have one microphone, and when you want one instrument louder than another, that instrument physically moves forward closer to the mike, and the others move back. They all stand around in a semi-circle, and when a solo's coming up, one of them just jumps into the middle, and when he's finished, he jumps out again! The funny thing about bluegrass and a lot of country is that it really drives, and yet there are no drums on it. The rhythm and drive comes from the off-beat on the guitar, and the bass, I think. I'm not very musical, I just like it when I hear it.")*
* Jerry Lee Lewis: Another Place Another Time *("You mention his name, and people think 'Great Balls Of Fire', 'Whole Lotta Shakin', but in the sixties he started to make some immense country records, really good. Again, a guy who knows what he's talking about: when he sings "What made Milwaukee famous has made a loser out of me," he's telling you what he was doing last night. He's actually done more country than rock & roll.")*
* Louvin Brothers: Tragic Songs Of Life *("These are the boys. It's just so pure, is this, just guitar and mandolin and voices. Individually Charlie and Ira Louvin weren't distinctive singers, but when you put the two voices together, something really weird happens that makes those hairs stand up on the back of your head. Ira was a great mandolin player as well — the records have that high mountain purity. They are perfection — a natural perfection. Someone said that you can only sing like that if your family, and your voices are similar; on the evidence of the Blue Sky Boys, and the Louvins, this is true.")*
* Loretta Lynn: The Loretta Lynn Story *("When she sings "Don't come home a-drinking with lovin' on your mind", there's billions of women who agree. 'Coal Miner's Daughter' — have you seen the film? — is an autobiography in a song... when she gets to the last verse and almost shouts "yet I'm proud to be a...". Lump in the throat. She represents a certain strength, and blue collar dignity. A lot of people miss the humour in country — times may be bloody tough for these people, but there's still this humour that keeps them going in the face of adversity. That's why at one time it could have been described as the biggest music in America. Lots of people who have boring mundane jobs, don't have any kind of glamour, and are poor, downtrodden... somebody gets up on a stage and sings about those very same situations, and they can identify with it. 'One's On The Way' here is probably the best example of a celebration of being ordinary. White blues.")*
* Willie Nelson: The Redheaded Stranger *("This is again a concept album; he's just finished making a film of this. It came out in 1975. One of my favourite Willie Nelson songs is on this, "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain", which is basically just him and the guitar. Another record that really made country for me was a live LP of Willie Nelson's, "Willie & Family Live", which is one of the best live records I've heard. The Family Band blows a bloody gale when it wants to, but he never raises his thin little voice — he's always just talking to you, even when the band are really flying. And he has that kind of saintly charisma as well...")*
* Jimmie Rodgers: 20 Of The Best *("The Singing Brakeman. After the Carter family, I suppose this was the other bloke who introduced that blues feel to country. It's very simple stuff, and his guitar picking is really attractive. Me favourite song here is 'Waiting For A Train'; I like songs about trains. Travel's very important to American music. People wonder why we don't have romantic songs about riding from Nottingham to Crewe; that's because it doesn't involve a complete change in scenery and lifestyle, and take ages to do. It's got a lot to do with America being such a fooking vast place. A lot of early country was made by working class whites who were no better off than the blacks. They were listening to black stuff as well as country — like Jimmie Rodgers is nearly all blues. That's what helped folk music in America evolve into country music. For Jimmie's last recordings they were having to hold him upright in the studio because he'd got TB.")*
* Hank Williams: 40 Greatest Hits *("Not to be confused with his preposterous son. He recorded for a surprisingly short period: made his first record in 1946, and died on New Year's Day 1953. He always looked about 45, but actually was only 29 when he died. I think one of the reasons he looked like that was that he crammed so much in, he lived so much while he was alive... But he sang them like no-one else. That, and sex played an important part. Before hand, country singers had been about as sexy as the Pope. He just had an honesty and a rapport with the listener that no-one else had. These songs are very confidential; you feel like he's telling you, 'that was a bloody terrible business last night — I feel so lonesome I could cry'. He sounds like he's about to drop dead — a voice full of loneliness. Read Chet Flippo's biography, 'Your Cheatin' Heart'.")*
* Dwight Yoakam: Guitars & Cadillacs *("He's the best of the New Country players. The dynamics on this LP are brilliant — great production, with big highs and lows. The best country songs are about survival, a matter of life and death — when you're listening to this sort of stuff, you'll never ask the singer 'why are you telling me this?' Nothing superfluous. And there should be honourable mentions for all the people I've left out... Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Munroe & his Blue Grass Boys — he invented bluegrass — Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, early Dolly Parton... Most of these people have got extraordinary backgrounds, and if they sing about hardship, they probably have been brought up in a family of 12 and had no shoes — it's not PR.")*