Before Country Was Cool …

Howdy! If you followed old time country music you may agree that everybody seemed to be working an angle. You had folks like Minnie Pearl, String Bean, Little Jimmy Dickens and Grandpa Jones. Bumpkins frequented banks and laughed back at their city slicker cousins.

Hicks were American idols. Hayseeds were “in.” Some of my buddies mimicked the lingo, and when we chased girls at twelve, they called it “goin’ wenchin’.” Pitching hay, the jokes ran like this: “Preacher asked Farmer Brown if he prayed before his meals. Farmer said, ‘No sir. My wife’s a good cook.’” Mostly it was self-deprecating humour.

I was sixteen before I set foot in a real city. Those were more innocent times, and I look back with more fondness than embarrassment. Someone should write a book about early country showbiz--or a podcast with the sound intact. I confess that I knew Barbara Mandrell’s song when titling this playlist.

That was the era when Nashville dusted the hayseeds off the albums and started producing the Dickens out of them; the urban cowboy became a thing. Until Chuck Berry captivated me at twelve, I was very country. A couple of years before that I saw Ross Bannington, a 5-string banjo player from Ontario, at the village Odd Fellows Hall and wanted to be as cool as that--not play rock guitar.

So we sang a few of the beloved, landmark songs on this list: significant classic country, largely from the 1940s--mid-1970s. Not always the foundational history-makers perhaps, but significant nonetheless.

Good Old Mountain Dew--Grandpa Jones:

Louis Marshall Jones recorded this in April 1947; he didn’t write it. In spite of the name, it’s not about soda pop. A banjo-pluckin’ lawyer wrote the original after a moonshine court case, but Grandpa’s version is way more fun. Cornball humour, fake moustache, pedal-to-the-metal clawhammer banjo: perfect for a pretend mountain man, and it became his signature. I saw him do it at Grand Ole Opry in the 1970s when he would have been in his sixties. More energy than a five-year-old--an unlikely grandfather. The same style worked on Hee Haw too. Country Music Hall of Fame, 1978.

The Race is On--George Jones:

“No-show George” was one of the greatest. He put more songs on the Billboard country chart than anybody--about 166 charted singles, roughly 143 Top 40, 78 Top 10s, and 13 solo No. 1s (more if you count the Tammy Wynette duets “We’re Gonna Hold On,” “Golden Ring,” and “Near You”). “He Stopped Loving Her Today” made him a household name. He wrote or co-wrote a lot of songs; the only writing credit in this bunch is “We’re Gonna Hold On.” You could call George Grandpa Jones too: he has several grandchildren. Those who don’t care for country music usually don’t love George. Hard-core fans do.

Mule Train--Tennessee Ernie Ford:

Written for the 1950 Vaughn Monroe western Singing Guns, it received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (lost to “Mona Lisa”). Frankie Laine won the pop race with it; Tennessee Ernie Ford rode it to No. 1 country. Same mule, different track. A mule-skinner drives the pack over hill and plain, whip cracking, calling “Get along, mule!” The cargo is a shopping list of the Old West--plug of tobacco for a rancher, a guitar for a cowboy, a calico dress for a pretty Navajo, boots made to order, a Bible for the Reverend Mr. Black. Western Writers of America voted it to their Top 100 Western songs.

Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy--Red Foley:

This late-1949 song is often cited as one of country’s first million-sellers, with huge crossover into 1950. Foley’s smooth style helped popularize country more broadly, with strong era dominance and influence.

When It’s Apple Blossom Time in Annapolis Valley--Hal Lone Pine:

Hal was from Maine, but loved the Maritime Provinces which he toured extensively with Betty Cody, his Québécois wife. They attained star status here and skipped the Nashville rat race. One day at practice they heard a third harmony. The only other person in the room was their three-year-old. Lenny was a prodigy. They taught him guitar; he sang parts on stage as a preschooler, gigged by 12, and was lead guitarist at fourteen. A teacher heard him in an echoey stairwell and advised him to drop out and give music a shot. I have many Lenny stories, some unpublished. Chet Atkins once rated him the greatest guitarist of all time! 

I Overlooked an Orchid--Mickey Gilley:

Carl Smith first recorded it in 1950; that must be the version my uncle sang when I was a child. The lyric contrasts the orchid--the quiet, lasting love that was right there--with the flashier rose that faded. The narrator catches on too late. Authorship is messy; those disputes were common in country publishing then. Gilley’s piano-driven Nashville cut gave it a wider audience and soared to No. 1 in 1974, his second chart-topper that year. He was a first cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis; they grew up in Louisiana and learned piano in the same family circle as Jimmy Swaggart. Gilley spent years in Lewis’s shadow before finding his own lane in honky-tonk and the Urban Cowboy sound. Piano, steel, fiddle; the vocal sits right in the pocket for that mid-70s country feel.

The Auctioneer--Leroy Van Dyke:

He wrote it in 1953 while serving in Korea with Army Counterintelligence. The words and melody kept arriving “out of the air” as he rode dusty roads. The fourth time he went back to his squad tent, picked up his Sears Roebuck guitar, and wrote it in about twenty minutes. He later said it felt like someone else was pushing the pencil. Learning the chant sections took two weeks: a real auctioneer never calls it the same twice, but a record has to. First public performance was a USO show; the other act was Marilyn Monroe. Van Dyke figures he is the only country singer who ever opened for her, and he was plenty nervous. The song was about his second cousin, a stellar cattle auctioneer. It was used in a Subway commercial; bluegrass versions have won awards recently. Van Dyke is still collecting royalties.

Kansas City Star--Roger Miller:

Out of the army, young Roger made a beeline for Nashville. After ten years of struggle, he released an album called “Roger and Out,” and moved to LA to become an actor. Then he turned on his car radio and heard “Dang Me” climbing the charts. When I planned the first bus tour to Nashville from Halifax, we booked into the new Roger Miller Motor Lodge. A sign that said “Trailers for Sale or Rent” inspired “King of the Road” which garnered several Grammys and made him a household name. This song, like his others, is playful and endearing. He does human foibles well.

Anytime--Eddy Arnold:

Arnold dominated the 1940s with his smooth “Tennessee Plowboy” style, huge sales, and radio play. He bridged country and pop to help create the Nashville Sound. Uncle Ed did a super job of this one!

You Can Depend on Me--Brenda Lee:

Lynne Crowell is a versatile and talented singer. My favourite Lynne story was told one night at a jam by a drummer almost as old as moi. At twelve she was already singing early rock in a dance band. One night the liquor inspector showed up at the Legion Hall and someone rushed in to warn them. Lynne was so tiny the drummer hid her in the bass drum until the inspector left. A few years later she was singing country with Vic Mullen--mostly bluegrass, I presume. Her bass-playing brother is a good friend of mine; he loves blues, so Lynne got into that in recent years and is loving it. She also has a couple of CDs of her originals that lean folky. She did this in my band called Hardscratch Road in 2020, which formed to play the Coalshed Festival on the Yarmouth Waterfront.

BONUS! I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool--Barbara Mandrell:

Mandrell didn’t write her 1981 No. 1, but called it “the story of my life”--and it became her defining hit. As a California schoolgirl, she would perform country music on Saturday-night television, then return to class Monday and get teased for playing “that hillbilly music.” The record appeared after she had won CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1980 and helped make her the award’s first two-time--and first consecutive--winner. George Jones sings the last line of the chorus, following the lyric: “circling the drive-in, pulling up and turning down George Jones.” Although presented on Barbara Mandrell’s Live as a Roy Acuff Theater performance, the hit was recorded in a studio and the audience reaction to George that you hear was actually overdubbed later. Years later, while staying at the Opryland Hotel, I strolled the lobby and noticed a television studio behind a huge window. Less than 20 feet away, Barbara Mandrell was being interviewed live. Hopefully the glass was mirrored on her side, because I stood there alone, gawking for ten minutes. She was easy to look at, eh!