# Real rockabilly and real country



## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Currently listening to a whole load of true 50s rockabilly and country of then and even earlier. Modern country is awful! I read a great quote today in a newspaper by an English country singer/musician, who just had a gig in my county in Sweden at the weekend, he said, "Most modern country sounds like Britney spears with a steel guitar added!" I couldn't agree more! Give me Hank Williams and Johnny Burnette any day of the week over crap like Garth Brooks and Travis Tritt!

How can anyone not love this. 




OR 




OR 




And forget Elvis and Bill Hailey in the '50s, this song by the main man in '47 was exactly in my opinion when rockabilly and its offspring rock and roll started! Just listen to that electric guitar.





I was lucky enough to grow up in an Irish family (country has always been extremely popular in Ireland & among the Irish diaspora) and my mum & dad were always listening to Hank and Johnny Cash and Merle and Waylon and Willie and Marty, also Texas Swing like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. I got into Don Williams late 70s

Then as a young teenager, aged 14 or 15, rockabilly was my first youth culture "look" for a few years & the music our gang used to listen to on a ghetto blaster, while wandering round the streets! Rockabilly in the late '70s in London was absolutely huge!

But modern country? It isn't country in my opinion.


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## VictorRomeo (Sep 11, 2009)

Depends how you define 'modern'. Sure the 'pop' side of country is painful and depressing, particularly the Irish interpretation of what is country... Think 'wee' Daniel and his sister Margo and you'll know where I'm coming from. Don't misunderstand me though - I despise 'achy breaky' just as much! There is though, always a place for Johnny Cash, Waylon, Wille, Emmylou and then the likes of Gram Parsons.

However, I've a bit of a thing for what today I deem real country, or moreso alt/folk/rock(abilly) country. 

Modern artists that fit this bill for me include the likes of Ray Lamontagne, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent, Ryan Adams, Richard Hawley, Wilderness of Manitoba, Wilco, Leftover Salmon and Cracker to name a few. 

Then you have the likes of Daniel Lanois who uses instruments typically associated with country into his music - I'm thinking the lap and ped steel and produces a sound that is both intoxicating and beautiful. Well to my ears.


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## Douglas Brisbane Gray (Jun 7, 2010)

So how do you feel about big Tom and the Mainliners


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Douglas Brisbane Gray said:


> So how do you feel about big Tom and the Mainliners


Ah shure now, the staple diet of many a Hibernian!


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## Realalefan (Jan 12, 2009)

Give Lucinda Williams a listen. Also the Waco Brothers, led by Jon Langford of the Mekons - for that matter, the whole Bloodshot Records roster.


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## VictorRomeo (Sep 11, 2009)

Now don't go messin' with Big Tom - a native of Castleblayney, Co.Monaghan - as is my good wife - and a very good friend of her parents. He attended our wedding, you know! His music and others like him are a staple in their house, but her father was especially fond of Yodlin' Slim Clark, Slim Whitman and Jimmie Rodgers - he liked his yodlin', so he did! Sunday night in the Glencarn Hotel in Castleblayney is scene to some of the most dreadful experiences of my life with their 'Live Country Sunday'....

My old man on the other hand was into opera and despised country.

Now T.R. Dallas on the other hand......


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

My dad's first love musically was country, then cajun, then all the 50s crooners, then all the tenors singing arias. My dad had a beautiful tenor voice actually, (a bit like myself - no need for false modesty here) and he would sing some of the better known sad arias, especially those by Gigli, Lanza and Caruso. And he did a brilliant impersonation of Nat King Cole.


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## MikeDT (Aug 22, 2009)

IMO not all modern country music is bad. I quite like Keith Urban.

Although I think this a futile effort....
https://www.chinamusicradar.com/?p=291
"America bringing Country Music to China" 
.... why?
Country music sung in Mandarin, ... is just well .. not right ... its kind of like trying to sing Beijing opera in English.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Victor a mhic, 
here ya go, cringe away to Philomena Begley the female equivalent of Big Tom, Irish country and show bands...you gotta love 'em!





I prefer a good ceili band though, with the piano and drums, which as you know is what distinguishes a ceili band for the dance from a simple folk band.

Heres the Kilfenora, and I've danced to them on that very floor in the Camden Irish Centre, albeit last time was St. Patrick's '94


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## Douglas Brisbane Gray (Jun 7, 2010)

I love a good cèilidh (I think porridge wogs like me spell it differently and we don't need a piano). But I like a bothy band as well the rough end of the folk pub band scene (it used to amaze me how every regular squaddy knew a range of rebel songs no matter where they came from). I always remember bands in the Int Corps bar in Lisburn being freaked out by requests for ”The Ballad of Kevin Barry” “The men behind the wire” and “My little armalite”.


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## WouldaShoulda (Aug 5, 2009)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> this song by the main man in '47 was exactly in my opinion when rockabilly and its offspring rock and roll started! Just listen to that electric guitar.


Imagine how surprised I was to learn that George Thorogood was only covering Hank Williams!!

Thus I became a fan of Williams, George Jones and Buck Owens.

AFTER I was a fan of Thorogood, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, (Rockpile) and Elvis Costello.


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## Cruiser (Jul 21, 2006)

I lived much of my life in Nashville and had a number of friends in the music business. Through them I got to know several of the singers and songwriters. The first was Marty Robbins, but I met him through stock car racing, not music. He was an outstanding writer and performer who left us much too soon.

As for Hank Williams, I've always considered him to be more country blues than rockabilly, although I see the subsequent progression. And like him or not, 1956 Elvis was pure rockabilly, along with guys such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Conway Twitty; and then on into guys like Buddy Holly later in that decade.

I agree with you about modern day country. The problem is that everybody sounds like everybody else, especially the women, and it's far too commercial. Except for possibly someone like Alan Jackson, where are the Willies, Waylons, Merles, Cash, George Jones, Buck Owens, etc. today? Going back over the past 20 or so years some of my favorites have been;

John Anderson 




Gene Watson 




Vern Gosdin 




Randy Travis 




Dwight Yoakam 




And my number one favorite girl singer of the past 25 years, Johnny Cash's stepdaughter Carlene Carter. 




Cruiser


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Douglas Brisbane Gray said:


> it used to amaze me how every regular squaddy knew a range of rebel songs no matter where they came from.


Exactly, and at the other end of the spectrum, also surprising the number of times I've been in Irish pubs or houses in Belfast, Liverpool and London and someone has sung or played The Auld Orange Flute or The Sash My Father Wore.


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## VictorRomeo (Sep 11, 2009)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Exactly, and at the other end of the spectrum, also surprising the number of times I've been in Irish pubs or houses in Belfast, Liverpool and London and someone has sung or played The Auld Orange Flute or The Sash My Father Wore.


Who knows the rest of this one?!  

When I was young I used to be
As fine a man as ever you'd see
Til the Prince of Wales he said to me:
"Come and join the British army"


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## Douglas Brisbane Gray (Jun 7, 2010)

VictorRomeo said:


> Who knows the rest of this one?!
> 
> When I was young I used to be
> As fine a man as ever you'd see
> ...


When I was young I used to be as fine a man as ever you'd see
Til the Prince of Wales he said to me: "Come and join the British army"

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

Sarah Comden baked a cake, 'twas all for poor oul Slattery's sake
She threw herself into the lake, pretending she was barmy

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

Corporal Daly went away, his wife got in the family way
And the only thing that she could say, was: "Blame* the British army"

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

Corporal Kelly's a terrible drought, just give him a couple of jars of stout
And he'll beat the enemy with his mouth and save the British army

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

Kilted soldiers wear no drawers, won't you kindly lend them yours
The rich must always help the poor to save the British army

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

Toora loora loora loo, they're looking for monkeys up at the zoo
And says I: "If I had a face like you, I'd join the British army"

My dad loved the Dubliners and not just because him and Mr Drew share a first name.

*Blame is some other word when it's sung live anywhere.


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## Cruiser (Jul 21, 2006)

When I posted the list of some of my favorite country entertainers I can't believe I left off Billy Joe Shaver, a true old school rough and tumble songwriter that most of you probably never heard of. Billy Joe has been everything from a sailor to a rodeo cowboy. He picked cotton and worked in a lumber mill where he got two fingers cut off. He was only recently acquitted of aggravated assault after shooting a guy in Texas when it was ruled self defense.

I met Billy Joe back in the mid-70's when we shared a table at a Nashville club called the Exit-Inn. Also at the table was another songwriter, Bobby Bare. Who knows how I got at the table with them. All I remember is that we were all there to see Doc Watson. Billy Joe is definitely one of the last of a dying breed that simply wouldn't fit in with today's music scene. The guitar player in this video is his son Eddy who died of a drug overdose.






And to the person who mentioned Lucinda Williams, I get goose bumps listening to her sing _Get Right With God_.

Cruiser


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## Snow Hill Pond (Aug 10, 2011)

Check out www.wdvx.com. It's a great internet radio station that plays old country and new Americana. You'll hear George Jones, Johnny Cash, and Merle, but also Dwight, the Old 97s, Lucinda, Wailin Jennys, the Byrds, etc. It's based out of eastern Tennessee (Knoxville), and I believe still is a non-profit organization.


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## Shaver (May 2, 2012)

Great stuff. You gotta love ol' Hank. "God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise"

A favourite of mine -


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