Here’s what I know about today’s country music. Alan Jackson looks like a guy who rides your bumper with a monster truck, Travis Tritt looks like the potheads I knew in high school in Atlanta, Shania Twain is already fading away like most bad ideas and I agree with Steve Earle that Garth Brooks is the anti-Hank.

I don’t know much about country music recorded after 1970, but start me talking about Patty Loveless and Johnny Cash, and you’ve got yourself a record review.

Granted, we can’t really call Cash country anymore. He has simply become Johnny Cash, which means he makes some of the most formidable, fearsome and dark roots music on the planet. He is one of my heroes, Loveless is one of my, well - you have to understand that when I first came across her years ago, I was more excited about her album covers than the music within. But I’m older now and can make a more mature assessment. That lady is the greatest female country singer alive.

I’ve been worried about both of them. Cash has recently been on death’s doorstep more than I care to know, and Loveless has showed late warning signs of forever sinking into the commercial abyss.

But both have recent recordings that show us what they’re made of, and trust me, it’s strong stuff. I think Cash would agree the lady should go first.

Patty Loveless - Mountain Soul (Epic Records)
She obviously isn’t ashamed of it, but I’ve noticed that Patty Loveless’ roots are showing.

No female vocalist in country music can match Loveless’ purity and power of voice or her natural tone that pegs whatever she does as country no matter how popward it leans.

Only Loretta Lynn can match her country pedigree, and like the Queen, Loveless can rightfully claim coal miner’s daughter status. Born in Elkhorn City, Kentucky, Loveless moved with her family of seven to Pikeville where her father worked in the coal mines. The family later moved to Louisville where doctors could treat her father’s black lung disease.

But Lynn never did what Loveless has done with “Mountain Soul.” Other than an invitation to her house, it’s what I’ve been waiting for from Loveless for more than a decade. It’s a bluegrass album.

She seems to be eager to reaffirm her roots, not just musically. The packaging of this all-acoustic turn is chock full of photos of Loveless’ childhood. There’s an unposed photo of a man grimy with coal dust, pulling off a worn flannel shirt. A caption tell us it’s “Daddy coming home from the mine. He worked at the Federal Mine, four miles into the earth, sometimes mining coal on his knees.”

There’s the photo of her mother’s family, with “Granpa Drake (Preacher and Miner), Grandma Virgie, Brothers and Sisters.” There’s her mother’s parents on their wedding day and there’s her father’s parents and there’s that creepy hilltop cemetery statue of a mother and child overlooking the ragged coal town below.

And there’s that photo of Loveless in 1963, a pretty, well-dressed little girl, one hand on hip and one hand supporting a face looking a bit beyond the camera lens. But clearly, this is a child who knows exactly where that camera is and how to get its attention.

But of all the photogenic country starlets, perhaps none has seemed so uncomfortable with the CMT revolution as Loveless. Attempts at portraying her as a sexy video siren have seemed forced, and Loveless has appeared too stiff to do whatever the videographer demands. A particularly awful video for one of her hits ended with Loveless leaping off her seat and charging off camera, as if she was genuinely glad that the whole embarrassing ordeal was over.

All is forgiven with her latest album. Her husband, Nashville heavyweight producer Emory Gordy Jr., once again takes over the helm, but this time not in search of the perfect hit. This is indeed mountain soul that cuts to the bone.

Bluegrass veterans Earl Scruggs (banjo), Ricky Skaggs (mandolin), Rob Ickes (dobro) and Clarence “Tater” Tate (bass) help out on the picking. True, Travis Tritt appears as a quest vocalist (he lately began banjo lessons, but don’t worry, Earl’s reputation is still solid), but the true gem is Loveless’ voice. It never sounded so lovely or soulful, especially on the chilling, “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” a semi-autobiographical account of a family legacy left below ground: “Grandma sold out cheap and they moved out west of Pineville/To a farm where Big Richland River winds/And I bet they danced them a jig/And they laughed and sang a new song/Who said we’d ever leave Harlan alive/But the times they got hard and tobacco wasn’t selling/And old granddad knew what he’d do to survive/ He went and dug for Harlan coal and sent the money home to grandma/But he never left Harlan alive.”

Loveless sings two camp meeting songs with the natural ease of a confident bluegrass gospel pro. Ralph Stanley’s “Daniel Prayed” gets a further dose of authenticity from Ricky Skaggs’ vocals, and the uplifting “Rise Up Lazarus” is tempered by the earthly pains of “Cheap Whiskey” and one of the greatest “I’ve committed adultery in my mind” songs ever written, Don Reno and Mack Magaha’s “I Know You’re Married But I Love You Still.”

But the wizened bluegrass fan might notice treachery afoot. Two of the songs are well-known as traditional tunes. “Soul of Constant Sorrow” is simply “Man of Constant Sorrow” recast with a few word changes, but attributed to Loveless and her husband as co-writers. Hasn’t that song also been attributed to Carter Stanley? Is this an attempt to cash-in on the “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou” soundtrack? “Pretty Little Miss” is simply a well-known version of “Shady Grove” with a few lyric variations, but attributed to guess who. Does this mean bluegrass bands must pay royalties to Loveless and company whenever they play these old classics?

She leaves us with one to remember. “Sounds of Loneliness” builds intensity to leave Loveless’ voice out there accompanied only by the rhythm of a heart pounding against a troubled chest: “Hear the sound of my heartbeat/It beats so loud, oh, I can’t stand it/oh, that sound, that lonely sound/That lonely sound, that lonely sound/Hear the sound of my tears falling down, falling down/Like the rain coming down/Oh, that sound, that lonely sound/And it grows louder and louder and louder and louder.”
I’d like to think that Loveless’ sweet bluegrass voice will grow louder on recordings to follow, but no doubt she has many more hits to come. I’ll try to look beyond them and dig for the rough gold. I’ve had enough of the polished silver.

Johnny Cash - American III - Solitary Man (American Recordings)
The Man in Black has taken his darkest turn yet.

To say that Johnny Cash’s latest album is his true dark night of the soul would be an exaggeration. He has had too many of those nights to make this one an exception. But this album is notable for two reasons. One, it continues his string of excellent work with producer Rick Rubin. Two, it doesn’t mask anything about the condition of Cash these days.

He is not a well man, I can’t keep track of how many illnesses he has been diagnosed with in the past several years, and I don’t know the latest word on his degenerative nervous system disorder. His most recent hospital stay involved a serious bout with pneumonia that left fans and family members fearing the worst. The word on the street is he wants to go back in the studio.

The word from Cash himself in the liner notes to “American III - Solitary Man,” is he’s glad he’s not back on the road, and he remembers the lines to a song he performed in a talent contest as a child: “Show me that river, take me across/Wash all my troubles away/Like that lucky ole sun, give me nothing to do/But roll around heaven all day.”

He has included the song on the album, and like every other tune on this collection, it is sung by a man who has already cheated death too many times and is now conversing with a friend while he waits for a final knock on the door.

Tom Petty, who served as bandleader for Cash’s last Rubin-produced classic, “Unchained,” returns to lend a hand on several songs. The set opens with Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” Unlike the original version, Cash’s reading sounds like a man who has emerged from an illness long enough to get these words out: “I ... won’t ... back ... down.” Is it from an illness that Cash emerges, or is it a sense of taking a beating from the entire musical establishment? You decide.

Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” follows, an acoustic song rendered more powerful than the original by its leanness and the sense that this song was written for the lone man in Black of myth, not for Diamond’s Vegas act.

Even the love songs convey a sense of pain. The inclusion of David Allan Coe’s “Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone” speaks to the hell that June Carter Cash has had to endure in her long marriage to her husband, a fact he acknowledges with the image of a marriage vow based on promises of trouble, discomfort and unwavering devotion.

If this album is notable for just one song, it would be Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat,” a terrifying excursion into the last moments of a death row inmate, complete with the declaration that he committed “a crime for which I’m totally innocent, you know,” a statement that we - and Cash - know isn’t true.
Under Rubin’s wing, Cash has pulled it together for some powerful emotional moments. This might be his most powerful one yet; “I began to warm and chill to objects and their feel/The ragged cup, the twisted mop/The face of Jesus in my Soup/Those sinister dinner deals/The meal trolley’s wicked wheels/ A hook bone rising from my food/ And all things either good or not good.”

It’s a song you wouldn’t have heard Cash perform on his legendary prison concert albums, and Cash admits in the liner notes that those days seem so far away, even after a visit with Merle Haggard, who saw Cash perform at San Quentin while serving time. “Guards on the catwalk,” Cash remembers.
“Clanging of steel cups for applause. The yelling at me. The men on death row as I walked by. Sites and sounds of San Quentin, years ago. Haggard and I didn’t talk about it.”

Haggard joins Cash for a duet on “I’m Leavin’ Now,” one of the album’s four original Cash compositions. Other famous musicians join him - Norman Blake, Petty guitarist Mike Campbell, Sheryl Crow (on accordion!), Randy Scruggs and Marty Stuart - but the project stays far away from an “all-star jam.” Cash and Rubin will have none of that nonsense.

This album likely will not win a Cash convert if it’s someone’s first exposure to him, but diehard Cash loyalists will treasure it and say, “Nice going, Johnny, hang in there.” And they will pray that the next time will be stronger.

And they, like me, will pray that there will be a next time.

(Karl Rohr teaches history at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee. He can be reached at rohr@wcu.edu)

 

Back to Top

The Smoky Mountain News