Vanished America, Part Two: "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo"

The "country music" that one hears in today's world of popular entertainment is not country music.  If you wish to hear real country music you must go back to the sources.  For me (and for others of my generation, I suspect) that exploration began with a 1968 album (yes, album) by The Byrds:  Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

At that time (and to this day, come to think of it) country music was anathema to the soi-disant cognoscenti (who are always blinkered and deaf to the real thing) -- they believed that country music was the music of gun-totin', Bible-thumpin' rednecks.  Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman of The Byrds knew better.  Fortunately for us, they stumbled upon Gram Parsons at a time when they needed to add some members to the group.  And the rest, as they say, is history.

Gram Parsons's legacy is a story in itself.  He died in 1973 at the age of 26.  But, before he died, he passed his love of traditional country music on to a generation of  people who might not have otherwise recognized its distinctive American beauty.  The Byrds hired Parsons to play piano (at which he was marginally proficient -- he mainly played guitar), but his enthusiasm convinced McGuinn and Hillman to make a country album.  McGuinn said later that he had merely intended to hire a piano player, but Parsons "exploded out of this sheep's clothing.  God!  It's George Jones!  In a sequin suit!"

                                         Gram Parsons (1946-1973)

Sweetheart of the Rodeo is not a "cross-over" album, or a "fusion" album.  It is a traditional country album by young American musicians (The Byrds were rock stars at the time) who appreciated this unique form of American music.  I am certainly not claiming that The Byrds and Gram Parsons are the ultimate exponents of true country music -- for that, you need to go back to the Carter family, Roy Acuff, and the Louvin brothers and move forward from there.  But please listen to the album -- I recommend starting with "Hickory Wind," "You Don't Miss Your Water," and "One Hundred Years from Now" -- and you will hear American music at its best.

Progress: "England Lies Lost To Silence Now"

I cannot gainsay the importance of freeways and motorways and expressways to the felicity of our Modern World.  I have driven the length and breadth of the U.S.A. on more than one occasion, and there is nothing finer than travelling beneath a huge sky on Interstate 40 out in the Texas Panhandle, heading toward Albuquerque -- particularly if you are listening to Gram Parsons sing "Return of the Grievous Angel" with Emmylou Harris.

And yet, one wonders . . . I have seen, high up on the Great Divide in Wyoming, the remnants of wagon wheel ruts on the Oregon Trail.  And I have seen, just off the Natchez Trace Parkway near the Mississippi River, the sunken, shadowy trail beneath the trees that marks the old Natchez Trace.  In both places you could hear a pin drop.

                      Bridges

The arteries, red lane on lane,
   Cover the engineers' new maps:
England lies lost to silence now:
   On bridges, where old roads cross
The chasm of the new, the idlers
   Stand staring down.  Philosophers
Of the common run, some masticate pipe-stems,
   And seem not to hear the roar in Albion's veins,
As though the quiet, rebegotten as they lean, survived
   Through them alone, its stewards and sustainers,
For all these advancing and disappearing lives.

Charles Tomlinson, The Way In and Other Poems (1974).

                 

                    Winifred McKenzie (1905-2001), "The Tree" (1990)