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A Major Landmark; Happy Birthday, WSM
Written By Bill Littleton Just imagine: The Grand Ole Opry is seventy-five years old! Wben George Hay, a young man despite his self-applied "Solemn Old Judge" image, began his Saturday evening programmes of music he dubbed "simple as sunshine," Calvin Coolidge was president and America "roared" in celebration of winning the War To End All Wars -- ah, but if only ... Not taking anything away from WSM or the Opry, I'm a tad uncomfortable with the current "where it all began" promo assertions, mostly because of the absence of a definition of "it all." Is 7th & Union the birthplace of the Nashville music industry? Absolutely. No doubt about it, with an undeniable impact on the national and international entertainment situation. But of country music? Acts of circa 1925 vintage not associated with the Opry are numerous and include such luminaries as the Carter Family, Fiddlin' John Carson, Riley Puckett, Clayton McMichen, Gid Tanner, Eck Robertson, Ernest & Hattie Stoneman, Henry Whittier, and, ah, yes, the Willie and Garth of the day, Jimmie Rodgers and Vernon Dalhart, not to suggest there were not others. And, obviously, none of these performers had "invented" anything aside from bringing their own personalities into what they did; they were essentially picking and singing in the manners of their times and cultures, as they and many others had been doing long before such newfangled gadgets as phonograph recordings and radio. Roy Clark's observation that country music has to "come from something; it can't just be made up" remains an anchor in my awareness. The "something" here goes back as far as anyone cares to look, and we honor that history when we avoid automatically and arbitrarily equating "the country music business" with the music itself; indeed, the former needs the latter, but the latter thrived for millenia with little presence of the former. My persistence on this point makes some people uncomfortable, perhaps because going beyond the realm of charts, ratings, and other measuring devices gives the music some sort of mystical power, but to ignore that mystical power is to misunderstand-and-therefore-flounder in the present. The accumulative effect of technology and the related pace of life in our culture have dictated changes in the sound as well as of the marketing of the music, but the music continues to be a connector to those earliest primitive days of civilization from which we and our music emerged together. "We sing old songs today not because they're old," Bill Gaither told a GMA Week songwriting workshop several years ago, "but because they have survived the most demanding marketing process in history: The Folks." The great tunes and songs of earlier centuries that we still hear and perform came about in the midst of a lot of forgettable/forgotten music, much the way we can't forget some songs today and can't remember others. That, Dear Hearts, is the mystical power and its allurement can convince many of us that we surely have great songs in us. The Dream for many is not so much to write hits for money as to write standards for posterity; immortality, no less. "It's simply a matter of getting them written and recorded," The Dream whispers to our souls; "fate will take care of the rest." I've heard estimates over the past few decades of how many young music hopefuls get off the bus in downtown Nashville every week; the most reliable ones have never exceeded ten. Last week, an internet newsletter dedicated to helping songwriters and singers get established boasted more than 7,000 member subscribers. At least three or four similar newsletters with comparable circulations have found me, so we're looking at serious aspirant numbers -- all over the world! Seventy-five years from now, it won't be the "too country/not country enough" controversy we remember; it'll be the songs and the performers who survive "The Folks" -- important point: by touching the hearts of successive generations, just as it has always been, whether we're talking about Amadeus Mozart, Stephen Foster, Fanny J. Crosby, or Hank Williams. Predicting the future of country music is somewhat pointless within that historical perspective, yet we know that a variable proportion of every generation will succomb to that mystical power and try to touch the hearts of the rest of the world. It's a human thing and agrarian cultures are archeologically older than urban cultures -- those of us who honor that "country" heritage certainly aren't going to fade away just because most of us live in cities these days. It's no surprise to those who pay attention that the future is already here. It would take CNN's 24/7 staff to document the Internet's impact on the entertainment arts and the changes and challenges that pop up like targets in a shooting gallery, yet the critical changes will have to come in our individual perceptions of all this technology. Larry Megill recently had a long conversation with Joe Nolan, who is a veritable star of MP3.com and is building a viable performing career without radio. A condensation of Joe's take on the matter is that a focus on the tangible CD or tape a customer takes out of a store is "old think;" what counts in cybermarketing of music is the quality of the music and the imaginativeness of promotion -- people will take a listen and either download or don't, and the choices are becoming so numerous the quality has got to be there. Tompall Glaser recently voiced optimism for music on the web: "Since tape recording came along, there have been people who got our music without paying for it and there will always be some of that, but the industry will work out a way for us to get paid for at least most of it; just think, we can put out whatever we feel good about and somebody out there will buy it, since it's going all over the world." Did I say "radio" a few lines back? Oh, yeah, we all remember radio. A hot new player in the game is cybercasting and is being embraced by established radio entities and independent newcomers alike. Dick Shuey is among the latter; I asked him how his venture works and how it's going: "TWANGTOWNUSA.COM is a domain name that I own lock, stock, 'n' barrel," he replied. "It is currently non-profit, so no licensing is required. I'm sure you are aware that the RIAA is trying to change that. Licensing would be with the server, which in my case is the REALPLAYER. "Being an independent web radio station, I don't have to answer to anybody. I can program who and what I want -- real country music, gospel, and bluegrass 'round the clock. I play a mix of 50 per cent traditional classics and new indie artists product. "Of course, I'm not the only web radio station blazing new ground -- they are springing up daily on the Internet, and, I might add, with pretty darn good Country Music. They are filling the gap generated by the Radio Consultants." Dick's closing comment highlights the most fascinating element of the Internet: within the concept of "old think" as in wattage, TWANGTOWNUSA and WSMONLINE, to use interestingly diverse examples, have exactly the same geographic coverage -- ANYWHERE someone can afford a computer and there's access to an Internet server!! Promotion clout is less democratic, but a great deal of the appeal of independent webcasters is that Major Radio, as a genre, has forsaken the traditional niche markets -- the same mournings from country fans can be heard in a variety of dialects and accents. Also, the nature of the 'Net endows enormous navigational power to site links, which means that he who has the most links, easily equated to who has the most friends or at least the most time to spend online, often get the most hits. So the little guys conceiveably have an edge, although WSM's unique role in the international music situation gives it a built-in edge of its own. I used to wade through the static to listen to the Grand Ole Opry in South Carolina; just imagine folks from Albania to Zimbabwe getting to hear the longest running radio show in history. Hey, that's pretty cool. And that brings us back to where we started. Happy Birthday, WSM Grand Ole Opry. The part of "it all" that began with you has done us proud.
written by Bill Littleton -- from thebridgeworks for October, |