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#75 May-Jun 2008 {Buddy Miller}
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#74 Mar-Apr 2008 {String Bands Special}
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#73 Jan-Feb 2008 {Shelby Lynne}
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#72 Nov-Dec 2007 {John Fogerty}
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Hank Ballard, best-known for writing the early rock ‘n’ roll smash “The Twist”, died March 2 after battling throat cancer. Ballard, 75, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Rusty Draper, a country and pop singer whose hits included 1953’s country top-10 “Gambler’s Guitar”, died of pneumonia February 28. He was 80.

Tommy Thompson, a founding member of North Carolina string-band revivalists the Red Clay Ramblers, died January 24, 2003, after struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 65.

Frank Edmonson, a longtime road manager for Alison Krauss and soundman for Hot Rize, died on November 28, 2002.

On January 27, 2003, Joel Svatek, who worked with a variety of nightclubs and bands in Austin, Texas, was killed January 27 when his car was struck by a drunk driver. He was 33 years old.

MAE AXTON, co-writer of Elvis Presley’s smash hit “Heartbreak Hotel” and mother of songwriter Hoyt Axton (Three Dog Night’s “Joy To The World”), passed away on April 9 in the Nashville area.

I have a clear memory of sitting on my grandmother’s lap when I was five-years-old and listening to her beloved tube radio in the darkened back bedroom of the shotgun duplex that she and my grandfather rented on the corner of 67th Street and Navigation Boulevard in the hardscrabble section of Houston, known as the East End. And I still associate the acrid smell of overheated power transformers and dust-caked electronics with the sound of the Carter Family performing live on radio station KXEG in Del Rio, Texas. Neither she nor I knew at the time that we were, in fact, listening to rebroadcasts of live transcripts recorded in San Antonio and aired on radio station XERA in Del Rio in the late thirties and early forties. (Johnny Cash often joked about XERA’s broadcast signal being so strong that he could listen to the Carter Family singing live on a barbed wire fence in Dyess Arkansas.) On my grandmother’s aproned lap, with the dry and beautiful sounds of A.P., Sara, Maybelle and the Carter girls filling the four corners of that tiny bedroom, I knew for the first time the feeling that I was loved.

The first time I heard the name June Carter was when she and her sisters, Helen and Anita were introduced during their segment of one of these broadcasts. At the time of the original transmission, she was nine-years-old, Helen and Anita perhaps twelve and seven. My memory of the sound they made didn’t so much change over the years as become more itself. June did a comedy routine, the gist of which I can’t remember, but the sound of her voice remains, as clear in my mind today as it was that night in 1955.

Since I wasn’t aware of the time lapse between the original airing and the broadcasts my grandmother and I were listening to, I assumed June was near to my age, and developed a heartfelt crush on this lovely creature whom I had never seen, yet swore someday to marry. (Ironically, Johnny Cash once told me that he too fell in love with his future wife, listening to her on the radio.) But not until I was ten did I learn that the love of my young life was a grown woman.

I first met that grown woman in Los Angeles, in 1978. My fascinating new girlfriend, Rosanne, introduced me to her father, Johnny Cash, and his wife June at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “This is Rodney Crowell,” Rosanne announced confidently. To say I was awestruck would greatly understate the moment. Being introduced to June Carter and Johnny Cash in the same breath was a paralyzing proposition. To whom do I extend my hand? Would it be John, whom I had admired since first hearing his voice come out of the dashboard radio belonging to my father’s borrowed, ’49 Ford? Or would it be June, whom I had loved since childhood?

It was June who broke the spell. Grabbing me in a Poor Valley, Virginia bear hug, she proclaimed, “I can already tell this one’s all right.” I was reeling from the warmth and of her spontaneous affection when she took a step back, placed her hands on both my shoulders, and further sized me up. “Why, I believe the next time I see you, you’ll be wearin’ silk shirts,” she said. “Get on in here and let’s eat something.”

The four of us dined on room service that night, John and June going well out of their way to make me feel welcome. It was a gift of generosity neither would ever retract. The next day I made arrangements with Rosanne to shop for silk shirts.

June Carter Cash collected people. Knowing I was numbered among the vagabonds and dignitaries she held close to her heart is one of my most prized accomplishments. Once you belonged among her Klediment’s—Junespeak for keepsakes— she never stopped reminding you of two things: Friendship is unconditional. Love is eternal.

There was something in the way June carried herself that—along with that fox, auburn hair—can only be described as regal. For the last decade of her life, I fondly addressed her as “The Queen”—and for good reason. She was born the daughter of Maybelle Carter, a founding member of the first gospel and mountain music ensemble ever recorded, was recognized the world over as an ambassador of American culture, and perhaps most importantly, logged 60-plus years as a working performer. If June didn’t possess the credentials to assume the uncommonly wizened, graceful and kind-hearted Minnie Pearl’s vacated throne, who did?

In later years, June was known to rattle and ramble on a bit, but never at the expense of another human being. A review of her comic legacy will show that her humor was based entirely on self-effacement. June possessed the kind of intelligence great comedians are born with—a self-awareness that counsels, make fun of your self, not others.

The second time I met June was at Harrah’s, Lake Tahoe, where Johnny Cash and the Carter Family were performing in the summer of 1978. I was wearing a silk shirt. “Nice,” June said, feeling the shirt’s material and pulling me aside to give pointers on how to handle “the Cash/Carter gauntlet.” “Now you know that John and I think you are good for Rosanne, and we accept you as our own, but nine out of ten people in this big ole entourage are going to think you’re just one more dog come a sniffin’ ’round the girls. It won’t hurt you to hold your own under that kind of scrutiny for a while. They’ll come to know what we already know. I know right where I need to put you until the rest of ‘em warm up.”

June escorted me to the blackjack tables where Mother Maybelle sat behind a stack of chips the size of a small city. “This one needs to sit beside you a while, momma,” June said, laughing. “See what you can do with him.” And so it was that I played my first hand of blackjack under Maybelle Carter’s expert tutelage. After a few hands had been dealt, Peggy Knight, Maybelle’s personal valet, nurse, and gambling companion —and later, June’s longtime personal assistant—leaned around Maybelle and asked rather stridently, “Are you country or rock ‘n’ roll?” “Which would you prefer?” I asked, matching her contentiousness with my own brand of pugnacious cool. “Aw, leave him alone Peggy,” Maybelle chided, “they’ve been trying to answer that question for forty years.”

Here’s my question: What are the odds that a five-year-old boy in love with a mythical child radio star would come to know the object of his affection as a shining example of what a life lived with love, humor and goodwill stands for? As yet, I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know this: I have loved June Carter most of my life, and I will continue to love her until I too leave this beautiful world in a new silk shirt.

(June Carter Cash died May 15, 2003, in Nashville, Tennessee, following complications from heart surgery. She was 73.)

(Editors note: This is a slightly revised version of the article which originally appeared in the July/August 2003 issue.)

Early rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Buddy Knox passed away in February at the age of 65. Knox, a native Texan, and his band the Rhythm Orchids (which also included future Nashville production and boardroom giant Jimmy Bowen), had a #1 hit in 1957 with “Party Doll”, which was recorded at Norman Petty’s Clovis, N.M., studio shortly before Buddy Holly ventured there. In the ’60s Knox embarked on a modestly successful solo career playing more country-oriented material.

Guitarist Robert Buck of folk-pop band 10,000 Maniacs died December 19 of liver failure at age 42. Buck was a founding member of the Jamestown, New York, group and co-wrote (with singer Natalie Merchant) many of the group’s best-known songs, including “These Are Days”, “Hey Jack Kerouac” and “Lilydale”.…

Soul singer James Carr died January 14 of cancer at age 58. Carr was perhaps best-known for his definitive recording of the oft-covered Dan Penn/Chips Moman classic “Dark End Of The Street”.

It’s a bit mind-boggling how many times Greg Leisz put a pedal steel or six-string line to tape over the first half of this decade. There’s Leisz playing with Dwight Yoakam, Victoria Williams, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, k d lang, Matthew Sweet, Peter Case, Dave Alvin, Rosie Flores, Gilliam Welch, Grant Lee Buffalo and the Jayhawks (although the latter is debatable — it seems Greg Leese, not Leisz, is credited as playing on Tomorrow The Green Grass).

More well-rounded rock fans will note his participation on the most recent Smashing Pumpkins and Beck releases, as well as other alt-rocky entries such a Bad Religion and Tommy Stinson’s Bash & Pop. And then there are recent gigs with Brian Wilson, the Ventures, Percy Sledge, Anne Murray and Amy Grant. Some 200 in all, Leisz figures, over the last six years or so.

While considerable less frequent, you might have also noticed a producer credit. Leisz started wearing that hat a few years ago, as it was a natural progression to his collaborative role with artists such as Flores and Alvin. He has had a prominent role in the creation of multiple Flores releases, albums by Tom Russell and Lisa Mednick, and Alvin’s stellar King of California.

But the word “producer” is a title Leisz is not all that comfortable with. “The bottom line is, your name is in really small print, theirs is in really big print. I don’t really like to get too hung up on it,” he says, sitting at the patio table in the backyard of his home in Van Nuys, California. “If I start talking with people about doing a record, usually I’m thinking in terms of just collaboration. The p-word, I don’t even like to bring up.”

When Alvin asked Leisz to take the helm of California, Leisz told the songwriter that if he wanted to make an acoustic record, the first thing he should do is sit down with an acoustic and play the songs repeatedly until he was truly comfortable with them. “That was really the main part of pre-production,” he says. Then, “it was just a matter of getting people to play with it so it would still remain organic.” And at that point, “it’s really about trying to create a sonic landscape for the songs to live in.”

Leisz, who spend his youth checking out the Byrds and Burrito Brothers in the dingy clubs of Hollywood and Orange County, cites Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and early Band recordings as favorites, but he stresses that it’s more about the spontaneity of the performance than any creative knob-twiddling.

“There’s a sense of adventure that’s important to making a record. I’m not afraid to experiment and fail in getting something that’s different. The ideal thing is that you blend what you’re doing and what the other musicians are doing into the life of the song itself so that they become inseparable.”

The song, though, dictates the sound – not the producer, he insists. “The thing you remember about Phil Spector records is Phil Spector more than the Ronettes,” he points out. “It’s not necessarily the best thing for the artist.”

It’s hard to make much sense of the lyrics even after repeated listens – there’s some sort of fixation on mortality, and a lot of images that might connect if you hang out in Harrison’s circle. Still, that doesn’t mean the music is meaningless; Peoria is 34 minutes of meditations on pop music possibilities, almost as if the second half of the Beatles’ career was compressed into eight songs and blended with modern-day samplers and drum machines. (Think what “A Day In The Life” could have been with the equipment Harrison takes for granted.)

(Future Clouds & Radar’s “The Epcot View” from Peoria)

If this sounds academic or dry, not to worry: Peoria is emotionally powerful. There is a sadness, a yearning, a questing for connection which comes across again and again in the music, as the trumpets peal above Harrison’s plaintive voice, as the strings soar after synthesizer squiggles, as sampled audience applause takes on the end of a melodic line. The disc finishes with a huge, majestic chorus of voices, an eerie piano melody, and pounding drums and bass slowly winding down into an unexpected chord that resonates like a question mark, asking if it’s time to start the whole process over again.

Hillbilly/rockabilly guitarist Jimmie Lee Fautheree died June 29 at age 70 from cancer. Fautheree, who played with Faron Young, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce, is best known for the tune “Can’t Find The Doorknob”. Earlier this year, he released an album produced by longtime admirer Deke Dickerson.…

Robert Quine first gained attention for his distinctive guitar playing with punk rock pioneers Richard Hell & the Voidoids. He later became a sought-after sideman, working with Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Marianne Faithfull, Mathew Sweet, Lloyd Cole and others. He died June 5 at age 61, an apparent suicide.…

Rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey scored his biggest hit in 1958 with “Bluebirds Over The Mountain”, later done by the Beach Boys. However, he probably is most remembered for the 8×10 of him in an iconic rockabilly pose that was featured prominently in Rolling Stone’s Illustrated History Of Rock. He died July 12 at age 70 from complications following surgery.