TAMMY WYNETTE – “Stand By Your Man”
I only have a surface-skimming knowledge of country music, but it’s pretty obvious what’s great about it: songs about grown-up situations and emotions, with clear, well-turned lyrics, whose singers often have gorgeous, expressive voices – what’s to dislike? But stereotypes stick to the genre – particularly at an ocean’s distance: sentiment, traditionalism, religiosity, a willingness to be trite or didactic. These are big hurdles for a lot of listeners, though none of them is as true, as often as the people who utterly dismiss country might imagine. None of them are even a deal-breaker for me – something I like about country is that I can disagree with what’s in a song at the same time as I enjoy it.
Country is a near-total absence from British charts now: in the 1970s, though, there was a clear market for it and the big hits did extremely well – especially if, as in this case, they had year to build up demand before an eventual release. I didn’t know, coming to write this entry, that “Stand By Your Man” wasn’t a 1975 hit, and knowing that Wynette and George Jones divorced in the mid-70s I’d heard bitterness in its tears, and its lyrics that essentially present men as helpless, defective children. My Dad, who loves the song, used to chuckle over Wynette’s multiple real-life marriages, understanding that the pleasure in country lies partly in how it briefly, artfully paints a life and situation in a few minutes. Whether the singer lived the song didn’t seem to be the point.
I may enjoy country but ultimately I don’t share its sensibilities: the lachrymose wobbles and almost-cracks in the vocal do feel over-the-top to me, and the record can’t quite win freshness back from crushing over-familiarity. But the sardonic, wounded intensity of Wynette’s performance is a keeper whether it’s your first time hearing it or your thousandth.
6
I do sympathise, MC, even if your choice of what stood out in the ’88 chart doesn’t necessarily match mine (I’m not sure anything did, frankly). Until they’re forced to play a given chart in full, they’re always going to pick and choose what suits a Sunday afternoon audience. Maybe when the whole station is taken over by Radcliffe and Maconie…
And at a suitable point in the future I’ll have to share memories of the glory that was Mike Sweeney’s Piccadilly Radio show in the late 70s/early 80s, along with the occasional play for a Salford Jets track. A thread on Tammy Wynette is possibly not that suitable point – perhaps I’ll save it for Abba. (If you were there you’ll know why!)
My systems thinking for R2 weekend schedules:
Get rid of huge otiose obstacle that is the Radio 2 Comedy Hour.
Replace with POTP a la Capital Gold format – 2 hours, just one year, full chart and maybe different/better presenter.
Broadcast at 1 pm on Saturday – will inherit Jonathan Ross’ audience; therefore more scope for more eclectic range of music.
Perhaps move Maconie’s Saturday show to Sunday afternoons since it would fit in better with Johnnie Walker coming after it.
Oh, you’ve got to keep Dale, though! I always find the occasional personal touches that refer back to his record-buying childhood, and DJing seventies youth slightly moving, and mercifully free of projected credibility: “Oooh! This is one of my favourites. At number seven, it’s Matt Monroe!”, etc.
What could certainly be improved is his script, though. Sample annoyance: “‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’ was the biggest-selling Motown single in Britain in the sixties. Amazing!” To which I find myself replying “Well, what’s amazing about that then? Something had to be!”
Well yes but more often than not it’s just “good record,” “good single, that,” “good dance track” and Phil Swern’s statistics damned statistics (and frequently wrong statistics at that) and you can tell Dale’s sitting in a damp basement pre-taping it and he’s not really bothered. Does it really matter whether “Cross My Broken Heart” was the third of Sinitta’s nine Top 40 hits?
One presenter who might work, if he’s still around – Paul Burnett.
Or else keep Dale but hire me to write the scripts.
Interesting to read people talking so thoughtfully about moving away from “following the charts”, without defaulting to the (to my mind) illusory “it all went rubbish!” defence. I like the Danny Baker quote about turning 26 – which happens in my case to be in 1988, in the week that some of us recently discussed at length on my blog. As it was the year of Bros & Kylie & Tiffany, and also the year of acid house and its attendant genres, I can well remember some of my contemporaries throwing up their hands in horror and deciding that Enough Was Enough.
None of this explains why, at the ripe old age of 46, I still follow the charts, even if not to the same exacting degree that I did when I was 26. Some might say it was a case of arrested developement – but then, it’s not as if chart music makes up more than a fraction of my total listening. All I can say is that I still find developments in chart pop interesting, and that I have yet to be alienated by any of these developments (oh alright, nu-metal left me stone cold, but it was quick to pass).
But then, since I was listening to music that was considered “too old” for me at the age of 12, it doesn’t surprise me that I’m listening to music that’s “too young” for me at 46. I absolutely always knew that this was going to happen, and I know it’s unusual, but then I’ve always resisted being shoe-horned into age/background-related demographics… don’t fence me in!
Oh, Dale’s always had funny taste, dating back to his Radio Trent days (“Key Largo” by Bertie Higgins, anyone?), but I’ve always liked his enthusiasm, eg. when he played Irene Cara’s “Flashdance” on import 12″ and declared it the best single ever made!
Yes but “Flashdance”! That’s like Peter Powell saying that Tron is the greatest film ever made “apart from other ones.”
Like Mike, i too listened to music “too old” for me from the ages of approx 10-16 and bought no contemporary records at all but, oddly enough, still listened to the charts every tues on Gary Davis’s Bit in the Middle with great interest.
The most distressing thing i’ve found about the current top 40 is that from my personal experience it seems to no longer hold much interest to young people.I would’nt be too suprised if I was chatting to someone in their mid-40s or even mid 30s about music and found that they were not up to speed with, say, Basshunter or Scouting for Girls. However in the job i recently left i was working w/ people aged mainly between 17 and 23 and none of them seemed to pay any attention to the charts whatsoever. Most of them seemed much more interested in the music of the 80s or 90s. Whenever i tried to turn conversation to new chart hits they seemed either disinterested or ignorant. It was very odd. Is this common or was i merely working with a bunch of deeply ungroovy people?
You’re lucky – in my workplace, no one’s that interested in music, full stop!
Not being up to speed with Basshunter or Scouting For Girls, however, is forgivable.
Totally agree- In fact Scouting for Girls have recently been awarded the honour being IMO THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD EVER.
If u happen to be reading this, guys- well done!
(btw the band they overtook in this coveted position will thankfully not be bothering us here at Popular till we reach 1991..no spoilers, mind..)
It’s funny. When I was a sixth former my advocacy of, say, The Sundays, The Pixies or My Bloody Valentine was a source of great derision from my peers, but is now a source of retrospective cool with the undergraduates, “interested in the music of the 80s or 90s”, that I teach. I think that I’d have prefered to have had the credibility at the time, though!
Entirely predictable question: what were your sixth form peers actually into?
(entirely uneducated guesses: Gn’R, Runrig, Deacon Blue)
My 13 year old niece is a big Scouting For Girls fan, and was even on the phone last night trying to blag a place onto the guest list for their Nottingham show. (I’ve got more in common with her 9 year old sister, who I’m taking to see Girls Aloud.)
When we were all teenagers together, my three step-siblings had next to zero interest in the singles charts, out-voting me every week on Top Of The Pops versus The Bionic Woman (or was it the Six Million Dollar Man, I can’t recall). It was an early indicator that people who maintain an active interest in current chart music have perhaps always been in the minority.
Good question – Guns ‘n’ Roses, Eurythmics, Beverly Craven, Fine Young Cannibals, Lisa Stansfield, Deacon Blue. Runrig never made much of an impression in Eltham!
Oh, and up ’til 1989 I was at a top public school in South London, where U2 were much bigger than anything else. Move a few miles down the road to London’s biggest comprehensive and nobody liked them.
I think we’ve found POTP‘s target demographic here!
If only the young ‘uns i worked with who were “interested in the music of the 80s or 90s” were into Pixies, MBV etc.
It was actually more like Ocean Color Scene, INXS and the Bluetones!
This week’s definition of hell: “The Riverboat Song” on autorepeat forever and ever and ever.
Ah, “The riverboat song”. For some reason, my band covered that in the late 90s, much to my chagrin, and I had to learn to play it (as lead guitarist), and hated every moment of rehearsing and playing it week after week. In a way, I was glad the band split up, just so I didn’t have to play it again.
Good stuff on this thread – who says a little digression does a man harm?
Getting a little back on topic tho, I just wish this hadn’t been the only #1 to feature Wynette.
But it’s interesting what will unite people, musically. I work with two categories of people – members aged 37-50, but mostly in their mid-40s, and staff (26 – 32, apart from aged me).
The senior statesman of the outfit read out from The Scotsman last week that Leonard Cohen is playing Edinburgh Castle. I immediately called my other half and began an “Edinburgh Castle or O2?” discussion. The 26 year old, immediately piped up – “Get me one!” (but he’s Canadian, so it could have been a ‘can’t miss the legendary compatriot’-type thing), and the 32-year old, said he wanted one, too. The bemused 50-year old immediately instructed the American interns to make sure nothing sharp was left lying around the office. Only for one of them to enquire “Who’s Leonard Cohen?”…
In the end we opted for the O2. Edinburgh seats don’t seem to be on sale yet.
Don’t know about ol’ Tammy but I’m sorely tempted by Dolly, same venue a couple of weeks earlier. If anyone had told me 20 years ago I’d be in the market for that one day, I’d have had a fit! Perhaps as you get older you just see your life turning into the narrative of a country song -”Something about motherhood this time; the song already had a truck”, as Harry Chapin said.
Anne – Getting older may indeed see one’s life turning into the narrative of a country song. Waldo’s example would be when I suffered a touch of the old Chalfonts a couple of years ago, a clear acknowledgment to Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”.
Apropos Dolly, interesting titbit (ahem) on the radio last night lifted from a recent National Enquirer interview:
“When I talk to a man, I can always tell what he’s thinking by where he is looking. See, if he is looking at my eyes, he is looking for intelligence. If he is looking at my mouth, well, he is looking for wit and wisdom. But if he is looking anywhere else except my chest he is looking for another man!”
As Mr Maconie remarked (for it was he): “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Ah yes, but nowadays if you avert your eyes from Dolly’s chest and scan towards her knees, you are still looking at her chest. Thus you are not a poof.
Today’s definition of hell: The Magic Numbers “performing” “Islands In The Stream” on that beyond terrible Guilty Pleasures show on ITV the other weekend.