Editorial: Those Sad, Country Songs

Keith Whitley

Growing up with a dad who graduated high school in 1951 (when 11th grade was the last year of high school), I was lucky enough to pick-up on many of the artists that he listened to – and loved – in the ’50′s and ’60′s. Some of his favorite were Webb Piece, Faron Young, Jim Reeves and Hank Williams, Sr.

He was lucky enough to see Hank, Sr. play at the Opry, and later in life, have a drink with Charley Pride. He had enough bad luck in his life, so he was due.

Part of the great thing about country music of the 1940′s to 1960′s was the vast number of artists who had a propensity to sing gut-wrenching, heart-breaking songs – so-much-so that it became of punch-line of the era. Its a punch-line that still exists today, despite the fact that the genre has produced one or two decent acts in the last 20 years.

When I was in college, I started buying albums by some of the country super-stars of my dad’s era. Not a lot, but a few. After my dad passed in 1998, I bought a few more. I’m still working on building that back-catalog, so over this past Winter, I picked up one the last greatest hits albums missing from my collection. It was one for Lefty Frizzell.

Frizzell had ton of hits throughout his career. Most of them were those classic, fiddle lead-in, up-tempo songs. But two of his most recognizable songs are also two of the saddest country songs ever written: “The Long Black Veil” and “I Never Go Around Mirrors”.

A lot of people know “The Long Black Veil” from Johnny Cash – and it’s a fine version – but I think Frizzell’s version is superior.

But to me, it is “I Never Go Around Mirrors” that’s Frizzell’s best – and maybe the saddest, cry-in-your-beer, country song written. But his version is not the best version of the song.

That honor belongs to Keith Whitley.

Growing up where I grew up – growing up with the people I grew up with – country music was a defining factor in life. After 1987, every boy with an ounce of musical talent was singing trying to be Randy Travis. But it was another artist that had captured the attention of me and my dad.

It was Keith Whitley.

Whitley first hit the country scene in 1984 and in five year’s time, he was dead of a drug overdose in 1989. But in 1988 he released an album that altered the way I became emotionally evolved in music. In 1988, he released, Don’t Close Your Eyes.

There were several outstanding singles released from that album. Three of them, “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” “When You Say Nothing at All” and “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” all went to number 1. I have a lot of fond memories of riding home from school in my dad’s “green monster” pick-up truck while singing “I’m No Stranger To The Rain” with him when it came on the radio.

But it was Whitley’s cover of Frizzell’s “I Never Go Around Mirrors” that really blew my mind.

When I bought the tape, I didn’t really know of the song. It hadn’t been released on the radio and I was unaware it had been a hit for Frizzell in 1973. But after the first time I heard it, I rewound the tape and played it again. And then again. And again and again – I did this repetitively for what was probably two hours.

(There are only a few songs that fit into that play-it-27-times-in-a-row-in-one-night category: “Anything, Anything” by Dramarama; “Rape Me” by Nirvana, “Unhappy Birthday” by The Smiths, “untitled” by Interpol, and a few other compatriots.)

I wore out that Whitley tape listening to that song, although I still have it. It’s a perfect song – and perfectly sung by Whitley. A lot of songs talk about a reality. This song was reality. It pulled my heart out, stomped on it, and did it in a way that I couldn’t help but want that feeling again.

I go through phases where I forget about music as reality. I’ll be honest, I can’t relate to the upbringing of Vampire Weekend or Animal Collective. They might as well be from Pluto. So, I guess, it’s understandable why I don’t connect with their music either.

I’m back at a place in life where I need to connect to music again. Not because some blog says so. I’m not that cool. I never was. (Nor am I that young.)

I’m just son of a blue-collar worker, trying to get by.

My dad, he had a tough, sad life. The music of his era, it was tough and sad, too. My life is a cake-walk in comparison to his. And most of the music I listen to is equally as gentile.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a shock that most of the music of this watered-down world doesn’t leave me inspired. I’m not inspired by this watered-down world either.