Country Music Month: The Texas Connection - George Strait

I started in the radio business in November, 1979. A little over a year later, in 1981, I played a song called Unwound and it was at that moment that I became a George Strait fan. Damn, this guy from Poteet, Texas was country - honky tonk sound? Check. Fiddle? Steel guitar? Lyrics about drinkin' and lost love? Check, check and check. My faith in real country music had been restored. That restoration of faith was confirmed when Strait followed Unwound with the release of  Down and Out. Here we are thirty odd years later and George Strait is still making hit records. Early in Strait's career, a songwriter named Dean Dillon was the genius behind many of Straits hits. A partial list of those songs include the previously mentioned Unwound and Down and Out plus: Easy Come Easy Go, I've Come to Expect It from You, Ocean Front Property , The Chair and more. I think it's safe to say that George Strait and Dean Dillon made each other wealthy men - and Country Music Legends. The collaboration between these two men is so historic that I couldn't, in good conscience, not link to a Dean Dillon song actually performed by Dean Dillon.

George Strait has achieved a status in country music reserved for few men and women. He's earned Entertainer of the Year, Song of the Year, Single of the Year, Album of the Year and Everything Else of the Year awards without compromising his integrity and belief in what country music and its traditions are all about for over three decades. I am going to link to a George Strait YouTube page that features many of his hits, the songs that have set the standard for the Country Music stars of tomorrow. You can read more about George's rise to fame and some of the hurdles, including the death of his daughter, he overcame to be the man and artist he is today at this link.

Maine Minutiae : Apples, Harvests and Other Stuff

It's been a while since we've done a list of festivals and goings on in Maine. As the second weekend of October 2010 approaches, I found a list of things to do for the remainder of the month. something good is bound to be near you, so let's get down to bidness:

• The Fryeburg Fair  continues through Sunday with pig scrambles, flower shows, livestock shows and, of course, plenty of food. Click the link at the start of this paragraph for a list of all the daily activities. While you're in Fryeburg be sure, be sure to stop by and see Arthur and Mary Ellen at the Bears and More booth, where you can choose a bear or another loveable pet and lots clothes and accessories to make your bear unique to you. Watch Arthur fill the bear with cushy goodness at "The Filling Station" and you'll have a snuggle buddy for years to come! Be sure to tell Arthur and Mary Ellen you read about them on Three States Plus One.
• Acadia Oktoberfest and Food Festival is my kind of community get-together. Going on through Sunday, beer, wine and cheese headline this weekend in Acadia, but there are about a million other things to do, so you are bound to  find something that trips your trigger. 
• Homecoming Weekend at Sugar Loaf goes on through Sunday the 10th. They've lined up an impressive list of events at this year's Homecoming Weekend, including a sunrise canoe trip Saturday morning at 5:45 and an auction to benefit the Western Maine Center for Children. Get lots more info at the link.
• Farmington Apple Festival - The Apple Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Fairbanks School Neighborhood Association, on Route 4 two miles north of downtown Farmington. A celebration of everything apple! Apple Pressing, crafters, apple/fall novelties, food sale, luncheon, apples for sale, kid's corner. For info phone (207) 778-3808 or 778-4272. (copied and pasted from maine.info) 

If your weekend schedule is already filled up with things to do, click here to see more community events scheduled for later this month throughout the state of Maine.

Country Music Month: The Texas Connection - TNT

TNT

The town of  Seminole, Texas is the birthplace of two of the biggest Country Music stars of the '70s and '80s - Larry Gatlin and one of my all time favorites, Tanya Denise Tucker. Tanya Tucker (TNT) exploded onto the Country Music scene in 1972 at the age of thirteen with a song that remains a Country Classic today, Delta Dawn. Her way beyond her years vocals and style belied the fact that she was still barely a teenager. Over the years Tanya churned out hit after hit after hit on the Country Charts and as she grew up cultivated a sex kitten image that garnered a lot of notice from Country Music fans. In the vernacular, she was hot! That sexy, party girl persona was more than just an act, Tanya was, shall we say, an "independent" young lady, a lady Outlaw. Songs like Texas When I Die did nothing to disprove her images. Some of her songs did, however, show a softer side to this rowdy girl. Songs like Two Sparrows in a Hurricane (my favorite TNT song) were tender ballads of love, dedication and perseverance that tell a story of young love growing into a lifetime of commitment and devotion between a man and woman. Tanya could be rowdy and raunchy one minute, then tender and retrospective the next.

Here's a short list of Tanya's hits that I think are her best songs, in no particular order:

• Love Me Like You Used To - A damn good song of a love that's lost its spark and Tanya's plea to her lover to rekindle the romance.
• Lizzie and the Rainman - I really like this song because it reminds me of Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show. Good story in the song.
• What's Your Mama's Name? - Pretty heavy subject in the song. Just remember she was only 15 when she sang it.

Looking back, it's very difficult to believe that it's been almost forty years since that little thirteen year old girl sang about Delta Dawn. Wikipedia has a pretty good bio on Tanya if you want to delve into the details. If you'd rather take a trip back in time to catch some of Tanya's hits, YouTube has a great channel with some of TNT's best songs.

Tanya Denise Tucker, Lady Outlaw. And a damned fine performer.

Country Music Month: The Texas Connection - Halls Of Fame, Texas Style

I am going to spare you of my usual bullshit wit and expertise on Country Music in this post. The reasons are twofold - 1) the links I am embedding in this article don't need any nitwit expert opinion because it's hard to improve upon their content and 2) the Texas Rangers made the playoffs for the first time since 1999 and I can actually watch the games as long as they are in the playoffs! We don't see the Rangers on the tube much here in Maine, so I am pretty stoked about it.

Today is the sixth day of Country Music Month and would have been my Dad's 72nd birthday. Today also marks the 28th anniversary of my Grandma's (Dad's Mom) burial, so it's a bit of a melancholy day to say the least. I was very close to Grandma and there has not been a day in the last 28 years that I haven't thought about her. I love and miss you both, Dad and Grandma.

I am going to post some links for you to explore at your leisure. I looked at all the sites that will be linked and they all are outstanding places to learn more about country music history and your favorite artists and maybe some favorites of your Dad or Grandma.

Texas Country Music Hall of Fame - located in Carthage in East Texas, this facility is an outstanding tribute to the best of Texas country music. Wikipedia has a list of the Best of the Best.

Texas Music Office - this site has a list of names representing the Cream of the Crop in Texans who have made a name for themselves in the field of Country Music. Each name is clickable and will re-direct you to a page with more info on that artist.

I've gotta run - the game is on. :)  Thanks for stopping by!

Toby the Pin Cushion! UPDATED! (scroll down)

Over the course of today I will feel like a voodoo doll. I am gonna be poked, prodded, x-rayed and have enough blood drawn to hold a Dracula Family Picnic. I just hope the lady who draws my blood has had a lovely day up to that point. Drawing blood... point...I made a funny. The medical powers that be are going to run eight different tests on me to see what's up with the root causes of my migrating rheumatoid arthritis (hey, it's legal migrating RA, not illegal migrating RA!). I also have fibromyalgia. My understanding is that I may have sort of immune system deficiency that adds to this problem, but I will know more when the test results are in. Besides the pain of the RA and the muscle weakness from the fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue is also a result of all this bullshit.

I am normally a one man ant hill, scurrying through life at a full tilt boogie, but Mother Nature and Middle Age have conspired to slow me down a little. I am by no means complaining. I know that there are millions of people far worse off than I am, and many of them live life with gusto and a smile, so I figure I can at least do the same without bitchin' about a little RA and the other stuff. I have a lot of life left to enjoy with my grown up sons, my two little girls and my grand kids, I just have to do it a little more deliberately. Like Waylon Jennings once sang, "I may be used, but baby I ain't used up."

Instead of a regular post today, I wanted to put up links for some of my favorite websites. They cover various subjects, from politics to sports to technology, and some may use salty language, but they are cool sites to visit.

 The List:

Politics
Ace of Spades HQ - This is the first blog I ever visited a few years ago and is without a doubt my favorite. It's mostly about politics, but Ace covers other stuff as well. Pick out a post and go to the comment section. The "Morons" (Ace's readers) are flat ass funny and damn smart people. I love this blog.
JammieWearingFool - Jammie is a Jersey guy who covers politics and current events with a conservative slant. He's built this blog up to one of the top blogs in the country in just a few years. I visit it daily.
Nuke Gingrich - Fellow Texan no2liberals has a great take on current events and other topics at his blog. He takes no prisoners! Be sure to stop by!

Technology
 Gizmodo   
Lifehacker
These are two blogs about general technology stuff, but both have something for all level of computer user to appreciate. The also have very good comment sections and are quite helpful with new readers who have questions about the subject at hand.

Sports
 Texas Sports - All things Longhorn Sports. Enuff said.
The Smoakhouse Forums - If you want to know anything about sports - pro, college, high school - David Smoak is The Man. I know David and he's the shit when it comes to sports. He hosts a radio show on KTBB AM in Tyler. The station streams its programming online at this link. Just click on the "Listen Live" button. Smoak is on in the afternoon from 3 - 7, I think. It's been a while.


Pay these sites a visit. They are all top-notch in their fields of interest. I'll try to post a summary of the day's events when I get home, but I am not sure what to expect as far as any medication I'll be administered during my hospital visit. Make it a great day, y'all!


Adios,
Toby

UPDATE: I "donated"  twelve(!) vials of blood for tests whose names sounded like alphabet soup. These tests will hopefully give the doctors some information on what is going on. I guess, we'll see. I also had about 10 or 12 x-rays taken in some body positions that I won't discuss in mixed company. Let's just say I'm glad they won't be on the internet. :)

The Maine Country Music Hall of Fame

Big Boots to Fill**

Country music in Maine is very popular, if Arbitron (radio's version of the Nielsens) is to be believed. I couldn't locate the most recent ratings for the the biggest markets in Maine, Bangor and Portland, but I did locate some ratings from the last year. Those charts show that the top rated radio station for Bangor plays Country Music. This ratings chart shows that two of the top three stations in Portland, Maine's largest city, are running a country music format.

Maine is not, however, known as a place that produces a great number of country music stars, like, say Texas or Tennessee. As a matter of fact, I did several online searches for country music stars from Maine and I came across exactly one that had a hit song I could remember - Dick Curless, with 1965's A Tombstone Every Mile. Curless also had ten other songs that charted between 1965 and 1972. This is not to say that Maine singers suck or anything, it simply means that the numbers favor larger states. For instance, Texas has about 25,000,000 people and Maine has about 1.5 million. Hell, Texas has 1.5 million country singers performing at local clubs around the state on any given Friday night. How many of those 1.5 million singers will ever become a major recording star? Two? Three? It's a numbers game. Put another way, what are the top three states in the country that turn out more college football stars than all the rest? Texas, California and Florida. Those three states account for, when added together, over eighty million people.! It's only natural that they would produce a larger number of anything like star players and singers, by the sheer force of mathematics.

The numbers mentioned above do not, however, dampen the enthusiasm Mainers have for Country Music. I just happened across this story in the Portland Press Herald. The Maine Country Music Hall of Fame has finally found a home, if only temporary, after all the items donated to it had been in storage for 31 years! the MCMHOF will be housed in the Silver Spur Club in Mechanic Falls until a permanent facility can be found. In the meantime, performers' clothes, sheet music, photos and other memorabilia from Maine's Country Music past will be on display at the Silver Spur for the public to see. I feel sure that if any of the old timers are hangin' around the venue when you visit, they'd be happy to share some stories of their time as stars in their own right with you. Although national recognition eluded many of the Hall's members during their singing careers, their dedication to finally finding a home for the artifacts of yesterday's country musicians of Maine, is indeed worthy of all the attention that it can garner, and inspirational to a new generation of country music singers and would-be superstars of today.

**Photo from Portland Press Herald**

Country Music Month: The Texas Connection - Bob Wills UPDATED (scroll down)

If you look back through the history of Country Music you'll find times when an artist came along that has such an impact on the genre that he/she takes the music to an entirely new level in the eyes, the ears actually, of the listening public. One such time was in 1929 when a young man named James Robert Wills brought forth a new type of Country Music called Western Swing. This was as big a happening to Country Music as when Elvis later got the world of Rock N Roll all shook up (insert Jordanaires backing vocals...uh huh huh). More on that in a minute.

On March 5, 1905, a baby boy was born in Old Union, Texas (near Groesbeck, in Limestone County) who was destined to play the fiddle and change the face of Country Music. James Robert Wills came into this world  a bit of a premonition, the son of a statewide fiddle champion. Each member of the Wills family played an instrument, so holding  dances in their four room house was a regular thing for Jim Bob (as young Wills was called) and family. Bob learned traditional music from his family and what were called "Negro songs" from the black people who picked cotton on the Wills cotton farm. Later in life, Wills noted that until he was seven or eight, he hardly ever played with white kids other than his siblings, but was in the cotton fields singing and playing with the black children. At age sixteen, Bob hopped on a train and traveled around from place to place before moving back home and attending barber school. Bob continued to play the fiddle and travel extensively in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, meeting future Texas Playboys band members like Tommy Duncan along the way. Eventually getting a daily radio gig on 50,000 watt KVOO in Tulsa, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were heard by a large audience every day and soon major success would come their way.( detailed bio of Bob Wills). Churning out hit after hit, the American public went crazy over Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Bob Also starred in movies, did rodeo shows, almost anything to to share Western Swing with the world. There are so many songs to list, I am gonna make it easy on you and me by posting this link to YouTube with many of Wills' classic songs.

Bob Wills musical influence extended to some of the greatest country artists of all time - Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson among them. Haggard did a tribute album to Wills in 1970 called "A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World"  with Wills and The Texas Playboys as guests. If you like Western Swing, find this album! It's a work of art. Willie did an album of Bob Wills songs with Ray Price and it, too, is a great piece of music (sorry, I can't recall the name of it). More Bob Wills information and music can be found on the Official Bob Wills Website.

 UPDATE: My Blog Buddy no2liberals provides this this link to his site with some great info on boogie woogie/swing music!