In this video, Johnny Cash shows that he could have had another career as an Elvis impersonator. The clip is apparently from 1959 when Cash was 27 years old and touring as an opening act for Elvis Presley.
Before his performance of “Heartbreak Hotel,” Cash clarifies that he is not impersonating Elvis directly. He explains it is “an impersonation of a rock and roll singer impersonating Elvis is what this really is.”
Perhaps he wanted to add the extra layer of making fun of an impersonator rather than Elvis to somewhat insulate himself from making fun of his former colleague at Sun Records. In fact, the two men admired each other, and Elvis Presley even introduced Cash’s future wife June Carter to the wonder of Johnny Cash’s music.
Who is your favorite Elvis impersonator? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On April 6, 2016, Merle Haggard passed away from complications from pneumonia on his 79th birthday in the state where he was born, California. Along with the likes of Johnny Cash and George Jones, Haggard was one of real legends of country music.
In my younger years, I learned of Haggard’s music through songs like 1969’s “Okie from Muskogee” and 1970’s “Fightin’ Side of Me,” which may have made me resistant at first due to the apparent political nature of those songs. But eventually as an adult, I fell in love with his music, his voice, and his Bakersfield influence. I found fondness for the above songs and fell in love with many others, like “Tulare Dust” and “They’re Tearing the Labor Camps Down.”
Heck, the man not only did a tribute album to Jimmy Rodgers, he learned the fiddle just so he could do a tribute album to Bob Wills, The Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (1970). He was the real deal, both as a singer and as a songwriter.
One of my favorite Merle Haggard songs is “Kern River.” The lyrics written by Haggard tell a mysterious and haunting tale about loss and regret. In it, the singer is an old man in the mountains looking back on his life and a river from his youth, Kern River, which he will never swim again. He recalls that “It was there I first met her / It was there that I lost my best friend.” And it is only later in the song where you realize that the “her” was also his best friend who got swept away by the river.
The most beautiful line in the song, for me, is in the chorus. The singer now lives on a lake, and he laments, “And I may drown in still water / But I’ll never swim Kern River again.” Something about that line breaks my heart every time, just the way my heart is breaking today at the loss of the country great.
In this video, Merle Haggard performs “Kern River” on a country talk show in 1984 before the song was even released the following year. Check it out.
What is your favorite Merle Haggard song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle are releasing a new album, appropriately titled Colvin & Earle. To give us a taste of their new music, the duo have made available one of the songs from the album called “You’re Right (I’m Wrong).”
Colvin’s and Earle’s on-stage collaborations go back decades, and Colvin featured an excellent cover of Earle’s “Someday” on her 1994 album of covers, Cover Girl. The new album from the pair of singer-songwriters also will include them both singing Earle’s “Someday,” as well as other songs, including a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”
On “You’re Right (I’m Wrong)” the two harmonize on a gritty rock song. Earle explained to Rolling Stone that the song is “the darkest piece on the record — a little scary even for Shawn and myself.” Check it out.
Colvin and Earle release Colvin & Earle on June 10, 2016.
This week, Michael Stipe appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to pay tribute to the late David Bowie. It was a rare recent public performance by the former lead singer of R.E.M. and a moving way to honor Bowie with a performance of “The Man Who Sold the World.”
Accompanied only by piano, a bearded Stipe sang a haunting version of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World.” Check it out. [2018 Update: The video of the performance is no longer available, but the video below contains the audio of Stipe’s appearance.]
Stipe is also taking part in two New York City David Bowie tribute concerts this week. One will be at Carnegie Hall on Thursday, March 31 and the other will be at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, April 1. You may watch a live stream of the April 1 tribute concert at musicofdavidbowie.com with a small donation that goes to the Melodic Caring Project, a non-profit that helps bring streaming music performances to kids in hospitals.
A new interactive video brings to life Jeff Buckley‘s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman.” The song appears on Buckley’s recent compilation You and I, an album of songs that the late singer recorded in 1993.
The interactive video allows you to choose different story lines that result in different music too, reportedly featuring 73 story cells with more than 16,000 possible combinations.
The interactive video was created by the design studios of Interlude and Blind. While you watch, click on various blocks to follow the “story,” and you periodically get chances to add instrumentation to the track too. Note that you may repeatedly click on the same blocks to see the different possibilities too.
[UPDATE: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available]
The new album from Jeff Buckley, who died in 1997, features eight cover songs and two originals. You And I was released March 11, 2016.
What was your favorite part of the video’s story? Leave your two cents in the comments.
was released March 11, 2016.