Tag: Roy Clark

Do You Believe Dean Martin Making Social Commentary In “Do You Believe This Town”?

In the late 1960s, even Dean Martin took a crack at recording some social commentary songs, including the hidden gem “Do You Believe This Town”

Dean Martin is known for his fantastic singing and his humor more than for his social commentary. But in 1969, with so much going on the U.S., he released an album with some social commentary, including the wonderful “Do You Believe This Town.”

“Do You Believe This Town” appeared on Dean Martin’s 1969 album, I Take a Lot of Pride In What I Am, featuring a title track written by Merle Haggard. At the time, Martin’s career was doing well, resurrected since he signed with Reprise in 1962, including the 1964 hit, “Everybody Loves Somebody.”

The I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am album featured social commentary cuts, including “Do You Believe This Town,” written by Joe Nixon and Charlie Williams. The song apparently foregoes a question mark in its title but is about small-town hypocrisy. Nixon and Williams wrote “Do You Believe This Town” not long before the release of another song about hypocrisy, Jennie C. Reilly’s “Harper Valley PTA.” Yet, “Do You Believe This Town” also references the PTA in its opening lines.

The woman next door has gone to the PTA,
And stopped to see her best friend’s husband on the way;
The folks down the street have a different thing,
So everyone is putting them down;
Do you believe this town?

In the video below, Martin performs the song on his television show. But his joking around as he sings it seems to contrast with the more serious nature of the song. The contrast is especially stark as he jokes around during the lines that appear to be about racial strife.

Do you believe they burned a house down yesterday?
You won’t believe the reason that they gave;
If the folks who lived there had a known their place,
They could still be hanging around;
Do you believe this town?

I first discovered “Do You Believe This Town” on the wonderful collection Bob Stanley & Pete Wiggs present State of the Union: the American Dream in Crisis 1967-1973. The album features songs from the era, generally by well-known artists, whose work on the featured songs illustrated a different direction, echoing a dark time in the United States.

The music for “Do You Believe This Town” suits Martin well. It has a nice swing so that one may not initially connect to the fact that the song has a message. Although the record is not one of Martin’s best-known recordings, it illustrates what his great timing and voice can do with a song. I assume most fans did not go to a Dean Martin performance for social commentary, but hearing this record makes me wish he had tackled more such songs.

Interesting, Roy Clark, another artist not known for social commentary, recorded “Do You Believe This Town” before Martin did, releasing the song on his album Do You Believe This Roy Clark in 1968. He even performed it on Hee Haw, although his performance took a more serious approach than Martin’s approach above. It was strange times in America.

Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Johnny Cash Concert With Glen Sherley Behind Prison Walls

    Johnny Cash Tennessee State Prison

    In 1976, Johnny Cash performed in “A Concert Behind Prison Walls” at the Tennessee State Prison. The video of the full Johnny Cash performance was released as A Flower Out of Place, also featuring performances by Linda Ronstadt, Roy Clark, and Foster Brooks. [May 2016 Update: Unfortunately, the video is no longer available for embedding but you may watch it at this link at iconcerts.]

    The Tennessee Prison show was hosted by Glen Sherley who also performed, but the video omits him and he is not listed as a performer on the 2003 CD release of the show. It is possible he was cut from the release because he was the least known performer. But the film editors may have omitted him because by the time the show was released, Sherley had come to a sad end.

    Cash met Sherley when Sherley was at Folsom Prison for armed robbery. Sherley, who had been in and out of prisons for much of his life, wrote the song “Greystone Chapel” while at Folsom. After Johnny Cash heard a tape of the song, he surprised Sherley by performing the song at his famous 1968 concert at Folsom Prison with Sherley in the audience. With some help from Cash, Sherley had a brief music career when he left prison, but he struggled to adapt to life outside prison bars and to his new fame. Sherley eventually fell back into drug abuse and shot himself to death in May 1978 at the age of 42.

    Here is a video of Sherley performing his song “Greystone Chapel.” The performance appears to have been at the same Tennessee State Prison show, which would have been about two years before his death.

    A movie about Glen Sherley may be in the works with actor Thomas Jane playing Sherley. Jane has been talking about making the film with different possible directors since at least 2009, but as recently as 2012, he was still searching for a studio. Its current status is unclear.

    Sherley’s life has the potential to be a great movie, but nobody would believe it.

    What is your favorite Johnny Cash song in the video? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Buck Owens: Don’t Judge a Man’s Music By His Overalls

    Buck Owens Hee Haw On March 25 in 2006, Buck Owens, who was born Alvis Edgar Owens Jr., passed away. When I was a kid, I thought Buck Owens was just a goofy guy who wore his overalls backwards and joked around on Hee Haw with Roy Clark. But as I grew up and learned more about classic country music, I discovered that Owens was a legend who made great music with his band, The Buckaroos.

    Along with Merle Haggard, Owens was one of the first to stand up against the slick Nashville music to help create and popularize a rock-influenced honky tonk music called “the Bakersfield sound” that influenced and continues to influence many great country artists like Brad Paisley. In the clip below, Owens and his long-time legendary guitarist Don Rich performed “Love’s Gonna Live Here” in 1966 on the Jimmy Dean Show.

    One of the artists touched by Owens is Dwight Yoakam. After Owens lost his friend and guitarist Don Rich in a motorcycle accident in 1974, Owens drifted out of the spotlight and eventually stopped recording music. In 1988, though, Dwight Yoakam helped bring Owens back to popularity when the two recorded a new version of Owens’s 1973 hit written by Homer Joy, “Streets of Bakersfield.”

    The collaboration between Yoakam and Owens on “Streets of Bakersfield” gave Owens his first number one song in sixteen years. I love this song.

    A Buck Owens biography portrayed Owens, who was married several times as sort of a jerk at times. But like he asks in “Streets of Bakersfield” about walking in another person’s shoes (or overalls), “[H]ow many of you that sit and judge me / Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?”

    Country musicians were not the only ones who recognized the talent of Buck Owens and the great Bakersfield sound. In “Far Away Eyes” from Some Girls (1978), the Rolling Stones described driving through Bakersfield on the country sounding song. Creedence Clearwater Revival mentioned Owens in “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” (“Dinosaur Victrola, Listenin’ to Buck Owens”) on Cosmos Factory (1970).

    Even more famously, in 1965 the Beatles covered one of Owens’s songs, “Act Naturally,” on Help! with Ringo Starr singing lead. Years later, Buck and Ringo joined their humor and musical skills to record a new version of “Act Naturally.”

    When Owens passed away in 2006, he was sleeping in his bed. Hours earlier he was not feeling well and considered canceling a performance until he heard some fans had traveled from Oregon to California to hear him. So he stood on stage at his Crystal Palace club and restaurant, singing one last time in Bakersfield.

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    Audie Murphy: To Hell and Back to Film to TV to Song

    audie murphy to hell and back On a cold day on this date of January 26 in 1945 in France during a World War II battle, Audie Murphy earned the Medal of Honor when he engaged in a single-handed battle with Germans. His heroic actions would save many of his fellow soldiers, and it eventually garnered Murphy attention from Jimmy Cagney and Hollywood, helping launch a film career.

    Murphy’s Act of Heroism

    In the January 1945 battle, Murphy saw his unit reduced from 128 men to 19.  So, he ordered the remaining men to fall back while he fought the Germans by himself for a period.  He eventually climbed up on an abandoned tank and used its machine gun to enable his comrades to return and organize a counter-attack.

    The counter-attack won back the town of Holtzwihr, France for the Allies. When he later was asked why he took on an entire company of German infantry, Murphy explained “They were killing my friends.”

    Murphy was wounded in the fight, which ended his active duty. Through his military career, he won a large number of medals and decorations, making him known as “the most decorated combat soldier in World War II.”

    Audie Murphy in Hollywood

    After the decorations led to a profile in Life magazine, Hollywood came calling.  The attention eventually led to a film based on Murphy’s war service.

    The movie was called To Hell and Back (1955).  And it starred . . . Audie Murphy.

    Upon seeing a trailer for the exploits of a war hero with the war hero playing himself based on a co-written autobiography, one might conclude that Murphy had a big ego and thought of himself as a great hero. But Murphy originally did not want to play himself.

    The film is largely a tribute to Murphy’s fallen comrades.  The movie highlights the deaths of the fallen, including the dead soldiers haunting Murphy’s award ceremony.

    My favorite film with Murphy is Destry (1954), a remake of the also good Destry Rides Again (1939), which starred Jimmy Stewart. He also appeared in a number of television shows, including a Western, Whispering Smith (1961).

    Murphy’s War Experience

    Murphy was humble about his exploits and realistic about war, as shown by this 1963 radio interview.  In the interview, he explains that the highlight of the war for him was the day he heard the war was over.

    Murphy also became a hero when he helped veterans of the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam by breaking taboos to speak about his own post-war struggles.  He was open about his personal battles, including post-traumatic stress syndrome and addiction to sleeping pills.

    You may see how unassuming he is in this clip from the TV show What’s My Line?, recorded before To Hell and Back hit theaters.

    Murphy the Songwriter

    It was not until I started writing this post that I discovered that Murphy also co-wrote a number of country songs.  His songs were recorded by singers such as Dean Martin and Porter Wagoner.

    Below is one of Murphy’s biggest hits, “When the Wind Blows in Chicago,” sung here by Roy Clark.

    Murphy’s Death and Confusion About His Age

    Murphy died in a plane crash on May 28, 1971. His widow, Pam Murphy, continued to work for veterans until she died in 2010.

    Audie Murphy had been 21 when he risked his life and earned the Medal of Honor. When he died, he was only 45, although many sources like Wikipedia and even his tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery claim he was 46.

    The age confusion was created because this honorable and talented man did lie once. Several months after his mother died, with some help from his sister, the teenaged Murphy falsified his birth certificate.  He lied so he could serve his country when he was only seventeen.

    What is your favorite Audie Murphy film? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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