Jimmy Dean, 1928-2010
He’d butchered hogs on his family’s farm as a kid, so after becoming a country music star, he knew how to set himself up for life after showbiz: a sausage company, established in 1969 right in his...
View ArticleJustin Townes Earle, "Slippin' And Slidin'"
Awl pal Tim Sutton has directed a short film of Justin Townes Earle drinking in a bar, going back to his apartment and playing a song from his new album Harlem River Blues. Earle, 28, is the son of...
View ArticleRalph Mooney, 1928-2011
“He played with a real bright, animated sound with lots of picking, but he could take off into blues licks at the same time. Nobody every played quite like he did, and after that it became known as...
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The Infinite Lives of 'Jolene'
Dolly Parton does it all in only two hundred and two words. Eighty-four fewer than the Gettysburg Address; one hundred and thirty-six more than the Lord’s Prayer. Two hundred and two words, one of...
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The Song That Made The Pill OK
Loretta Lynn wrote and recorded “The Pill” in 1972. Her label didn’t release it until 1975, but three years wasn’t long enough to cool the controversy stoked by Lynn, one of the biggest names in...
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How to Be a Black Country Star
The Statler Brothers were a gospel band most famous for the years they spent as Johnny Cash’s backup singers and opening act. In 1979, they released a song called “How to Be a Country Star.” “There’s...
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Beauty and Ruin in Pigeon Forge
In May, Dolly Parton returned from promoting her new album, Blue Smoke, to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for the celebration she hosts every year: the Dollywood Homecoming Parade. Thousands gathered along...
View ArticlePickup Artists
Rock and roll has its Mustangs; easy listening has its Volvos; rap its Beamers, Benzs and Bentleys, but country music has always had its trucks. Big rigs and long-haul truckers got some airtime, but...
View ArticleThe Anthem of the Working Stiff
I don’t know what men are made of, though a song I love begins: “Some people say a man is made out of mud.” Perhaps the dust of Eden got wet with the kiss of the Lord and made mud, and from that Adam...
View ArticleGirls in Country Songs
The beginning of Maddie & Tae’s video for “Girl in a Country Song” is familiar to any CMT viewer: two sun-tanned hotties in cowboy boots and bikini tops walking on a dirt road, ogled by...
View ArticleSounds Enumerated
In 2014, not a single artist’s album has gone platinum. Not one has managed to cross that million sales mark. One album has managed to sell over a million copies so far this year, but it’s a...
View ArticleThe Need to Make Believe
The last thing I made was my bed. Soon I will make some toast, and later today I will make plans for this weekend. We all make things, abstract and actual, every day. Some people just make do and...
View ArticleThe Gator Lost His Mind: The Historical Ballads of Johnny Horton
I’ve been meaning to write about Johnny Horton. He sang some of the best ballads on country radio in the fifties. There was one called “Comanche” about a horse who happened to be one of only survivors...
View ArticleThe Man Who Won't Let Go
“He Stopped Loving Her Today” might well be George Jones’s most famous song, but I don’t think it was his best. Eighteen years before that one, he released my favorite: “She Thinks I Still Care.” The...
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What Happens When You Bring Your Cat to Work
A photo posted by Max Linsky (@maxlinsky) on Oct 13, 2012 at 10:45am PDT People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, Longform.org co-founder Max Linsky...
View ArticleBaptism by Song
There are many ways to take a bath, and just as many ways to perform a baptism. Some Christian traditions sprinkle a little water on the foreheads of infants or adults, drop by holy drop, and call it...
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Red Dirt Girls
We were lost, but not really lost. We were lost in the way that you can get lost with a GPS on your phone, which is to say we knew exactly where we were, even if we didn’t quite know where we were...
View ArticleThe Country Bumpkin Circle of Life
I don’t drink, but if I did, then here’s what I’d say to every bartender in the county: “I’ll just have a glass of anything that’s cool.” That’s my favorite drink order, and also my favorite pick-up...
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The Night the Lights Went Out
I’ve been thinking a lot about murder. Not committing one, but a few of them from a few decades ago, so my playlists have become filled with murder ballads. Life has changed and so has death, but not...
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All-American Drag
At the CMA Awards on Wednesday, John Mellencamp sang his classic “Pink Houses,” joined by the Australian singer Keith Urban, who politely shredded the guitar (in a women’s blazer and a wifebeater) and...
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