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Calling all hillbillys and yankees that love the Man In Black, the Brooklyn Country Music in association with BAM Brooklyn Next presents The Johnny Cash 75th Birthday Bash featuring Alex Battles’ Whisky Rebellion, The Lonesome Prairie Dogs, Louisiana Emily, Eli Smith, Jessica Rose, The Dock Oscar Gospel Quartet & more
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Southpaw
125 5th Ave. (@ St. John’s Place)
Brooklyn, NY
$10
Doors, 730pm
Molly Ivins was a true Texas hero and a voice of reason in a field that has been a cesspool for a long time. True to form she went down swinging. You’ll be missed Molly!
From The Dallas Morning News – Tom Morrell bent steel with his hands. With his agile fingers and wrists, he could coax a steel guitar to cry out a mournful melody and to laugh out a happy phrase.
Mr. Morrell died Monday of emphysema at home in East Dallas. He was 68.
His contemporaries in Western swing and jazz consider him a musical genius, while many mainstream country music listeners don’t know him. But they probably unwittingly hear his session work on recordings by artists such as Willie Nelson (The Sound in Your Mind), Asleep at the Wheel (Tribute to the Music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys ) and many others.
“There’s nobody can even touch him,” said Leon Rausch, of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, before Mr. Morrell’s death. “He’s a stone genius.”
The Dallas native, who lived 30 years in Little Elm, left behind his 15-volume Tom Morrell and the Time Warp Top Tophands “How the West Was Swung” series on WR Records.
The collection chronicles his passion for jazz and particularly Western swing. Each CD features a roster of Texas’ best musicians such as guitarists Leon Chambers and Rich O’Brien, fiddlers Randy Elmore and Bobby Boatright, vocalists Leon Rausch, Don Edwards, Chris O’Connell, Buck Reams and Craig Chambers. Mr. Morrell was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 2001.
Mr. Morrell’s next CD, Relaxin‘, is expected to be available next week at Westernswing.net, Amazon.com and some local record stores. The disc is the 15th in the “How the West Was Swung” series.
Mr. Morrell’s sisters Delores “Dodo” Boyd, 65, of Dallas and Jeanne McKinney, 59, of Garland remember their brother as a lifelong musician. Mr. Morrell first picked up a guitar when he and Ms. Boyd were students at St. James Catholic School in Oak Cliff. Ms. Boyd knew her brother was serious about music back then.
“If you lived at our house and saw every minute he spent playing with a band … music was his life, that was it,” Ms. Boyd said.
Other survivors include a son, Jerry Wayne Morrell of Monroe, La.; daughters Cheryl Denise Walker of Monroe and Laura Renée Wagner of Houston; and four grandchildren. Memorial plans are pending. Details will be posted on the guest book at Westernswing .net.
Mr. Morrell lived in Hobbs, N.M., for about a year in the 1950s. Mr. Rausch remembers seeing Mr. Morrell play in Hobbs.
“We all were amazed at him. We saw this pimple-faced kid playing more steel guitar than anybody we knew,” Mr. Rausch said.
Mr. Morrell had an onscreen band part in the 1990 movie Daddy’s Dyin’… Who’s Got the Will? directed by Jack Fisk. Also, his music is featured on the soundtracks of the movies Savannah Smiles and True Stories.
Mr. Morrell was most recently living with his lifelong friend and partner, Jody Balfour. Ms. Balfour says that the couple talked a lot about music and Mr. Morrell’s artwork. “His biggest fear was being forgotten,” says Ms. Balfour.
Bert Winston, owner of WR Records, thinks Mr. Morrell’s legacy will be affirmed by seasoned and up-and-coming musicians.
“He was one of the greatest steel-guitar players that has ever been, really,” Mr. Winston said. “I actually think he is probably more admired now than ever.”
From the Dallas Morning News – Tom Morrell, a Dallas-based prolific steel guitar player is being treated at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas for emphysema,Mr. Morrell was admitted to the hospital Jan. 21, where he was placed on a ventilator on Tuesday. The ventilator has since been removed.
Mr. Morrell was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, in St. Louis, in 2001. His CD Monkey Bizness is the 13th volume in his “How the West Was Swung” series of Tom Morrell and the Time Warp Tophands albums. For a discography, visit www.westernswing.net.
Leon Rausch, of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, hired Mr. Morrell in 1964 to be part of the reorganized Texas Playboys band, after Mr. Wills had left the band.
Mr. Rausch, who has played with Mr. Morrell in many other groups and gigs over the years, says fellow musicians consider Mr. Morrell a musical genius. “He’s the man to go to for steel guitar,” he says. “He’s the biggest influence that a lot of us have ever had.”
Albert Talley of the Texas Steel Guitar Association says, “Tom has been a premier player and innovator of steel guitar for the last 50 years.”
Mr. Talley, who organizes the annual Texas Steel Guitar Association Jamboree, says that Mr. Morrell had intended to attend this year’s convention but probably not perform as he usually has.
Well, sorta. Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Ray Price with opener Asleep at the Wheel will come to Radio City Music Hall for thier The Last of the Breed show on 3/22 the night before Lucinda Williams plays the same room the night after. This is going to be a great couple of days for country music fans in Gotham.
Typically I could care less about the Grammy’s. I mean COME ON! Hootie & the Blowfish, Milli Vanilli and Culture Club! Yeesh! But because because of a flash of musical perception, odds, or whatever…they sometimes get it right. This year the folks at the Grammys have a couple of winners..if they actually win that is.
Willie Nelson’s You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Album and Rick Rubin has been nominated for Producer of the Year, Non-Classicalfor his work on Johnny Cash’s album American V: A Hundred Highways and the song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”. He is also nominated in the same category for his work on albums from Neil Diamond, The Dixie Chicks, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Yeah I know. It’s starting to sound like all Lucinda, all the time here at planet Twang. So what? Who am I to deny the power of Lu? (or her publicity machine at Lost Highway – how about some backstage passes for all this, huh?) Ms. Williams will be coming to the Big Apple on March 23 at Radio City Music Hall. Oh how I wish for a Rockettes choreographed rendition of “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.”
Tickets go on sale this Saturday 1/13. See you there.
Here is a glimpse of the cover of the forthcoming release from Goddess Lucinda Williams “West” (2/13). You can also hear samples from the CD at AllMusic.com. Keep checking in to Twang Nation for any more Lucinda news on the CD and tour info. I said it before and I’ll sy it again, Faith Hill and Sheryl Crow should be lick-shining the Luccheses of this lady.
Fifty years into his legendary music career, Grammy winner and Country Music Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner has been signed to LA-based Anti- records, and is soon to release a Marty Stuart-helmed project celebrating his five decades as one of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry’s best-loved performers.
Wagonmaster, as the project is now titled, will mostly feature songs written by Wagoner himself– the same tunes that have earned him a place in Americana music history, as well as numerous industry awards and accolades. But one song in particular, while not penned by Wagoner himself, holds a special place on the album’s roster.
Twenty-five years ago, after Johnny Cash took an interest in some of Wagoner’s early recordings, he wrote “Committed to Parkview,” about a stay in a mental asylum not far from Nashville, where Cash and Wagoner both spent time. Cash gave a cassette recording of the song to bandmate Marty Stuart, who was instructed to pass it along to Wagoner, which he did– two and a half decades later.
“I never got around to it until we started collecting songs for this project,” Stuart explained in a statement. “I searched mywarehouse and found the envelope with ‘Committed to Parkview’ on it, with a note from John to Porter. Twenty-five years after I was supposed to and three years after his death, I did what I told John I would do. I delivered the song and Porter loved it.”
Wagonmaster is slated for release in May 2007. For more on Porter Wagoner, check out his official website, PorterWagoner.net.
Anti- is home to such artists as Tom Waits, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Neko Case.
MSNBC has a nice