Music & More

CMA Straight Talk (Sort Of)

I've been reading some of the reviews and fan comments regarding the 2008 CMA Awards held this past Tuesday at the Sommet Center in Nashville. I'm not alone in expressing disappointment. In addition to handing out the awards, the CMA show generally includes about 20 live performances spread over three hours. The pattern is usually to have 3 or 4 great performances, another 3 or 4 very good to good and the rest ranging from fair to awful. Some of the biggest names in country music fall in this last grouping. As a country music fan, I'd like to be able to brag about the show but I'd be lying if I did.

Viewers saw Kellie Pickler go from vulnerable in '07 to vixen in '08. It wasn't a pretty sight - or sound. Taylor Swift seems like a nice kid and probably a very savvy kid to package her teensy voice into such a commercially successful musical machine. Were the CMA moguls just kidding us with Kid Rock. We don't have better country singers who could have performed? Rodney Atkins sounds much better digitally and now we know why Miranda Lambert is more comfortable with rockers. Jason Aldean didn't sing badly but the song was awful. James Otto seemed a bit nervous but did a fairly good job once he got going. The superstars were very disappointing. I'll be kind and say that Strait, Jackson and Chesney were uninspiring. Martina McBride and Ronnie Dunn are usually the highlights of any CMA show but seemed to be off their game this time. Keith Urban was good but has been better and Brad Paisley should have won for Entertainer of the Year rather than Male Vocalist.  Brad's singing will never match his great songwriting and guitar playing talents.

The best performance of the night came from Sugarland featuring the outstanding vocals of Jennifer Nettles on "Love". Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum was the most pleasant surprise of the night to me since I had never heard him sing live. He did a great job on "Love Don't Live Here". The Eagles were "Busy Being Fabulous" as usual and Carrie Underwood did a great job on a difficult song "Just a Dream". Darius Rucker did a fine job on "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" and Trace Adkins did likewise on "You're Gonna Miss This".

Ink Spots

In my post of October 15th, I mentioned that among the 78 rpm records in my family's record collection when I was a kid were some by the Ink Spots. They were one of the great black singing groups popular in the 1930's and 40's and into the 50's. Equally famous during that time were the Mills Brothers. I remember hearing that the Ink Spots got their name when a fountain pen they were using accidentally sprayed a few ink spots on the paper on which they were writing possible names for the group. The tale may be apocryphal but it makes for a good story. My brothers and I loved their music but the 78's are long gone, probably all broken since they were extremely fragile.

About ten years ago I bought a cd called "We Four - The Best of the Ink Spots". There are many other Ink Spots cd collections available plus individual songs and albums on i-tunes. "We Four" contained 24 songs, most of them familiar to me but some I hadn't heard. The cd was made in the Czech Republic for Jasmine Records (London, England) in 1998. According to the liner notes, their first big hit was "If I Didn't Care" in 1939 although the group was formed in 1934. Many of the songs were sentimental ballads which featured what became their signature guitar intro plus a "talking chorus". (Could we call it a gentle predecessor of rap?) The lead singer was tenor Bill Kenny and the talking chorus was performed by bass vocalist Orville "Hoppy" Jones. The love interest in the talking chorus was often referred to as "Honey" or "Honey Child". Charles Fuqua and Ivory "Deek" Watson completed the group providing harmony for most of their big hits but there were changes in the group over the years, most notably when Hoppy Jones died in October 1944. What a mellow sound they had.

The songs I remembered besides "If I Didn't Care" include "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow and Me)", "Maybe", "Do I Worry" (dated with the line "Do I worry, when the iceman calls"), "The Gypsy", "Whispering Grass", "To Each His Own", "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire", "Until the Real Thing Comes Along", "Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat", "Prisoner of Love", "Thoughtless" "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and "Address Unknown". ("My Prayer" I first heard by the Platters probably in the late 50's.)  There are two songs in which they are joined by Ella Fitzgerald, "Into Each Life A Little Rain Must Fall" and "I'm Beginning to See the Light". Check out The Ink Spots Home Page and The Ink Spots (Original Group) and other sites online for their history and complete discography.

Richard Russo

I'm now caught up to date with one of my favorite authors, Richard Russo. I just finished "Bridge of Sighs" (2007), his latest and lengthiest effort to date at 642 pages in my soft cover edition. I already had read "Mohawk" (1986), "The Risk Pool" (1988), "Nobody's Fool" (1993), "Straight Man" (1997), "Empire Falls" (2001) and "The Whore's Child and Other Stories" (2002), the last a short story collection. Summaries and reviews are available online so I'm not going to rehash them here. You can find reviews of "Bridge of Sighs" by the NY Times, Washington Post, etc. I didn't read my first Russo novel until 1999 when a friend recommended him. I read "Nobody's Fool" and was hooked. "Nobody's Fool" was made into a movie in 1994 starring Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy and Bruce Willis while "Empire Falls", which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, became a TV movie in 2005 starring Ed Harris, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Helen Hunt and Paul Newman. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Mr. Russo's novels. When I start one of his books, I'm immediately comfortable with his writing style. His short story collection however, "The Whore's Child",  just didn't do anything for me and I do read short stories on a regular basis. After reading a long novel, historical work, biography or other non-fiction work, I like to read a few short stories before plunging into another lengthy book. Short stories are also good to take on trips, read in a doctor's office, etc.  Since each story stands by itself, you can read a few stories and then put the collection aside for a week, a month, whatever. Since I read it three times, I guess you could say that my favorite short story collection is "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919) by Sherwood Anderson. Give it a try.