IN THE SPOTLIGHT – LES LEVERETT

“For my age and condition, I guess I’m doing pretty good,” Les Leverett told me when I called him last week at his home in Nashville. “God’s been awful good to me.” Les is ninety-two years old and leads a busy life. One of his favorite events takes place the first Monday night of each month. A group from his church goes to the Maybelle Carter Retirement Home to sing for the folks who live there. Read the rest of this entry »

CONCERT REVIEW – WAHOO COUNTRY MUSIC SHOW

Thanks to Sharon Kenaston and Tracy Pitcox for a Thursday evening filled with high-quality traditional country music. Sharon hosted the 22nd annual Wahoo Country Music Show in Wahoo, Nebraska, this past weekend. Tracy Pitcox brought several Heart of Texas recording artists for a dance at the Starlite Ballroom.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – LLOYD GREEN

I hadn’t heard anything about Lloyd Green in quite a while, so I called him Sunday evening to find out how he’s doing. He answered the phone on the second ring. “Life’s different for me these days,” he told me. “Dot passed away about three years ago. I’m still in the music business, I’m still recording some, I’m still playing live shows around here. But music is becoming less and less important.”

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – LISA SUTTON

“I am kind of phasing out Lisa Sutton Music Services after fifteen years,” Lisa Sutton told me during our telephone conversation last week. Lisa is the daughter of the late singer Lynn Anderson and songwriter Glenn Sutton. Her grandparents were songwriters Liz Anderson and Casey Anderson. How’s that for country music royalty?

Lisa has spent her career in a different aspect of the music industry. “I always handled CD manufacturing and graphic design for album covers,” she explains. “We could do short runs, long runs, I could put all the CDs together, drop ship them to all the different customers. But everybody’s going digital. So I’m backing out of that one slowly, and I’m going to focus more on my publishing catalog.” Read the rest of this entry »

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – LACY J. DALTON

The most incredible project Lacy J. Dalton, 72, has ever done in her life came from the recent three-and-a-half years she spent with an arts program at High Desert State Prison in Susanville, California. “It was a life-changing experience,” she told me during our telephone conversation last week. When a friend called and asked her to join the program, she said she was too busy and didn’t want to do it. He convinced her to give it a try. Dale Poune, her partner of ten years and a “fabulous guitar/mandolin/piano player,” went with her. “From the minute I went into that prison, I never felt one moment of fear,” she recalls. “Those men were so grateful. They had no programs like art or music or acting or anything in the arts. These are level four guys, twenty to life. I’ve never felt so loved and appreciated in all my life.” Read the rest of this entry »

NEWS

Mastering engineer John Eberle, 79, died April 12 at Dickson Health and Rehab in Dickson, Tennessee. For more than 30 years, he mastered recordings at Nashville Record Productions (NRP), before launching his own company, Americana Mastering. His credits appear on nearly 450 recordings. “Mastering is the final process in audio recording, after the music has been captured to tape (or disc), and mixed down to a two-track master recording,” explains Bluegrass Today. Read the rest of this entry »

NEWS

Jim Glaser (1937-2019)

Jim Glaser, the originator of the Marty Robbins harmony sound, died April 6 at his Nashville home at age 81. While on tour near Spalding, Nebraska, in 1957, Marty hired the Glaser Brothers (Tom, Chuck, and Jim) after their father brought them to his dressing room. The trio toured and recorded with Marty for almost five years. “The western songs were three-part harmony,” Jim once explained. “I laid out those harmonies pretty much the way I laid out the Glaser Brothers harmony, which turned out to be a little bit of a bugaboo for us, because the Glaser Brothers began to sound like we were copying Marty.” They became known as Tompall and the Glaser Brothers Read the rest of this entry »

CONCERT REVIEW – DWIGHT YOAKAM

Saturday night brought my first opportunity to see Dwight Yoakam in concert. He came to the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls for a sold-out show in a wonderful venue. I enjoyed the intermission more than the opening act. The recorded music gave promise of a show that respected classic country. Listening to Patsy Cline, George Jones, Willie Nelson, and two songs in a row by Faron Young made me wonder if Dwight had personally chosen the playlist.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – GARRY ROBBLE

Willful Shadows: The Account of SONNY JAMES and the Southern Gentlemen is the title of a book being released May 1. Gary Robble, who cowrote the book with Barb Day, told me about it in a recent phone conversation. “Our book on Sonny is not about all the artists we performed with,” he said. “It’s about the process–of how he almost became a one-hit wonder. And then how he found a second career. Read the rest of this entry »

IN THE SPOTLIGHT – GEORGETTE JONES
Life changed for Georgette Jones in 2009, as the result of two men she met on a trip to Ireland. The daughter of Tammy Wynette and George Jones had been a registered nurse in Alabama for seventeen years. “I loved my job,” she told me when we talked on the phone recently. “I enjoyed being a nurse. But I always loved music and it was something I was too shy to pursue.” She sang at an occasional local gig, but that was it.

Read the rest of this entry »