First DVD Drawn From Johnny Cash’s TV Show Coming Soon

Brody Vercher | August 21st, 2007 Email Share

  • The LA Times (registration required) has a brief run-down of the four hour, two-disc The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show DVD.

    “While a war in Vietnam divided America, a revolution on television brought us all back together,” explains a narrator, who goes on to cite examples of the social and political upheaval of the late ’60s. “Through it all, one man served as the ultimate ambassador.”

    That man, of course, was Cash, who brought both an uncommon sense of musical integrity and social consciousness to the weekly ABC show. By showcasing gifted artists who cut across generational and racial lines, Cash sought to use the cleansing power of music to help unify and heal the greatly divided nation.

    Circle September 18th on your calendars. (via Take Country Back, where you can find the full text as well)

  • Listen: Country Mike recently mentioned an artist named Jerry Kilgore in one of his posts, so I checked out his MySpace and he’s not too shabby.
  • You’ve got to admire his conviction, but Kanye West needs to work on his tact, which seems to be nonexistent at this point. Contact Music writes that West was horrified when the Dixie Chicks’ track “Not Ready To Make Nice” beat Gnarls’ Barkley’s mega-hit “Crazy” at the Grammy Awards, and even six months later West feels Barkley got robbed:

    “How does Dixie Chicks win over Gnarls Barkley for Songs Of The Year and not even mention them when they accept? They need to give awards to people who really deserve it.”

  • Country, western, country-western, country-rock, alt-country, Americana, cow-punk, psychobilly, pop-country, countrypolitan, etc.; join the discussion and let us know what you think about the various genre labels. Does one appeal more than another to you?
  • Remember when Jessica Simpson butchered the Dolly Parton song “9 to 5″ at the Kennedy Center Honors last December? In the new issue of Self magazine Jessica Simpson says she failed.

    “I let people down. But Dolly wrote me the kindest words. She said, ‘I will always love you,’ and ‘Don’t listen to what these people are saying,’ and ‘I can’t remember those words when I sing that damn song, and I wrote it.’”

    I’ll refrain from saying anything bad about Jessica Simpson and just leave it at: Dolly is too nice.

  • Jake Coyle visits the subject of greatest hits albums and provides a vantage point from both sides. Some bands and artists feel like a hits album is a commercial ploy that takes away from the integrity of their previous albums, whereas some consumers and label heads look at it as a way to introduce passive music fans to a band/artist they’re unfamiliar with. It’s easy to see both points of view, but regardless of right or wrong, I think we can all agree that some hits albums are a bit premature. Are there an specific ones you can think of?
  1. Hollerin Ben
    August 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm Permalink

    Kanye does lack tact (see: George Bush doesn’t care about black people) but I think its hard to argue that the Dixie Chicks’ strong showing at the Grammys was due to their perceived artistic merit rather than their perceived political martyrdom

  2. Chris N.
    August 21, 2007 at 1:07 pm Permalink

    Just for fun, try singing the words from “9 to 5″ the next time you hear “Heart of Glass” by Blondie.

  3. Dave S
    August 21, 2007 at 1:16 pm Permalink

    Didn’t Kanye make a fuss when Gretchen Wilson beat him out for a New Artist category at one of the several music awards shows back in 2004? I forget if it was the Grammy’s, People’s Choice, or American Music Awards… something like that. What I’m saying is that there is a trend… he’s a cry baby. And he’s going to cry even more when he finds himself at #3 on the Billboard 200 behind Kenny Chensney and 50 Cent.

  4. Kevin C.
    August 21, 2007 at 1:32 pm Permalink

    Actually, it can be argued Ben, as it was by this year’s Hall of Fame inductee:

    “Regardless of the controversy, they made a great record. You can analyze this thing into dirt, but at the end of the day, they’re a great act with great songs. To me, you look like a fool arguing they don’t deserve it.”
    - Vince Gill

    As for Kanye, he shouldn’t be shocked that Gnarls Barkley didn’t win Song of the Year, since they weren’t even nominated.

    They did lose Record of the Year to the Chicks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they came in second in the voting. But I imagine that some voters who would’ve chosen them went with Mary J. Blige instead, and vice versa. Sure, country voters had the Chicks song and “Jesus, Take the Wheel”, but what about the rest of the voting body? “You’re Beautiful” was already so played out by that point, and slight to boot, that the Chicks song was probably the only credible thing to vote for.

    He’s also wrong, the Chicks did acknowledge the other nominees collectively both in their acceptance speeches and the press conference backstage. Why should they single out Gnarls Barkley over Mary J. Blige, James Blunt, Justin Timberlake, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.? It doesn’t make sense.

  5. Chris N.
    August 21, 2007 at 2:53 pm Permalink

    Kanye is the hip-hop Toby Keith. Discuss.

  6. Hollerin Ben
    August 21, 2007 at 4:47 pm Permalink

    Kevin C.

    you are very well informed regarding the goings on of the Grammys this year, well done.

    And I happen to disagree with ol Vince Gill on this point. Furthermore, I don’t think he has a very persuasive argument. First of all I don’t share his enthusiasm for the Chicks and would probably substitute “good” or “alright” (but certainly not bad) for every time he said “great”, but even putting that aside, I don’t think that one would be a “fool” or even more condescendingly that one would “look like a fool”, to argue that the political controversy surrounding their act (which, by the way, was a major promotional tool for them i.e. the first single, the dvd “shut up and sing”, the interviews that found them hostile and dismissive towards the country music audience) was coincidental to their sweeping the Grammys.

    I think that Vince, or anyone else, would be the one “looking like to fool” to confidently assert that minus the political controversy that found the Chicks looking like the victim of a right-wing smear campaign, that they would have swept the Grammys (which have been no great friend of country music up to this point)

  7. Brody Vercher
    August 22, 2007 at 8:56 pm Permalink

    Chris - I was going argue that too a certain degree they could be compared to each other, but the more I think about, they do have a lot in common. Good call.

  8. Dave S
    August 22, 2007 at 10:07 pm Permalink

    How do you compare Toby Keith to a thug, whiney, rapper like West? I just saw Toby Keith’s show last week for the first time, and Toby is one hell of a country entertainer. He is good to his fans and his music can still be counted as “country.” He does not deserve to be compared to West, especially when the people making the comparison aren’t citing any similarities to back their statements up. Which leads me to believe that it’s just criticism with no foundation whatsoever, generated because some people might not like his politics, music, or whatever.

  9. Brody Vercher
    August 22, 2007 at 10:17 pm Permalink

    To be honest I haven’t listened to West’s music, but he doesn’t come across as a thug to me and generally speaking I like Toby Keith, but like West he can be a little brash at times. They’re both supremely confident to the point that it can be construed as arrogance, both are outspoken about their political beliefs, and both have publicly disclosed their displeasure with the way certain awards were handed out. I think they’re both probably good people, just a little misunderstood at times.

  10. Chris N.
    August 23, 2007 at 8:31 am Permalink

    My point was actually that Kanye and Toby — despite the consolations of wealth and success — are both extraordinarily fixated on the industry awards they win or don’t win, as if such things are actually meaningful.

    Also, not every rapper is a thug.

  11. Brody Vercher
    August 23, 2007 at 3:30 pm Permalink

    Oh yea, and they both have something against the Dixie Chicks.

  12. Paul W Dennis
    August 25, 2007 at 10:20 pm Permalink

    Mike is mistaken - the “Western” in Country & Western Music never did stand for cowboy music. Back when the term was coined the two dominant strains of modern Country Music were Honky-Tonk and Western Swing (Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, Tex Williams)and hybrids of the two forms such as Merle Travis, Ted Daffen, Al Dexter and later Hank Thompson. The Sons of the Pioneers were about 30% Western Swing so they got some airplay, but few other western acts ever got much radio airplay on C&W radio.

    It was always possible for a really good cowboy song to get some airplay (and the really great vocalists such as Billy Walker and Marty Robbins managed some major hits) but cowboy songs never were a significant part of the mix, except perhaps in parts of the west

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