Comments on: Your Take: Country Music Tragedies

By: Hubba

Hubba — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:52:48 +0000

Barry M, it is said that the executives of a battered RCA were in a meeting discussing how they were going to keep their company alive when news of Elvis’ death broke the airwaves, and they actually cheered…

By: Hubba

Hubba — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:50:19 +0000

Personally, Chris Ledoux’s death hit me pretty hard. I’m from South Dakota, and I was familiar with Ledoux before he became famous. Then after he came out with that damn “Copenhagen” song, everyone in the world thought it was my favorite song because I chewed Copenhagen, so I had gotten to the point where I didn’t like him that much, through no fault of his own.
I heard about his death on the radio in the tractor, and I just sat there for a long time, and realized I really did like him a lot.

By: idlewildsouth

idlewildsouth — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:32:36 +0000

I know this isnt a thread to discuss Gram Parsons to death, but my two cents is that he would have continued to do things half way like he always did. His problem was that he didnt have to succeed to eat, so why try hard enough to make it into work?

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:21:14 +0000

I think the current state of Top 40 country music is a tradegy and well deserving of a mercy killing…

By: Barry M

Barry M — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:06 +0000

Well, there are people–some possibly already mentioned above–for whom death was a terrific career move. I won’t speculate out loud as to what artists might have had larger reputations (or myths) if they’d checked out at points a lot earlier than they did, but you know that it would have happened for some. I think when we’re young all deaths same like huge tragedies–a little later, like inevitabilities, a piece of the cycle. Country music understands that, by the way–no matter how much it sentimentalizes the dead–which can be a lot.

By: jacob rice

jacob rice — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:51:57 +0000

keith whitley is mine….isnt sad that of all the tragedys keith is the only one that has yet to be inducted to the hall of fame

By: Occasional Hope

Occasional Hope — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:25:26 +0000

“If turning Harris on to country music was Parsons’s contribution to the genre, then his early death made no difference”

That’s a fair point – but you could argue that it was his death that released Emmylou to have her solo career, which was definitely influential in country music in many ways. I presume they would have stayed collaborators at least for a while, and maybe Emmylou never would have emerged as a solo act to be reckoned with.

By: Jon

Jon — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:05:03 +0000

Well, Parsons was a rock guy with country aspirations and some country songwriting capabilities. But he was also really young, and demonstrably short on the kind of stick-to-it-iveness needed to really pursue a country music career, so predictions as to what his role might have been are iffy; for the kind of persistence and sensibilities he would have had to develop, look instead to Chris Hillman, one of the guys he ran off.

By: nm

nm — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:37:02 +0000

I don’t see it; he wasn’t a country artist at all, IMO. He was a rocker.

By: Hollerin' Ben

Hollerin' Ben — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:53:06 +0000

But I’m not sure he had the least impact on country as a genre: what changed in country music because of him?

That was sort of my point, he was on a clear path as a country artist and I’m speculating that he would have made an impact on country music were it not for his untimely and tragic death.