Jack Ingram Honors Guy Clark With Song

You may have read my recollections about Guy Clark, after his passing earlier this month: "He Ain't Going Nowhere" and how he showed up for Jack Ingram's record release party for "Livin' Or Dyin'" in Austin in March of 1997.
Well, Jack posted a new song about his friend Guy Clark "Sailor And The Sea" and a background story about that song on his facebook page.


I let him tell the story in his own words:

"The Sailor & The Sea"
I wrote it for/about Guy Clark.
He told me a story about riding out Hurricane Carla, 1963, in the bay at Rockport on a boat he had helped restore & was scheduled to sail to Florida the next week. Hurricane Carla took out Galveston. It was a big one.
He anchored the boat out in the bay with 100 lb test rope. He tied 10 lines of rope to the anchor, each one 10' ft longer than the previous. As one would break there would be 10 more feet of line & the boat remained steady.
Storm passed. Made a few minor repairs & sailed the boat to Florida.
The old sailor's poem came to mind:
"Red sky morning, Sailor's take warning- Red sky night, Sailor's delight"
In general...
I don't know how it all works- the if and what and why, where, when. I never will. But I do believe in magic. The kind of magic that we make. We make happen every day right here when we need it and especially when we need it now...the kind we muster up when we have the want to, the will, the why the hell not, the what's the worst that could happen and the what else we gonna do- quit...kinda spirit! It ain't because of a feel good, fill me up, help self help motivational pull...it's because quitting feels like shit and never fucking quitting feels fucking great AND gets us all feeling lucky in all the right ways even though we all know luck's for suckers, sucker...but THIS sucker sure as shit AINT NO QUITTER!
Guy Clark never quit. He died trying.
I'm not talking about "trying" to beat what ailed him...I know for a fact he died still trying to write a better song. Trying to cut the word "compromise" out of the artist's dictionary. Trying not to allow the world AS IT IS...NOT "offend his sensibilities" of the world he built every day at his workbench.
I loved Guy. I didn't need him to but he let me know in ways he knew I'd know that he was glad I was in his world. That felt really fuckin' good. He knew I needed that from him and he gave it to me.
Guy Clark took moments of absolute CLARITY and turned them into songs that were clearer than the original moment!
If you've EVER tried to explain a dream to ANYBODY then you know that doing that in any meaningful way is damn near IMPOSSIBLE! That's what Guy's songwriting was like...like he explained something in FULL DETAIL that came from a dream, from a moment that was only seen by one person but now was sitting there in full color detail ready to be viewed by the world even more brilliant than when it was a perfect moment!
Guy was my hero. He was my friend. He was hard on my songs. He told me I was doing "Good Work"...which is the same, for Guy Clark, as when your puppy dog licks your face & wets himself because you're the best owner in the whole world! smile emoticon
I could go on. In fact, I will!
I'm gonna do what I've done since the day I first heard a Guy Clark song as a young songwriter...I'm gonna TRY! I'm going to keep trying...try to write a better song than I've written before! Try to write a better one than Guy ever wrote! After I do that...I'm gonna do it again...until I can't do it anymore...then I'll do it all again...or die trying! That's what my heroes would do!
Things Ain't Getting Any Better...But Everything's Gonna Be Okay (me, Shawn Camp & Guy Clark wrote that),
Good bye, Guy...that son of a bitch is comin'..,
Jack

He posted the song in his dropbox, where you can download it from, here's the link "Sailor And The Sea" - where you can download this nice tribute. 

I also found this great interpretation of Clark's song "Stuff That Works" from The Kessler Theater in Dallas; the whole song which is available in other recordings Jack did of it, lives especially with Jack's intro on how he and Guy had a great relationship. He sure fits into Guy's boots. A new album by Jack, is scheduled to be released by the end of August of this year.

Stuff That Works

John Berry - I'm Still Alive

According to the Tennessean the passing of original Beastie Boys member, John Berry got mixed up by another news service, by AOL.

Instead of using footage of the punk/hip hop four-piece's early days, as the Young Aborigines or later the Beastie Boys, they mixed their obit up with footage of country music singer John Berry.

As I write this, AOL's video is still up, even though people started to complain more than 12 hours ago and country singer John Berry released a video, proclaiming that he isn't on his way to the Pearly Gates yet and actually still among us.

Country singer John Berry: 'I'm alive' despite AOL mixup

Country singer John Berry had an important message to share with his fans on Friday: "I'm alive and well." Fans were concerned after AOL posted a video reporting the death of another musician named John Berry, who was a founding member of rap/rock group The Beastie Boys.

Good to know - Nashville's John Berry plans to release a new album on June, 3rd, "What I Love the Most." The South Carolina tenor is mostly known for 1994, Grammy nominated number-one-hit "Your Love Amazes Me." Besides reaching the top of the charts, he also had six more singles reaching the top ten, and he is widely known for his charitable work.

Your Love Amazes Me

From A Jack To A King - Ned Miller Passes

"I'll get an idea for a song," Ned Miller is quoted on his 1991 Bear Family retrospective, named after his biggest hit "From A Jack To A King" and it goes on "but then I think, 'Who wants to go through the hassle of getting someone to record it.' These days I have nothing to do with recording. My kids have nothing to do with the business. If you love shows and like to perform, it's a great business, but if you don't, you shouldn't be in it."

This pretty much sums up the short career of roughly 13 years. He then put his guitar up, quit writing songs and stopped performing. Henry Ned Miller, born in the mining town of Rains, Utah on April 12 in 1925 passed away on March, 18 in Medford, Oregon. His death which wasn't announced until this week, was confirmed by his wife of over 70 years, Sue to the New York Times.

According to liner notes, he bought his first guitar when he was nine, after splitting and selling wood. His mom taught him how to play, and he wrote his first song while still in High School in Salt Lake City. After a three year stint in the Marine Corps - he served in the Pacific theater during World War II - he went to college with the help of the G.I. Bill and became a pipe-fitter and later air-conditioning man by trade.

In July of 1956, Ned decided to try his wings in the music field and went to California where he met Fabor Robison of the Abbott, Fabor and Radio Record Companies who had discovered, developed and guided the early careers and first hits of such artists as Jim Reeves (who would later record several of Ned songs), Johnny Horton, Bonnie Guitar, The Browns and many others. Fabor saw the potential in Ned's abilities to write and sing and signed him to the label.

From the liner notes of Fabor's "From A Jack To A King" album: "The inspiration for "Dark Moon" came while Ned was driving along the Malibu, California beach one evening. Being a little depressed, he mentally drew a veil across the bright, full moon and immediately wrote the song "Dark Moon."

Dark Moon - Bonnie Guitar


Bonnie Guitar recorded the song for Fabor and even - according to an article in No Depression magazine - gave up her royalties: "I knew in my mind, as little as I knew, that that was a hit song. I just knew it. So, we went right in the studio and started working on it, and I played the lead guitar and everything."
Bonnie Guitar wasn't the only one who took the song into the US Billboard Top 100 (#6), shortly after her version peaked, Gale Storm took the song into the Top Five (#4). Guitar also charted in the Country Charts (#14) - at the same time another version of the song was also recorded by Hawkshaw Hawkins.

Bonnie returned the same year with "Mr. Fire Eyes" a song the two of them had written together. Other people started recording Ned's songs, but when he released "Roll O Rollin' Stone," in 1957 he didn't crack the charts, neither did he with the first time release of "From A Jack To A King" the same year. "Lights In The Street", "Gypsy" (1958) as well as the early Sixties songs "Cold Gray Bars" and his version of "Dark Moon" all failed to make a great impact.
No luck also with two songs, he recorded with Jan Howard for Jackpot "Girl From The Second World / Ring The Bell For Johnny," even though the songs got a favorable review in Billboard magazine.

On it's second go-round in '63, "From A Jack To A King" not only became his biggest hit and signature song, but made him a world wide star. The song crossed over onto the top of the pop charts of Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Ireland just to name a few, became a #2 in the US Billboard Hot Country Singles and also made the Top Ten in the Top 100 (#6). He was featured in March of '63 with a small bio in Billboard magazine, several artists recorded their own versions of the song, where love lifts a man from being a Jack to being the King, though among others by Elvis, Slim Whitman and a quite a bluesy version by Jerry Lew Lewis as well as by a British glam rock quartet, past it's prime named Mud (watch at your own discretion.) Twenty five years later, Ricky Van Shelton recorded a remake on his second platinum selling album "Loving Proof" and took the song all the way to Number One, enabling Ned with a nice royalty retirement check. It's actually fun to watch this live recording of Shelton's version among some of the greats of country music.



Ned needed a big follow-up, and after a couple of duds came up with a song he'd written with his wife Sue, Invisible Tears. The married couple actually worked together on several of his songs, for instance "Behind The Tear," wich Sonny James took to the top of the country charts for three weeks in 1965. Miller came out the same year - now on Capitol Records with a song based on a saying he'd picked up from his father, "Do What You Do Do Well." It became his second biggest hit, reaching #7 on the country charts and #52 on the pop listings in 1965.

Do What You Do Do Well - Ned Miller


Behind The Tear - Sonny James


The crooner charted four more times albeit in the lower regions of the chart, with his sweet melancholy songs: "Whistle Walkin'" (#28),"Summer Roses" (#39), "Teardrop Lane" (#44) and "Hobo" (#53). Due to stage-fright and therefore not touring behind his songs, he got dropped by Capitol. On different labels he charted in 1968 with "Only a Fool" (#61) and two years later with "Lover's Song" (#39) and then he called it quits. Several of his songs, he has a catalog of almost 200 songs, were recorded by a big variety of stars and some even translated into other languages.

Next Time I Fall In Love, I Won't - Hank Thompson


Invisible Tears - Bobby Bare & Skeeter Davis


Some of his original Fabor and Capitol albums can still be found and there are several compilation albums (CDs) out there, but if you would like the comprehensive music history of Ned Miller, I would suggest to buy the German Bear Family album released in 1991, even though e.g. his Jackpot singles are missing, it's the most comprehensive collection with a rich 16-page booklet that can be found.


Sources: Bear Family CD "From A Jack To A King", Liner Notes of his UK release on London "From A Jack To A King", News Services, No Depression, Billboard, YouTube

Kenny Chesney's "Noise" debuts in Rolling Stone

Kenny Chesney - Live                                 © Jill Turnell (courtesy EBMedia)

For once it's not pina coladas, sandy beaches and cladly dressed dancer babes in bikinis. It's neither a jocose
singer reminiscing about the quietude at a lovely hidden oasis where he shares a longneck with his honey on the back of a pickup truck while strummin' on his guitar.

In his new video "Noise," the lead-off single of his new album "Some Town Somewhere" which ships July 8th, Kenny Chesney actually inculpates all the white noise, the cacophony, the constant sound bytes, the tech overload around us.

Wrecking balls, downtown construction
Bottles breaking, jukebox buzzing
Cardboard sign says ‘The Lord Is Coming’
Tick tick tock
Rumors turn the mills back home
Parking lot kids with the speakers blown
We didn’t turn it on
but we can’t turn it off, off, off …”

While this topic is quite popular in pop and rock music, it's rather rare in country music to sing songs being critical of society or at least critical of part of society. "Atomic Power" by the Louvin Brothers, "Okie From Muskogee" by Merle Haggard come to mind. In order to convey this new message to an audience who would listen, Chesney's team didn't select the regular outlets like CMT, Vevo or a country music magazine, but choose RollingStone.com to premiere his chaotic video.

“They have been the cultural and societal touchstone since I was a kid,” Chesney explains in his press release, why he choose the music magazine as an outlet “and that gives them the gravitas to reflect what [director] Shaun [Silva] and I were trying to capture in the song. This is not political, so much as social... if you want to get people to take it all in, to step back and really reflect, let’s put the video at the heart of where people who sort those things are.”

The visual manifestation of the song is clear: distorted images changing in a fast cut, timely mentioning in passing, not only the current US election cycle, but also the daily overload of sound or video bytes that is thrown at us, basically a wall of noise imprisoning us. And even though everybody seems to communicate, there are no messages reaching the listener:

Twenty-four hour television,
get so loud that no one listens
Sex and money and politicians talk, talk, talk
But there really ain't no conversation
Ain't nothing left to the imagination
Trapped in our phones and we can't make it stop, stop, stop

Watch Kenny Chesney's Chaotic 'Noise' Video

As Rolling Stone knows: "Kenny Chesney already had the first single from his upcoming "Some Town Somewhere" album picked out when a bunch of talking - make that, yelling - heads on television threw a curveball..."

He was on the phone with Nashville tunesmith Shane McAnally on a way to a marketing meeting with his manager, when the idea of "Noise" came up. Two days later he went into the studio and recorded the song, which besides McAnally was written by Ross Copperman and Jon Nite.

But Chesney doesn't see himself as a messenger, as he told RollingStone.com "We're not preaching to anyone, we’re just making a statement about the way we live. The message is to try to be mindful of it. If you love someone, tell them you love them. Don’t text it to them! There is so much life to be lived outside our phones.”

Summary: A great move for the fluffy 8-time entertainer of the year, away from "Bro" country to an actual meaningful song. The other songs on "Some Town Somewhere" will have to prove the new thoughtfulness of Kenny Chesney. An ethereal follow up will render "Noise" as meaning less.

Sources: RollingStone.com, Essential Broadcast Media,