Yeah, I bet Bare just sits out there by his pool, wondering where to fly
to for dinner that night, and regrets those background singers were on
those hit records.
It the music Business. He can play those songs as gritty as he wants to
1000 times, and does, but the only way to get those songs to cross over
to pop radio was to cut them pop. I bet it didn't hurt any of those
writers' feelings to get BMI checks for 50,000 instead of 5,000, too.
I don't understand this whole thing, I guess. If a person is a performer
in the Music Business, then the idea is to make records that as many
people as possible will like. As long as that doesn't involve a moral
issue or an aesthetically repugnant one, then this seems like a
non-problem to me. The fact that in retrospect those choruses seem corny
thirty years later doesn't mean they did then.
Gritty country records didn't sell. Pop records did. He wasn't making
records for purists, they were for people. Purists were playing high
school gyms for $150 a night and Glen Campbell had a network tv show.
"Terry A. Smith" wrote:
>
> Now, Jon, let's talk. You mean to say that those jingle-singers coming in
> dooby-doobying, or whatever, in the middle of the working-man's lament,
> "Detroit City," don't bother you? To my ears, the dissonance between the
> gritty lyrics and vocals, and the glossy uptown arrangements, is
> insurmountable. And, yeah, these songs recorded by Bobby Bare were
> hits, with both country and pop, and were obviously calculated to succeed
> on those levels. But that's the aesthetic problem -- a producer "managing"
> a performer's sound to succeed in the market, but in so doing, diluting
> the tunes into mush. I can't believe that Bare, looking back, hasn't
> wondered whether he shouldn't have done the songs differently. He probably
> doesn't wonder too much, because regretting grand success is sort of a
> useless occupation. But still...
>
> But getting back to the earlier point... Isn't there a sound aesthetic
> argument for arranging "gritty" songs in a "gritty" fashion, and giving
> urbane lyricizing a glossier finish? Jesus, the way they arranged Miller's
> Cave, they may as well had Perry Como singing it. -- Terry Smith
--
Joe Gracey
President-For-Life, Jackalope Records
http://www.kimmierhodes.com
