> Me again: OK, let's try this again. Pretend you're composing a sound track
> for a movie about a lonely rural guy from Kentucky or West Virginia, who's
> living in Detroit making a buck in the auto factories, and who spends a
> lot of time pining for his old home, and wondering just what the heck he's
> doing in this big depressing city. Now would you use an arrangement that
> sounded like it employed some off-duty singers from the Comet commercial
> being taped in the next studio, or would you use something a bit less
> jingle-like and glossy?
I'd want to know more about the guy. Some things - and I think music is
prominent among them - don't boil down to such a mechanical connection. I
know too many men, for instance, from a rough-and-tumble background who sing
purty as angels when they harmonize. Or maybe I'd just take a selection of
stuff that was on the radio - which is how a lot of people listened to music
in those days (as now) - in all its diversity. Country diversity, that is
<g> (which reminds me that there were some pretty good singers, like the
Jordanaires, in among those moonlighting ad singers).
> I fet the feeling that Chet shoe-horned everybody
> into his own poppy world, whether they belonged their or not.
>
> I still don't understand why debating decisions on arrangements is such a
> bad thing. It has everything to do with the way a record winds up
> sounding, so what's wrong with making a value judgment about it?
As long as it's labeled as such, nothing. It's making the leap to saying
that the judgment is grounded in the values and history of country music, or
of music, or in the intentions of the specific performer (especially absent
hearing what they had and have to say), or easily equating musical style to
class content - that's where I see trouble.
I'm reminded yet again that Ralph & Carter Stanley and Jim & Jesse
McReynolds were all born within 4 or 5 years of each other, about 30 miles
apart, and from similar backgrounds...
Jon Weisberger Kenton County, KY [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.fuse.net/jonweisberger/
