September 2, 2022 —– Chart #159
Hello Music Friends,
Ever get a song stuck in your head? You know, you hear the song and for the next week you can’t stop humming or singing the tune in your mind? Happens to me all the time, and when a good one gets lodged in there tight it’s hard to get out. Today’s Chart is one of those songs, and it not from the 60’s or 70’s. Today’s Chart of the Week is a wonderful tune by Texas’ own Rodney Crowell. The song, It Ain’t Over Yet, was released in 2017 and won a Song of the Year award. I hope you like it and please accept my apologies in advance if this one gets stuck in your head too!
Rodney Crowell (born August 7, 1950) is an American musician, known primarily for his work as a singer and songwriter in country music. Crowell has had five number one singles on Hot Country Songs, all from his 1988 album Diamonds & Dirt. He has also written songs and produced for other artists. He was influenced by songwriters Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Crowell played guitar and sang for three years in Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band. He has won two Grammy Awards in his career, one in 1990 for Best Country Song for the song “After All This Time” and one in 2014 Best Americana Album for his album Old Yellow Moon.
Crowell was born on August 7, 1950, in Houston, Texas, to James Walter Crowell and Addie Cauzette Willoughby. He came from a musical family, with one grandfather being a church choir leader and the other a bluegrass banjo player. His grandmother played guitar and his father sang semi-professionally at bars and honky tonks. At age 11, he started playing drums in his father’s band. In his teen years, he played in various garage rock bands in Houston, performing hits of the day mixed with a few country numbers.
In August 1972 he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in search of a musical career and got a job as a songwriter after being discovered by Jerry Reed. He later met and befriended fellow songwriter Guy Clark, who became a major influence on his songwriting and vice versa. While there, he said, “I got a real cold splash in the face of what real songwriting is about. I started filling my mind with as many symbols and images as I could. I started reading. I got real hungry to have something to contribute”. Emmylou Harris had recorded one of Crowell’s songs, “Bluebird Wine”, on her Pieces of the Sky album and made a request to meet him. After he sat in with Emmylou at her gig at the Armadillo World Headquarters in early January 1975, she asked him to play rhythm guitar in her backing band, The Hot Band. He accepted and left the following day to join Emmylou in Los Angeles.
Crowell has recorded and/or performed with Vince Gill, Tony Brown, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Jewel, Sheryl Crow and many others. There is a very long list of musicians who have recorded Rodney Crowell written songs including Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, Lee Ann Womack, Wynonna Judd, Keith Urban, Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw and many others.
Solo, just the man and a guitar: https://youtu.be/iERRtmNnR18
Live w/ Rosanne Cash & John Paul White: https://youtu.be/Y3kxbi5pVb0
I hope you enjoy reading these stories and playing these songs as much as I love putting them together. The music keeps us together.
Keep rockin my friends,
Stan Bradshaw