The Name Game

The Chicks changed their name this week, and Lady A recently changed theirs. Society’s problems have been solved!

Both were called their new names by radio and fans anyway. So, hardly a big deal.

Social change during a pandemic is a lot to deal with. Thought we already dealt with the Confederate flag issue a few years ago, but maybe not. It’s back, and the coals are red hot in some quarters. The band names were low hanging fruit, and changing them served as preemptive strikes.

Now, do we go back to talking about banning songs that have Southern overtones? “If Heaven Ain’t A Lot Like Dixie?” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down?” “The South’s Gonna Do It Again?” I’m just asking. Is “Snoopy and the Red Baron” pro German (the Red Baron was honorable)? Where does this all end?

Banning songs played by the University of Georgia Band, “Tara’s Theme” from “Gone With the Wind,” for example. Some have said this week to tear down Mount Rushmore. Just asking, where does this end?

Is the music of America’s first professional songwriter, Stephen Foster, to be revisited in this light? Do we tear down Andrew Jackson’s statute across from the White House? All these subjects are discussion topics this week on many levels.

History is complicated. You can’t change it and it’s not wise to erase it. Nashville, a.k.a. Music City, is steeped in history good and bad.

If time could be turned back, yes, changes would have been made and things done differently. Some of these issues being spotlighted now should have been dealt with 50 years ago. So, now is as good a time as any.

Country music’s association with NASCAR has seen good days and bad. NASCAR is trying to move into the future, and they are finding that to be tricky and a little uncomfortable. The Bubba Wallace story this week is still unfolding.

If you are from the South, looking into the past can be ugly. Hank Williams was raised in my hometown of Montgomery, AL, in the pre Civil Rights movement. An African American street musician, Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne, mentored young Hank, who learned the blues and got important music education from him. It was not a liberated time like today. Looking back is unpleasant, but the love of music was often far more powerful than the day’s norms.

Elvis Presley also got a lot of his musical education from segregated West Memphis. Local DJ Rufus Thomas showed Elvis off to an all black audience one afternoon at the WDIA Goodwill Review in 1956. Hearing Rufus tell this story brought such a smile. Whiter than white Elvis began his hip moves and the place went wild. Music brought everyone to the same happy place.

History is complicated. You can’t just paint with a big, wide brush. At a charity event at the Opry House once, James Brown asked if I would take him to meet one of his idols, Roy Acuff. James told me he listened to Acuff as a young boy and was thrilled to meet him. Charlie Daniels met us in the hallway and came along. Hearing James Brown singing “Wabash Cannonball” was amazing. Who knew?

Floyd Cramer was one of the greatest keyboard players in Nashville history. He told me that Michael Jackson’s mom was a huge fan, so much so that he played for her at her Los Angeles-area home.

There is so much great history on Nashville’s 16th Ave. Yes, there has been discrimination and that’s horrible. But the world is in color, not black and white. Change is never fast enough. History lays it all out, good and bad. So much great history is being made on Music Row these days, and much more needs and can be done. It will be done!

The pressure of life in 2020 is over the top for so many right now. The economic conditions caused by the Coronavirus is rough on so many, with no sign tours and money are coming back in the future. Add everything else that’s going on and it equals overload.

Protests, elections, policing issues … Our music should let us escape the day and, in some cases, cause us to look deeper.

Divorce is another Music Row sadness, yet the basis of so much art. It’s sad to see any time. There’s pressure of all kinds. Fame is often a poor bandage.

God bless the music makers who help us get through this life. Never let the music stop … ever!