Country music singer Loretta Lynn at her new Hollywood Walk of Fame star during her 1978 induction ceremony.
Associated Press file
Loretta Lynn hugged me. In her dressing room in Reno. After I had sent the country singer two dozen roses to say there were no hard feelings.
More about that later.
Country music gets the short shrift up North. People like me who enjoy it — who’ve been to the Grand Ole Opry and seen Montgomery Gentry, twice — tend to be on the down-low on the subject. Maybe we’re embarrassed to defend our affections. For me, it’s the honest human emotion. I don’t have a daughter, but Ashley McBride’s “Light on in the Kitchen” still chokes me up. Admitting that is off brand, I suppose.
It shouldn’t be, not in Chicago. For all the talk of Chicago as home to the blues, to jazz, and even to house music, we somehow rarely get around to talking about our rich country music heritage. Rich and deep — the WLS National Barn Dance, which predated the Opry by two years, was first broadcast 100 years ago Friday, on April 19, 1924.
If you haven’t read Mark Guarino’s “Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival,” it’s a richly-researched, utterly fascinating revelation, from the Barn Dance to Ernest Tubb coining the term “Country and Western,” in 1947 at the prodding of “a record man from Chicago,” trying to escape the confines of “hillbilly music.”
The program was the center of country for decades, drawing all sorts of stars. Gene Autry lived in Aurora . Bill Monroe recorded “Blue Moon of Kentucky” at the Wrigley Building. In the 1920s, Chicago mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson was known as “the cowboy mayor” for his Stetson hat and Nebraska ranch, and once rode a horse into the City Council chambers. We’ve gone from that to a mayor who can’t hold an impromptu conversation.
“Country & Midwestern” by Mark Guarino was published last year by the University of Chicago Press, and documents Chicago’s important role as a center for the development of country music. Guarino was the Midwest bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor for seven years.
Photo provided by the University of Chicago Press.
I thought I knew a lot about Chicago. I knew the Gate of Horn was a Near North Side club where Lenny Bruce was arrested. I didn’t realize it was a folk music mecca, with a dirt floor dressing room, where an 18-year Joan Baez nervously dipped her toe in the big time, dreaming of meeting Marlon Brando. A nebbishy Bobby Zimmerman, on his way from Minnesota to Greenwich Village and his rendezvous with becoming Bob Dylan, knocked around Hyde Park for a few days. “Little chipmunk-faced guy with a flat hat and a pea coat on,” Elvin Bishop recalls. “I said, ‘Oh, this poor bastard seems like a nice guy but is never going to make it. Listen to that voice.'”
One of the valuable accomplishments of Guarino’s book is how he connects country music with the folk revival. “Hillbilly for cultured” is how the Tribune summed up folk in 1960. He also documents how Uptown was once a haven for poor Appalachian whites fleeing north to Chicago, and how they met prejudice surprisingly similar to that faced by their Black counterparts.
I was surprised at how familiar it all was. You couldn’t work the night shift in the 1980s and not know the R.R. Ranch, the country music bar incongruously located on Randolph Street between the Greyhound bus station and the Woods Theatre. And yes, I climbed on stage one night and sang “Tequila Sunrise” with the Sundowners.
The more I look at my time in Chicago, the more country pops out. I occasionally brag about hearing Muddy Waters play, but seldom mention that the group I set out to see that night was Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, whose records I’d heard at summer camp. The blues great was their opening act.
And Loretta Lynn. A magazine assignment. Before I interviewed her, I figured I’d better do my due diligence and listen to her records, watch “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” That pushed me toward loving country music.
A few days before we were to meet, however, someone in her entourage suffered a tragedy and Lynn canceled our interview. I flew to Reno anyway, figuring, see the show, then talk later. But when we got to the hotel, I had an idea: I called the hotel florist and sent her two dozen roses with a note explaining my sympathy and understanding.
An hour later her manager phoned — Loretta appreciated the flowers; why not stop by after the show and say hello? So I did. We talked. She was effusive, speaking in that gorgeous Butcher Holler, Kentucky drawl. “So Doo pushes me in the poo’, and I get out and push Doo in the poo’.” She told of ghosts and heartbreak, and when it was over, Loretta Lynn gave me a big ole hug.