Charlie McCoy Interview (Part 2 of 2) [Listen 29:00] Shaking Hands With Charlie McCoy S04 Ep08
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S04 Ep08 (Part2 of 2) - Shaking Hands With Charlie McCoy
Special Guest: Charlie McCoy (Part 2 of 2) might be one of the most honored and revered guests in my roster. His impact on music (both Country and Rock) is immeasurable. To bringing up the fact that he played on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, and John Wesley Harding, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” or Roy Orbison’s “Candy Man” would overlook some of the other amazing achievements of this great musician. It should be noted that he also played with Elvis Presley throughout his career, including his early RCA sessions, and put out 35 great solo albums of his own. He is a Country music legend and has played with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Flatt and Scruggs, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, and Johnny Paycheck. He was in the Nashville’s super group, Area Code 615, as well as being part of the Nashville A-team, he was the musical director for the ground breaking television show Hee Haw for 14 years and was inducted into the Country Hall Of Fame in 2009 with Roy Clark and Barbra Mandrell (and if you had to ask he recorded with them too).
In this podcast McCoy talks about working with Gordon Lightfoot and Kris Kristofferson, working on Hee Haw and explains his thoughts on the music and recording technique in Nashville today.
Charlie McCoy - Workingman's Musician.
It's rather remarkable how Charlie McCoy gets as little attention as he does; he's been in many of the landmark moments in many of the great musicians connected to Nashville. Perhaps, most notably for his work with Bob Dylan. Being the guitarist on Dylan's song, Desolation Row, should alone gain him attention. Getting thrown into the mix changed the sound immensely, but once Dylan had it, it stuck. Not to mention the input McCoy had on Dylan's monumental album, John Wesley Harding. Regardless of being one of the most sought after session musicians in Nashville, you hear relatively little about him. At least, not as much as you'd expect to, considering the places he's been and the people he's worked with. But he doesn't seem to mind being out of the spotlight. He seems to be one who just puts his head down and get to work, be that whatever is needed, but most often he's there with a harmonica in his hands. Kind of like a John Henry except with the harmonica as his tool of choice. He just gets it and goes to work, like a workingman musician.
For Desolation Row, McCoy just happened to be in New York at the time when Dylan was recording and was asked by producer Bob Johnson to add an improvised guitar part to the song. McCoy played a Mexican style fill to Dylan's lyrics which has been said by some critics to add a crucial element to the song. Rolling Stone ranked the song as number 187 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Simply chance and knowing the right people landed him into music history. Yet countless scores of people may know the song, may even be able to sing along, but have no clue to who played the guitar that delicately enhanced and outlined Dylan's verses of the song. It seems sort of odd that he didn't get more recognition since careers have been launched on much simpler guitar riffs on much less important songs.
Now add this to the input McCoy had on John Wesley Harding; throughout the entire album, the songs consisted of Dylan, McCoy, Kenneth A. Buttrey on drums, and occasionally Pete Drake on pedal steel. For those being the only members of the band on the recording, McCoy makes for a rather large piece of the pie, yet no one has chased him down to write a book on his input on those sessions. At least, I have yet to find it. Even the Nashville Public Library has only small amount of material on him. McCoy has been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but you may find no one amongst the inductees more understated.
Maybe this persistence of being hidden in the shadow of the spotlight owes itself to McCoy devoting so much time to being a session musician, had he landed a longer stint in a band, he would have surely proved his usefulness many times over, being the multi-instrumentalist that he is. He has risen to the occasion before, and in a more stable setting, where one might expect, and look forward to his repeated showings, he might have gained a reputation by fans as being someone's right-hand man. After all, all Joe Perry and Jimmy Page did was play guitar, right?
Charlie McCoy Interview (Part 1 of 2) [Listen 26:00] Discovering Unique Talent With Charlie McCoy S04 Ep08
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
S04 Ep08 (Part1 of 2) - Discovering Unique Talent With Charlie McCoy
Special Guest: Charlie McCoy (Part 1 of 2) might be one of the most honored and revered guests in my roster. His impact on music (both Country and Rock) is immeasurable. To bringing up the fact that he played on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61, Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline, and John Wesley Harding, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” or Roy Orbison’s “Candy Man” would overlook some of the other amazing achievements of this great musician. It should be noted that he also played with Elvis Presley throughout his career, including his early RCA sessions, and put out 35 great solo albums of his own. He is a Country music legend and has played with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Flatt and Scruggs, Chet Atkins, Patsy Cline, and Johnny Paycheck. He was in the Nashville’s super group, Area Code 615, as well as being part of the Nashville A-team, he was the musical director for the ground breaking television show Hee Haw for 14 years and was inducted into the Country Hall Of Fame in 2009 with Roy Clark and Barbra Mandrell (and if you had to ask he recorded with them too).
In this podcast Charlie and I talk about his Southern beginnings, getting to Nashville and his barn dance radio days, McCoy's big Grammy winning album, The Real McCoy, his involvement in the songs “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with George Jones, and “Today I Started Loving Her Again” with Merle Haggard and Roy Orbison, we talk about Fred Foster, Sam Philips, Archie Bier, Charlie McCoy's work with Elvis, Ray Price, we get into Hank Williams and much, much more.
Nashville Sound
The Nashville sound, sometimes called by the ugly portmanteau, Countrypolitan, is the name for the sub-genre of country music that sprang up arguably around 1957. The Nashville sound is believed to be the reaction of country to combat the booming popularity of rock n' roll, ironically, it is argued that the Nashville sound was largely influenced by the one who was bolstering the popularity of rock 'n roll, Elvis Presley, but the Nashville sound was primarily orchestrated by Chet Atkins, Owen Bradley, Bob Ferguson, and Steve Shoals.
Why exactly Nashville became a music centre of the U.S. is still a matter of debate. Besides the people involved, on which there is even greater debate about who held the greatest impact, the location is considered to be a large reason behind the emergence of Nashville as a music centre. Both close enough to New York and the music that came from that way, but also far enough away from New York to not be so greatly influenced by it. And south enough to be rooted to the sounds emerging from the south and the rural areas. Also, a great deal of traffic traveling East and West went through Nashville, making it a harbour for the musical influences the travelers brought with them.
Of, course, this musical crossroads birthed one of the most reputable and revered stages by bringing these influences into the culmination of the Grand Ole Opry. The Grand Ole Opry grew out of the National Barn Dance radio program that showcased old-timey and down-home music. Noted as "the home of American music," The Grand Ole Opry is still a massive draw and is the highlight in many careers of notable country musicians that span several generations now.
S01 Ep06 – (1 of 3) Seeing Ray Price as a Human Being.
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S01 Ep06 - (1 of 3) - Seeing Ray Price as a Human Being
Interview Date: July 8, 2011 @11am EDT
Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys
I don’t know where to begin, or how to explain the gravity and cultural significance of my next guest. Ray Price is a Country honky-tonk legend who, by all accounts, kept the Hard Country torch alive as the rest of the world was turning its back and jumping on the Rock ’n ’Roll bandwagon.1 He is a man whose “music” and “message”, I would argue, is more relevant today than any other time in history. To listen to him is to listen to over a hundred years of American history all boiled down into one well crafted tune; a man so important that Hank Williams