Nashville Finally Fessing Up To Having ‘Country’ Image

The Grammy Award nominations produced some journalistic crowing in Nashville now that the influence of the Tennessee capital is showing up amongst the national elite of the pop and country music categories.

Congratulations are in order to the Nashville-based writers of Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” (Wayne Kirkpatrick, Gordon Kennedy and Tommy Sims) for their across-the-board Song of the Year nod, but please pardon a wry caveat.

Nashville, some may recall, was dragged kicking and screaming into recognizing itself as Music City USA a quarter-century or so ago, despite the fact that the Grand Ole Opry had been its most nationally-known cultural entity since the 1940s. Even then, however, the city never went so far as to employ the word “country” to describe itself. And, ever since, Nashville has looked for evidence it could ballyhoo as proof that its music is, as it has proclaimed over and over again, “not just country.”

Today, country music is no longer just the cult-loved music of rural rubes, partly because most of the rural rubes have long since moved into suburbs or cities. And despite a much-publicized downturn, country music has been America’s most-heard music in the ‘90s.

Yet it continues to be subtly snubbed even in its own capital, and on more than one level. In addition to a hunger for pop recognition in major competitions such as the Grammies, there is also a tendency on the part of many of the city’s record producers and radio programmers, to lean as often as possible toward the “contemporary” rather than the traditional side of the country music spectrum.

But every time Nashville music suffers a downturn, a few ruraloriented messiahs show up to lead a resurgence that brings it back, often to a more popular level than it had enjoyed before. It has been happening off and on ever since Johnny Cash arrived to save the traditions of Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff from the onslaught of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. In the early ‘80s, it was Ricky Skaggs and George Strait; in the mid-‘80s, it was Randy Travis and Dwight Yoakam.

More significant among this year’s Nashville-connected Grammy nominees, instead of the writers of the Clapton song, is 14-year-old LeAnn Rimes, whose “Blue” - which seems to have been adjudged too traditionally country by many country stations, until pop stations embarrassed them by grabbing it and making it a phenomenon - is nominated for Song of the Year alongside the Clapton hit.

Rimes herself, meanwhile, is nominated for Best Overall New Artist. Not, ahem, just country.

Looking backward

Speaking of Rimes, the stunning teen-ager says her follow-up album to “Blue” will be the CD that she recorded for an independent label at age 11 that got her the attention of, and ultimately her recording contract with, Curb Records.

It will be released shortly, she says, and will bear a title that has to be a first for a 14-year-old: “LeAnn: the Early Years.”

Keep on Tuckering

Before Rimes, the last country girl to become a superstar at 13 was Tanya Tucker, with the hit “Delta Dawn” 25 years ago. Since then she’s had 30 albums and 63 singles in the hit charts. Her next CD, “Complicated,” is scheduled for release March 25.

Back in the money

Johnny Paycheck, who wrote Tammy Wynette’s “Apartment No. 9” and Ray Price’s “Touch My Heart,” is writing songs again in what seems to be a determined bid for a comeback.

“It has been a long lull,” he adds, blaming it on the fact that for several years he has had no recording contract.

“I’m the type of guy that if I don’t have anywhere to put something, I don’t create it. I shouldn’t be that way, and I’m trying to correct that, because even if I don’t sing it myself, maybe somebody else will. There are so many new artists, so I’m trying to get in the frame of mind where I don’t worry about whether I’m going to sing it. I just write it, and if I don’t (sing it), somebody else will.”

Richey returns

Kim Richey, who co-wrote Trisha Yearwood’s recent No. 1 single “Believe Me Baby (I Lied)” and whose first album (“Kim Richey”) was chosen as one of the best of 1995 by several notable publications, will be back with another release March 4. It will bear the intriguing title “Bitter Sweet” and will feature 12 new songs she co-wrote.