‘Alternative’ Country Radio’s Focus On Mainstream Hits Forces Fans To Seek Out Favorite Styles Elsewhere

Country Albums

Country music’s current mainstream is narrowly focused and hard to hit, a lot of it so radio-friendly that it seems to pander, but the mainstream is just a fraction of a much richer Nashville spectrum past and present.

Operating outside the mainstream provides much wider latitude in terms of both style and substance. Just being “alternative,” though, doesn’t always make a project exceptional.

A Multiplicity of Artists

(Warner/Reprise) ****

This massive $54.98, three-volume collection is probably priced beyond the consideration of the casual consumer, but it is a historic package that will richly reward any who give it a chance.

It exhaustively illustrates the contributions of African Americans to country music, whether in the pop and rhythm and blues realms, or in the country field proper. But the very span of the package, which is accompanied by 60 pages of helpful notes, suggests a panorama of cross-cultural experience that not only enriched country music but made a more than minimal impression on the American black consciousness as well.

It begins with the string band era and DeFord Bailey’s famous “Pan American Blues,” which contributed to the rise (and even the coining of the name) of the Grand Ole Opry, and goes on through a succession of early string bands that featured some, if not all, African-American musicians and singers.

“Volume Two: The Soul Country Years” presents many black singers who used country songs to make hits in their own field as well as in the pop arena. Highlights include Joe Hinton’s version of Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away,” Arthur Alexander’s of Mel Tillis’ “Detroit City,” Ivory Joe Hunter’s of Bill Anderson’s “City Lights” and Al Green’s of Kris Kristofferson’s “For the Good Times.”

Volume Three is meaningfully titled “Forward with Pride,” opening with Charley Pride and four tracks from his prodigious stardom, but also including a wide array of other country-aimed material by much less famous African American artists. Some of the most memorable here include “The Man that Made a Woman Out of Me” by La Melle Prince, whose vocal approach is remindful of Dottie West; Otis Williams & the Midnight Cowboys’ rendition of Tom T. Hall’s “How I Got to Memphis”; Barrence Whitfield’s version of Merle Haggard’s interracial love lyric “Irma Jackson”; The Pointer Sisters’ landmark recording of their own “Fairytale”; and Dobie Gray’s “From Where I Stand.”

The singing styles vary from the country traditionalism of Pride, Stoney Edwards and Prince to the soul of The Orioles, Esther Phillips, The Supremes and The Staple Singers, but the lyrical message is country. Which should hardly be surprising. Nashville’s music is rooted, after all, in the agricultural South where poor blacks and poor whites always impacted each other.

Dixie Chicks

“Wide Open Spaces” (Monument) ***-1/2

This unforgettably named group, whose Dixieness is Southwestern and tempered by some Massachusetts roots, offers much more than three blondes.

Basically, the Chicks is a heady mixture of bluesy power and folky harmonic sweetness. The power is supplied by lead singer Natalie Maines, whose forte is vocal guts and who gets her genes from the musical Maines family. (Remember the Maines Brothers of a couple of decades ago?) The sweetness comes from sisters Emily Erwin and Martie Seidel, who helped found this group eight years ago, six years before Maines was recruited.

In a decreasingly stable business, these people could be around a while.

The Mavericks “Trampoline” (MCA) ****

Warning! This gets four stars, but with a caveat: It is not much more country than Placido Domingo.

Nevertheless, country fans who like music in general should find this collection’s sheer exuberance, vocal power and lilting artistry hard to resist. Its title, which is not taken from that of any of the songs, probably refers to the bounce that pervades most of the 13 tracks, a dozen of which were written or co-written by lead singer Raul Malo.

The sound here is that of a group of men - Robert Reynolds, Paul Deakin, Nick Kane, Jerry Dale McFadden and Malo - being let out of jail, as if the band has felt constricted by the minimal attentions it has paid over the years to trying to fit the country format.

The lead singer/songwriter’s Miami/Cuban roots show here in periodic trumpets and touches of Caribbean rhythm, while his voice is at its lilting, poignant best in such big sweeping ballads as “Tell Me Why,” “I Should Know,” and “I’ve Got This Feeling.”

This is very good but utterly non-mainstream. On radio, you’ll probably have to seek it out.

Paul Burch

“Pan American Flash” (Checkered Past Records) ***

This is for alternative country fans of current practitioners of the old sounds - in this case, the Hank Williams instrumental sound teamed with newly written songs that tend to sound old.

Burch, who wrote all of them, has a listenable voice, and his band, the WPA Ballclub, is tight, energetic and faithful in copying the spirit of the ‘50s Nashville sound.

The lyrical point here seems to be to reinforce the nostalgia of the instrumentation rather than establish any strong story of its own.