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OK, be honest with me. When is the last time you heard a Christmas Carol with a riff from Sweet Home Alabama thrown in for good measure? There’s only one entertainer alive who can pull off a stunt like that and make it sound absolutely natural and exceedingly stylish at the same time.
Keith Urban is a guitar legend, a man who grasped at a second chance in life and rode it to the very pinnacle of country music greatness. And along the way he seems to be having more pure fun than the law allows, sitting on some steps in Nashville, jamming with a couple of buddies…and the result is pretty close to perfect.
It’s impossible to ignore Tennessee Ernie Ford’s rich and booming baritone, but it’s Ford’s son, Brion, who steals the show here, “Bless his little pea picken heart!”
This clip is taken from a 1957 Christmas edition of “The Ford Show”… three guesses which automaker sponsored it … Ford (the singer not the carmaker) was at the height of his popularity, just two years after the smash hit ‘Sixteen Tons’ made him a household name. He turned increasingly to Gospel music over the years and that unmistakable, bone-rattling baritone served him right up until his death in 1991. Unfortunately, Brion, the rambunctious boy who so animates this segment also passed away in 2008.
What a gorgeous little gem. There’s a touching innocence in this ballad, a simple and wondrous tale of two souls uniting at Christmas, the joy of the moment and the promise of many more to come. And Lee Ann Womack tells the story perfectly.
What a voice. Ms. Womack has to be one of the most underrated entertainers in the country music business. Of course she’s had her hits and won her share of awards but has never really secured her place on the A-list…possibly because fans often have to wait years between albums. Still, for my money she’s up there with Dolly Parton when it comes to wringing every last drop of emotion out of the music… in this case, the hope and exhilaration of a fresh romance, combined with the celebration of Christmas.
Something tells me the trio of blonds that makes up Lucy Angel is anything but… and still, their light-hearted rip-off of Mr. Sandman is absolutely infectious, a boisterous rollick that somehow tiptoes a magic fine line...sexy and sweet and fairly bursting with Christmas spirit. The jingle alone will keep you happily humming all day long but have a look at the video and you’ll be chuckling as well.
Lucy Angel is another of those overnight successes … years in the making; hard at it since 2003 and finally starting to catch fire. Now take a hard look at the trio … Kate, Lindsay and Emily … and tell me which one is the mother and which two are the daughters.
Originally written in 1934, Don’t Fence Me In languished in song limbo for a full ten years before it was heard by much of anyone – except for Cole Porter and maybe his mother. Porter had written the song for a film - Adios Argentina - that was never released. He’d based the lyrics on a poem by a Montana writer named Robert Fletcher. Fletcher and the producer of Adios Argentina were friends, and when Porter was asked to write a cowboy song about the west (you can imagine Porter’s surprise – he’d never written a cowboy song before), the producer suggested he buy the rights to Fletcher’s poem and use it for some of the lyrics.
Porter borrowed a number of lines from Fletcher, including ‘Give me land, lots of land,’ ‘on my cayuse’ (I had to look it up too – a cayuse is a North American horse, wild or tame, that is small, stocky, speedy and has incredible endurance – it’s named for the Cayuse people of eastern Washington and Oregon), ‘straddle my old saddle,’ and ‘where the West commences.’
The song was finally heard when it was featured in Hollywood Canteen, a musical filmed in 1944 to entertain the troops in World War II, starring Roy Rogers and his horse. After Hollywood Canteen, Don’t Fence Me In went on to sell more than a million copies of sheet music – no small potatoes in 1944. Accounts differ as to what happened next. Either Porter realized Fletcher hadn’t received any credit or income from the song and decided to assign him a portion of the royalties, or Fletcher hired attorneys who negotiated his share of the proceeds. Either way, Don’t Fence Me In has become one of the most popular western songs of all time. Here are three very different versions – first by Roy Rogers, then by David Byrne and Willie Nelson. (You’ll be interested to know that James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald and Nokia (for a commercial) also did versions!)
Saturday, December 24, 2011 at 10:18PM Tweet 
Credit: tvtropes.org
