Standing Over By The Record Machine: How Dwight Yoakam almost single-handled saved country music

Really though, country music needed Dwight a lot worse than he needed country music.

DWIGHT YOAKAM

The Beginning And Then Some: The Albums Of The ‘80s (Reprise/Rhino/Via) 4xLP box set

Country music in the ‘80s was an auditory disaster zone. Not much changes, does it?

Veteran artists were being cut loose by Nashville in favor of mediocrities in beards and leisure suits, floundering in an endless mire of uninspired tunes and 10th rate Eagles pastiches. I mean, how could anyone choose KENNY FUCKING ROGERS over George Jones?!

Let’s face it: Country music in the ‘80s sucked a huge red dick. Not as bad as this sugar-shaker shit and fiddles-over-hip-hop-beats they call “country” now. But it came damned close.

So, let’s speak another unvarnished truth: Country music needed Dwight Yoakam a lot more than Dwight needed country music. He saved it, anyway, out of love. And goddammit, if I don’t wish he or some new Dwight Jr. would come save it again! Rhino Records’ quadruple LP box set The Beginning And Then Some: The Albums Of The ‘80s  is all the evidence you need of his musical superiority, comprehensively gathering every note he recorded in the years when The Oak Ridge Boys were fucking up C&W left and right and Ronald Reagan was fucking up the US government.

Okay, at this point I am hearing the voice of My Dear, Sainted Mother, who loved this countrypolitan crap like I love fried chicken and the New York Dolls: “Things change! They progress!”  This is true. But not all change and “progress” is positive. If so, New Coke would have been better than the Coca Cola that existed from Whenever They Took The Cocaine Out until 1985, when the big wigs in Atlanta attempted to foist that Pepsi By Another Name upon us.

Country music doesn’t have to be as tasteless as Barry Manilow or The Eagles in order to have “progressed.” Willie Nelson provides ample evidence of this. Even the hardest core honky tonk can have beauty and poetry, and speak volumes about the human condition – Hank Williams, anyone? (But NOT Hank Jr. – that garbage is just bad Southern rock with fiddles.) 

AHEM! Okay, back to Dwight Yoakam.

Dwight seemingly arrived fully-formed – low-slung Stetson, spray-on/ripped-knee Wranglers and all –  with his 1986 debut Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.  An expansion of a six-cut, 12-inch EP for independent Oak Records, it sounded for all the world like Yoakam had been raised in a cave somewhere, nothing but Buck Owens and Merle Haggard records for comfort and sustenance. Maybe it was a coal mine? He was a natural-born Kentuckian. Thing was, there’d been a bit of an apprenticeship: Knocking around Nashville a bit after a short stint at Ohio State University following his 1974 high school graduation, he got used to the sound and feel of doors slamming in his face. He arrived in Los Angeles at age 20 in 1977, dreams of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons dancing in his head.

Several years of day jobs and shows in bars later, Yoakam soon found himself opening for a slew of punk bands as often as he played The Palomino — X, our boys Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and Hüsker Dü, among others. It fit, as he felt like country music’s punk comeuppance, in an age of wall-to-wall Alabama. It helped that he had a band as bulletproof as Owens’ Buckaroos, or Haggard’s Strangers, with a genius guitar foil in Pete Anderson, Yoakam’s own personal Don Rich. Detroit-born Anderson was as much a mentor and architect of The Dwight Yoakam Sound as a sideman. He was also Yoakam’s producer, and became one of the draftsmen behind what became known as Americana.

A set of demos recorded in 1981, included in this set on the bonus album So Forth & So On, shows that Dwight entered the decade with a pretty clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish. The tunes are familiar, populating the other six sides of this set, even if the faces on the bandstand are slightly different, including Elvis’ piano player Glen D. Hardin, first-call West Coast pedal steel whiz Jay Dee Maness, and sometime Ventures guitarist Gerry McGee. The difference between Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. and So Forth & So On is the difference between being backed by session musicians and being supported by a road-hardened band of crackerjack country killers. True, Hardin and Maness appear here, alongside the 1981 sessions’ mandolin/dobro player David Mansfield. But the core band is what he dubbed “The Babylonian Cowboys” on the next album –  Anderson’s 90 miles of twang, J.D. Foster on bass, Brantley Kearns’ fiddle, and Jeff Donovan on drums. It’s all that’s necessary to put flesh on the bones that were the demos, rendering songs such as “It Won’t Hurt,” “I’ll Be Gone” and the epicly aching “South Of Cincinnati” in a full-blooded fashion. It’s the difference between a demo and a Billboard country chart # 1 album that sells double platinum.

Dwight’s next two LPs, Hillbilly Deluxe and Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room, drew from the same pool of material on that ‘81 demo tape, adding new compositions such as the boot-scootin’ “Little Ways.”  (Dwight even managed to inject some Bakersfield twang into Elvis’ “Little Sister” on Hillbilly Deluxe, almost but not quite cutting The King at his own game.) Additional production gloss also coated the surface without removing the music’s guts – it just amounted to the modern equivalent of Buck Owens insisting mixdown/mastering engineers reduce the bass frequencies on his classic ‘60s Capitol sides, so they cut through AM car radios and transistor units better. Both albums also hit #1 on Billboard’s country chart, but only went single platinum. Which doesn’t mean Guitars, Cadillacs, Ad Infinitum was better. (Well, maybe it was!) These were ALL Dwight Yoakam albums, superior to every twangy thing else out there. The only peer he had at this moment was Steve Earle.

And honestly: Has there ever been a better album title than Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room? Well, maybe My People Were Fair and Had Stars In Their Hair Until…oh, never mind! 

The best thing about the third of the trio, besides the fleshing out of “I Sang Dixie” from the ‘81 demos, was his conjunto-fication of the 1972 Buck Owens obscurity “Streets Of Bakersfield.” By applying Tex-Mex polka rhythms to Buck’s ode to an outsider’s defiance of societal rejection, Dwight accomplished three things: 1) his first # 1 country hit; 2) introducing the country market to the accordion majesty of Flaco  Jiménez; and 3) (and most importantly) reinvigorating Buck Owens’ career. The well-done music video below likely had a lot to do with “Streets”’ success. The joy The Student and The Master took in each other’s company (Dwight especially looks like he’s thinking, “Holy shit! That’s BUCK OWENS!”) shines through like a spotlight on a stripper’s pole.

Dwight Yoakam made more music, consistently as good as this. He’s gone from strength to strength, and has even developed a parallel acting career with the same drive and intelligence he invests into his music. The Beginning And Then Some: The Albums Of The ‘80s is the music that established him as the force he is, the fire that cleansed and purified country music. True, the return of traditional country was short-lived. But Dwight stands strong in this sugar-shaker moment, the living definition of The Real Thing. That’s valuable. Here are the albums that underline his value.

#TimNapalmStegall #TimNapalmStegallSubstack #PunkJournalism #DwightYoakam #TheBeginningAndThenSome #TheAlbumsOfThe80s #VinylBoxSet #RhinoRecords #CountryMusic #1980sMusic #Americana #BakersfieldSound #ClassicCountry #CountryRevival #RealCountry #BuckOwens #FlacoJimenez #SteveEarle #PeteAnderson #SaveCountryMusic #MusicCriticism #PunkRock #SupportIndependentMedia #NapalmNation #Subscribe #Monthly #Annually #ForLife #UpgradeYourFreeSubscription #BestWayToSupport