Post by erik on Jun 9, 2012 23:04:09 GMT -5
There is a huge consensus among fans on both sides of the ideological and musical fence that has seemingly always separated rock and country: Trio was one of the most significant albums by anyone in either genre made during the 1980s. It was the end result of more than a decade's worth of friendship between the Arizona-born Linda, and her two good pals from the South, Dolly and Emmylou. And its roots go way back into each singer's past.
Dolly, of course, had been a country music icon (albeit a sometimes controversial one) since first appearing on the charts in 1967 with "Dumb Blonde" (which, of course, she wasn't), and being country legend Porter Wagoner's partner on his TV show--a partnership that lasted up until about 1973, when their split caused a lot of acrimony in ultra-conservative Nashville, even when she detailed her sorrow at their split up in her 1974 ballad "I Will Always Love You." It was also in 1974, however, that Dolly befriended Linda and Emmylou, at a time when Emmy's post-Gram Parsons solo career was getting underway, and Linda's career was about to rocket right into the stratosphere. When Dolly got her own syndicated TV show in 1976, she got Linda and Emmylou to perform with her on one episode, and it sparked the idea of actually doing an album together.
The problem, of course, was that all three women had careers of their own; each was at or close to the pinnacle of their individual successes; and each of their schedules always got in the way; and an attempt to do such an album during a ten-day period in 1978 hit the rocks. It would be another eight years before the threesome would be able to take the time to do another album and do it right without interference. By that time, Dolly had once again become both the object of fan worship and some Nashville industry disdain for her crossover hits; Emmy had had a huge critical hit with The Ballad Of Sally Rose, which unfortunately was a commercial disaster; and Linda had managed to do three albums worth of American pop standards with Nelson Riddle which were obscenely successful.
With Linda's frequent engineer George Massenburg signed on to produce, the three women indulged in extremely traditional country arrangements that utilized instruments not heard in abundance much on country records except in the bluegrass genre: mandolins; fiddles; Dobro; Hawaiian slide guitar. The song selection also reflected the ultra-traditional feel of the album as well: Jean Ritchie's "My Dear Companion"; "The Pain Of Loving You" (which Dolly and Porter had hit with in 1971); "Making Plans" (another Dolly/Porter hit, from 1980); and the Appalachian favorites "Rosewood Casket" and "Farther Along."
Released in March 1987 with a cover of the three women dressed up in Western outfits and silhouetted against an Arizona skyline that belied the album's contents, Trio was considered an extremely radical album at a time when country music was undergoing a neo-traditional phase with artists like Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, and George Strait, but was still stuck somewhat between the Urban Cowboy and Nashville countrypolitan trends of the earlier 1980s and the "hat acts" to come. In every way imaginable, Trio, by making almost no concessions to an increasingly corporate country music industry and by including so much in the way of traditionalism, would have been all but totally unmarketable had it been any other three-women combination. But the fanbases of Dolly, Linda, and Emmylou scarfed the album up voraciously, causing the album to go Platinum in very short order, making it among the best selling albums of the year, and (arguably) the single biggest selling country album of all of the 1980s. Not only did Trio hit #1 on Billboard's Country Album Chart, a position it held for five weeks (staying on the entire chart for 84 weeks), but it also, astoundingly enough, hit #6 on the overall Billboard Top 200 album chart. In March 1988, it won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Duo/Group performance, which incredibly made it only the third time up to that point that Linda herself had won anything at those awards (it was also nominated for overall Album Of The Year, which it lost to U2's The Joshua Tree).
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www.chicagonow.com/off-broadway-in-chicago/files/2011/06/Dolly11.jpg [/img]
Four huge hits were spawned out of Trio, all of them Top 10 smashes: "To Know Him Is To Love Him", a traditionalist take on the Phil Spector-penned classic that hit #1 in May 1987 and featured Emmylou on lead vocals; "Those Memories Of You", with Dolly on lead vocal, which hit #5 in the fall; and "Wildflowers", again with Dolly on lead, which hit #6 in the spring of 1988. Linda didn't get left in the dust, however; her own lead vocal singles release contribution scored heavily with country listeners, and was the closest that any song on Trio got to her 1970s country-rock past.
TELLING ME LIES
05/30/87--#65 (Linda's nineteenth Top 100 C&W single)
06/06/87--#45
06/13/87--#36 (Linda's tenth Top 40 C&W single)
06/20/87--#31
06/27/87--#26
07/04/87--#21
07/11/87--#18
07/18/87--#14
07/25/87--#10 (Linda's seventh and final Top 10 C&W single)
08/01/87--#6
08/08/87--#3
08/15/87--#9
08/22/87--#21
08/29/87--#43
09/05/87--#52
09/12/87--#75
09/19/87--#98
09/26/87--#99
Managing to hit #35 on the Adult Contemporary chart, "Telling Me Lies", written by Betsy Cook and British-born singer/songwriter Linda Thompson, was also nominated for a Grammy as Best Country Song. Even with all the power and dexterity developed in her voice during the seven years full of Gilbert and Sullivan and Nelson Riddle, Linda hadn't lost her ability for subtlety, which was amply demonstrated in an arrangement that was for all intents and purposes a throwback to earlier times. It was also, at least to date, her last appearance in the Billboard Country Top 40 singles chart with her voice as the primary or solo focus.
Dolly again had Linda and Emmylou on her second TV show, this time for ABC, in the fall of 1987 to do songs from the album; and as with the 1976 show, the appearance of her two Trio pals turned out to be the best of the series. No tour for the album was ever done, however, because once again the three women had careers that still needed attending to. Linda, in particular, was to stun audiences once again before the end of 1987 with Canciones De Mi Padre.
In the intervening years, the three women each talked about doing a second Trio album. But such talk once put into practice in the following decade got so tangled up in scheduling conflicts and personality issues that their friendship was almost irreparably damaged. That and other aspects of Linda's relationship to country music will be focused on in the next segment, which will deal with the entire decade of the 1990s.
Dolly, of course, had been a country music icon (albeit a sometimes controversial one) since first appearing on the charts in 1967 with "Dumb Blonde" (which, of course, she wasn't), and being country legend Porter Wagoner's partner on his TV show--a partnership that lasted up until about 1973, when their split caused a lot of acrimony in ultra-conservative Nashville, even when she detailed her sorrow at their split up in her 1974 ballad "I Will Always Love You." It was also in 1974, however, that Dolly befriended Linda and Emmylou, at a time when Emmy's post-Gram Parsons solo career was getting underway, and Linda's career was about to rocket right into the stratosphere. When Dolly got her own syndicated TV show in 1976, she got Linda and Emmylou to perform with her on one episode, and it sparked the idea of actually doing an album together.
The problem, of course, was that all three women had careers of their own; each was at or close to the pinnacle of their individual successes; and each of their schedules always got in the way; and an attempt to do such an album during a ten-day period in 1978 hit the rocks. It would be another eight years before the threesome would be able to take the time to do another album and do it right without interference. By that time, Dolly had once again become both the object of fan worship and some Nashville industry disdain for her crossover hits; Emmy had had a huge critical hit with The Ballad Of Sally Rose, which unfortunately was a commercial disaster; and Linda had managed to do three albums worth of American pop standards with Nelson Riddle which were obscenely successful.
With Linda's frequent engineer George Massenburg signed on to produce, the three women indulged in extremely traditional country arrangements that utilized instruments not heard in abundance much on country records except in the bluegrass genre: mandolins; fiddles; Dobro; Hawaiian slide guitar. The song selection also reflected the ultra-traditional feel of the album as well: Jean Ritchie's "My Dear Companion"; "The Pain Of Loving You" (which Dolly and Porter had hit with in 1971); "Making Plans" (another Dolly/Porter hit, from 1980); and the Appalachian favorites "Rosewood Casket" and "Farther Along."
Released in March 1987 with a cover of the three women dressed up in Western outfits and silhouetted against an Arizona skyline that belied the album's contents, Trio was considered an extremely radical album at a time when country music was undergoing a neo-traditional phase with artists like Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, and George Strait, but was still stuck somewhat between the Urban Cowboy and Nashville countrypolitan trends of the earlier 1980s and the "hat acts" to come. In every way imaginable, Trio, by making almost no concessions to an increasingly corporate country music industry and by including so much in the way of traditionalism, would have been all but totally unmarketable had it been any other three-women combination. But the fanbases of Dolly, Linda, and Emmylou scarfed the album up voraciously, causing the album to go Platinum in very short order, making it among the best selling albums of the year, and (arguably) the single biggest selling country album of all of the 1980s. Not only did Trio hit #1 on Billboard's Country Album Chart, a position it held for five weeks (staying on the entire chart for 84 weeks), but it also, astoundingly enough, hit #6 on the overall Billboard Top 200 album chart. In March 1988, it won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Duo/Group performance, which incredibly made it only the third time up to that point that Linda herself had won anything at those awards (it was also nominated for overall Album Of The Year, which it lost to U2's The Joshua Tree).
Four huge hits were spawned out of Trio, all of them Top 10 smashes: "To Know Him Is To Love Him", a traditionalist take on the Phil Spector-penned classic that hit #1 in May 1987 and featured Emmylou on lead vocals; "Those Memories Of You", with Dolly on lead vocal, which hit #5 in the fall; and "Wildflowers", again with Dolly on lead, which hit #6 in the spring of 1988. Linda didn't get left in the dust, however; her own lead vocal singles release contribution scored heavily with country listeners, and was the closest that any song on Trio got to her 1970s country-rock past.
TELLING ME LIES
05/30/87--#65 (Linda's nineteenth Top 100 C&W single)
06/06/87--#45
06/13/87--#36 (Linda's tenth Top 40 C&W single)
06/20/87--#31
06/27/87--#26
07/04/87--#21
07/11/87--#18
07/18/87--#14
07/25/87--#10 (Linda's seventh and final Top 10 C&W single)
08/01/87--#6
08/08/87--#3
08/15/87--#9
08/22/87--#21
08/29/87--#43
09/05/87--#52
09/12/87--#75
09/19/87--#98
09/26/87--#99
Managing to hit #35 on the Adult Contemporary chart, "Telling Me Lies", written by Betsy Cook and British-born singer/songwriter Linda Thompson, was also nominated for a Grammy as Best Country Song. Even with all the power and dexterity developed in her voice during the seven years full of Gilbert and Sullivan and Nelson Riddle, Linda hadn't lost her ability for subtlety, which was amply demonstrated in an arrangement that was for all intents and purposes a throwback to earlier times. It was also, at least to date, her last appearance in the Billboard Country Top 40 singles chart with her voice as the primary or solo focus.
Dolly again had Linda and Emmylou on her second TV show, this time for ABC, in the fall of 1987 to do songs from the album; and as with the 1976 show, the appearance of her two Trio pals turned out to be the best of the series. No tour for the album was ever done, however, because once again the three women had careers that still needed attending to. Linda, in particular, was to stun audiences once again before the end of 1987 with Canciones De Mi Padre.
In the intervening years, the three women each talked about doing a second Trio album. But such talk once put into practice in the following decade got so tangled up in scheduling conflicts and personality issues that their friendship was almost irreparably damaged. That and other aspects of Linda's relationship to country music will be focused on in the next segment, which will deal with the entire decade of the 1990s.