Good “Old” Country Music

My son’s father is a musician and after we were married, I usually tagged along with him to his various gigs, sometimes just a smoky bar, sometimes nicer music venues. He was in a hugely popular country rock band in the ‘70s based out of Houston. They had a couple of reunions in the ‘80s and one time Nanci Griffith opened for them. She was not well received by the audience; she was too tame; they wanted their loud country rock to begin. After her performance she was humiliated and in tears but she went on to fame and fortune and no longer had anything to cry about.

In 1983, my husband is now in another band and their promoter managed to get them a touring gig with this up-and-coming country singer named George Strait and his band Ace in the Hole. No band had ever toured with George at this point so my husband’s band was the first.

I didn’t listen to country music so I wasn’t familiar with George, but prior to my husband touring with him, I remembered my sister playing a cassette tape in her car that she had of his music. She played a song that I liked, something about nickels and dimes. I figured he was just another country singer. My husband had played with so many others.

A friend of mine became a masseuse in the early ‘90s. One of her regular clients was the singer Michael Bolton. She told me she had no idea who he was. She was Hispanic and only listened to Spanish music. Just because someone is famous, doesn’t always mean we know who they are and that’s how it was for me not really knowing who George was because I didn’t listen to country music.

The first couple of gigs with George were in San Marcos at a large honky tonk/dance hall. I remember being impressed by the crowds and thinking, “Wow, this guy seems so well liked.” I became friends with the wife of George’s drummer, she and I pal’d around at the gigs. Whenever she and I would walk out to the dance floor, there were always lots of female fans hanging around the edges hoping for an up close encounter with George. They would stare at us, so almost in unison she and I would say to them “We’re just the drummers’ wives” to assure them that neither of us were married to George, which seemed to put these women at ease. Never mind George’s wife was at most of the gigs too. So that was our motto at all the gigs, “We’re just the drummers’wives.”

At one end of the stage was a small enclosed room that had a door going out to the dance floor and another door going out to the back parking lot where George’s bus was and where we all parked our cars. I walked in the door off the dance floor just as George was coming down the steps from the stage, and there we are, about three feet from each other, and all I could do was stare at him with a stupid smile pasted on my face. Maybe my lips moved as if to say something, because he stood there smiling at me, waiting for me to say whatever it was I was going to say, which is ... I have no idea. I guess I was starstruck. I wasn’t expecting to react this way as my husband had played with other country stars that didn’t do this to me, but George’s presence, his smile and incredible good looks were paralyzing. About that time my husband came in through the other door from the back parking lot so I was off the hook. He and George started talking and I stood there, looking from one to the other, as if watching a tennis match. I’d look at my husband then look at George and back again. I was kind of amazed by the whole thing because I had a feeling that this guy George Strait was on his way to super stardom, and here my husband is talking to him as casually about that night’s performance as if they were talking about the weather.

There were many memorable moments from those days with George, but one that really stood out was when I was backstage and this little girl with beautiful long wavy blonde hair was walking towards me. She looked up at me and I knew immediately who she belonged to. Her face was that of George Strait. The resemblance to her father was mind-blowing. Several years later, her life was taken in a car accident in the Texas Hill Country. My husband said that was when George switched from a white hat to a black hat.

I decided to be more open to country music and learned to appreciate a few country stars here and there, but as the years marched on, I began to see a pattern. All these new country singers looked and sounded exactly alike, or they were George Strait wannabes. There are a few that stand out, but I feel that really good country music ended with George Strait. I don’t know if we’ll ever see another time where we have such diverse and unique voices like Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and many others and of course our beloved George Strait.