Mickey
Newbury |
|
|
Mickey
Newbury |
Birth
name : |
Milton
Sim Newbury, Jr. |
Born
: |
(1940-05-19)May
19, 1940
Houston, Texas |
Died
: |
September
29, 2002(2002-09-29) (aged 62)
Springfield, Oregon |
Genres
: |
Country |
Occupation(s)
: |
Singer-songwriter |
Years
active : |
19682002 |
Website
: |
www.mickeynewbury.com |
|
|
|
|
Milton
Sims "Mickey" Newbury Jr. (May 19, 1940 September 29, 2002)
was an American songwriter, recording artist, and a member of
the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. |
|
Early
Life and career |
|
Newbury
was born in Houston, Texas, on May 19, 1940, to Mamie Ellen (nιe
Taylor) and Milton Newbury. As a teenager, Newbury sang tenor
in a moderately successful vocal group called The Embers. The
group opened for several famous performers, such as Sam Cooke
and Johnny Cash. Although Newbury tried to make a living from
his music by singing in clubs, he put his musical career on hold
at age 19 when he joined the Air Force. After four years in the
military, he again set his sights on making a living as a songwriter.
Before long, he moved to Nashville and signed with the prestigious
publishing company Acuff-Rose Music. In 1966, country star Don
Gibson had a Top Ten country hit with Newbury's "Funny Familiar
Forgotten Feelings" while Tom Jones scored a world hit with the
same song. In 1968, Newbury saw huge success with four top-five
songs across four different charts: "Just Dropped In (To See What
Condition My Condition Was In)" #5 on the Pop/Rock chart by Kenny
Rogers and the First Edition; "Sweet Memories" #1 on Easy Listening
by Andy Williams; "Time is a Thief" #1 on the R&B chart by
Solomon Burke; and "Here Comes the Rain Baby" #1 on the Country
chart by Eddy Arnold. This feat has not been repeated. |
|
Early
career |
|
Based
on his phenomenal success as a writer, Newbury scored a solo deal
with RCA and recorded Harlequin Melodies. Sonically, the
album is drastically different from anything else Newbury would
record. The artist largely disowned the album, considering its
successor Looks Like Rain his true debut. In contrast to
the subtle expressiveness of Newbury's prime work, Harlequin
Melodies is overproduced and packed with often distracting
instrumental touches, shifting tempos, and strange production
effects. Some of the songs on Harlequin Melodies would
be re-recorded by Newbury for later albums, with very marked differences.
"How Many Times (Must The Piper Be Paid For His Song)" was a highlight
of Frisco Mabel Joy; "Good Morning, Dear" and "Sweet Memories"
reappeared on Heaven Help the Child, and "Here Comes The
Rain Baby" reappeared on A Long Road Home, the last album
Newbury released during his lifetime. |
|
Owing
to a verbal agreement with Steve Sholes, Newbury was able to get
out of his five-year contract with RCA and sign with Mercury,
where he could work with his good friends Jerry Kennedy and Bob
Beckham. Just about every aspect of his next recording, Looks
Like Rain, was unconventional by Nashville's standards at
the time, beginning with Newbury's choice of studio. Cinderella
Sound was located in a residential area of Madison and was run
by guitarist Wayne Moss, who had converted his two-car garage
into a recording studio. Newbury's decision to record outside
the Nashville studio system would inspire other country singers,
such as Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, who were also frustrated
by the confines of Music City's traditional recording practices.
Newbury would record three albums at Cinderella Sound that defied
categorization. One significant aspect of their production is
the inclusion sound effects to link the songs, which gave the
LPs a conceptual feel and would become a Newbury trademark. His
next album, Frisco Mabel Joy, includes his most famous
song, "An American Trilogy," later made famous by Elvis Presley.
The song is actually a medley of three 19th century songs: "Dixie",
a blackface minstrel song composed by Daniel Decatur Emmett that
became the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy since the Civil
War; "All My Trials", originally a Bahamian lullaby, but closely
related to African American spirituals and well known through
folk music revivalists; and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic,"
the marching song of the Union Army during the Civil War. According
to Joe Ziemer's Newbury memoir Crystal & Stone, Newbury
was moved to perform the songwhich had been banned in some southern
statesas a protest against censorship. It is the song most associated
with Newbury and his highest-charting original recording, reaching
#26 in 1972, and #9 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart.
Newbury's version would remain in the Top 40 for seven weeks.
In 1972, Elvis Presley's version reached #66 and peaked at #31
on the Easy Listening chart, but it became the grandiose highlight
of his live shows. The song gained worldwide exposure when Presley
performed it during his Aloha From Hawaii television special
in January 1973. |
|
1970s |
|
Throughout
the '70s, Newbury continued producing albums that were critically
acclaimed for their unique, mysterious atmosphere and poetic songs,
such as Live at Montezuma Hall (1973), Heaven Help the
Child (1973), and I Came to Hear the Music (1974).
However, his albums did not sell much, in part because of their
eclecticism and Newbury's growing disdain for the music business,
especially in Nashville. By 1975, the outlaw country movement
had captivated the industry, reaching its commercial zenith with
the release of the Willie Nelson concept album Red Headed Stranger
and the RCA compilation Wanted! The Outlaws a year later,
which would be recognized as country music's first platinum album.
The year before, Waylon Jennings recorded his album This Time
at Tompall Glaser's "Hillbilly Central" studio at 916 Nineteenth
Avenue South, bucking the Nashville studio system so he could
record his music exactly as he wanted to. Jennings and Nelson,
along with a coterie of other like-minded outlaws, were heralded
by many as visionaries for their independent spirit and reaped
the rewards of record-breaking sales. Newbury, meanwhile, who
had arguably inspired the spirit of the outlaw country movement
more than any other artist, was having difficulty keeping his
albums in print. Newbury biographer Joe Ziemer sums up the singer's
dilemma in his book Crystal and Stone: "Though diversity
derives from aptitude and ability, diversity was Newbury's problem
with radio stations. One dominant characteristic of his music
is eclecticism, and that's what made his albums unattractive to
strict radio formats." |
|
Newbury
was not even living in Nashville by 1975, having moved to Oregon
with his wife and son. Ironically, Newbury's profile could not
have been higher on the radio in 1977, albeit in a referential
way; in April, Jennings released the #1 country smash "Luckenbach,
Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)," which contains the lines
"Between Hank Williams' pain songs, Newbury's train songs..."
The song became an instant classic, but most of the listeners
who sang along with the tune likely had no idea who Newbury was.
Although cited by Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, David Allan Coe,
and several other country stars as a primary influence on their
songwriting and albums, Newbury had little interest in cashing
in on the outlaw country movement, telling Peter O'Brien of the
Omaha Rainbow in 1977, "It's just categorising again, making
a new pigeon-hole to stick somebody into. You got to be dressed
a certain way, you got to be a drinker and a hell-raiser, cuss
and make an ass of yourself, act like a kid. I've told 'em I quit
playing cowboys when I grew up. I just get turned off by all that."
In 1976, Newbury signed with ABC Hickory Records and recorded
three albums: Rusty Tracks (1976), His Eye Is on the
Sparrow (1977) and The Sailor (1979). Despite featuring
some of the best musicians in Nashville (as well as film scorer
Alan Moore), the recordings failed to find an audience, although
his work remained highly regarded by critics and fellow artists.
In his AllMusic review of The Sailor, Thom Jurek observes,
"The Sailor, once again, refused to sell, perhaps because
it was too late, perhaps because it was too earlyMerle Haggard
and George Jones made records that sounded exactly like this only
three years later and scored big... Nashville's radio machine
wasn't having it, and therefore the public never got the chance
to make up its mind." |
|
1980s |
|
In
1980, Newbury was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame,
the youngest person to receive the honor at the time. Newbury
signed with PolyGram-Mercury and recorded After All These Years
in 1981. After that, the singer dropped out of sight, not recording
again until 1988. He was not completely inactive during this period,
appearing on the Bobby Bare and Friends television show
in 1983 and participating on the Canadian program In Session
with friend Larry Gatlin the same year. He also toured Australia
in 1984 and sang "Sweet Memories" during a "guitar pull" as part
of the television special The Door Is Always Open hosted
by Waylon Jennings. However, Newbury was disenchanted with the
music business, especially after Wesley Rose, who controlled the
publishing rights to 300 Newbury compositions, sold the Acuff-Rose
publishing company to Opryland USA for $22 million in 1985.
Adding to his woes, the IRS came after Newbury as well. "All that
came together at one time... So I wasted what should have been
the best years of my life just fightin' off the wolves," he later
remarked. "Plus I was old... Nobody wanted me anymore." |
|
In
1988, Airborne Records planned a release in which Newbury demos
were treated with synthesizers and other then-contemporary production
effects. These demos stemmed from sessions with producer Larry
Butler in Nashville in March 1983 and featured new-age synthesizer
sounds, which Newbury came to loathe. "I was so drunk then," he
later explained. "I hate those cuts and never want to hear 'em
again." Newbury also claimed to have thrown a cassette of the
recordings on the ground and stomped on it. Newbury was aghast
when he heard that Airborne was planning to release the recordings,
and had even printed up the album art, but after learning that
no CDs or cassettes had yet been made, Newbury instead re-recorded
the songs Airborne planned to use, and the album was released
with these new recordings, effectively Newbury's first recordings
in years. Newbury recorded the album solo with accompaniment from
violinist Marie Rhines. |
|
Later
life |
|
In
1994, Newbury resurfaced with the live album Nights When I
Am Sane. A year later he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis,
which would impact his ability to record and perform for the remainder
of his life. In 1996, he released Lulled by the Moonlight,
his first collection of new compositions since 1981. Several live
recordings followed, including Live in England (1998) and
It Might as Well Be the Moon (1999). The final album released
in Newbury's lifetime was the autobiographical A Long Road
Home in 2002. Like most of Newbury's albums, it did not chart
but was critically acclaimed, with No Depression's Peter
Blackstock calling it "a masterpiece." Newbury died in Springfield,
Oregon, following a battle with emphysema on September 29, 2002,
aged 62. |
|
Legacy |
|
Ralph
Emery referred to Newbury as the first "hippie-cowboy," and along
with Johnny Cash and Roger Miller, he was one of the first to
rebel against the conventions of the Nashville music society.
The influence of the production methods can be heard in the albums
Waylon Jennings went on to record in the 1970s (with instrumentation
highly unconventional for country music), and his poetically sophisticated
style of songwriting was highly influential on Kris Kristofferson,
who later proclaimed, "I learned more about songwriting from him
than any other writer... He was my hero and still is.". Newbury
gained a reputation as a "songwriter's songwriter" and a mentor
to others. It was Newbury who convinced Roger Miller to record
Kristofferson's "Me & Bobby McGee", which went on to launch
Kristofferson as country music's top songwriter. Newbury is also
responsible for getting Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to move
to Nashville and pursue careers as songwriters. |
|
Van
Zandt later described how Newbury's voice impressed him: "I can't
really call it 'explain' but I'd tried tell Jeanene [Van Zandt's
wife] about the sound of Mickey's voice and the guitar on a good
night at the same time. It's hard; you can't do it. It's like
from outer space. I've heard about people trying to explain a
color to a blind person... There's no way to do it." During a
show in Galway, Ireland, John Prine said, "Mickey Newbury is probably
the best songwriter ever." |
|
According
to his official website, Newbury has had over 1,500 versions of
his songs recorded across many genres of music. His work would
be recorded by singers and songwriters such as Johnny Cash, Vampire
Weekend, Bob Luman, Roy Orbison, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bill Monroe,
Johnny Rodriguez, Hank Snow, Ray Charles, Tony Rice, Jerry Lee
Lewis, Tammy Wynette, Ray Price, Don Gibson, Ronnie Milsap, Brenda
Lee, Charlie Rich, Lynn Anderson, David Allan Coe, Sammi Smith,
Joan Baez, Tom Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, John Denver,
Kenny Rogers, Steve Von Till, B.B. King, Linda Ronstadt, Dax Riggs,
Bobby "Blue" Bland, and Bill Callahan, among many others. |
|
Elvis
Presley's cover of "An American Trilogy" is especially famous.
Presley began performing the song in concert in 1972 and released
it as a single. He performed it in the 1972 documentary Elvis
on Tour and in his 1973 international satellite telecast ElvisAloha
from Hawaii. |
|
Many
of Newbury's songs, such as "The Thirty-Third of August", "The
Future Is Not What It Used To Be", and "Just Dropped In (To See
What Condition My Condition Was In)", delve into the dark recesses
of the human psyche. Newbury, who battled depression in his life,
later reflected, "How many people have listened to my songs and
thought, 'He must have a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a pistol
in the other.' Well, I don't. I write my sadness." |
|
Discography |
|
Studio
albums |
|
Year
|
Album
|
Chart
Positions |
Label
|
US
Country |
US
|
AUS |
1968
|
Harlequin
Melodies |
|
|
|
RCA
Victor |
1969
|
Looks
Like Rain |
|
|
|
Mercury
|
1971
|
Frisco
Mabel Joy |
29
|
58
|
|
Elektra
|
1973
|
Heaven
Help the Child |
|
173
|
|
1974
|
I
Came to Hear the Music |
|
209
|
80
|
1975
|
Lovers
|
|
172
|
|
1977
|
Rusty
Tracks |
|
|
|
Hickory
|
1978
|
His
Eye Is on the Sparrow |
|
|
|
1979
|
The
Sailor |
|
|
|
1981
|
After
All These Years |
|
|
|
Mercury
|
1985
|
Sweet
Memories |
|
|
|
Airborne
|
1988
|
In
a New Age |
|
|
|
1996
|
Lulled
by the Moonlight |
|
|
|
Mountain
Retreat |
2000
|
Stories
from the Silver Moon Cafe |
|
|
|
2002
|
A
Long Road Home |
|
|
|
2003
|
Blue
to This Day |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Live
albums |
|
Year
|
Album
|
Label
|
Notes
|
1973
|
Live
at Montezuma Hall |
Elektra
|
Recorded
in 1973 |
1994
|
Nights
When I Am Sane |
Winter
Harvest |
also
released on VHS |
1998
|
Live
in England |
Mountain
Retreat |
Recorded
in 1993 |
2002
|
Winter
Winds |
Recorded
in 1994 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Compilation
albums |
|
Year
|
Album
|
Label
|
Notes
|
1972
|
Sings
His Own |
RCA
Victor |
Alternate
version of Harlequin Melodies |
1991
|
Best
of Mickey Newbury |
Curb
|
|
1999
|
It
Might as Well Be the Moon |
Mountain
Retreat |
2-CD
set of In a New Age and a live recording |
2011
|
An
American Trilogy |
Saint
Cecilia Knows/Mountain Retreat |
Box
set |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Singles |
|
Year
|
Single
|
Chart
Positions |
Album
|
US
Country |
US |
CAN
Country |
CAN
|
CAN
AC |
AUS |
1968
|
"Weeping
Annaleah" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Harlequin
Melodies |
"Got
Down on Saturday (Sunday in the Rain)" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sings
His Own |
1969
|
"Queen"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"San
Francisco Mabel Joy" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Looks
Like Rain |
1970
|
"Sad
Satin Rhyme" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
single
only |
1972
|
"An
American Trilogy" |
|
26
|
|
76
|
|
30
|
'Frisco
Mabel Joy |
"Remember
the Good" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1973
|
"Heaven
Help the Child" |
|
103
|
|
|
|
|
Heaven
Help the Child |
"Sunshine"
|
53
|
87
|
50
|
|
41
|
|
1974
|
"If
I Could Be" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I
Came to Hear the Music |
"Baby's
Not Home" |
|
|
|
|
|
51
|
1975
|
"Lovers"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lovers
|
"Sail
Away" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1977
|
"Hand
Me Another of Those" |
94
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rusty
Tracks |
"Makes
Me Wonder If I Ever Said Goodbye" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1978
|
"Gone
to Alabama" |
94
|
|
|
|
|
|
His
Eye Is on the Sparrow |
"It
Doesn't Matter Anymore" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1979
|
"Looking
for the Sunshine" |
82
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sailor
|
"Blue
Sky Shinin'" |
81
|
|
|
|
|
|
1980
|
"America
the Beautiful" |
82
|
|
|
|
|
|
single
only |
1981
|
"Country
Boy Saturday Night" |
|
|
|
|
|
|
After
All These Years |
1988
|
"An
American Trilogy" |
93
|
|
|
|
|
|
In
a New Age |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|