What, goes a waggish Nashville question, do the bear and the Kentucky HeadHunters have in common?
Answer: Davy Crockett killed them both.
”That`s the new one going around now,” laughs Richard Young, a member of the good-ole-boy-rock group with the clutch of country awards, the platinum and gold albums, and a zany image.
”A lot of people would get offended by that (joke),” Young continues.
”But I say as long as they`re talking about us, let `em talk.”
Nevertheless, the group-again nominated for the Country Music Association Group of the Year Award it won in 1990 and the biggest-selling country group in America-does seem a bit dazed by the events of recent months. It`s as if they had been shifting the Ferguson tractor owned by band member Fred Young into high and suddenly missed a gear.
The miss occurred with ”Davy Crockett,” a ”silly” (as they themselves put it) remake of the Disneyesque musical history lesson from the 1950s. Fred Young, the skinny and bespectacled HeadHunter whose customary stage attire is a coonskin cap and no shirt, pulled the idea out of his hat.
With great optimism, the HeadHunters-the Kentucky-born Young brothers, their cousin Greg Martin, and Arkansas siblings Doug and Ricky Lee Phelps-released it as the debut single from their second album, ”Electric Barnyard.” Mercury Records shipped out a lot of promotional coonskin caps. Then the ”Davy” musket misfired.
”We thought, `What a great song,` ” Ricky Lee recalls. ”Then it came out and everybody . . . I don`t know . . . got offended or something.”
”And we still don`t know why,” says Richard.
”We don`t know if they thought we were making fun of something, or being too silly, or what,” says Doug.
Somewhat stunned, they returned to the drawing board. For their next single, they made a 180-degree turn and selected the Bill Monroe bluegrass song ”Body and Soul,” which they say is about as straight country and un-” silly” as the Heads get.
They thought ”Body and Soul” had ”hit potential” and would climb the country charts. Accordingly, as Doug puts it, they ”sent it down the
(mainstream) country-and-western pathway” without the usual video accompaniment.
”And it got sent back about a week later,” Richard says with a laugh.
Please don`t infer from these two consecutive misfires that the Heads are going under. To the contrary, ”Electric Barnyard” purportedly is on a faster sales pace than their first album, ”Pickin` on Nashville,” and already has been certified platinum in Canada.
In just their second year of stardom, the HeadHunters have toured mainly on their own at a time when a lot of major rock and country acts are having to hit the road in packages of three or four to be able to draw sufficient crowds. They were just featured in a major article in Rolling Stone, and they profess great confidence in their recently released, video-accompanied single, ”It`s Chitlin` Time.”
They claim to be more confused than worried by continued lack of acceptance of their wild, loud and often-wacky music by country radio, and that is understandable: Despite their awards and sales, their country radio play never has been more than grudging.
Their near 2 million record sales so far have been managed with just one Top 10 country chart hit-which was neither their raucously unforgettable career-launcher, ”Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” nor its better-known party-time successor, ”Dumas Walker.” It was their comparatively immemorable reprise of ”Oh Lonesome Me,” a country chestnut that doesn`t seem to be a favorite.
”Live, it doesn`t go over as well as `Walk Softly` or `Dumas,` ” says Greg.
”Yeah, at our shows, `Davy Crockett` gets 10 times the reaction it does,”` says Richard.
”At our encore the other night, people were going `Day-vee! Day-vee!
Day-vee!` ” recalls Fred.
”At our concerts, they sing `Davy` just like they do `Dumas Walker,`
`Walk Softly,` `Chitlin` Time,` `Daddy Was a Milkman` and `Spirit in the Sky,` ” Richard says. ”So we did something right (by recording `Davy Crockett`) whether anybody recognizes it or not.”
The Crockett song, though, had long-lasting effects.
For instance, because of the song, they recently ”semi-hosted” a syndicated TV show on American folk heroes, and President Bush called their version one of his favorite records. When they performed it at the Academy of Country Music Awards show in Los Angeles last spring, no less than Johnny Cash cited their performance as an example of the kind of individuality on which stardoms are founded.
Individuality, though, often takes longer to be recognized. Hank Williams Jr., Waylon Jennings and other outlaw-oriented acts had to beat down country radio`s resistance. When they did win acceptance, though, they became huge.
The HeadHunters already are pretty huge, and they seem likely to become even more so by the fact that, unlike Williams and Jennings, they`re bent on killing their opposition with kindness.
”We made a pact when we started that we wouldn`t hold grudges against people, and if country radio feels we`re not proper for their format, we`re not gonna bad mouth `em,” Richard says. ”We have no right to judge them, just like they don`t have the right to ask us to change and be like everybody else to fit their format. We knew we weren`t going to get played on all radio, and we respect their opinions.
”The only time I was a little hurt by the fact that we didn`t get played was when `Pickin` on Nashville` stayed No. 2 in the country album charts for all those weeks and never hit No. 1 because of radio airplay. It amazed me that somebody wouldn`t say, `Let`s play them old boys and let `em have No. 1.` ”
What may break down country radio`s resistance to the HeadHunters is the group`s winsome amiability and incessant sense of humor-which seem not to be deliberate tactics as much as the essence of the HeadHunters` personalities.
Their job is to entertain, and they do it from album cover to autograph. Taking themselves less seriously than any star in recent memory, they do whatever it takes to accommodate. Well, almost, anyway.
They say they won`t change their sound-that, they believe, would be disloyal to their record buyers. And they wouldn`t enlarge on their zany image by complying with a Rolling Stone photographer`s requests to mud wrestle in a cow pasture or play music for a cow in their home studio.
”First, they wanted us to bring a cow into the practice house,” Richard remembers. ”We said no, that a cow would tear everything up in there. Then the guy looked across the fence to where the cows were and said, `Would you guys get out there and mud-wrestle for me?`
”We said, `We might if what you`re looking at was mud, but it ain`t.` He said, `Oh! I see.` The boy had never been off a sidewalk.”
Unlike the photographer, the HeadHunters have lived the bulk of their lives in the Great Unpaved. That fact, along with their obvious pride in it, may be another factor that isn`t helping them with some of the more urban and ”contemporary”-oriented country stations.
Their insistently down-to-earth attitude is exemplified by Fred Young, who is such a devotee of the Ferguson farm tractor that he owns several of them. Fred Young says he plans to go overseas to the renowned intellectual centers at Oxford and Cambridge this fall for, of all things, a plowing contest.
How, he is asked, does one qualify for membership in this prestigious organization of which he is so proud? His response is immediate, deadpan and characteristically HeadHunter.
”Have $25,” he says.
