Ultracountry singer Mark Chesnutt, whose 45-caliber anthem ”Bubba Shot The Jukebox” continues to soar after five months on the charts, is raising eyebrows as well as sales expectations.
Today the 29-year-old performer, a proud exponent of his field`s most
”redneck” attitudes, is scheduled to join folk-country star Kathy Mattea in co-headlining Nashville`s first community-wide effort for AIDS awareness.
To heighten public awareness of the disease, Chesnutt says he quickly accepted an invitation to perform free with Mattea at a concert after a four- hour walk from Riverfront Park to Music Row and back again.
”I`ve always been concerned about AIDS,” the singer explains. ”What got me wanting to be involved was a few kids around my part of Texas that I`ve heard of who contracted AIDS through blood tranfusions. It made me mad. It also made me want to say something about it.
”Everybody`s always saying it`s a disease of gays and drug users and all that, and a lot of people are saying, `We don`t have to worry about that,` but everybody has to worry about it. And for kids to have it is really sad, because it`s not their fault. They haven`t done anything to get it. They have it because of somebody`s carelessness.
”I figure what little I can do to help-by letting everybody know it`s not just for gays-is worth doing. If you`re a redneck living in Texas you can catch it just as quick as a gay living in New York City.”
In fact, say organizers of the Nashville effort, you can catch it even faster. Publicists for Nashville CARES, organizers of today`s Nashville effort, assert that the disease is fastest-growing among heterosexuals in the South, long country music`s quintessential marketplace.
That, they add, is why Chesnutt`s participation is so critical. If there were a logical country performer to spearhead such an effort, it would hardly be the Texan. ”Bubba Meets AIDS,” as his participation might be headlined, is a windfall for Nashville CARES.
”Chesnutt,” the organization`s publicists understatedly observe,
”speaks to parts of the South that AIDS organizations have had trouble reaching.”
A stocky musical graduate of the gritty Beaumont honkytonks, Chesnutt is a man in a cowboy hat whose present hit says it all about his musical and social orientations.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, the song`s lyrics-set to an urgent beat-deal with a good ol` boy named Bubba who, when the jukebox in Margie`s Bar gets to sounding too sad, starts crying, goes to his truck, gets his pistol and silences the machine with a bullet. When the sheriff arrives in a bathrobe to charge him with reckless shooting, Bubba howls:
”Reckless, hell; I shot right where I was aimin`.”
Chesnutt sees Bubba as a familiar figure, one he can almost identify with.
”I`m from that area (the South), and there`s a lot of people I know personally who would do something like that,” he wryly explains.
Asked if he himself might do it, he doesn`t laugh.
”I`ve thought about it a few times,” he reflects. ”Not because I was sad, but because some idiot would come in and play a bunch of rap music on a jukebox while I was trying to eat or something.”
Chesnutt says he encountered the one-of-a-kind tune in Nashville while gathering material for his present, second MCA Records album, ”Long Necks & Short Stories.” Written by Nashville tunesmith Dennis Linde, ”Bubba” was played for Chesnutt by staffers at MCA as a joke.
”They said, `Hey, you gotta hear this song; it`s the funniest thing you ever heard,` ” he recalls.
”So I listened to it. It turned out that everybody in town was talking about it, but nobody would record it. I heard it one time and said, `Man, this is a great song.` I was the only one who had the sense of humor, I guess, to cut it.”
Even Chesnutt didn`t realize it was a hit single, though, he admits,
”because it says `damn` and `hell.`
”A lot of stations won`t play anything like that, so I just put it on the album for fun,” he says. ”Then radio (stations) picked up on it and started playing it off the album. That`s when, I guess, MCA decided it would be a good single. Stations were playing the hell out of it before it was even released as a single.”
In fact, it was in the hit charts several weeks before MCA officially released it, and it has been steadily climbing ever since. At last look, it was No. 7 and still rising.
Chesnutt first hit the national scene a couple of years ago with a hard-country ballad of male frustration entitled ”Too Cold At Home.” Part of the young horde of hat-wearing newcomers who have revolutionized-and hugely popularized-country music, he has surged toward the forefront with virtually nonstop roadwork and an uncompromisingly traditional approach.
One of his primary heroes is an older native of the Beaumont area, legendary country traditionalist George Jones, who has recognized Chesnutt`s ability by singing with him on a couple of recent recordings. ”Bubba” now seems to be advancing Chesnutt to an even higher level of recognition.
”Young people love the song,” he notes. ”It`s real rowdy and real different, too-so plain and real. It`s different from anything I`ve ever done and, I think, from anything anybody else has ever done.
”The young people are really showing up (in crowds at his shows). They`re out there jumping up and down hollering for `Bubba.` ”
Such young people are the very ones Nashville CARES hopes to target with Chesnutt`s involvement in today`s AIDS walk. They say they`re expecting at least 3,000 to 4,000 participants.
That figure could go considerably higher. The first large-scale effort in behalf of AIDS research by the city`s heterosexual and music communities, it is being co-chaired by Mayor Phil Bredesen and Mrs. Jo Walker-Meador, the influential former executive director of the Country Music Association.
Kathy Mattea`s participation was fairly predictable. Her marriage to Nashville songwriter Jon Vezner (who wrote her great 1990 country Song of the Year, ”Where`ve You Been”) is just the most obvious of Mattea`s ties to the Nashville creative community`s more liberal side.
She has participated in other Southern AIDS walks, taken the lead in wearing a red AIDS-awareness ribbon at this year`s recent Country Music Association awards ceremonies, and now is heading a project to record a ”Red Hot Country” album under the auspices of American Foundation For AIDS Research (AmFAR), Elizabeth Taylor`s national AIDS-awareness organization.
”I`ve lost three friends to AIDS, and I know other people who have lost a lot more than that,” Mattea said earlier this year. ”The part that`s frustrating to me is the social stigma associated with AIDS. People act like it has something to do with who you are as a person. I just feel angry that some people are so judgmental about this.”
Considering this stigma, Mattea`s participation in such efforts is courageous, and that of Chesnutt, in light of the conservative orientation of his core audience, seems even more so.
The concerns of both stars center on the danger to the community at large, and Chesnutt says he feels the key is to make that community informed of the danger-especially in his native South.
”I think what it is is, people in the South are just now being made aware of it,” he says, referring to the fact that heterosexual AIDS is reported to be rising fastest below the Mason-Dixon Line.
Chesnutt now is preparing for life after ”Bubba.” He says he soon will film a video to accompany a new single titled ”Old Country,” a song about a macho, rural-oriented, working-class male engaging in an intermittent but ongoing relationship with a refined, urban, upper-class female.
That sort of bridging of gulfs between seemingly different worlds is
”happening a lot lately,” Chesnutt says, adding that some of it is the result of the mushrooming popularity of country music.
”Everybody`s getting into it all over the country,” he says, ”and I figured the song kind of states what`s going on. City folks and country folks are kind of getting together.”
In a lot more ways than one.
