Is Eddy Arnold’s world turning toward uncharacteristic bragging?
With a new record set subtitled “Last of the Love Song Singers,” it sounds as if the “Tennessee Plowboy” who took country music to the masses is swaggering.
“I’m certainly close to it,” says Arnold, in a telephone interview from his home in Brentwood, Tenn. “I’ve been around a long time and made a lot of records. They’re still singing love songs, sure, but they’re a little bit different than in the old days.”
Earlier this month RCA released a two-CD boxed set, “Eddy Arnold Then and Now: The Last of the Love Song Singers” with 27 songs-16 hits on one disc and 11 new tunes on the other.
When singles sales ruled the music business, Arnold reigned with more than 85 million records sold. His method: Tap the pop sentimentality of Bing Crosby and lean on the earthy homespun heartache of Hank Williams. Speak softly and carry a big hit-or 91 of them.
Arnold will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Star Plaza Theatre in Merrillville, Ind. Tickets cost $23, through the theater (312-734-7266) or through TicketMaster (312-559-1212).
“I’ll have a couple of backup singers, five or six strings and a wind section,” Arnold says. Tenor saxophonist Boots Randolph will open the show.
From 1946 to 1952 it was typical that Arnold would have two or three records in the top 10 at the same time. In 1948 he had nine in the top 10.
The 74-year-old pioneer of the “Nashville Sound” added string backgrounds to traditional country and brandished a polished image called “countrypolitan.”
“He was the first country entertainer who really made sense to an urban audience,” says Bill Ivey, director of the Country Music Foundation, the organization that operates the Country Music Hall of Fame, to which Arnold was elected in 1966. “He was as comfortable in a tuxedo as he was in western dress.
“In Nashville he’s respected on the level of Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe,” Ivey adds.
On the eve of a record-release ceremony at the hall, Arnold explained his most recent contribution: “They’re adding a little thing near my plaque, (an installation with) my old hunting clothes.”
That might be appropriate for an entertainer who took his share of flak for “urbanizing” country music.
“I had had a good long career and my records sales started dropping off, and I just got to thinking as I was riding along in the car one day, `Why don’t I do something a little different?’ I decided I would take practically the same style of song and just add the violins as opposed to the fiddles-and it worked.”
He took no heed of the country purists who cried “sellout.”
“Every time I had one guy criticize me I had two pickin’ up the record and takin’ it home,” he says.
After double-bypass surgery in 1990, “My voice was the last thing to come around,” he says. “I had to do a lot of vocal exercises to get that back,” although his range is far removed from the high-pitched yodeling of his theme song “The Cattle Call,” a 1955 hit.
Naming names isn’t Arnold’s style, whether discussing his manager from 1945 to 1953, Col. Tom Parker (who a few years later would boost Elvis Presley) or getting cut from the RCA roster in the early ’80s despite earning millions for the label.
“Two weeks ago I did a show in Nevada. Tom Parker came to see me perform. He’s 84 years old. He’s well, but a little feeble,” Arnold says.
Dismissing widespread reports of Parker’s manipulation of Presley, Arnold says: “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it. He used to be my manager for eight years. I have talked with him at length a good many times about this subject. He kept (the career of) Presley alive after he went in the Army. He kept the records going, kept them being released, kept all the publicity going.”
On the heels of his appearance as a judge on Shenandoah’s music video “Leavin’s Been A Long Time Comin’,” Arnold hopes to put out a video of his own. He figures he’s telegenic: He had three television programs in the ’40s and ’50s and played guest host for Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” in 1975.
“I have had a lot of success, but I’ll take some more hits,” he says. “If I can just get on the charts with something from this album it would be the sixth decade I’ve been on the charts.”
