Tracy Byrd, whose “Keeper of the Stars” has been one of the most popular country songs of the past several weeks, won a couple of dance awards for his recent “Watermelon Crawl” and the line dance it inspired, but confesses that he and most of his fellow natives of southern Texas don’t know much about line dancing.
“The music I naturally loved just always was dance music,” Byrd says. “I’m a big western swing fan, and back then in the clubs a third of the stuff we were playing was old Bob Wills or Spade Cooley. So dancing–two-step, polka, waltz and jitterbug–has been involved in my music from the beginning.
“But the funny thing about South Texas is, line dancing still hasn’t caught on down there. They don’t do it. There’s only one line dance that they’ve been doing for about 15 years to a Ronnie Milsap song. They call it the Freeze, and they’ve been doing it forever, but they won’t do any of this other stuff. It never caught on.
“It amazes me how big line-dancing is up North, because like in Chicago, for instance, they don’t two-step. Up there, and out West–in Arizona and Nevada and California–it’s all line dancing.”
Byrd recalls once playing a Minneapolis gig where he and his band introduced “this real sexy waltz” titled “Satin and Lace” and were amazed to see everybody in the place start line-dancing to it.
“I stopped in the middle of the song and said, `Hold on a minute,’ ” he says. “I said, `Listen, fellas, this is a waltz. The reason they created this tempo, this beat, this rhythm, is so you could get real close and hold on to one of them gals. Y’all are line dancing, not even touching each other. You need to be wrapped up: This is a love song.’
“So they all wrapped up. They could do it . They just wanted to try to line-dance to it.”
– Polydor Records executives slightly discomfited the 30-something members of the Polydor quartet 4 Runner (whose “Cain’s Blood” is in the upper quarter of the hit charts) at a Polydor reception by announcing to its guests that Polydor-Nashville was going to be a youth-aimed label.
The executives weren’t kidding. The next Polydor quartet scheduled for introduction to the market (June 20) is the Moffatts, a Canadian-born group of brothers whose half-dozen years in the music business doesn’t sound like an awful lot until you realize its half or more of their lives.
The Moffatts are 12-year-old lead singer Scott Moffatt and his 11-year-old triplet brothers, Bob, Clint and Dave. They came to Nashville’s recording studios from Canada (where they were nominated for five Canadian Country Music Association awards at ages 9 and 8) via Branson, Mo., where they appeared for a summer with the Osmonds, and a seven-month run at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.
“What people seem to love most about these guys is that when they go onstage they’re total pros,” says their father, Frank Moffatt. “And when they come off, they’re normal little rats, just like any kids their age. They love basketball and fishing and baseball. Our job now is keeping them normal.”
– Some of Nashville’s better-known and more diverse names are working on a Decca Records album of songs of tribute titled “Not Fade Away (Remembering Buddy Holly).”
So far, recordings have been completed of the Band and Holly’s old group, the Crickets, doing the title song; Waylon Jennings, a Holly intimate, performing “Learning the Game”; Steve Earle and Marty Stuart on “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”; Nanci Griffith on “Well . . . All Right”; and the Mavericks on “True Love Ways.”
“The tracks that have been completed to date reflect the beautiful simplicity of Holly’s music,” says Decca executive Mark Wright. “Each artist involved truly wanted to be a part of this project. We encouraged each artist to choose the song he/she loved the most. I think that freedom of expression is making a difference; the project seems to be taking on a life of its own and is becoming an artist-driven album.”
Holly’s first recording contract was with Decca, and he recorded most of his major hits on the Decca subsidiary Coral. He died in a plane crash Feb. 3, 1959, at age 22.
The album is scheduled for release Dec. 19.
– Shenandoah lead singer Marty Raybon’s first solo album is a gospel one for the Sparrow label.
“I didn’t come to record a country gospel record–I did it to promote what God has done,” Raybon says. “I think this album is something that needs to be said–in a compassionate way. There are people I have compassion for–that’s what this album is all about.”
The 10 songs of the collection, titled “Marty Raybon,” include eight co-written by the singer. It ships to the market July 6.
– Singer-songwriter-producer Gail Davies recently left for a radio promotion tour of England, Ireland and Scotland.
“I want to lay the groundwork so I can ask for enough money to be able to go over with a band and not fall on my face,” Davies says. “I’ll be back by the end of June, and I hope to talk about it on `Music City Tonight.’ “
Davies, who wrote and sang such songs as “Bucket to the South” and “Grandma’s Song” and also had the hit on K.T. Oslin’s “Round the Clock Lovin’,” has just released her latest album, “Eclectic,” on her own Little Chickadee label, which is soon to be available in stores or from P.O. Box 210151, Nashville, Tenn. 37221.
– The Warner Western label is releasing an album on June 13 whose story is as good as its music.
The smooth central voice of “The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again)” is Herb Jeffries, an 83-year-old jazz singer who in the 1930s became Hollywood’s only black singing cowboy movie star before going on to tour as lead vocalist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
The album of cowboy songs features such varied vocal guests as Little Texas, Take 6, Michael Martin Murphey, the Mills Brothers and Hal Linden. But the man at center mike can still sing.
– The second installment of RCA’s “Essential” series is now hitting the market with collections of some of the finest material by Nashville Sound pianist Floyd Cramer, musical outlaw Willie Nelson, guitar genius Jerry Reed and internationally popular crooner Jim Reeves.
Each album contains 20 samples of the best of each artist’s RCA material.
