Two new books about country singers have wildly contrasting tones and preoccupations, but each has nuggets to offer fans and the curious.
—"Composed: A Memoir," by Rosanne Cash; Viking (256 pages. $26.95)
"My life has been circumscribed by music," writes Cash, a daughter of Johnny Cash and a significant performer herself. She's also an essayist, fiction writer and marvelous tweeter ((at)rosannecash). In deft prose she sketches her childhood anxiety, her Catholic school girlhood, early work as a CBS A&R minnow in England, Method acting classes (where she became "the girl who couldn't stop crying"), then finally her career in music.
Her father hovers over her life story like an inspiring guardian angel. After making her successful "King's Record Shop" album, she bullied Columbia/Sony for a big money renegotiation because she was furious the label had dropped her dad. She also had a challenging dream that pushed her to develop her songwriting, work on her voice and take up painting.
Her new recording, "Interiors," signaled her turn toward a singer-songwriter style of music, and also led to her marriage to musician John Leventhal (she was previously married to country singer and producer Rodney Crowell, who has his own memoir coming out in 2011.)
Woven throughout her book are loving recollections of her father. She knew he was a country legend, but in her eulogy for him, she wrote: "He was not an icon when he told us how he loved us, how beautiful and handsome we were, how proud he was." A reader can't help but think that Johnny Cash still loves his literate daughter's stubborn independence and honesty.
—"Buck Owens: The Biography," by Eileen Sisk; Chicago Review Press (320 pages, $24.95)
Veteran journalist Sisk's bio of the country singer and "Hee Haw" star makes it clear that something more than pickin' and grinnin' was going on when Buck Owens was in town. As Sisk relates, this prime mover of the Bakersfield honky-tonk sound was also a horny, skirt-chasin', dollar-hungry, dictatorial bandleader. She ascribes to Owens at least nine children by different women (wives, affairs and a groupie), and reports how "Hee Haw" made him wealthy ($400,000 for the 1969 season) while bringing a new level of friction (with co-star Roy Clark and the producers) into his life.
The saddest chapter is about the motorcycle-accident death of Don Rich, Owens' talented musical right-hand man (guitar, vocals, fiddle), which plunged Buck into depression. As Jon Hager said, "He was the confidant of Buck. He knew Buck better than Buck did."
The after-effects of "Hee Haw" and generational change dimmed Owens' reputation to obscure novelty, but Dwight Yoakam's "Streets of Bakersfield" video duet with the head Buckaroo reminded listeners how good Owens was. If you like your music biography as gritty and lowdown as a saloon floor at 2 a.m., this is your book. I just wish it had lavished more attention of the music of the man who brought us "Act Naturally," "Tiger by the Tail" and his own passionate take on Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode."
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