Honor My Music

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I still have a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the inductions into the Country Music Hall of Fame, which were announced earlier this week (March 29). It's not that I don't like Charlie Daniels, and not that I have anything against his political beliefs (there are some who complained about his induction based solely on "Charlie's Soapbox," a place on his web site where he writes mostly political commentary -- and I think that's a dangerous attitude to have, given that the first of our Constitutional amendments guarantees free speech). I just have a good memory, and when Daniels was in his heyday in the 70's he was a Southern rocker, not a country singer. It makes me angrier about the Country Music Association (the CMA, or as Merle Haggard famously said, "that stands for 'country, my ass!'"). The CMA, the organization that votes on the inductions into the Hall of Fame, doesn't think enough of the Hall of Fame to feature it on their awards show. Think about that: in November, when the CMA awards are presented, they'll most likely have more time devoted to Glenn Frey's death than they will Randy Travis' induction. I'm a donor to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Their motto is "Honor Thy Music." If I am going to truly "honor my music," I cannot support an organization who puts southern rockers in ahead of country music singers who (a) would NOT have any dispute about their eligibility and (b) wouldn't have any dispute about whether or not they qualify as "country." And, it's not just that. For a place that is supposed to acknowledge the entire history of country music and present it in the museum in order to educate and inform patrons, they're doing a pee-poor job of it. I get mailings from them as a donor, but the ONLY time I saw that the Hall of Fame had an exhibit on Stringbean (ne Dave Akeman, a clawhammer banjo player who was the original banjo player in Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and went on to a long and fondly-remembered career as a singer, musician, and comedian on the Grand Ole Opry and as a Hee Haw regular before being murdered in 1973) was when I got the notice that the exhibit was about to close. Meanwhile, they keep shoving Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton and all these other bro-country buffoons who couldn't tell George Jones from Grace Jones in my face. As a result, I'm not going to renew my membership. I'll give that money I was giving to the Hall of Fame to support the Ameripolitan Music Association instead. It's the only way I can truly obey the Hall of Fame's motto to "honor my music." (PS - if you watch this clip of String singing "Hot Corn, Cold Corn" with the Osborne Brothers, you'll see that he invented wearing one's pants down to the knees! )