The Taney County Commission will hold a public meeting next week to address traffic issues at the Thunder Ridge Nature Arena. Many fans sat in traffic for hours last weekend trying to get to the Garth Brooks concert because Highway 86 is just a two lane road.
The county commission wants to expand Highway 86 and create a sales tax to pay for it. The one percent community improvement district tax and the one per cent transportation tax would only be paid at Big Cedar properties.
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Artis Leon Ivey Jr., better known as the rapper Coolio, with an extended look at his lone Hot 100-topper: the gothic soundtrack smash “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
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Precious little in Coolio’s career had suggested he would even entertain something so bleak as “Gangsta’s Paradise”.
“Do I have to use a gat to show you where I’m at?” he rapped on 1991’s Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed, as a part-time member of the conscious crew WC and the Maad Circle, “Or pose with a forty ounce and fake like a killer?” His 1994 solo debut It Takes a Thief was a West Coast party record that displayed a humorist’s touch: he rendered county welfare recipients and childhood ding-dong-dashers with the same twinkle. The big single was the No. 3 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Fantastic Voyage,” a G-funk banger that pulls to the curb and merrily ferries its audience out of gang territory.
In a contemporary profile in The Source, the Compton-raised Coolio (who had done some time as a juvenile, and kicked a cocaine habit before his rap career) talked about his motivation: “[W]hether this album goes platinum, gold or sells a few hundred thousand – I don’t care about me. I just want everything to be right for my kids. I’ve got to break the cycle for them.” “Gangsta’s Paradise” was the counterfactual: what if he couldn’t break the cycle? What would that feel like? What would that sound like?
What it sounded like was perhaps the doomiest No. 1 in Hot 100 history. In title and structure, the song borrowed heavily from “Pastime Paradise,” Stevie Wonder’s 1976 unsettled chamber-pop rebuke of backwards thinking. Producer Doug Rasheed converted Wonder’s deliberate synthstring motif into slashes worthy of Bernard Herrmann and made the bass an ominous background figure. A squelchy clap on the 2 and 4 was the instrumental link to G-funk, but the overall vibe was positively gothic: Coolio’s midnight tour of decrepit buildings and broken brains. Unlike, say, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony — whose 1996 No. 1 smash “Tha Crossroads” offset their Old Testament existentialism with the promise of heaven – Coolio Crip walks through the valley of the shadow of death, unaccompanied.
But the trudge was a tour de force, as Coolio switches between high-handed taunts and head-clutching regret with a monologist’s deftness. He uncorks lines with Jules Winnfield’s Old Testament indignance (“But I ain’t never crossed a man that didn’t deserve it”) but also knows when to pull the punch. Specifically, the line “Too much television watchin’s got me chasin’ dreams”: he lands on a delicate blend of regret and wistfulness, sipping the poison like it’s the cure. His cadences and defiant introspection owed more than a little to Tupac Shakur, just taken to operatic heights.
If the result tipped toward melodrama, well, fine: “Gangsta’s Paradise” was written for the screen. Rasheed — who had a studio setup at the home he shared with Coolio’s manager — had been working on a “Pastime Paradise” loop with Larry “L.V.” Sanders, a singer and producer with the up-and-coming G-funk outfit South Central Cartel. Sanders had fleshed out the vocal arrangements (he mapped out every voice, bass to falsetto, in that mournful, soaring choral part) and was trying to get a rapper on the track. Coolio happened to hear the work in progress and immediately staked his claim, even writing a verse on the spot. With the demo done, Coolio’s manager began shopping it to film productions.
It was the percentage play: the ‘90s was a golden age for popsongsfeatured in movies, whether written for the film or added as promotion for an upcoming album. As a bonus, the soundtrack format — for movies aimed at Black audiences like Menace II Society, Above the Rim, and Juice — allowed nascent hip-hop fans to check out fresh names without having to rely on rap-resistant programmers in radio and television. Before he even had a solo album out, Coolio himself had three songs featured in the 1993 Janet Jackson/Shakur drama Poetic Justice.
But Team Coolio’s best bet — Martin Lawrence and Will Smith’s action-comedy Bad Boys — fizzled when the musicians weren’t offered enough money. The winning film was another Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production: Dangerous Minds, a Bay Area classroom drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer. It wasn’t exactly the illest of movies (one scene has Pfeiffer teaching poetry to her Black and Latino students using Bob Dylan lyrics) but it had Disney money and the possibility of reaching a wide audience, which aligned with Coolio’s goals. In the context of the film, “Gangsta’s Paradise” offered a glimpse at the future bearing down on those students: “I’m 23 now, but will I live to see 24?/ The way things is going, I don’t know,” he shrugged. (Coolio, for the record, was by then in his thirties.) Ever the entertainer, he worried he was going “too dark.”
It turns out he should’ve worried about going too blue. When Doug Rasheed reached out to Stevie Wonder for permission to use “Pastime Paradise,” the maestro rebuffed him. “I had a few vulgarities in the song and he wasn’t with that,” Coolio recalled. But Rasheed and Coolio was persistent, and Wonder finally signed off once the rapper agreed to overhaul the lyrics. (He also cedes the lion’s share of the publishing to Wonder.) Even with the foul language excised and his established rep as a pop-rapper, Coolio wasn’t sure white audiences would respond to “Gangsta’s Paradise”.
His concerns were unfounded: the song entered the August 19, 1995 Hot 100 at No. 28: the week’s top debut. (That same week, the Dangerous Minds was the Greatest Gainer on the Top 200 Albums chart, jumping 108 places) By September 9th, “Gangsta’s Paradise” was No. 1, unseating Michael Jackson’s tremulous slow jam “You Are Not Alone.” Top 40 radio, at the time slower to put hip-hop singles into rotation, jumped on it. “Gangsta’s Paradise” had become the rap equivalent of a four-quadrant tentpole film, a hustler’s lament that kept expanding its audience.
Arguably, Wonder’s demands contributed to the single’s reach. “Gangsta’s Paradise” was gangsta rap as message music, something kids didn’t have to listen to furtively. Coolio’s mean-mugging briefly became hip-hop’s acceptable face – making him, three years after The Chronic, the first L.A. rapper to top the Hot 100. For the music video, director Antoine Fuqua successfully recruited Pfeiffer to appear in the music video. Coolio figured he’d be getting the standard ‘hood videotreatment, but instead, he got to glower in a darkened room at an A-lister, giving him and his song further credibility. “Gangsta’s Paradise” would win two MTV Video Music Awards the next year, for Rap Video and Video From a Film; if the Wonder lift hadn’t made the song ineligible, it would’ve been a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, with an outside chance of beating Eminem to hip-hop’s first Best Original Song award.
“Gangsta’s Paradise” stayed in the penthouse for three weeks before getting evicted by Mariah Carey’s ecstatic (and tonal opposite) “Fantasy.” Though seven other singles had longer reigns in 1995, Coolio’s had remarkable staying power: it was either No. 1 or 2 for 12 weeks. Its run of play earned it the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 for 1995, the first rap single to top a Year-End Hot 100, and the only one until 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” did the same in 2003. And the global response was just as rapturous: in the United Kingdom, “Gangsta’s Paradise” debuted at No. 1, a first for a rapper. The single wound up topping charts in over a dozen countries.
And it allowed Coolio to perform in dozens more, decades later. “Gangsta’s Paradise” functioned as a life annuity, guaranteeing its maker residual income and bookings long after most of his contemporaries changed careers. For subsequent generations, ”Gangsta’s Paradise” wasn’t just Coolio’s signature song, it may as well have been his only one. It has over a billion plays on YouTube and Spotify; on the latter it has fifty times the streams of “Fantastic Voyage,” his next-most popular track. His time at the vanguard of mainstream rap lasted just a brief while: 1995’s Gangsta’s Paradise album spawned one more Hot 100 top five hit in “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” — which, ironically, found him back in party-MC mode — and his U.S. hitmaking days ended with 1997’s treacly gospel ballad “C U When U Get There,” which peaked outside the top 10 and marked his final entry on the chart.
“I can’t live a normal life,” Coolio fretted on “Gangsta’s Paradise,” and it proved true as he transitioned to a long second career in acting and reality television. To the end, he was a celebrated link to West Coast rap’s breakthrough age and a touring shot of instant nostalgia. And though he didn’t get to be an elder statesman for as long as we might have hoped, he had long since shattered the cycle that had consumed his thoughts before he used it to top the charts.
When Katy Nichole first teased what would become her breakthrough hit, “In Jesus Name (God of Possible),” it was a far cry from the completed product that has since set records on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs and Christian Airplay charts.
In August 2021, after a writing session with songwriters Ethan Hulse and David Spencer, Nichole posted a brief video on TikTok of herself singing the lyrics, “I pray that a breakthrough would happen today/ I pray miracles over your life in Jesus’ name.” Overnight, the clip went viral — earning 1.9 million views to date — but it presented her with a challenge. “I realized if I want to release this, I need to fully create a new song,” Nichole remembers. “It was the bridge that people were reacting to.”
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After shifting the bridge to become the song’s chorus, she created a new one with Hulse during a Zoom session last November before recording the final version at co-writer and producer Jeff Pardo’s SeeMore Sound studio later that month. By late January, the 22-year-old’s uplifting ballad and debut single arrived through Centricity Music.
Its central themes of encouragement, hope and triumph encapsulate a key part of her own story. Growing up in Mesa, Ariz., Nichole started singing in school and church choirs from a young age. But at 15, she needed to pause her musical aspirations to focus on her health. Nichole was born with congenital scoliosis, a sideways curvature of the spine, prompting surgery to install metal rods and screws. “When I came out of the surgery, I was in excruciating pain,” she recalls. “It was the darkest time in my life. I got to a place where the pain wasn’t just physical, but mental, with severe anxiety and depression.”
Katy Nichole photographed on September 20, 2022 at Westlight Studios in Franklin, TN.
She spent the next three years visiting numerous doctors, while also restarting her music ambitions — including auditions for American Idol and The Voice, though she never made it to the live shows. Eventually, she was told she would need a second surgery to remove the rods and screws, which though risky, ultimately led to clarity, both personally and professionally.
“The moment I came out of the surgery, it was like the dark smoke cloud over my life was parting,” she says. “I do feel like that was the day I found a purpose.” Soon, she was writing and performing Christian songs and began leading worship at a local church in Phoenix. (There, she met Josh Havens, lead singer of contemporary Christian music group The Afters, who served as Nichole’s mentor.) She even started posting covers on Instagram.
In February 2020, one in particular of Nichole singing Jordan Feliz’s R&B-tinged 2015 hit “The River” caught the attention of Centricity Music senior vp of A&R John Mays, prompting him to invite her to an independent artist retreat. The pandemic derailed the event, but Nichole continued sending music to the label, eventually attending a week of writing sessions in Nashville. And while she went in “just hoping to become a better songwriter,” she was quickly offered a record deal with Centricity, home to artists including Lauren Daigle, Brandon Heath and Unspoken. She signed in June 2021.
When her TikTok clip of “In Jesus Name” went viral a few months later, Nichole was able to lean on the label’s expertise to help “finalize the song, release it promptly and work with social accounts to point new fans to Katy,” says Andrew Lambeth, Centricity’s vp of sales and promotions.
Upon its official release as “In Jesus Name (God of Possible)” at the top of the year, the song vaulted up the iTunes chart, grabbing the attention of CCM radio station network K-LOVE, which quickly rushed the song into its rotation. “It hit radio four days after it was released, which is crazy,” Nichole says. “Usually, it takes a few months.”
Other stations followed suit, and by late April, “In Jesus Name” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart, 12 weeks after debuting on the chart at No. 26. The rapid climb marked the quickest journey to the summit for a debut from a female artist in the chart’s 19-year history. The song likewise now holds the record for the most weeks at No. 1 for a debut single by a female artist on both Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs (20 weeks) and Christian Airplay charts (nine). Already, follow-up single “God Is in This Story” — a collaboration with faith group Big Daddy Weave — has also entered the top 10 of Hot Christian Songs. “I’m just grateful to be a vessel that carries these words,” Nichole says.
Katy Nichole and Katie Mohre photographed on September 20, 2022 at Westlight Studios in Franklin, TN.
As her career takes off, and as she finishes work on an upcoming full-length album, Nichole has beefed up her team with the addition of Proper Management’s Katie Mohre. (Mohre had previously served as a mentor to the young singer-songwriter, acting as a sounding board as Nichole integrated herself into Nashville’s contemporary Christian music community.) “My goal is to empower her to keep using her voice for what she’s intended to,” says Mohre.
“I felt like my story is pretty messy and broken,” adds Nichole, “but I knew God’s handprints are all over my life.”
Coldplay has been forced to postpone 8 shows in Brazil due to a “serious lung infection” affecting singer Chris Martin. In an Instagram post on Tuesday (Oct. 4) the group wrote, “With deep regret, we’ve been forced to postpone our upcoming shows in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo until early 2023. Due to a serious lung infection, Chris has been put under strict doctor’s orders to rest for the next three weeks.”
At press time a spokesperson for the group said not additional information was available on Martin’s illness. The impacted dates include the following shows: Estadio Nilton Santos in Rio De Janeiro (Oct. 11, 12) and a planned six-date run at Allianz Parque in São Paulo (Oct. 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22). The band’s next scheduled date is the kick-off of a 10-show stand at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is slated to kick off on Oct. 25 and run through a Nov. 8 date.
Last month Coldplay announced plan to bring the massive Music of the Spheres World tour to the big screen with a global broadcast of one of the Buenos Aires gigs to thousands of theaters in more than 70 countries on Oct. 28-29.
“We’re working as fast as possible to lock in the new dates and will follow up with more information in the next few days,” the band added in its post. “To everyone in Brazil who was looking forward to these concerts, we’re extremely sorry for any disappointment and inconvenience, and we’re so grateful for your understanding at this challenging time where we need to prioritise Chris’ health.”
Coldplay’s eye-popping Spheres tour has sold more than 5.4 million tickets to date while racking up more than $60 million in concert grosses in July alone; in June the band hit $1 billion in career touring grosses, becoming only the 11th act to surpass that figure in reported Boxscore touring revenue.
The group asked fans to hold on to their tickets for the rescheduled dates, which they plan to announce soon; ticket refunds will be available at point of sale. “We’re optimistic that Chris will return to good health after the prescribed medical break and look forward to resuming the tour as soon as possible,” they said. “To everyone affected, please accept our sincere apologies, and thank you as always for your love and support.”
Directed by journalist, music historian and filmmaker Nelson George, the film is currently in production. It will center on the making of the record-breaking album and the release of the accompanying short films that redefined the music video format.
Released by Epic Records in 1982, Thriller was Jackson’s second studio album as a solo artist. It went on to capture 12 Grammy nominations and a record-setting eight wins, including album of the year. The album also garnered seven top 10 singles on the Hot 100 chart, with “Beat It” and “Billie Jean” both achieving No. 1. Since its debut, Thriller has sold over 100 million albums worldwide and became the first album to be certified triple diamond by the RIAA.
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Featuring never-before-seen footage and interviews, the untitled documentary focuses on how the album launched Jackson into mega-stardom and created a pop culture phenomenon that continues to influence the worlds of music, television, dance, fashion and more.
“The release of Thriller redefined Michael Jackson, taking him from teen star to adult superstar, who composed memorable songs, sang beautifully and reached the highest level of on-stage performance,” said George in a statement. “The album, and the short films they inspired, created a new template for marrying music and image. It’s been a privilege to explore this extraordinary album and revisit its magic.”
Back in May, Sony and Jackson’s estate announced the release of Thriller 40 on Nov. 18. The double-CD set includes the original Thriller album along with a bonus disc of never-before-released tracks Jackson had worked on for the album.
The Optimum Productions and Sony Music Entertainment documentary, produced by Company Name, joins Bad 25 and Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall as the third documentary film to focus on a Jackson album. Additional productions celebrating his impact include the 2009 film This Is It, Michael Jackson ONE by Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas and MJ The Musical on Broadway.
“Michael opened and explored emotional depths and pushed the boundaries of sonic innovation on Thriller,” said John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of the Michael Jackson estate. “In the process, he breached destructive barriers in the music industry and literally united the world through his music: there isn’t a place on this planet that hasn’t been exhilarated by the music of Michael Jackson. This documentary’s exploration of Michael’s process and impactis revelatory.”
“Michael Jackson’s Thriller marked a momentous and pivotal moment in both music and pop culture around the world,” added Tom Mackay, president of premium content at Sony Music Entertainment. “We’re excited to expand the estate’s documentary collection with our upcoming film and look forward to sharing it with fans around the world.”
Sony Music Entertainment is distributing the film. Colin Hanks and Sean Stuart from Company Name are producers while Branca and McClain are executive producers.
After a rough Thursday night, Drake had a lot to celebrate on Sunday when his three-way NFL wager transformed into a $2 million payday. In his latest post promoting the Stake online crypto casino, Drizzy showed off his impressive gambling wins after taking a $208,000 L betting on the Miami Dolphins to beat the Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday.
The rapper known for his wagering ways had a nice comeback over the weekend when he swept a three-team parlay that he said raked in more than $2 million. Thanks to the Bills and Cowboys winning their games and Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes besting Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in prime time — in a 2021 Super Bowl revenge win that was teased last week with a commercial featuring Beck singing Neil Young’s “Old Man” — Drake crowed about his major score in an Instagram post.
“Made up for it,” he wrote, seemingly in reference to last week’s losses. According to Drake’s post, he took home a total of $2,000,941. It’s not the 10th time Drake has bet big on the NFL. In February, Drizzy claimed a $1.26 million win based on three bets he made on this year’s Super Bowl. In that three-way parlay, he put money on the champion L.A. Rams to best the Bengals, as well as wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. scoring at least one touchdown and the famed Rams receiver putting up more than 62.5 yards in the game.
Drake would be wise to bet on himself when the 2022 BET Hip Hop Awards air tonight (Oct. 4), where he is the leading nominee with 14 noms. The Certified Lover Boy MC is up for hip hop artist of the year, hustler of the year, lyricist of the year, best live performer and hip hop album of the year and has earned multiple nods within the same category.
His “Way 2 Sexy” collaboration with Future and Young Thug as well as his feature on Future’s “Wait for You” (also featuring Tems) are nominated for best hip hop video, best collaboration and song of the year. His cameos on “Wait for You” as well as Jack Harlow‘s “Churchill Downs” have secured Drake two nods in the Sweet 16: best featured verse category, while his and 21 Savage‘s “Jimmy Cooks” earns Drake a total of three nominations in the best collaboration category
Earlier this year, Bad Bunny embarked on his biggest stage tour yet, earning $116.8 million in North American arenas on El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It became the highest grossing Latin tour in Boxscore history and rewrote local records in more than half of the markets where he played.
Only six months later, he launched his second tour of 2022 and doubled the gross of his prior record-breaking trek – and he’s only just finished the first leg. World’s Hottest Tour wrapped its U.S. leg in stadiums, grossing $232.5 million and selling 944,000 tickets from just 21 shows.
That averages out to $11.1 million and 45,000 tickets per show. Currently, World’s Hottest Tour boasts a bigger per-show average gross than any tour by any artist in any genre, in Boxscore history (dating back to the late 1980s).
The Rolling Stones previously paced $9.4 million on the No Filter Tour (2017-21), but have been bested by the Bunny with the first tour to average more than $10 million per night. Inflation, dynamic pricing and platinum ticketing certainly give an advantage to more recent tours, but Bad Bunny’s unrelenting pace in the U.S., especially as a contemporary artist who doesn’t perform in English, makes World’s Hottest Tour one to watch, to say the least.
World’s Hottest Tour broke venue revenue records in 12 of the 15 U.S. markets that it played. Shows in Cumberland, Ga.; Miami; the Bronx; Houston; San Antonio; San Diego; and Phoenix were the highest grossing engagements in each venue’s history. Further, his shows in Orlando; Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Oakland, Calif., were all-time highs among single-night performances.
Arlington, Texas; Las Vegas; and Inglewood, Calif., are the only markets where Bad Bunny didn’t set a record, coming in second in each. In the latter two cities, he was blocked by BTS, who played four shows at each stadium, compared to Bad Bunny’s two.
Breaking the record he set earlier this year, his latest trek is now the biggest tour by a Spanish-speaking performer in Boxscore history, giving Bad Bunny the top two positions on the all-time Latin breakout. But, again, his big year goes far beyond genre distinctions, as he is the only artist to ever launch two separate $100 million tours in the same calendar year.
Combined, and including three Puerto Rican shows in July that were not officially part of either tour, Bad Bunny has earned $353.2 million and sold 1.6 million tickets in 2022, all in North America. World’s Hottest Tour resumes on Oct. 21 in Santo Domingo, kicking off a 22-show run in Latin America before closing in Mexico City on Dec. 10.
Tony nominees Dee Dee Bridgewater and Delroy Lindo have been tapped as co-hosts for the inaugural Jazz Music Awards, set for Saturday, Oct. 22, at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta. Bridgewater was Tony-nominated for her featured performance in The Wiz (1975). Lindo was nominated for his featured performance in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1988).
Bridgewater is also a two-time Grammy winner for separate albums in which she paid tribute to jazz legends Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
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Dianne Reeves, Kenny Garrett, Marcus and Jean Baylor of The Baylor Project, Somi, Lindsey Webster, guitarist Brian Bromberg, harpist Brandee Younger, and pianist Orrin Evans have been added as performers, joining previously announced performers Bridgewater, Ledisi, Lizz Wright and Jazzmeia Horn.
The show will open with a performance by The Baylor Project, joined by Reeves and Horn. The show will also include a musical tribute, “Songs of Social Justice,” also featuring Reeves and Horn, along with Bridgewater, Ledisi, and Wright.
Garrett and Evans will honor McCoy Tyner, who is posthumously receiving the Jazz Legend Award. Organist Ray Angry, guitarist Mark Whitfield, and saxophonist Marcus Strickland will perform in a medley in honor of three jazz musicians who died this year — Joey DeFrancesco, Ramsey Lewis and Pharoah Sande
Bassist James Genus, trumpeter Milena Casado, drummer Nikki Glaspie, pianist Orrin Evans, and DJ and percussionist Kassa Overall are also in the band assembled by musical director Terri Lyne Carrington.
The Jazz Music Awards will present awards in eight competitive categories as well as six special honors.
The Jazz Music Awards is a nonprofit division of Jazz 91.9 WCLK at Clark Atlanta University, the HBCU owner and licensee of WCLK. For updates, visit jazzmusicawards.com.
Vocalist Loretta Lynn, whose ascent from a small Kentucky coal-mining community to national country music stardom literally became the stuff of Hollywood, died on Tuesday (Oct. 4) at 90. According to a statement from her family, Lynn passed away in her sleep at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.
“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home at her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills, the family said in a statement; an announcement about a public memorial is forthcoming.
Lynn’s life story was memorably retold in Michael Apted’s 1980 feature Coal Miner’s Daughter, based on Lynn’s 1976 memoir. Sissy Spacek won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for her portrayal of the singer.
Beyond the dramatic particulars of her life, Lynn, who recorded 16 No. 1 country singles, was among the music’s groundbreaking female singing stars.
She became one of the music’s brightest luminaries in an era when men dominated country. She wrote much of her hit material, and it was sharply-penned stuff, written from the point of view of a woman (usually a married one) who would take no guff from her man. And she did not shrink from controversial subject matter.
Lynn was born Loretta Webb on April 14, 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. “I’m always making Butcher Hollow sound like the most backward part of the United States — and I think maybe it is,” she wrote in her autobiography.
She was the second eldest of coal miner Melvin Webb’s eight children, and grew up in sometimes dire poverty in the heart of the Great Depression. One of the few distractions she had was the radio; 11-year-old Loretta became enamored of the Grand Ole Opry and its early female star, Molly O’Day.
At the age of 14, she married Oliver Lynn, known by his nicknames “Doolittle” and “Mooney.” A year later, the couple moved from Kentucky to Custer, Washington, a town of a few hundred near Bellingham. By 18, Lynn had four children. (Two more would follow later.)
Encouraged by her husband, Lynn began singing in the Washington clubs. In 1950, Don Grashey of tiny Zero Records arranged a session for her in Los Angeles. Backed by top-flight guitarists Speedy West and Roy Lanham, she cut her composition “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” inspired in part by Kitty Wells’ 1952 hit “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonky Angels.”
With tireless promotion by the country neophyte, the song became a surprise hit, and Lynn was soon touring with the Wilburn Brothers and appearing on the Grand Ole Opry. She was signed by the major label Decca Records in 1961, and the title of her first top 10 hit for the company harbingered the rest of her career: “Success.”
A run of chart-topping country singles followed, sung in a warm voice but taking a tough-minded stance. Just the titles of many of these hits telegraph Lynn’s point of view: “You Ain’t Woman Enough” (No. 2, 1966), “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)” (No. 1, 1966), “What Kind of a Girl (Do You Think I Am?)” (No. 5, 1967), “Fist City” (No. 1, 1968), “Your Squaw is On the Warpath” (No. 3, 1968).
Other signature tunes by Lynn took an autobiographical tack; these included 1965’s “Blue Kentucky Girl” (memorably covered by Emmylou Harris) and 1970’s No. 1 single “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
In 1971 — the year she charted her biggest solo hit, “One’s On the Way” — Lynn began a productive collaboration with label mate Conway Twitty. The pair’s No. 1 duet hit “After the Fire is Gone” was followed by a dozen more top 10 country singles.
In 1975, as the national debate over women’s liberation continued to roil, Lynn incited comment with her song “The Pill.” The song, which reached No. 5 on the country chart, was, in Lynn’s words, “about how the man keeps the woman barefoot and pregnant over the years.” It was one of the best examples of the no-nonsense spunk of her songwriting.
Lynn continued to chart records through the ‘80s, but her recording career slowed and then stopped.
She reentered the scene at the age of 70 in 2004 through the agency of an unlikely fan and collaborator, Jack White, of the popular Detroit garage-punk act The White Stripes. Lynn and White collaborated on the Interscope album Van Lear Rose, which was designed to reignite her career as Johnny Cash’s series of American Records albums had returned him to prominence. The album became the biggest of her career, and the Lynn-White duet “Portland Oregon” received serious radio play.
Lynn remained active well into her 80s, releasing the Grammy-nominated Full Circle in 2016, the first of a series of albums produced by her daughter, Patsy Lynn Russell and John Carter Cash. Circle was followed by that year’s White Christmas Blue and and 2018’s Wouldn’t It Be Great, a collection of new songs and interpretations of classics including the title track, “God Makes No Mistakes,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter”; a planned tour was canceled after Lynn suffered a stroke in May 2017.
The singer returned in 2021 with the her 46th and final album, Still Woman Enough, which featured “Coal Miner’s Daughter Recitation,” a celebration of the 50th anniversary of her signature song.
Bono’s next tour won’t be in stadiums, arenas or even with his band U2. Indeed, the veteran rocker will hit theatres on both sides of the Atlantic later this year, for a solo run in support of his memoir.
The Irishman opens a new chapter in a stellar career with his autobiography Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, due out Nov. 1 through Penguin Random House.
He’ll take those tales on the road for Stories of Surrender, a 14-city book tour across North America and Europe.
Live Nation and Penguin Random House are producing the trek, which kicks off Nov. 2 at Beacon Theatre in New York, and visits Boston, Toronto, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Berlin, Paris and Bono’s hometown Dublin, before wrapping-up Nov. 28 in Madrid.
“I miss being on stage and the closeness of U2’s audience,” Bono comments in a statement. “In these shows I’ve got some stories to sing, and some songs to tell… Plus I want to have some fun presenting my ME-moir, Surrender, which is really more of a WE-moir if I think of all the people who helped me get from there to here”.
Spanning 40 chapters, each named after a U2 song, Bono’s book walks readers through his early days in Ireland, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to U2’s journey to the top, and his years-long commitment to good causes.
“When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life,” he explains. “Surrender” is “a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book.”
Bono is no stranger to the stage. As a member of U2, the band re-wrote the history books with the 360° Tour which, in 2011, passed the $580 million mark, making it the then-highest-grossing tour in Billboard Boxscore history (Ed Sheeran has since overtake that figure).
The 62-year-old singer has also flirted with writing. In 2007, he was tapped as the first-ever guest editor of Vanity Fair, a year after filling-in for the same role at the U.K.’s Independent.
‘Stories of Surrender’ dates
Nov. 2 – New York, NY – Beacon Theatre Nov. 4 – Boston, MA – Orpheum Theatre presented by Citizens Nov. 6 – Toronto, ON – Meridian Hall Nov. 8 – Chicago, IL – The Chicago Theatre Nov. 9 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium Nov. 12 – San Francisco, CA – Orpheum Theatre Nov. 13 – Los Angeles, CA – The Orpheum Theatre Nov. 16 – London, UK – The London Palladium Nov. 17 – Glasgow, UK – SEC Armadillo Nov. 19 – Manchester, UK – O2 Apollo Manchester Nov. 21 – Dublin, IE – 3Olympia Theatre Nov. 23 – Berlin, DE – Admiralspalast Nov. 25 – Paris, FR – Le Grand Rex Nov. 28 – Madrid, ES – Teatro Coliseu
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