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The King of Tears · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin In Nashville, Tennessee. There's a songwriter named Bobby Braddock.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: He's in his seventies, maybe five foot seven, bald head,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: scruffy beard, wiry, like if you messed with them in
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a bar, you'd probably lose. The most striking thing about
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: him is his eyes, which are the palest and most
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: intense shade of blue. He wears sunglasses a lot, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it's almost as if he needs to protect the world
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: from that look there. I met him on a music
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: row in Nashville. We had lunch, and then we sat
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: in one of the writer's rooms in the Sony Building,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: piano in the corner, couches to one side, and he
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: talked about his education in the music business.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I think I always had the reputation as being kind
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: of a quirky writer, maybe a little left field.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The turning point in Braddock's career was a song you've
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: probably heard of. It was performed by Tammy Whyne that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: back when she was the reigning Queen of country music
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, about a mom who had to spell
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: out the word d I v O rcee so her
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: kids wouldn't know their parents were splitting up.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So D w r C.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I wrote this, did a demo on it, and no tikers,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: nobody did it. Nobody would recorded.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: D I v O RCE was a song with a gimmick.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Braddick did a lot of gimmicky songs back then. No
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: one wanted this one. So Braddick went to a friend
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and longtime collaborator, Curly Putman.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: So I said, well, why haf nobody recording? He said,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I think around the important part of your song, said,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: sad song, and your melodies on that part is too happy.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: What I was doing was, oh, stop this a little
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: bit like a like a soap commercial. I said, well,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: what would you do? And he gets a guitar and
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: he had this really mournful singing style. Tammy Whnette was
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: a big fan of Curly singing. She left her singing
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: because he had. I mean, he just you singing. It
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: was just so sad. It gives a guitar. Oh wish
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: we get started this. So I said, just get your guitar.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Let's let's put it on tape like that, you know.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: D I v O r C went to number one.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: It was Bobby Braddock's first great exercise in how to
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: make people cry and From then on, things just got sadder.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: about something that has never made sense to me. Maybe
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it's because I'm a Canadian, or maybe Americans puzzle about
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: this too. I'm talking about the bright line that divides
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: American society, not the color line or the ideological line.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about the sad song rie. I don't know
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: why people don't talk about this more because it's weird.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: For the sake of argument, let's use the rock magazine
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stone's list of the best songs of all time,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the top fifty. These are the critics choices. Hotel California
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: by the Eagles comes in up forty nine, which, as
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: far as I can tell, is a song about drugs.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Toutty Fruity by Little Richard at forty three Tuty Fruity,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: which I remind you has as its signature lyric tooty fruity,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: oh ruddy touty fruity, Oh rudy touty fruity, oh rudy
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: touty fruity, O rudy wop bop alo Bop a Loop,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Bam boom, there's Dancing in the Street at forty light,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: My Fire Be My Baby, Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Derek and the dominoes Leyla. There are songs about wanting
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: to have sex, songs about having sex, songs about getting high,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: presumably after having sex. Number one song on the list
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan. Ah, You've gone
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to the finest schools, all right, miss Lonely, But you
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: know you only used to get juiced in it. Nobody's
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: ever taught you how to live out on the street,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and now you're gonna have to get used to it.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I think that's a song about someone who dropped out
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: of Harvard. The number one rock song of all time
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is about dropping out of Harvard. In all of those
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: fifty songs, nobody dies after a long illness, no marriage disintegrates,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: nobody's killed on a battlefield, no mother grieves for a
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: so on. The closest that any song in Rolling Stone's
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: list comes to being truly sad is Smoky Robinson's Tracks
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of My Tears, which is first of all number fifty.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So they put the sad song at the bottom of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the list. And secondly, it's about a guy at a
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: party in their moments of greatest travail. The protagonists of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: rock and roll's sad songs still get to go to parties. Now.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Just turn on a country music station, especially a traditional
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: country music station, and listen. It's like a different universe.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Marriage is going to hell, people staring into their shot
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: glass in a honky tonk, people dying young. If you
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: ever heard John Prine's Unwed Fathers, it's a devastating bit
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of songwriting about a teenage mom fleeing town. He sings
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: it with his wife Rachel.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Also Wario Bam smoking Mantain.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: She bow. Now all the bad.
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: Your daddy meant to hurt you ever, You just don't
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: live here, but you got his eyes.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Those last two lines, your daddy never meant to hurt
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: you ever. He just don't live here, but you've got
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: his eyes.
• 6:34
  Speaker 6: That's brutal, black bad dream all on. We fob.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: One half of the country, the rock music part, wants
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: their music to be hymns to extra version. The other
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: half wants to talk about real life dramas and have
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: a good cry. I don't get it, by the way,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: you know who wrote that unwed Father's Song with John Prine,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Bobby Braddock, or maybe you've heard this another classic recorded
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: by Tammy Whynett Golden.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: Word with a Long Time Long pritaside.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Loud long bus Golden Ring. It follows a couple from
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: first love to the breakup of their marriage by tracing
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the journey of their wedding ring from pawnshop to pawnshop.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: It's a weeper who wrote it, Bobby Braddock, and today,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: forty years after he wrote it, Braddock is still mad
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: about a one word change made by the song's producer,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Billy Cheryl, because that made his song one crucial degree
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: less sad.
• 7:52
  Speaker 7: But we had.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: He says, you won't admit it, but I know you're
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: running around and Billy changed it too. He says, you
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: won't admit it, but I know you're leaving town. That's
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: not as that's not as powerful as you're running around.
• 8:05
  Speaker 7: He says, you won't admit it, but I know you
• 8:09
  Speaker 7: leave in town.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: She says one thanks for circ I.
• 8:13
  Speaker 8: Don't love you anymore.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: As throws down the ring as she walks out the door.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: I think country music is supposed to be about real life,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: you know, And I try to reflect that in bout
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: all Right.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Gold Ring, which brings us to maybe the greatest country
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: song of all time, certainly the saddest country song of
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: all time, the song that made me get on a
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: plane and go to Nashville. It was recorded by the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: great George Jones, one of the half dozen or so
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: most iconic figures in the history of country music. You
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: just heard him singing in Golden Ring. Jones was famously
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the husband of Tammy Wynett for a time, a hard living,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: dissolute megastar. Once, in the midst of an epic bender,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: jones family took his keys away, so he got on
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: his writing mower and drove eight miles to the liquor
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: store to get some whiskey. This was a man who
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: could pour his fractured heart into his music like no
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: one else. A half dozen times in his career, Jones
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: found a song truly worthy of his talents, but it
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: never got better than he stopped loving her. Today, I
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: still remember when I first heard that song, and from
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the day I started thinking about this episode, I haven't
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: been able to get it out of my head.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: He said, I'll love you till I die. She told him,
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: you forgetting time As the years went slowly by, she
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: still prayed.
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: Up all his his mind.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: He kept her picture on his wall.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Do I need to tell you who wrote that song?
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Bobby Braddock? Bobby Braddock is the king of tears.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: But he still loved him through it all, hoping she'd
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: come back again.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Oh man. One of the things that got me interested
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: in sad songs was a story my sister in law,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Bev told me. She and my brother live in the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: same area. I grew up in Waterloo County in southern Ontario,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and a while ago she went to a performance by
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a local chamber choir thirty singers. They sang a cantata
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: called Annalise by the British composer James Whitbourne, a choral
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: composition which puts the words of n Frank's diary to music.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I know this seems like a little bit of a
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: digression from country music, but it's a really useful case
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: study in understanding why some songs make us cry. The
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: performance Bev told me about was on a Sunday afternoon,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a free performance at the Public Library, which is a
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: very utilitarian, very nineteen sixties building on Queen Street in
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: downtown Kitchener. I've been there many times. Waaldwall carpet, that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: old books library smell, which I have to admit, I love.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: How many people are there.
• 11:26
  Speaker 9: It's in their main reading room. They've moved around all
• 11:29
  Speaker 9: the tables and one hundred one hundred and twentieth full,
• 11:35
  Speaker 9: pretty much standing room only.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Why light?
• 11:48
  Speaker 9: As they're singing, I think, why is that also not singing?
• 11:53
  Speaker 9: And then I look over and I think somebody else
• 11:56
  Speaker 9: as a Frian, I'm not singing. That's odd because everybody
• 11:58
  Speaker 9: else in their.
• 11:58
  Speaker 10: Parts is singing.
• 12:00
  Speaker 9: And I realized they were crying and they couldn't sing.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Bev says, she cried pretty much through the entire performance.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: She was looking straight ahead because she didn't want people
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: to see she was crying. But it didn't matter because
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: everyone was crying. When the performance was over, Bev approached
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: the stage to talk to the soloist, the woman singing
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Anne Frank's words.
• 12:22
  Speaker 9: I just went up to her afterwards and congratulated her
• 12:25
  Speaker 9: on the beauty of the piece then and her singing,
• 12:27
  Speaker 9: And I said, and how did you manage to sing
• 12:31
  Speaker 9: without crying? And she said, well, I couldn't look at Mark,
• 12:37
  Speaker 9: the conductor, because he was wiping tears from his eyes,
• 12:40
  Speaker 9: and I had my back to the choir, so that
• 12:43
  Speaker 9: was good. And I didn't look at anybody in the
• 12:45
  Speaker 9: audience because they were crying. So I just looked up
• 12:48
  Speaker 9: in the middle distance and I sang, it was a
• 12:50
  Speaker 9: good thing. I hadn't memorized.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I was at home in Canada when Bev told me
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: that story, so I called up Mark, the conductor, and
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the soloist, whose name is Natasha. They're actually husband and wife.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: They only live a few minutes away from my brother,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: so they came over. Mark sat at the piano in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the living room and Natasha stood behind him, and they
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: performed one of the pieces from Analyst they did that
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: day in the library.
• 13:14
  Speaker 10: This is the last movement. It's called Anne's Meditation. I
• 13:18
  Speaker 10: see the world, I see the world being slowly turned
• 13:21
  Speaker 10: turned into a wilderness.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Now I realized, this is a crazy question, because we're
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: hearing a piece based on the diary of Anne Frank,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: which is one of the most heartbreaking stories from one
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of the most horrific moments in recent history. But why
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was everyone crying that day at the Kitchener library. The
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: obvious reason is that the music is beautiful, so is
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Natasha's singing. The performance is also authentic. There's nothing contrived
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: about it. It wasn't at Carnegie Hall. People weren't wearing
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: suits and evening gowns. They were at the Kitchener Library
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and there's families getting books and kids running around, and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: everyone's on stacking chairs with the tables pushed off to
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the side. But here's the most important thing. Annalise is
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: specific It's a cantata about the actual experiences of a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: real person. In her own words, Bev says that when
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: she cried, she started thinking about her own family, Mennonites,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: who escaped terrible persecution in Russia. Natasha's says that as
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: she sang about twelve year old an Frank, she was
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: thinking about her own daughter, who was ten and who
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: was sitting right next to Bev in the audience. Beauty
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: and authenticity can create a mood. They set the stage.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: But I think the thing that pushes us over the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: top into tears is details. We cry when melancholy collides
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: with specificity, and specificity is not something every genre does well.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones, written by Keith Richards
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and Mick Jagger, It's a song about a conversation a
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: man is having with a silent, suffering loved one. The
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: story goes that Mick Jagger dreamt up the verses while
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: sitting at the bedside of his then girlfriend Mary and Faithful,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: as she recovered from an overdose.
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: Oh suffer, Bill, I watched.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: You suffer a dull, aching pain. Now you've decided to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: show me the same. No sweeping exit or off stage
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: lines could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Wild Horses couldn't drag me away. Wild Wild Horses couldn't
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: drag me away. Wild Horses was recorded first by the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: legendary Graham Parsons. Not long afterwards, Parsons died of an overdose,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and his friend in protege, the country music singer Emmy
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Lou Harris, made a song in his memory. She wrote
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: it with Bill Danoff. It's called from Boulder to Birmingham.
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: I don't want a hee song. I got on the
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: zepplin just a flow damn nods below me.
• 17:13
  Speaker 9: But all that you can.
• 17:15
  Speaker 6: Show me is a premium.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: Mascuy, And I don't only hear he said.
• 17:27
  Speaker 9: Story.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Someone who has suffered a terrible loss has gotten on
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: a plane and she's so numbed by grief that she
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: can no longer see those around her.
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: Blessed time.
• 17:38
  Speaker 7: I feel like this.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I was in the wilderness in.
• 17:45
  Speaker 9: The can was on FA.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: From Boulder to Birmingham, and wildhorses are both beautiful melancholy.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: They're about the same thing, the ties the living and
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: the healthy have to those in pain. But which is
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: the sadder song? I don't think there's any question. Wild
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: horses is generic. Listen to how it starts childhood. Living
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: is easy to do the things you wanted. I bought
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: them for you. Graceless lady, you know who I am.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: You know I can't let you slide through my hands?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: What's going on? Any idea? What is Mickey yammering on about? Now?
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Compare that to the specificity of looking down from the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: airplane and seeing nothing but prairie. Then standing on a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: mountain and watching a canyon burn.
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: Was our rapsle in the coosm.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: I would hold.
• 18:50
  Speaker 6: Any say, race away from all.
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: Act I could see.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: First, she references the great black spiritual rock my soul
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: in the Bosom of Abraham. The Bosom of Abraham is
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: where the righteous dead go while awaiting judgment. Then she sings,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and I would also walk all the way from Boulder
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: to Birmingham. Now she's locating her grief. I would make
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a pilgrimage from progressive, hippie liberal Remember this is nineteen
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: seventy three, dope smoking Colorado back to the repressive heart
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: of the Old South, just to see your face. Two
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: completely different specific images, each with its own set of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: emotional triggers, and she's piled one on top of another.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Mark Vornan, the music director of the choir in my hometown,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: says that there's a part in Annalise that does the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: same thing. Anne is.
• 19:58
  Speaker 10: They're in hiding already, and she starts singing, and the
• 20:01
  Speaker 10: composer has set these words in kind of a style
• 20:04
  Speaker 10: of an American Sousa march, and so she's talking about
• 20:09
  Speaker 10: in the bathtub and being scrubbed in the bathtub, and
• 20:11
  Speaker 10: it's a SUSA we scrub, scrub, scrub ourselves in the
• 20:15
  Speaker 10: tin right, very happy and optimistic music.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And Frank in the bathtub to the tune of a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: SUSA march with the horrors of the Holocaust outside her door.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Three absolutely concrete images in merciless combination.
• 20:35
  Speaker 10: It just floored me every time I heard it, because
• 20:39
  Speaker 10: it was so close to you know, our own daughter,
• 20:42
  Speaker 10: you know, to think that she would have to create
• 20:44
  Speaker 10: this kind of fiction in order to just get through
• 20:48
  Speaker 10: the day.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: That's how you get tears. You make the story so
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: real and the details so sharp, and you add in
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: so many emotional triggers that the listener cannot escape. But
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: it's a risky thing to do, right if you aren't
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: a talented composer and you don't do a sensitive rendition
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: of those lyrics, they could fall flat, could seem forced,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: even offensive. Far easier just to fall back on the
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: blend cliche that wild horses couldn't drag you away. Country
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: music makes people cry because it's not afraid to be specific.
• 21:25
  Speaker 8: You know, she came to see him one last time,
• 21:31
  Speaker 8: and we all wondered if she would, and it kept
• 21:39
  Speaker 8: running through my mind.
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: At this time.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Bobby Braddock was born in Auburndale, Florida, a little town
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: between Tampa and Orlando. His father grew Citrus. They were
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Church of Christ, just about the most fundamentalist of fundamentalist Christians.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: Braddock moved to Nashville in nineteen sixty four, just after
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: getting married to seek his fortune in the music business.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: He wrote his memoirs a few years ago. It's called
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: A Life on Nashville's Music Row. I read it before
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I went to see him, and the best way to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: describe the book is that it's exhausting. I don't mean
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: that in a bad way, because I couldn't put it down.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: But so much happens.
• 22:34
  Speaker 11: You've lived this incredibly tumultuous, emotionally tumultuous life. Yeah, And
• 22:40
  Speaker 11: in the book it sounds like the first precipitating event
• 22:44
  Speaker 11: is the death of your son. Braddock was touring with
• 22:47
  Speaker 11: the country music legend Mardy Robbins at the time. He
• 22:50
  Speaker 11: and his wife, Sue had a baby. The child was
• 22:53
  Speaker 11: just a few months old when he died.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Whenever I was in town, not on the road with
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Marty Robbins, every single day we'd buy fresh flowers, go
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: put it on it's gray. We were just pathetic.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: He and Sue fight, She cheats on him, he cheats
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: on her. They break up, they get back together, they
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: have a daughter. The divorce, his ex wife mysteriously vanishes.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: He drinks a lot, gets into fights, owes enormous sums
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: to the irs, has a major Boutwood depression, smokes a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: lot of pot, lurches from one volcanic event to the next,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and through it all Braddock writes songs, hundreds of them.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Your kind of tolerance for emotional volatility seems extraordinary.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I guess tolerance is probably a pretty good word for it.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Braddock walks over to the keyboard on the other side
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: of the room. He begins to talk about an old
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: girlfriend named Angela, who committed suicide by driving her car
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: into the river.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: When Angela died, her mother took her baby to raise it.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And she sent me a picture of the little girl
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Angela's when she's about four or five years ago, look
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: just like her mom. Picture of her standing out in
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the arm And boy did a number on me, despite
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: all the dusts.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: He wrote a song about that in twenty minutes. He
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: played it for me. Then he played his favorite bit
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: of a sad Randy Newman song. He played me a
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking song he wrote once after getting up in the
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: middle of the night and passing his lover in the hallway.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: And as he played one weeper after another, I realized
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that the thing I'd said about Braddock's tolerance for emotional volatility,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: tolerance was the wrong word. That was just me projecting
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: my uptight Canadian self onto Braddock. But Braddock is from
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the musical side of the United States, where emotion is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: not something to be endured, it's something to be embraced.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: At one point, when cell phones were still analog, you
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: could buy a scanner and listen in to other people's conversations,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and that's what Braddock does. He can't help himself. A
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: woman complains to her husband for an hour about his
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: lack of affection from the parking lot at the grocery store.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Then ask him what he wants and he says, maybe
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Apple Newton's. And then this is my favorite part I'm
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: quoting now from Braddock's memoir. The conversation that truly touched
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: me was between a man perhaps forty and his mother
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: may Bee, late sixties, in which the sun opened up
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: about sexual problems he was having with his wife. And
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I envied the sprinkling of profanities and the mother's invitation
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: to come over to the house, son, and let's open
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: a bottle of whisky and talk about it. Wishing I
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: had that kind of easy and open communication with my mom.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Then learning that the guy's mother was terminally ill with cancer.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: If you're keeping track, that's marital difficulty, sex, profanity, whisky mom,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and terminal cancer in one conversation, and it truly touched
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: him free. Do you know what Braddott's favorite song is
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Vince Gills go Rest High on that Mountain, which Gil
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: wrote in memory both of his brother who died young
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: of a heart attack and fellow country star Keith Whitley,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: who drank himself to death.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: O on.
• 26:39
  Speaker 9: Song you.
• 26:44
  Speaker 6: Is dumb, dude, Oh my god.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: When Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs and Patty Lovelace are
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: singing harmony on that thing, I go nuts. It still
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: tears me up. Knowing that it's about death, and Vince
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: wrote it about Keith Whitley and then about his own brother,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and just the emotion that sending that song, It's just
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: it's just powerful day.
• 27:10
  Speaker 6: Left us gathered round agree degree we shock, goody.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: Faces.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: It's heartbreaking. Listening to that song makes me wonder if
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: some portion of what we call ideological division in America
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: actually isn't ideological at all. How big are the political
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: differences between red and blue states anyway, in the grand
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: scheme of things, not that big. Maybe what we're seeing
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: instead is a difference of emotional opinion, because if your
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: principal form of cultural expression has drinking, sex, suicide, heart attacks,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: mom and terminal cancer all on the table for public discussion,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: then the other half of the country is going to
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: seem really chilly and uncaring. And if you're from the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: rock and roll half, clinging send me ironically to two
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Dy Fruity O Rudy. When you listen to a song
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: written about a guy's brother who died young of a
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: heart attack and another guy who drank himself to death,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you're going to think, who are these people? Here's another
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: way to think about the sad song line. Let me
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: read you the list of the birthplaces of the performers
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of the top twenty country songs of all time Again.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to use the Rolling Stone magazine list. Ready, Arkansas, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Mississippi, Georgia, California,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Central Valley, by the way, not Los Angeles, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Texas, Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Texas, Kentucky, Texas.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I could do the top fifty, or the top one hundred,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: or the top two hundred and you get the same pattern. Basically,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: you cannot be a successful country singer or songwriter if
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: you're not from the South. It's impossible. There's one exception,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: which is the great songwriter Harlan Howard, who was born
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: in Detroit, but almost immediately thereafter his family moves to
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: a farm in rural Kentucky. It's like the five to
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: second roll when you drop a piece of food on
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the floor. If it's not on the ground long enough,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: it doesn't count. As far as I can tell, there
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: are no Jews on the country list, almost no Catholics,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: only two black people. It's white Southern Protestants all the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: way down. Now compare that to the rock and roll list.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: You've got Jews from Minnesota, black people from Detroit, Catholics
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: from New Jersey, middle class British art school dropouts, Canadians, Jamaicans.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll is the rainbow coalition that diversity is
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a good thing. It's why there's so much innovation in
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: rock and roll. But you pay a price for that.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: There was a very clever bit of research published recently
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: by Colin Morris in the magazine The Pudding. He analyzed
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: fifteen thousand popular songs using an algorithm that can presses
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: digital files. So if you take out the repetitive bits
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: in a song, how much of it is left. Morris's
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: big finding is that rock and roll as a genre
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: is really, really repetitive. Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, the Beatles,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: If you take out the duplicative parts, their music shrinks
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: by sixty percent. That's what happens when everyone is from
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: somewhere different. Nobody speaks the same language, so you have
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to use cliche, the same phrases over and over again,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: because if you go deeper or try to get more specific,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you start to lose people. Country music, on the other hand,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: is not nearly as repetitive. When Morris ran the lyrics
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of popular country singers through his algorithm, they only shrank
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: by about forty percent, a third less than the rock
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and roller. Nor is hip hop repetitive, which makes sense.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: The birthplaces of everyone on Rolling Stones list of greatest
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: rap songs reads like an urban version of the country list. Queens,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: South Central, La Brooklyn, Long Island, South Central Long Beach, Houston, Queens,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: The Bronx, Englewood, New Jersey, The Bronx. Hip Hop and
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: country are both tightly knit musical communities. And when you're
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: speaking to people who understand your world and your culture
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and your language, you can tell much more complicated stories.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: You can use much more precise imagery, you can lay
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: yourself bare because you're among your own. In the book,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: it sounds like your relationship with Sparky was the one
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: that seemed the most creatively fruitful. It was it was
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Sparky was a beautiful blonde from northern Alabama, the great
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: love of Bobby Braddock's life. Why was that?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I think because my family her is so strong. I mean,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: it's it's sort of a visceral thing.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I think that's why I found Bobby Braddock's book so exhausting.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: It's because everything is felt, everything is a mountain peak
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: and Sparky, Sparky was everest, high altitude infatuation.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: That's the sort of thing that make people go absolutely crazy,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: you know, and that was the case with her. You know,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: that's what gets the animal instinct of people maybe who
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: haven't evolved as much as they should, and cause them
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: to go out and get a gun, blow somebody's brains
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: out over some gun. Not being able can't stand the thought,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: or someone you know, having sex with the person that
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: he loves.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Braddick and Sparky were on and off lovers for years.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: It was intense, painful, euphoric. When it ended, Braddock was
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in pieces.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: He kept her picture on the wall.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Went half crazy.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Now in the that's Braddock in the original demo he
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: made of he stopped loving her today.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: He still loved her through it all, hoping she'd come
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: back looking.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm not sure where it came from. It
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: may have come from Sparky, you know, honestly not know
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: it would be interesting.
• 33:45
  Speaker 9: How could it not?
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if I think it probably, I think it
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: probably did. But I just I can't see it. I
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: can't see that for any certainty to mar.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: They'll carry him will I felt like Braddick shrink at
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: that moment, listening to his tangled dreams and then wanting
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: to shake him. At the end of the session. It's Sparky.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Sparky, they found some letters by his bed.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, you wrote a song in the middle of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the great defining love affair of your life. The relationship ends,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and you write a song about the heartbreak of that
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a man carries to his grave. I mean, could it
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: be more clear?
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: I went to see him one last time.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Bobby Braddock wrote, he stopped loving her today With his
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: friend Curly in nineteen seventy seven, they took it to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the singer George Jones. Jones was then at his lowest
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: ebb a wreck, strung out on cocaine and whiskey. He
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: just checked out of a psychiatric hospital. The great love
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: of his life, Tammy Wynette, had embodied her hit song
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Di v O rcee and left him. Jones had just
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: nearly shot and killed one of his best friends. The
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: heartbroken Bobby Braddock has written a song about a man
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: who cannot stop loving a woman, and it's sung by
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: the heartbroken George Jones, who I cannot stop loving a woman.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Get some letters byes Babe.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Eight.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty two, he had underline and red.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Underlined and read every single I love you, every single
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I love you.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: I went to see him just today. Oh but I
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: didn't seen old tears, all dressed up to go away.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: First time I'd seen him smiling you.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Why did he finally turn his back on his great love?
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: Why is this the first time he smiled in years?
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Because he's dead? Only death could end his.
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: Love it blaster red upon his dog. I'm sung belt Carrier.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: He stopped loving hard today.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It's totally over the top. Madelin sentimental Kitchie, call it
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: whatever you want, just don't fight it. One thing that
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Bobby Braddock told me in Passing that I think about
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: a lot is that he thought of the character in
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: his song as a bad role model. The man was obsessed.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: He couldn't let go. But that's the point, right, That's
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: why we cry, because the song manages to find beauty
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: and even a little bit of grandeur in someone's frailty.
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: I'm song belt Carriage.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: He stopped hard today.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Wild horses please.
• 37:22
  Speaker 7: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand
• 37:25
  Speaker 7: Ole Opry House, to the celebration of life of George
• 37:29
  Speaker 7: Glenn Jones. One of the most important people ever, of
• 37:32
  Speaker 7: all time and of any time in the history of
• 37:35
  Speaker 7: country music.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: George Jones died in twenty thirteen. Everyone who was anyone
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: in country music came to his memorial service. You should
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: watch it if you get the chance. It's on YouTube,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: all two hours and forty one minutes of it. Because
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: it's everything I've been talking about. Vince Gill stands up
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: with Patty Lovelace and sings go Rest High in that
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Mountain and breaks down halfway through. Travis Tritt remembers a
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: conversation he once had with Chris Christofferson about how they
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: expected George Jones to have died years before.
• 38:26
  Speaker 12: And I looked at Chris and I made the comment,
• 38:30
  Speaker 12: you know, with all the years of hard living that
• 38:34
  Speaker 12: George had, who would have ever thought that he would
• 38:39
  Speaker 12: outlive Tammy. And Chris looked at me and said, had
• 38:47
  Speaker 12: it not been for Nancy, he would not have.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Nancy Jones, George Jones's fourth and final wife, the real
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: love of his life, his soulmate and companion. Travis Tritt
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: holds out his hand towards Nancy, who's sitting right in
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the front row.
• 39:09
  Speaker 12: It many times she's my angel, and she saved my
• 39:13
  Speaker 12: life and so we owe you a debt of gratitude.
• 39:18
  Speaker 10: For that.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Then comes the crowning moment of the day, the final performance.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Alan Jackson strides out onto the stage a big rangy guy,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: craggy features, cowboy boots, jeans, long coat, white statson. He
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: looks squarely at Nancy Jones and without introduction, launches into
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: he stopped loving her?
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: Today, he said, all of you till I die. She
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: told him you are good time as years went fool.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And you realize as he sings, that Braddock's song has
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: gotten even more specific. It's no longer about a long
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: ago affair. It's about right now. This is the day
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: George Jones stopped loving Nancy Jones. Alan Jackson takes off
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: his hat and places it over his heart.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: He stopped loving her.
• 40:29
  Speaker 6: Today.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: And if you aren't crying, I can't help you.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: Love you, George.
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: All the free grades of our time, ladies and gentlemen
• 40:47
  Speaker 7: at all time. That's Alan Jackson, Thank you so much.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: John.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by Mio Lobel and Jacob Smith,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Siomara Martinez White. Our
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Original
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: music by Luis Sciarra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberger. Panoply, I'm Malcolm gardwe