Right-Click to Save    Do you need a toe-tapper?  Even if you’re performing hip-hop (I sincerely hope not),  every now and then you need to throw in something completely different.  Something that makes people think, “Oh, that’s fun!”.  This classic country tune would be the one.

Bob Wills recorded “San Antonio Rose” as an instrumental in 1938.  He came from a musical family in Texas (father was a champion fiddle player – mother an accomplished pianist), so he naturally gravitated toward music as a career.  His band ( the Texas Playboys) wrote lyrics to the tune and it became “New San Antonio Rose” –  soaring to number one on the “Western” charts and staying there for a very long time.  Other versions became popular later on, most notably Floyd Cramer’s piano instrumental in the ’60s (which I’m trying to emulate here – to no avail).  This is the way I prefer to do it (duh),  but it’s got some pretty good lyrics so don’t be afraid to hand it to your singer.

When Wills and his band performed it at the Grand Ole Opry with horns and drums, it caused quite the controversy.  Seems the Opry people didn’t think those instruments belonged in a country-western band.  Could be they were right.

  Download Instrumental    In my sophomore year of college, I played a solo gig at a VFW in downtown Terre Haute, Indiana. It was a sudden introduction to country music and I had to learn a bunch of country tunes really fast. It was also the first time I’d seen anyone actually “cry in their beer”.  People really do that, you know.  You don’t see it often, but when you do it kinda sticks in your brain.

I loved playing that club.  I can still see couples swaying on the dance floor to this song by the great George Jones (my backing tracks are on the Country List if you think you’d like to trot this one out again).  I played a similar arrangement to this way back when – but then I didn’t have the luxury of a multi-track keyboard that could mimic every instrument.  I’d give anything to go back there and do it right – harmonica, guitar, fiddle – the whole works.  You couldn’t give this song justice as a solo piano player, but they still danced and cuddled and swayed and…. cried in their beer.   Good times.

  Right-Click to Save    Tom Jones had a worldwide hit with this in 1966, although it was first recorded by Porter Wagoner the year before.  It’s about a man who returns to his childhood home after many years.  As he steps down from the train, his parents are there to greet him and his beloved Mary comes running to join them.  With Mary, he strolls at ease among the remnants of his childhood, including “the old oak tree that I used to play on”.  And he pontificates that “it’s good to touch the green, green grass of home”.  Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  However, the music and words are hinting that something isn’t quite right here.

The third verse switches abruptly to speech rather than singing – “Then I awake and look around me, at four grey walls that surround me”.  He realizes he was only dreaming and, in fact, he’s on death row in a prison.  He’s awakened on the day of his execution – “There’s a guard, and there’s a sad old padre, arm in arm, we’ll walk at daybreak”, and now we know he’s returning home to be buried ‘neath that old oak tree.  Very sad, and cleverly written.

Whenever we do this song, it brings a lump to my throat and I can barely sing it.  It was a favorite of my brother, who passed away many years ago.  Steve… this one is always for you.  I miss him.

  Download with Lead    I don’t like this song.  But I’ve received several requests for a backup sequence from my “country” friends out there, so here it is.  It was painful listening to it over and over until I got the guitars just right, but it’s finished – as good as I can do it.  It’s hard making a keyboard sound like a guitar without it sounding like a keyboard trying to sound like a guitar.  Confused?  Me too.

I have absolutely no problem with Faith Hill.  She’s a pretty lady with a great voice and a true talent…. and I understand she has a little money.  It’s just this song – ugh.  Maybe I heard it too much.  Other people love it, so I’m just weird, I guess.  Anyway, download off the country list if you just insist on performing it (it’s almost 20 years old, you know).  I used a flute on the lead line – an obnoxious way of protesting a less than stellar tune.