Leonard Cohen and Country Music (Nat'l Examiner 5/23/09)

[sturgess66]

Article in National Examiner:

https://www.examiner.com/x-11729-Leonar ... ntry-music

Leonard Cohen and country music

By: Joe McClellan
May 23, 1:53 PM ·

At a Nashville party in the early 1970's, Kris Kristofferson, arguably the most poetic and literary songwriter in modern country music, told Leonard Cohen that he will have the following inscribed on his tombstone: “Like a Bird on a Wire/ Like a drunk in a midnight choir/ I have tried in my way to be free.” These lines, of course, are from Leonard Cohen’s 1968 classic, “Bird on a Wire.” What would cause one of the greatest country songwriters, who honed his craft for decades, to use another writer’s words as his epitaph? Such a gesture of respect suggests that Cohen, in his idiosyncratic, genre-bending style, had captured precisely what the most profound country music reaches for.

Producer Rick Rubin saw this when choosing songs for Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings,” the masterful final chapters of his monumental oeuvre. In the first of these albums, Johnny Cash delivers a powerful rendition of “Bird on a Wire” with nothing but his acoustic guitar and plaintive baritone voice. The song has also been covered by another legend of country music, Willie Nelson, on the 1995 tribute album “Tower of Song.”

The simplicity of Cohen’s compositions and the universality of his favorite themes of existential freedom, death, broken love and so forth, are in perfect harmony with the Hank Williams lineage of country songwriting that subscribes to the adage “three chords and the truth.” Emmylou Harris’ 2006 “Cowgirl’s Prayer” further exposes Cohen’s affinity for the heart of country music in her rendition of his lesser known song, “Ballad of a Runaway Horse.” Here Cohen explicitly embraces the imagery of the West, with its horses and mountains, and revisits familiar ground by constructing a mysterious tale of a young girl’s search for freedom, expressed through the metaphor of her runaway horse.

Cohen has always acknowledged his yen for country music, and by looking at the many countrified covers of his compositions, we can see how he has given back to the genre while remaining culturally outside of it.

[kalinowt]

Here's a review fromthe Nashville Concert in 2009 that adds some information about Cohen's country music connections.

http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2009 ... c-at-tpac/

Concert Reviews "Leonard Cohen shares smiles, lessons and music at TPAC": updated
Published by Peter Cooperon November 6, 2009in Concert Reviews and Reviews.

Leonard Cohen, 75, played the Tennessee Performing Arts Center Thursday night. And... well, it was great. A hundred smiles, a thousand lessons.

Cohen’s body of work is well documented and well loved. His voice is a low and husky rumble, the kind of thing that wouldn’t last a minute on American Idol and that helps the singer draw laughs each night when he sings, “I had no choice/ I was born with the gift of a golden voice.”

He was not born with a golden voice. But Cohen has developed more significant gifts: those of presence, attention and graciousness.

The presence part was apparent from the outset of the show, part of Cohen’s first major American tour in 15 years.

Dressed in a black suit and a shining, impossible belt buckle, Cohen was wholly in the moment, talking of how he lived near Nashville for years, on a 1,500 acre farm rented from Country Music Hall of Famer Boudleaux Bryant for $75 a month.The attention and graciousness aspects seemed to work together, as is often the case. In a distracted, tweet–away world, Cohen tends to look folks in the eye. During most every song, someone in his nine-piece band would take a solo, and Cohen would respond by taking off his fedora — he used the hat as a prop, like Bob Wills used his oft-pointing fiddle bow, or like Humphrey Bogart used his cigarette — and concentrating intently at the soloist.

The message was clear: “I, Leonard Cohen, am now a member of the audience. When I put the hat back on, perhaps I shall sing and you may turn your attention back to me. In the meantime, listen to something extraordinary.”

The result was that band members were heard and appreciated at a level seldom experienced. In the second set, when Cohen introduced each member for the second time, the audience stood and cheered for several minutes. A standing ovation... for the band.

A published poet for more than 50 years, and recording artist for more than 40, Cohen is a 75-year-old with what must be 25-year-old knees. He often dropped to those knees — particularly in the first set, when he wasn’t holding an acoustic guitar — and sang as if pleading to a lover, a higher power, or both.

He began, as is the usual of late, with “Dance Me To The End of Love,” and went on to perform “Suzanne,” “The Future,” “Bird On the Wire” (which was admired, and sung, by Johnny Cash) “Hallelujah,” “I’m Your Man,” "Sisters of Mercy,” “Chelsea Hotel, No. 2” and other favorites.

A bevy of Nashville musical luminaries — including Rodney Crowell, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gary Paczosa, Sergio Webb, Marshall Chapman, Trent Summar and Wood Newton — were in attendance to bear witness to Cohen’s lyrical testimony. At one point, Cohen told the story behind “Chelsea Hotel,” a song written about Janis Joplin.

“We were on the elevator... I asked her, ‘Are you looking for someone?’” he recalled. “She said, ‘I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’ ‘You’re in luck. I am Kris Kristofferson.’”

Cohen told the audience that Joplin replied, “I thought you were taller.” He got a laugh out of that one.

Neither Cohen nor Kristofferson is tall, though their legacies can dunk a basketball without so much as standing on tiptoes. And then Cohen sang the song, for an audience that, following Cohen’s lead, was present, attentive and gracious.

[holydove]

Here's a review fromthe Nashville Concert in 2009 that adds some information about Cohen's country music

Concert Reviews "Leonard Cohen shares smiles, lessons and music at TPAC": updated
Published by Peter Cooperon November 6, 2009in Concert Reviews and Reviews.

He was not born with a golden voice. But Cohen has developed more significant gifts: those of presence, attention and graciousness.

I appreciate the generally positive & admiring tone of this article, but I have to say: LEONARD COHEN MOST CERTAINLY WAS BORN WITH A GOLDEN VOICE!!

Perhaps the writer of this article should share his/her definition of "golden voice" with his/her readers; because maybe he/she doesn't understand the meaning of those words. And perhaps the writer should also explain what makes him/her an authority on who has, or doesn't have, a golden voice.

[kalinowt]

Here's a great recent interview with Charlie Daniels about Leonard Cohen, whom he appears to be still friends with.
http://www.lfpress.com/entertainment/mu ... 86221.html

Entertainment Music
Daniels, Cohen formed unique bond
By Jeffrey Ougler QMI Agency

Last Updated: September 8, 2010 6:02pm
Email StoryPrintSize A A AReport TypoShare with:
FacebookDiggDel.icio.usGoogleStumble UponNewsvineRedditTechnoratiFeed MeYahooSimpySquidooSpurlBlogmarksNetvouzScuttleSitejot+ What are these? .Here’s a music trivia question that should win a bar bet any time.

Q: Who played bass on Leonard Cohen albums, 1969’s Songs From a Room and Songs of Love and Hate released in 1971.

A: Charlie Daniels.

Yep, Charlie Daniels. Who even picked Cohen up at the Nashville airport, if you need a follow-up stumper.

Both Cohen classics were recorded in Nashville, where Daniels — a vocalist, guitarist and fiddler whose solo recordings started arriving in 1971 — was doing session work.

“He spoke in poetic ways and was able to communicate with people who had never lived in that world, like myself, and had never been exposed to that side of things,” Daniels said. “It was a very pleasant experience for me.”

This tranquility extended to the studio and beyond.

“When I think of Leonard’s music, I think of it as very, very fragile,” Daniels said. “I’d never been around that kind of music before, that everything that you did had to be something that was unique and that it complemented this very unique, fragile music that Leonard was doing.

“I’d never been around playing concerts for crowds that were that quiet. You could hear, maybe not a pin, but a 10-penny nail roll across the balcony.

“I saw another whole side of music that I had never seen, and I had so much respect for Leonard’s creativity, unique thoughts, the way his mind works. I learned a lot. You know what we do is the sum total of what we’ve done, actually. I was glad to be exposed to that feel, to that thing.”

The iconic Canadian poet and novelist was just beginning the singer-songwriter career that has made Cohen a star around the world. Through Daniels, he found a place to stay and a seemingly unlikely friend. Back in the day, Cohen moved “out in the middle of nowhere” and befriended a neighbour Daniels describes as an “old, hard-drinking, two-fisted cowboy” named Kid Marley.

“You talk about me and Leonard being different,” Daniels said. “You take Leonard Cohen, from the world of academia, and you put him out in the middle of the country in this little house. (Marley) loved Leonard. He used to come to Leonard’s sessions, and he’s the last person in the world you’d think Leonard would have anything in common with. I don’t know if it was having anything in common, or Leonard was just a nice guy.”

— The Sault Star, with files from James Reaney/The London Free Press

[kalinowt]

Found this obituary for Ray "Kid" Marley that mentions his connection to Leonard.

http://genealogytrails.com/tenn/henderson/obitM.html

RAY "KID" MARLEY - The man who once said, "I ain't ever gonna get old, I'm just gonna live a long time," Ray "Kid" Marley, Cowboy, has passed away at age 76. A long-time West/Middle Tennessee resident, "Kiddo" as many of his friends called him, died April 7, 2006, in Parsons, Tennessee from injuries sustained months earlier while training a horse. Here's a brief history of an eventful life. Born in 1930 on a farm in Lamesa, Texas, by age 14, Marley was running a string of horses on several West Texas ranches. At age 17, he rode a cattle car to South Dakota, entered his first rodeo, won twice his months wages and, from there, his path was set. For the next three years, he worked in rodeo's "Golden Age" picking up big checks at Cheyenne, Madison Square Garden and all points in between. Then, in 1950, an event took place that would change Marley's life forever. Before a rodeo in Texas, a fellow Texan who had moved to Franklin, Bob Corley, offered Kid and a friend (Harley May, the man who'd go on to, literally, write rodeo's rule book) an all-expense paid trip to Tennessee to work the Franklin Rodeo. They turned him down. Confident they'd win that night, they mapped out there plans to parlay that evening's loot into travel expenses for a rodeo run further West. One problem though, they didn't win a dime. Afterwards, they hunted down their new friend and, a few weeks later, found themselves in Tennessee. Marley met a woman named Mary Margaret Clark and the rest, as they say, is history. History that included; fathering four sons, appearing on "Wide World of Sports", bringing some of the first quarter horses to Tennessee, being penned in song by post-Beat poet Leonard Cohen, helping found Franklin's Mounted Patrol Unit, being written up in "Life" magazine, training thousands of horses, befriending whoever he met, and on and on and on. Though known as a man with a big, kind heart and distinctive laugh, according to his son Cody, it's stories of Marley's physical toughness that, through time, turned him into a "Paul Bunyan type figure." "My father once told me if everything said about him was true, he'd have to be 1000 years old. But, here's one story I know is true. One year at the rodeo in Memphis, during my father's prime mind ya, a pro wrestler named "Sputnik" Monroe showed up one night to challenge any cowboy to a fight. It was supposed to be a publicity stunt. Thing is, nobody told my father that. Boy, did he pick the wrong guy. Well, to make a long story short, by the time the media got a hold of it, and "Sputnik" got out of the hospital, my father was offered a wrestling contract. He just laughed it off." Cody goes on to add, "That said, my father had a deep side. He was a lot of things to a lot of people; father, friend, brother, son, mentor, hero. His soul was that of an artist. The horse was his canvas. The bridle was his brush. All my father ever wanted to be was a cowboy. He succeeded. Kid Marley. Cowboy.

[sturgess66]

Thanks for the article kalinowt - and the follow up about Ray "Kid" Marley!

[MaryB]

Really interesting articles - thank you both. I have hunches, but does anyone know the song that LC wrote about Kid Marley?

[kalinowt]

Thanks for the article kalinowt - and the follow up about Ray "Kid" Marley!

Thanks Sturgesse, my able research assistant from Cohen father's war record!

After reading the last line of this obituary it kind of put me in mind of Leonard's song, later reworked and made a hit by Emmylou Harris in "Ballad of a Run Away Horse", "Ballad Of The Absent Mare"

"Ballad Of The Absent Mare"

Say a prayer for the cowboy
His mare's run away
And he'll walk til he finds her
His darling, his stray
but the river's in flood
and the roads are awash
and the bridges break up
in the panic of loss.
And there's nothing to follow
There's nowhere to go
She's gone like the summer
gone like the snow
And the crickets are breaking
his heart with their song
as the day caves in
and the night is all wrong

Did he dream, was it she
who went galloping past
and bent down the fern
broke open the grass
and printed the mud with
the iron and the gold
that he nailed to her feet
when he was the lord

And although she goes grazing
a minute away
he tracks her all night
he tracks her all day
Oh blind to her presence
except to compare
his injury here
with her punishment there

Then at home on a branch
in the highest tree
a songbird sings out
so suddenly
Ah the sun is warm
and the soft winds ride
on the willow trees
by the river side

Oh the world is sweet
the world is wide
and she's there where
the light and the darkness divide
and the steam's coming off her
she's huge and she's shy
and she steps on the moon
when she paws at the sky

And she comes to his hand
but she's not really tame
She longs to be lost
he longs for the same
and she'll bolt and she'll plunge
through the first open pass
to roll and to feed
in the sweet mountain grass

Or she'll make a break
for the high plateau
where there's nothing above
and there's nothing below
and it's time for the burden
it's time for the whip
Will she walk through the flame
Can he shoot from the hip

So he binds himself
to the galloping mare
and she binds herself
to the rider there
and there is no space
but there's left and right
and there is no time
but there's day and night

And he leans on her neck
and he whispers low
"Whither thou goest
I will go"
And they turn as one
and they head for the plain
No need for the whip
Ah, no need for the rein

Now the clasp of this union
who fastens it tight?
Who snaps it asunder
the very next night
Some say the rider
Some say the mare
Or that love's like the smoke
beyond all repair

But my darling says
"Leonard, just let it go by
That old silhouette
on the great western sky"
So I pick out a tune
and they move right along
and they're gone like the smoke
and they're gone like this song

[manmike77]

His great music will always remain!

[B4real]

does anyone know the song that LC wrote about Kid Marley?

Hi Mary,

This answer is well over a year late and you may know it by now but I've just noticed this thread because it has been resurrected.

Kid Marley is mentioned in a line from Chelsea Hotel #1 -

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
Then I went to Tennessee
Sittin’ by the creek with Willie York
And Kit Marley came to visit me"

Full song lyrics here although there is at least another version:
http://www.leonardcohen-prologues.com/l ... elsea1.htm


....Kid Marley sold Leonard a horse which he had difficulty in catching to ride it!

Excerpt from Various Positions:
"Cohen decided he needed a horse and bought one from Kid Marley, a sometimes cowboy and a full time drinker. A legend in the area, Marley could sing and play the harmonica and did so often with Cohen. The horse was lame and consistently uncoperative, spending most of its time in the pasture avoiding the Montreal cowboy, although Cohen did eventually learn to ride him."

......and just in case you're interested in who Willie York was, here's the following paragraph in VP:

"One of Cohen's neighbours was Willie York, a notorious figure who had an illegal still and who once had shot a revenue officer. He became the subject of a hit song called "Wille York, Big East Forth, Franklin, Tennessee" by country singer Johnny Paycheck. York looked after Cohen's cabin and land while he lived there, but he also made off with a variety of goods including Cohen's rifle. An erratic neighbour he would pound on Cohen's door in the middle of a raging storm, demanding twenty dollars and Cohen would give it to him. Yet his individualism appealed to Cohen and he enjoyed his company."

[kalinowt]

I guess no chronicle of Leonard Cohen's connection to country music would be complete without mentioning Leonard's country classic "Bird on the Wire." This country song was recorded in Nashville Sept. 26, 1968 and has been covered by many country music stars including Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.

I`ve always liked Willie Nelson`s version best myself. See link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZutD7E-toOI

And here`s the Wikipedia link for more context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_on_the_Wire

Also let`s not forget Cohen`s regard for Hank Williams whom he pays tribute to in `Tower of Song!' Or the fact that Cohen's first band was a country band in Montreal called "The Buckskin Boys!"

[MaryB]

does anyone know the song that LC wrote about Kid Marley?

Hi Mary,

This answer is well over a year late and you may know it by now but I've just noticed this thread because it has been resurrected.

Bev,
No, I didn't know until just now when you so graciously gave me such a detailed answer - thank you very, very much!

Warmest regards,
Mary