And, I’m sorry to say, dominating the airways and pounded into our ears, is New Country cross-over pop-artists that are only interspersed with 50s to 90s era country music.

Growing up, my daddy would listen to the country station while in the car. At least while my momma was not with him. I would always secretly enjoy the sounds of the 60s and 70s artists. However, I would never admit so. Being a child of the 50s the sounds that I had to be abreast of to talk with friends were Rock & Roll. The Dave Clark Five, Paul Revere and the Raiders. The Circle, Beach Boys, Beatles, Ventures, etc. Then moving to the 70s, Iron Butterfly, CCR, Humble Pie and others.

As I reached my mid-twenties, I most perceptively gravitated to country. Rock and Roll left me unfulfilled somehow. The real clean sound of country satisfied my soul’s thirst.

Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Sr., Tammy Wynette and the emergence of Reba McIntire and George Strait filled a void in my intrinsic need of notes put together in such a way as to stir emotions of happy and sad. Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash were most visceral in this communication.

I think back in 1962, my father bought an album of Frankie Lane whose voice sang the song for the hit series Raw Hide starring a young Clint Eastwood who played the role of Rowdy Yates. Frankie sang songs of cowboys. These songs touched me forever. I unknowingly stored them away in some recess of my mind to be recalled some twenty years later as my car had only country stations on the preset buttons.

As the years continued on, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Tracy Lawrence, Patty Lovelace, Carlene Carter, Pam Tillis, just to name a few, continued to satisfy my ears with good sounds. I must say that my favorites are many and each with melodic sounds that I craved.

The male singers that I favored were Chris Le Deoux, a rodeo cowboy turned singer who Garth Brooks cleverly, and for so long kept hidden, stole his style in both stage and format. Pam Tillis of the women dominated my preference. While I enjoyed them all, without going  down the inexhaustible list of greats, country music died for me about 1999, or there -about.

Oh, for sure there are hold out old timers who continure to create fantastic sounds of the old guard, but they will for sure cease one day!

Sad? Yes! It seems I’m always hitting the preset button searching for old songs and artists. Patsy Cline, Hank Snow, Linda Fargo, Little Jimmie Dickens. Where are you? Most times it requires late night radio to find you.

The young artists are getting younger and their path to stardom a easy path of roses. You can’t believe in the words that they sing; they don’t convince me!

The pre-canned sound rings hollow. They dress like the pop culture of urban life, but that’s what so many hope for I guess. To water down the grass roots country sound, to be palatable so as to ‘cross-over’ on the charts. To achieve that double and triple platinum record. For country fans of so many prior decades it’s most sad to hear and see.

I have, because of this, gravitated to Blue Grass sounds more and more. Their artists strive to maintain integrity to it’s roots and remain strong as ever. I will forever listen for old guard country artists and continue to hit my presets, but I no longer look to new artists to satisfy country sounds, to satisfy my primal need of music.

To you new artists, look to the past to those who made it possible for all you have. You have forgotten, or you never knew, of that which I’m sure you are not. You new artists, the sounds that you create, grate obnoxiously through my radio.

Am I the only one?

I will continue to look to Blue Grass and old music. Real sounds of Country Music.

But I will, bit by bit, keep sending it page by  page. I want to convey, to give thoughts. How good my words flow in my head at times when the pen is not in my hand, or is it only perceived as being so. I am untrained to write. My mind for the most part is a super ball in a 4×4 box.

Why should I write? I ask it over and over. Is it ego? I must say yes. Is it looking for recognition? Yes! Why? I’m nothing special, no great mind. A life not lived in full, as to impart some golden nugget for others to draw from. To nourish and and lift up. Somehow I still crave.

I love the words of gifted writers of history. A well written auto biography. Oh, the gifted of words! I read where Jack London once said, “Inspiration does not come easy. It is coaxed with a club.” If this is so, with me I need a bigger club.

I found in sports, or at least was schooled, ‘practice makes perfect’, which was amended to ‘perfect, perfect practice makes perfect’. If true, the grind of sitting down at least every day to write, as I’m told I should do, will reap little in growth. To practice garbage. Garbage in, garbage out as they say.

My sister Lisa is so gifted in writing, a late bloomer as they say. With formal schooling? Yes, but an innate ability beyond me. I envy her, but am so proud of her. For she gives me encouragement. She gives me an avenue to attempt, when I have little else for self esteem, sense of worth.

I try, the one less than gifted. The hack. Spilling words upon the lines of the page not knowing where much goes except a period. And then not even knowing that for sure. So I will try again, perfect or not, maybe at times raw, but not nearly as raw as my emotions, which I desperately want to say upon the page.

As to my distain, I will highlight football, but it spreads to all areas in theses times we live, which I refer to as the “Me Era”.

In my private moments I secretly aspired to play pro football, but it ended in college. I would sit down Sunday, Monday and Thursday to watch football. It did not matter who played, I just wanted to watch football.

Yes, I had my favorite team; they being the Kansas City Chiefs. My favorite players were mostly defensive players, linebackers mostly. The top men were Dick Butkus, Chris Hanburger and Willie Lanier—football heros.

In those times you never saw players, or at least it was rare, showing-out after plays. To give a good lick was all that was needed. No Dance to seal-the-deal, as it were.

I watch defensive players of today run out to open ground and dance as they pump fists and contort their bodies—Look at what I did! Did you see that? That was me! See my number, dear fans, aren’t I great to make that tackle?!

Yeah, Sparky, It’s what you’re paid millions to do.

What of the poor performance on the 5 previous plays?? Did you point to yourself, separate yourself form the rest, hang your head and ask forgiveness? Not likely! You stayed hidden and slinked back to the huddle.

The persona of ‘tough guy’, the player who sucks it up and plays hurt is gone albeit a few. Every Sunday it’s  ‘He’s out for a few games for a strain, pull, a fracture this-and-that’ while he still banks millions for not performing!

It does not end there, if it were only so. The crying and whining is most tiring—calls by officials and refs leading to the tirades by players and coaches.

Quite becoming? Not even by a half, Mr. Professional! Today, I rarely watch football except for college. The professional, and I use the term with fingertips, has made me sour for antics of these self-indulgent prima donnas! So-called professionals!

I turn you to a sport steeped in this country’s tradition of the west, the cowboy sport of rodeo.

Within this sport there are athletes at a professional level who embody toughness, skill and mastery of body and beast. All live and perform by the still present code of the cowboy—the working cowboy—respect, courtesy.

They live in a life that’s real with real people, real events that are performed to this day on ranches that dot this country. The sport grew out of cowboy’s daily life.

Cowboy athletes performing in a rodeo event, whether bulldogging, bull riding, roping, saddle-bronc and the others, make their living off these individual event within the sport called rodeo. Cowgirls, too, are expanding beyond just barrel racing—They too, do I include here.

These are highly skilled athletes, and I stress athlete, for like their counter-parts in other sports, cowboys cross-train, lift weights and diets are constructed to maximize performance.

A cowboy pays his entrance fee each week to perform and a chance to earn a portion of the pot. If he performs well, he’s paid well. If he does not, his paychecks reflect the poor performance.

Sound as if something might be amiss in other sports?

A cowboy pays for his gas, meals, etc. to get to the next state, town and event the next week. He loads his horses, feeds and cares for them, maybe better then himself.

Bruises, pains, aches, fractures, strains and pulls must be tended to off his own earnings—And the previous weeks’ injuries must heal fast! Those that don’t, well, he must suck it up, or as it is said in cowboy parlance “Cowboy Up”, and perform well if he’s to make it to the pay window.

On and off the arena floor, a cowboy is expected to comport himself with respect for the judges, the fans, the animals and himself. If he fails in this regard, sanctions are quickly imposed—heavy fines—that can be a half a cowboy’s yearly earnings in some cases.

One cowboy was disqualified from competing for a year for bumping into a ref for what he deemed a poor call. In another case, a bull rider was fined $7,500 for throwing his head gear at a 1-ton bull (who probably thought a fly landed on him).

Bad form, as the Brits call it, is not tolerated and cowboys know that harsh penalties will ensue if they do. I read an article of a cowboy who lost a 3^rd world championship and $8,000 to a call by an official.

Consistent calls are sought after, unlike other sports. The meaning of the event matters not as, say, basketball or football. The cowboy who lost the title and the cash didn’t rant and rave afterwards. (And by the way, it mattered not, the call stood in concrete, good or bad)

The cowboy watched the replays and saw as others, the call was so very close and he had met the criteria. As he put it in the cowboy way, “I” put myself in that position. If “I” had performed better the official, in that tough position, would not have had to make the call and “I” would have another world title and be $80,000 richer.

Geesh! Are you kidding me? Do you know the backlash in something similar? If it were football, baseball, basketball the furies of hell would have emerged from every crack in the earth.

America, there IS a pure professional athlete! He can be found in the American Rodeo and real heroes of the American Cowboy—both professional in the arena and out—are so much forgotten.