American Country Singers

"I blew out my flip flop, Stepped on a pop top, Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home. But there's booze in the blender, And soon it will render That frozen concoction that helps me hang on."

"Cheeseburger is paradise. Heaven on earth with an onion slice. Not too particular, not too precise. I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise.I like mine with lettuce and tomato, Heinz Fifty-seven and French fried potatoes. Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer. Well, good God Almighty, which way do I steer? For my cheeseburger in paradise."

"Come Monday, it'll be all right. Come Monday, I'll be holding you tight. I spent four lonely days in a brown L.A. haze And I just want you back by my side."

"I wish I had a pencil-thin mustache, the "Boston Blackie" kind. Or a two-toned Ricky Ricardo jacket, And an autographed picture of Andy Divine."

"Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call. Wanted to sail upon your waters Since I was three feet tall. You've seen it all, you've seen it all.Watched the men who rode you, Switch from sails to steam. And in your belly you hold the treasure That few have ever seen. Most of them dreams, Most of them dreams."

"Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin's And drinks his green label each day, He's writing his memoirs and losing his hearing, But he don't care what most people say. Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion, If he likes you he'll smile then he'll say, Jimmy, some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, But I had a good life all the way."

"I really do appreciate the fact you're sittin' here. Your voice sounds so wonderful, But your face don't look too clear. So, Barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew. Honey, why don't we get drunk and screw."

"Mother, mother ocean, after all these years I've found My occupational hazard being my occupations just not around. I feel like I've drowned, Gonna head uptown."

"We’ve gotta roll with the punches Learn to play all of our hunches. Makin’ the best of whatever comes your way. Forget that blind ambition And learn to trust your intuition. Plowin’ straight ahead come what may."

"You're alright honey. Anyone who'll stand up to "The Cline" is alright. We're going to be good friends."

"Find one person in the audience and sing to them with all of your heart. And then cast a spell over them. Hoss, if you can't do it with feeling — don't."

"When I find out who stole it I'll take blood, ass and all!"

"You don't appreciate home until you leave it and, let me tell you, you can't appreciate life till you've almost left it! Some people hope and die with their song still in them. I used to think that happiness resulted when my earnings matched my yearnings! But not anymore!"

"Oh, I just sing like I hurt inside."

"Before Dolly, Loretta and Reba, there was Patsy. She was the first female country headliner and one of the first artists in the genre to have crossover pop success, which is basically a pre-requisite in terms of Rock Hall induction. During her prime, Cline was very much on the same level as fellow stars like Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and is a clear example of the Rock Hall’s need to focus more on women."

"I don't wanna get rich — just live good."

"This might give you an idea of how backward we are, but first, to appreciate this story, you've got to know that in eastern Kentucky we say the word "press" instead of "closet." Anyway, one of my best friends is Dr. John Turner, who took care of me when I was younger. Doc swears he saw this patient standing in front of the hospital elevator, looking confused. Doc asked him what was the matter, and the patient said, "Doc, I just seen a nurse get into that press — and when the door opened she was gone!" See, that patient lived in a holler all his life and never saw an elevator before. Myself, I never rode in an automobile until I was twelve."

"I come from Butcher Holler, Kentucky, and I ain't never forgot it. I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States — and I think maybe it is. I've traveled all over this country, down South and out West, and I ain't never seen anything like it. And I ain't making fun of it, because I'm the most backward person you ever saw. I never knew where babies came from until it happened to me."

"Sure, I wanted men to like me, but the women were something special. They'd come around the bus after the show and they'd ask to talk to me. They felt I had the answers to their problems because my life was just like theirs. Of course, it was impossible to find time to talk to each one or to answer every letter that came along. I ain't Dear Abby with nine secretaries answering the mail. Besides, I had a few problems maybe they could have solved for me. Sometimes I think some people were disappointed when they met me and found out I wasn't any smarter or happier than they were. I'm proud and I've got my own ideas, but I ain't no better than nobody else. I've often wondered why I became so popular, and maybe that's the reason. I think I reach people because I'm with 'em, not apart from 'em. It's not the fancy clothes I wear, or the way I fix my hair, and it sure ain't my looks because I don't think I'm anything special. It's the way I talk to people. You can tell when you meet somebody — in their eyes, or the way they stand — if they think they're above you or below you. After I was performing for a while, I got to like being with a crowd. I loved to get right down with 'em, with a long cord on my microphone, if I could. And if I was at a state fair or something, where they put you too far from the audience, I'd say, "This ain't the way I like it.""

"Well a lot of things have changed since a way back then And it's so good to be back home again Not much left but the floor, nothing lives here anymore Except the memory of a coal miner's daughter."

"She was my closest friend. She was the one person, other than my husband, I could turn to in a crisis. There was a lot of resentment when I first came to town. But Patsy was strong-willed and always taking up for me. If it hadn't been for her, I don't think I would have lasted."

"Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler We were poor but we had love That's the one thing that daddy made sure of He shoveled coal to make a poor man's dollar."

"Yeah, I'm proud to be a coal miner's daughter I remember well, the well where I drew water The work we done was hard At night we'd sleep 'cause we were tired I never thought of ever leaving Butcher Holler."

"I became aware that in Hank's recorded songs were the archetype rules of poetic songwriting. The architectural forms are like marble pillars and they had to be there. Even his words - all of the syllables are divided up so they make perfect mathematical sense. You can learn a lot about the structure of songwriting by listening to his records."

"When I wrote about Hank Williams 'A hundred floors above me in the tower of song', it's not some kind of inverse modesty. I know where Hank Williams stands in the history of popular song. Your Cheatin' Heart, songs like that, are sublime, in his own tradition, and I feel myself a very minor writer."

"No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive."

"We'll put aside a little time to fix a flat or 2, my tires and tubes are doing fine but the air is showing through"

"A good song is a good song, and if I'm lucky enough to write it, well....! I get more kick out of writing than I do singing. I reckon I've written a thousand songs and had over 300 published."

"[The country singer] sings more sincere than most entertainers, because the hillbilly was raised tougher than most entertainers. The people who has been raised something like the way the hillbilly has, knows what he is singing about and appreciates it. For what he is singing, is the hopes, and prayers, and dreams and experiences of what some call the "common people." I call them the "best people," because they are the ones that the world is made up most of. They're really the ones who make things tick, wherever they are in this country, or in other country."

"You wore out a brand new trunk, packin' and unpackin your junk."

"A pioneer of the electric guitar-based honky-tonk Bakersfield sound of the late 1950s, Buck Owens (1929-2006) boasted a phenomenal 21 number-one hits on the Billboard country music charts. He blasted a bright, loud and twangy Telecaster tone that stood in stark contrast to the syrupy strings and choruses of the Nashville sound, with nimble fretwork ably abetted by Buckaroos guitarist Don Rich."

"I Shall Sing No Song That Is Not A Country Song. I Shall Make No Record That Is Not A Country Record. I Refuse To be Known As Anything But A Country Singer. I Am Proud To be Associated With Country Music. Country Music And Country Music Fans Made Me What I Am Today. And I Shall Not Forget It."

"I've got a tiger by the tail it's plain to see I won't be much when you've got through with me Well I'm losing weight and I'm turning mighty pale Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail."

"Where, where, are you tonight? Why did you leave me here all alone? I searched the world over, And thought I found true love. You met another and Pfft! you were gone."

"You could make the case that Owens should have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influencer, considering he was a pioneer of the Bakersfield sound that many future country acts latched onto."

"You know why we're stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don't let themselves feel things."

""Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" is as good an epitaph for the counterculture as any; we'll never know how-or if-Janis meant to go on from there. Janis Joplin's death, like that of a fighter in the ring, was not exactly an accident. Yet it's too easy to label it either suicide or murder, though it involved elements of both. Call it rather an inherent risk of the game she was playing, a game whose often frivolous rules both hid and revealed a deadly serious struggle. The form that struggle took was incomplete, shortsighted, egotistical, self-destructive. But survivors who give in to the temptation to feel superior to all that are in the end no better than those who romanticize it. Janis was not so much a victim as a casualty. The difference matters."

"A banker's daughter or a runaway girl, A little lady or a honky-tonk Pearl Has to find someplace in this world Where she feels at home. A banker's daughter is so hard to deceive A little lady is so hard to please Honky-tonk Pearl wears her heart on her sleeve, And her heart will not grow cold."

"Here's a wish for a runaway girl; Here's a prayer for honky-tonk Pearl — Hope she finds someplace outta this world Where she feels at home."

"Wow, that's heavy."

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel You were famous, your heart was a legend You told me again you preferred handsome men But for me you'd make an exception. And clenching your fist for the ones like us Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty You fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, We are ugly but we have the music.""

"Singer Janis Joplin, who in 1968 was screeching out her voice with a California group called , said that she was not a hippie, because hippies believed in trying to make the world better. Instead she said she was a : "Beatniks believe things aren't going to get better and say, 'The hell with it,' stay stoned, and have a good time.""

"Janis knew more than I did about "how it was", but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. On the various occasions when we were together, she seemed to be holding in something she thought I might not want to hear, like older people do when they hear kids they love saying with absolute youthful confidence, "Oh, that'll never happen to me." Sometimes you know you can't tell them how it is, they have to find out for themselves. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom. Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough."

"Ah but you got away, didn't you babe You just turned your back on the crowd You got away, I never once heard you say I need you, I don't need you I need you, I don't need you And all of that jiving around."

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free... And feeling good was easy, lord, when he sang the blues. You know feeling good was good enough for me, Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee."

"You know you got it if it makes you feel good."

"Work me Lord, work me Lord. Please don't you leave me, I feel so useless down here With no one to love Though I've looked everywhere And I can't find me anybody to love, To feel my care."

"Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends"

"Well, I’m gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough. I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it, Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!"

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel You were talking so brave and so sweet Giving me head on an unmade bed While the limousines wait in the street. And those were the reasons and that was New York. I was running for the money and the flesh. I was running for the money and the flesh That was called love, for the workers in song And it still is for those of us left."