It Ain't City Music Transcript with some people identified
It Ain't City Music, Transcript
Edited by Daniel W. Patterson
TITLE: IT AIN’T CITY MUSIC
MAN 1 [standing in front of a pickup-truck]: Country Music is everybody’s music, that there that comes from the country. Now, well, it used to all about be country. Now that they’ve got the big cities, and so they’ve taken the country music up town. That’s what I say going back to the field, getting off, and go to get your guitar up, sit on the back porch, fight the flies and play. That’s country music. It was raised, as far as I can remember, the first thing I ever heard, in the music business, was a guitar and maybe a banjo. And there you go, what else would you call it? There was no big cities then, maybe one, New York, or somewhere or other, but then that’s Country Music. Why would you want to call it city music?
[Music] (People climbing out of the back of a Ford Pickup)
TITLE: IT AIN’T CITY MUSIC
A FILM BY
TOM DAVENPORT
(wide shot of campers and cars)
TITLE: FILMED AT
THE NATIONAL COUNTRY
MUSIC CONTEST
WARRENTON, VIRGINIA
MAN 2 (in blue shirt): This thing is growing into thousands and thousands of people. For instance, three or four days they come here, and park and stay here for these big shows. And they come from all over the world.
(Shots of people arriving, some carrying items for picnics).
(Two ladies,) WOMAN 1 (in sun glasses): We didn’t have no food. But my momma always had a guitar on the front porch.
(Shots of people arriving, distinctive bleached hair-dos on several women. Shots of people continue with voice over).
MAN 3 (voice/over): I think country music comes from the heart for people. I know it comes from my heart. And when I just put three years over seas in Morocco and a two and a half in Istanbul, Turkey. And sometimes when I get home tired from working, and be tired, and I’d think of home. And feel depressed and homesick I put the old Carter family on and listen to them. And I just shut my eyes and looked like I was going back three thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
(Shot of large group, the lake, and the back of a stage. Shot of guitar player and Evelyn Jamerson. More people coming, lady carrying a folding chair, men carrying a cooler).
(Two musicians, surrounded by onlookers).
MUSICIAN 1 (white shirt, guitar): I don’t ever win. I just come to play, that’s all.
ROGER BLAND (in green shirt, with banjo, identified by Tom Adams): I’m trying to pick up a dollar here and there. I’ll tell you the funny thing about this. I came down on a shoestring, and I lost it. I hope I win something! ‘Cuz ,buddy, I’m going to have to get that thumb out there educated again to get back.
[MUSIC] (These two musicians start to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”. Camera cuts to large crowd at the stage area, and focuses on a string band playing “Bill Cheatham,” its fiddler identified by Tom Adams as Bill Belford. They play while the camera pans over many other people, settling eventually on a stage on the far side of a small lake).
MAN 4 (off camera): Whippoorwill Lake to me is just ...you got to be there. You got to be there every year.
WOMAN 2 (off camera, sitting): And it’s great
MAN 3 (off camera): It’s great.
WOMAN 2 (sitting): It’s great, get’s better every year. (laughs) You are a lost ball in high grass. I just came because I love the people and the music. And some of the best people I’ve ever met I met right here.
(Back to musicians playing, they finish)
MAN 5 (in peach polo shirt, off camera, then on): It’s the chance you have to meet people you meet only once a year. And you do usually meet friends over and over again from each year to year here. Playing music is a, I don’t know what--you have a special interest in it, where you just listen to it you don’t always have.
[Music] (Two musicians, both in cowboy hats and white shirts, play song as another man looks on).
MAN 5: If you like to play yourself, you really like to get with the other people who do play.
(Musicians finish, a brief conversation between two of them. The camera turns to a group of two fiddle players).
[Music] (Two men playing fiddle).
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1 (voice over): It’s part of this country. That’s the way that people lived. Tt was the only form of recreation they had—square dances on the weekends, and whatever. So they all got together and played music. Basically it’s American music.
UNIDENTIFED MAN 2 (voice over): Started in a barn.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN 1: Started in a barn, that’s right.
[Music] (Shot of people mingling, grouping around certain performers. One band of young men starts singing. The shot moves to an older group of men, also playing and singing).
MAN 6 (blue shirt): Mister. There’s more playing on these grounds in these two days than you’ll see the rest of your life. Everywhere. Just like here, over here’s a great big bunch, overthere’s a great big bunch. They ain’t started yet, and when they start drinking, they’ll play that much longer. Oh yeah, it’s wonderful. And you have the best…
[Music] (A band with a guitar, banjo, fiddle, bass, playing to a small crowd. Shots of people dancing to the music. As the music ends, we are given a shot of the huge crowd near the lake. Announcer rattles on while people clap.)
EVELYN JAMERSON (holding a guitar): Hello, my name is Evelyn Jamerson, and I live in Lynchburg, Virginia, and I’m a secretary for Fort Hill Memorial Park. It’s a cemetery.
ANNOUNCER V/O: Contestant 121 in the junior division vocal competition.
[Music] (YOUNG BOY sings and strums guitar, cut to PERFORMERS 3 and 4 watching, then back to YOUNG BOY).
Twice on the pipes
Means you ain’t going to show.
AL HOGAN: My name is Al Hogan, from Lorton, Virginia, and I’m in the country music field, part-time entertainer and automobile salesman. I’m known through Lorton area and all over northern Virginia as Mr. Running Bear, and it’s been going real good for me.
ANNOUNCER (voice over): Contestant 139, Judges.
[Music]: (Jeannie Seely’s “Don’t Touch Me” as camera cuts to PERFORMER 2, a woman singing onstage with a microphone).
Don’t open the door to heaven if I can’t come in.
Don’t touch me if you don’t love me…
[Music] (A band identified by Tom Adams as The Spence Kids with Steve on banjo, Karen on bass and Kevin on guitar, then two women, PERFORMERS 3 AND 4, singing Connie Smith’s “Where Is My Castle,” interspersed with shots of members of the audience).
And every time I’ve trusted love to lead me by the hand
It circled back and left me where I stand.
Where is my castle? Where is my destiny?
How much longer will I have dream?
Where is my sunshine? Where is my valley?
Where is the love that’s meant for me…
WOMAN 1 (in sunglasses): You can go back over your life, and you can listen to records, and you remember people that you haven’t seen for years, different musicians that you’ve known, and different people, and things, events that have happened in your life. And you can really write your life with those songs.
[Music: Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner’s song “I Know You’re Married but I Love You Still”] (MUSICIAN 1 (in white shirt) plays guitar and sings with YOUNG WOMAN IN BLUE).
The day I met you my heart spoke to me.
It said to love you through eternity.
Now knowing that you were another's bride,
I vowed I'd always be close by your side.
You know I love you and I always will.
I know you're married but I love you still…
MAN 7 (in striped shirt): Some of your best songs that’s ever been written by anybody have been wrote in a beer joint, or bar, or something like that. (ANOTHER MAN: Some of the best ones!) I know one guy in particular who writes from out of Nashville—he gets all of his ideas out of a TV Guide.
(Cut back to MUSICIAN 1 and YOUNG WOMAN IN BLUE.)
My broken heart will have to pay the cost.
(Music continues as film cuts to footage of people walking around the parking area, hanging out in the shade. Wide shot of cars and campers).
You know I love you and I always will.
I know you're married but I love you still.
MAN 7 (in pink button up): Well, I’ve heard people laugh and say, “Somebody’s always in jail, somebody’s getting divorced, every country song you hear, the guy’s either in jail or he’s got a divorce, one or the other,” you know? So, it’s their life, you know, and they wrote songs about it.
MUSIC: (The song “You Win Again” by Hank Williams sung by YOUNG WOMAN WITH LONG BROWN HAIR. This band was called "The Adams Brothers.” The singer is Patty Epley [died 1984]. Dad Adams on guitar [died 1979] with Dale Adams on bass and son Tom on the banjo. Information provided by Tom Adams in 2010.)
The news is out all over town
That you've been seen a-runnin' ‘round.
I know that I should leave, but then
I just can't go, you win again.
This heart of mine…
(Credits)
Editing:
Lee Stieg
Sound:
Mimi Davenport
Harvey Greenstein
Additional Photography:
Jan Welt
Special thanks to:
Toby Foot
Rebecca Davenport
Sue Thomas
and
The Warrenton Jaycees
Produced by:
Tom Davenport
Pearlstone Film Company
Delaplane, Virginia
© 1973
