Nanci Griffith CD/SD, or Music You Used To Like Until Other People's Enthusiasm Ruined It For You

Instead, let's talk a bit about other artists ruining the original; it would have to be a pretty horrible cover version to ruin a really well-written song, I'd think, and I present as evidence Tom Waits. Here is a man who has had "Downtown Train" butchered by many, as well as "Ol' 55", but when I hear him doing the originals, I still smile and enjoy them. A good song should be able to stand up to a pounding.

Hope I haven't just contradicted myself.

on the subject of cover versions: many irish female singers have done cover versions of nanci songs and without exception they are all awful. i'm thinking of mary black and maura o'connell (formerly of de danann) in particular. great voices, but they haven't a clue how to interpret a song.

cover versions that are *better* than the original: jeff buckley's Hallelujah, anything dick gaughan sings (avoid his self-penned socialism-here-we-go rants, though), saint etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart, er, er ...

actually, this is the sort of thing there's probably already a thread about.

watching tv reporters play chicken with hurricane ike reminded me of "i wish it would rain," the line about riding the waves at galveston when the hurricanes blow in.

i like a lot of her stuff up through other voices, other rooms, and really love a handful of those songs: "listen to the radio," "gulf coast highway," "ford econoline." i never liked "from a distance" by her or anyone else, and she's definitely run to sap in her latter years. but boy her best songs are good. i like her twang too.

Nanci Griffith was a key figure in the CD changers of several family members of mine. Or the tape deck in the car, more accurately.
So I like her, instinctively almost, but I couldn't name a single one of her songs.

nanci griffith is a zinger songwriter, fwiw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OBSo3G8LCg

her vocal mannerisms are like nails/chalkboard to me

You don't like the Texas twang? I like her voice, and she's a good enough singer that her best-known album is covers. But a good enough songwriter that that shouldn't be true.

it's not the texas twang (which she exaggerates horribly when she deems it appropriate), it's the weird faux-irish pronunciation and the attempt to "sell" a song so strongly that it's like kind of out-of-whack high-school drama performance.

Depends on the song, and the era. Her music changed as she became this Adult Contemporary staple. Her first 10 years were good, I don't begrudge her making some money later on.

This is good. Her with Don Edwards makes sense -- she's much more Western than Country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS15kF-58-Q

Something about folkie music circa the late 80s-90s is so depressing to me
Like John gorka type stuff, I associate nanci with that scene

every one of my mom's friends (mostly divorced moms) in early 90s had several nanci griffith CDs.

that's not a good or bad thing, just an irrefutable social fact.

they had the sort of ubiquity that, say, the buena vista social club CD would have a decade later

Something about folkie music circa the late 80s-90s is so depressing to me

Reagan hangover

My mom played Nanci Griffith CDs constantly during the first eight years of my life (along with Can't Buy a Thrill), so I have her albums up until Clock Without Hands completely memorized. I'm sort of surprised to learn she was so ubiquitous, as only one or two friends knew who she was, and I grew up in Texas in the 90s!

Last of the True Believers is by far my favorite album of hers.

Loved her mid 80s work, so sad.

A brutal loss. RIP to the truly inimitable Nanci Griffith: https://t.co/g9YIqQQChy

— Country Universe (@CountryUniverse) August 13, 2021

Really sad news. Other Voices Too was sort of a folk music education for me, can't help still thinking of a lot of those versions as definitive.

R.I.P., I love a bunch of her songs, and she was a beautiful singer. Got to see her a few times in the ‘90s, she was great.

Oh what awful news. Love so many of those Little Love Affairs songs, but this is what I played when I heard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOFHwWSOfIs

And then there's this of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YZ3yvXpMOw

Nice tribute from Mary Gauthier:

https://www.facebook.com/marygauthiersongs/posts/10165800459940014

Nanci Griffith was a teacher to me, she showed me folk music, she educated me on what came before. She spoke my language, sang her way into my being. I loved her music and saw her perform many, many times.

I got to work with her a bit when I was getting started, and I got to know her some after I came to Nashville. She was always kind to me, generous. A profound influence on me, her spirit will always remain alive inside her music.

The first year I lived in Nashville, I was invited to a party at music photographer Jim McGuire’s house that became a song circle with Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely, Steve Earle and Nanci Griffith. It was a wonderful night, and I was on the edge of my seat, desperately wanting to go from being in the audience to swapping songs with that group of legends. I knew I was in deep waters, the new kid in town, but oh how I longed to sit in that circle. I’d deeply admired everyone in it for years. As the music was winding down, Nanci looked over and asked, “Mary, would you play us a song?” I knew her because I’d opened a string of shows for her a month prior.

I was absolutely thrilled when she invited me to play. I sat in the chair she offered, took her guitar into my hands, and played “Our Lady of the Shooting Stars.” The other songwriters closed their eyes and nodded as I played, some smiled. No wild applause, no pyrotechnics when the song ended. But the smiles and nods made me feel like I belonged. I still had a long way to go, but joining that circle was validation that moving to Nashville had been a good decision. Holding my own in that circle of songwriters whose records I owned and whose careers I followed gave me confidence. Being around songwriters I deeply admired humanized them and made the star I was reaching for feel less distant.

When I was done, I handed Nanci her guitar back. She shook her head and said, “Keep it.” I froze, holding her engraved, signature sunburst Taylor 612 cutaway guitar in mid-air,question marks in both of my eyes. “It’s yours,” she said. “When I moved to Nashville, Harlan Howard gave me his guitar. I’m giving you mine.” I was speechless but somehow found the courage to say,“Will you sign it?”
She signed, “For Mary, because YOU WILL sing.”

I found out later it’s an old Nashville tradition to pass on a guitar. It’s an attempt to stay on the good side of the muse and the mystery. Some songwriters believe it is one way to keep songs flowing. Harlan gave Nanci one of his guitars because he felt there were no more songs left in it for him but there might be some in there for her. Nanci had done the same for me. Welcome to Nashville, kid. Remember to stay on the good side of mystery and paradox; they’re your wheelhouse, now.

RIP Nanci, and thank you. Your guitar is in my hands right now, I play it, remember your kindness, your music, and the influence you had in my life, and I cry.

Beautiful

Fiona Whelan Prine on FB

It was never a secret that John loved to sing with women. He marveled at how the best and beautiful voices in music agreed to sing with him and especially at how good they made him sound.

Nanci Griffith had one of those best and beautiful voices. She was maybe his first real duet partner on stage. I rode the tour bus in the early 1990s with them and it was a golden time.

She and John had a real affection for each other; both enjoyed their Major cigarettes from Ireland; they had the same sense of goofy humor; and he regarded her as a kindred spirit because they both saw and wrote about the experiences of everyday men and women of the heartland.

This is a sad day for our music community, and for Nashville.

It gives me comfort to know that John had reached out to Nanci in January 2020. He missed her. He tried to persuade her that there were young women who needed her - her experience, friendship, humor and the gift of her singular craft. She was amazed to hear him say those things and said she’d think about it. They spoke one more time before John passed in April.

Rest In peace and music, sweet Nanci, and if you see that old duet partner please hug him from all of us.

xoxo

Can't believe I missed this. Well, I can, I live in London where nobody listens to country except Tim Hopkins. RIP Nanci.

Great tributes here! I posted this on Rolling Country:

Nanci Griffith RIP. This goes over the top at first---comparing her to Elvis?---but then makes a lot of good points, like about her early international following, and emerging thusly for many:
As a teenager in Philadelphia and a college student in Chicago in the eighties, I did not yet know from Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, or the Flatlanders (except for Joe Ely’s connection to the Clash). I had no idea what Houston’s Anderson Fair was, nor that I’d eventually be spending hundreds of nights of my life at a place called Hole in the Wall in Austin—venues where Griffith played. But long before the terms “alt-country” or “Americana” came along, eighties artists like Griffith, Lyle Lovett, and Steve Earle (as well non-Texans Dwight Yoakam, k.d. lang, and Rosanne Cash) weren’t that far from the post-punk I was listening to on college radio, starting with R.E.M. The same record store clerks who sold me jangly pop-inflected albums by Robyn Hitchcock, the Windbreakers, and Austin’s Zeitgeist (later the Reivers), also put a copy of Griffith’s 1987 MCA debut, Lone Star State of Mind, into my hands.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/nanci-griffith-more-loved-than-she-knew/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Web+Social&utm_campaign=NanciGriffithObit

― dow, Tuesday, August 17, 2021

That's a good observation, that Texas scene was cool in a way Nashville wasn't (at least from my blinkered high school/college POV), and it's also true that liking Lone Justice and Cowboy Junkies definitely opened me to liking Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett. When the alt-country/No Depression scene fully emerged in the '90s, all of the above kind of got retroactively slotted into it.