FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| MUSIC Diamond Joe White Earlier this year, in reaction to the perceived snub against older country acts, Johnny Cash, in conjunction with his label American Recordings, took out an ad in the trade journal Billboard "thanking" Nashville and country radio for their "support." The punchline was a full-page photo of Cash giving them the finger. "I'm glad to be in the same circles as Johnny Cash 'cuz I'd be flipping 'em the bird, too," says quasi-country music legend Diamond Joe White. "It's all a packaged formula," he says of the new buffed and polished, hyper-gloss twang. "It has nothing to do with country music or music at all, really." See, in the early '70s, Diamond Joe, a native Albertan now residing in BC, seemed poised to at least attain the same stature as contemporaries like Ian Tyson or Gordon Lightfoot. Although steeped in the same tradition of '60s folk music and simple yet powerful cowboy music of his peers, fame gradually slipped White by. "Music changed," he reflects. "We were all doing original music and the clubs weren't hiring that style anymore. They wanted the George Strait clones and stuff like that. "When you do that you destroy the whole principle of country music, starting from Jimmie Rodgers through Hank Williams and Merle Haggard. It's about entertainers that have lived the life. When they sing their songs it's not pretend. They've lived it." So, rather than employ an image consultant and prettify his gruff exterior (read: George Fox) or add some AOR arena rock glitz to his repertoire, White quietly resigned himself to the sidelines. Although he has never stopped writing or gigging entirely, some of his attempts to leap back into the fray met with less than stellar results. "I released an album in '88 and when we finished up and went to a place in Vancouver to get it pressed, the fellow said, 'Do you guys want to do this on album format or this new thing called a compact disc?' I asked my partner what he thought and he said, 'I don't trust this guy, I think it's a flash in the pan.' So that didn't do so good," laughs White. Yet, removing himself from the industry never meant severing his musical ties. Born and bred in the prairies, White maintains that country music - real country music - is an intrinsic part of his being. Now, with a new album slated for release in June, Diamond Joe hopes to share that part of himself with a wider audience. If things don't click on a commercial level, though, you can be sure it won't dampen White's enthusiasm for his lifelong passion. "I come from the prairies. I was raised around Turner Valley where everybody was a cowboy. It wasn't just something to be - it was what you were," he says. |
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