Sunday, August 3, 2014

Daughter With a Familiar Last Name

Song 210: This week's playlist song is Don't Tell Me What to Do by Pam Tillis, written by Harlan Howard and Max D. Barnes. At the turn of the 1990s, country music radio was buzzing about New Country, and with good reason, it seemed to me, as I started hearing a lot of new artists and clever, catchy songs that I liked, from a revitalized country music scene. In the process, I soon learned that Mel Tillis had a daughter, and from the sound of this track, I could tell that Mel's daughter could sing pretty well. This song alone was almost reason enough to buy the Pam Tillis CD Put Yourself in My Place, but I also heard a couple of other good tracks from the record so that by the time I picked it up, I knew I'd be spinning it quite a bit. If you know about country music songwriters, then you probably recognize the name Harlan Howard on this one, as the guy who also wrote a number of classic country tunes, including I Fall to Pieces, Heartaches By the Number and Busted. Not long after this record came along, I wrote a song called As Long as Merle is Still Haggard that makes puns like the title one from a whole bunch of country singers' names, and the one that I open the song with is... Pam Tillis. I'm sure that this record is the main reason why I thought of Pam, though it wasn't the only reason. On a side note, you can check out a YT video of my song by clicking on the title.

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