Posted on 02/28/2006 8:29:02 AM PST by presidio9
Never mind that country music is considered bedrock conservative, the unofficial red-state soundtrack. This year, some of country's most famous names are singing in movies with gay and transsexual themes.
Dolly Parton received an Oscar nomination for "Travelin' Thru," a song she wrote and sang for "Transamerica," while Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris are heard on the Oscar frontrunner "Brokeback Mountain."
Nelson, always an iconoclast in his music and politics, even released a gay cowboy song on Valentine's Day, "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)."
But don't expect a wave of gay love songs to sweep across the heartland anytime soon.
Veteran country stars like Parton, Nelson and Harris are free to reach out to a gay audience because they already have loyal fans. Their careers aren't driven by hit records, because country radio already ignores them.
Parton, who has always embraced her large gay following, says she's too stubborn to worry about a negative response.
"I'm old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I'd tell them where to put it," Parton, 60, recently said.
"Transamerica" stars "Desperate Housewives" actress Felicity Huffman as a transsexual who learns a week before sex-change surgery that he has a son from a fleeting heterosexual encounter, then embarks on a cross-country road trip with the teenager.
Parton wrote the closing-credits song, which has a gospel flavor with references to God and redemption. She sings, "Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song/I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home."
"I have a person who works in my organization who once was a woman and now is a man," Parton said. "I didn't know for years that this person had had a sex change. I know what a wonderful person he is, and I based some of my feelings [in the song] on my feelings for him and on knowing what he went through."
While Nashville has had few openly gay stars (Canadian-born k.d. lang is a notable exception, though she shifted from country to pop by 1992), the city's gay leaders say Music Row is more hospitable than many think.
"I expected men in hoods and burning crosses, but I found a lot of people on Music Row are very open-minded," said Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Larry Dvoskin, who's worked with David Bowie, Van Halen, Ricky Martin and others. "But there's still this sort of cultural barrier, like, 'We all love it and accept it, but we don't want to talk about it.' "
But country singers have little reason to go public if they're gay, said Chris Sanders, president of the Nashville Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
"The question a gay or lesbian country star has to ask himself or herself is, will the public accept me as a musician and not focus on the other issue?" Sanders said.
Parton appears in gay publications, and her fans organize an annual gay and lesbian day at her amusement park, Dollywood, in her native East Tennessee. She said gay men in particular are drawn to her flamboyant appearance, highlighted by thick makeup, gaudy clothing and blond wig.
She's at ease bucking the Nashville norm. "I've always been a freak and different, oddball even in my childhood and my own family, so I can relate to people who are struggling and trying to find their true identity," Parton said. "I do not sit in the seat of judgment. ... I love people for whom they are. We're all God's children."
Nelson, 72, has never cared much for the opinion on Music Row either. His fan base is much broader than the usual country audience and includes hippies, rednecks and outlaws young and old. He can record a vigilante song with tough guy Toby Keith ("Beer for My Horses") or a reggae album with a marijuana leaf on the cover.
On the "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack, Nelson sings the gentle "He Was a Friend of Mine." Harris performs "A Love That Will Never Grow Old," by Gustavo Santaolalla and Bernie Taupin. Her fragile voice fits the sparse, ethereal arrangement, evoking the wide-open Wyoming landscape. The song recently won a Golden Globe award.
Nelson's gay cowboy song features his deadpan delivery of lines like, "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?" Written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981, the song has "been in the closet for 20 years," Nelson said in a statement. "The timing's right for it to come out," he said. "I'm just opening the door."
Did Johnny Cash ever court the butch dykes who swipe his look?
Umm. Willie lives in Texas, he has nothing to do with Nashville. Dolly lives in East Tennessee which is nowhere cloe to Nashville.
So really, this story has nothing to do with Nashville.
Also, Heath Ledger was concerned about opening Brokeback Mountain in West Virgina, because "they were still lynching people there twenty years ago."
I Can't Get Over You, Until You Get Out From Under Him
Ask yourselves this question: What ever happened to some of the country music entertainers who came out of the closet? They disappear quite quickly. It's called fan abandonment.
Can someone design a good picture of a CLOSET with a DOOR....and post it with EVERY GAY ARTICLE? Please.....
Never hear much about labor unions lynching those who would cross a picket line.
Most of them didn't exactly come out of the closet. There was, quite literally, a handful of them who got caught clutching cop crotches in public parks.
Well, at least she got that part right. If she hadn't made it in the music world she could have been the star attraction on the midway at every county and state fair.
"Since that gosh darn Bareback Mountain movie, things just ain't been the same around these parts."
Yeah, I remember a story or two...What might surprise some people are the lesbians.
That'll work! Now you just need a line of text under it saying.....Here's your closet.....or something more appropriate.
Is Tom Cruise still in there?
'Born Again',Christian,white, southern, combat veteran, working class,heterosexual,gun owning,Republican, males...
Scapegoats of the left...
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