Brand On My Heart

THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GROWING UP POOR in the north and growing up poor in the south. Whenever someone criticized Hank Snow for affecting a Tennessee drawl, what they were in fact hearing were traces of an accent particular to Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, where Snow was born. Hank was Clarence back then, Jack to his friends and family. He had holes in his shoes and the cold North Atlantic wind blew through the walls of the shack they called a house, where he slept on a mattress stuffed with old rags, endured regular beatings, and longed to escape. When he went to sea at age twelve, he spent the money he earned not on shoes, and not on a train ticket out. He laid it down on the T. Eaton mail order counter and bought himself a guitar.

The hardships Snow had overcome to get to Nashville and embark on a career "beyond his wildest dreams" would be told and retold, as is the lore of so many country music stars. His rags-to-riches story culminates during his first few months at the Grand Ole Opry when his future there was uncertain after the lukewarm reception of his one weak U.S. chart showing, "Marriage Vow," written by country song peddler Jenny Lou Carson and foisted on him by his record company, rca. Their initial goal was to pattern his sound after the enormously successful schmaltz of Eddy Arnold, before they switched tacks and instead targeted the massive audience that had been mesmerized by his Opry contemporary, Hank Williams. Having been refused once already, Snow was finally permitted by RCA's Artists and Repertoire (A & R) man, Steve Sholes, to record "I'm Movin' On." When it began to climb the charts, the 'Opry suits' that were ready to sack him suddenly suggested that Snow buy a house.

It's tempting to say that the woman Hank leaves behind in "I'm Movin' On" is Canada, or at least someone who lived there, since he'd found "a pretty mama in Tennessee." There certainly was no shortage of them in the audience at the fabled Ryman Auditorium each Saturday night when the Opry took to the airwaves. He had many friends there, too, like Ernest Tubb, The Carter Family, Hank Williams, and a young man who would soon take Sholes' attention away from producing hits for Snow — Elvis Presley.

Decades later, and it's difficult to conceive such a storyline: A scrawny thirty-six-year-old wearing a bad toupee, and with fifteen years of beating his head against the wall in Canada already behind him wouldn't have a hope in hell in Nashville, no matter who his friends were. It wasn't even "I'm Movin' On" that got Snow there, but it was the one that meant he could stay. It had been a long, long road, and he damn sure wasn't going to turn back. Becoming a U.S. citizen in 1958 was, he said, not to sell out Canada, but part of the basic practicality of being a citizen of the country in which you live. But even though Snow may have reached the proverbial end of the rainbow in Nashville, he never stopped being Canadian.

In spite of Snow's achievements, if you spend time with Nova Scotia country music fans today, it quickly becomes apparent that there is no middle ground when it comes to comparing him with the province's other significant contribution to the genre, Wilf Carter. Those who support Carter chiefly admire his common touch and family values, and chastise Hank Snow for his naked ambition and unspoken philandering. Conversely, Snow fans regard him as one of the most influential figures in all of country music and cite his triumph over personal adversity as inspiration to face their own struggles. To them, Wilf Carter is merely a charming relic.

The gap between the two singers was already ingrained in the rest of the country in 1971, as the pair embarked together on another Canadian tour, a semi-regular occurrence since the early sixties, when Snow's career was at its apex and Carter's was fading. For this reason, Snow could — and did — always insist on closing every show, even though each possessed a presence that illustrated their unique appeal to their audience, a segment of the population that still thought of rock and roll as a figment of society's collective imagination.

Backstage at Toronto's Massey Hall during that tour, Snow sported a glittering country music uniform as always. Made by his friend Nudie Cohn, it was covered in rhinestones and a grape motif inspired by Revelation 14 ("Anyone who worships the beast or its image, or accepts its mark on forehead or hand, will also drink the wine of God's fury ..."). He was swamped by the crowd after the show, signing a never-ending stream of programs and photographs as is the custom for country artists. An unexpected face jockeying for position near Snow was Ken Thomson, newspaper mogul, fine art connoisseur, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. Here was a unique glimpse of two men who chased their dreams in a country that, during their youth, had little to offer in terms of fulfilling them. Their shared experience, along with deep mutual respect for each other's success made Snow's earliest records Thomson's personal "Rosebud" — that is, if Orson Welles had based Citizen Kane on him instead of William Randolph Hearst. After a brief conversation, and likely an invitation to dine later, Thomson gracefully left Snow to the other waiting fans.

By contrast, Carter was every inch the robust working cowboy he set out to be back in the thirties, which, when combined with his early fascination with yodelling, had unexpectedly started earning him a more than respectable living. Not the drinker Snow was purported to be, he did allow himself at least enough luxury to imbibe his beverage of choice, pink champagne, from a refrigerator specially designed for his car. His stage dress bore no concessions to Nashville finery; Carter could be seen in his white Stetson, conservative western-cut suit, and boots on any given day. Moreover, as the man who at the start of the fifties had made more records than anyone else on the planet (it was claimed), Carter bore no grudge over Snow's desire to be the star of the show. Each had his own definition of stardom, and Carter's was still bound to a time when that word was not in the lexicon of Canadian musicians.

Popular music was a highbrow art form in the early twenties when Carter began performing out of an honest desire to amuse himself, and those close to him. Soon after that, "hillbilly music" became the latest craze and by the time Snow was ready to take up similar pursuits, there were real possibilities to make money, and chase the wild show business fantasies many kids of the era had about escaping dire poverty. All one needed for proof was to look at how in 1925 a light opera singer named Marion Slaughter adopted the names of two Texas towns, Vernon Dalhart, and had the first million-selling 78 rpm record in the new genre with "The Wreck of the Old 97" b/w "The Prisoner's Song," both seminal works that Snow and many others later recorded.

Yet, another artist would come to define hillbilly music: Jimmie Rodgers, a former railway worker from Meridian, Mississippi. Also known as "The Singing Brakeman," Rodgers' haunting "blue yodel" became the manifestation of the sadness and isolation felt by so many who allowed themselves the relatively cheap decadence of gramophone records. Rodgers had come close to perfecting his yodel when he got word of...