Escott, Colin 1949-

views updated

Escott, Colin 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born August 31, 1949, in England; son of Leonard (an optician) and Betty Escott. Education: University of Kent at Canterbury, B.A., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Nashville, TN.

CAREER:

Island Records, London, England, exporter, 1971-74; TCD Distributors, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, operations manager, 1974-78; Polygram Records, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, operations manager, beginning 1978; writer. Producer, with Kira Florita, of The Complete Hank Williams (10 CD set).

MEMBER:

Canadian Wildlife Federation.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grammy Award for historical documentation; Lifetime Achievement Award, Association for Recorded Sound Collections.

WRITINGS:

(With Martin Hawkins) Catalyst: The Sun Records Story, Aquarius, 1974.

(With Martin Hawkins) Sun Records, Quick Fox, 1980.

(With Martin Hawkins) Elvis Presley, Music Sales Corp., 1981.

(With Martin Hawkins and Hank Davis) The Sun Country Years: Country Music in Memphis, 1950-1959, Bear Family Records (Bremen, Germany), 1986.

(With Martin Hawkins) Sun Records: The Discography, Bear Family Records (Vollersode, Germany), 1987.

(With Martin Hawkins) Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Hank Williams: The Biography, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1994, revised edition, 2004.

(With Ian Tyson) I Never Sold My Saddle, Gibbs Smith (Salt Lake City, UT), 1994.

Tattooed on Their Tongues: A Journey through the Backrooms of American Music, Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) All Roots Lead to Rock: Legends of Early Rock 'n' Roll: A Bear Family Reader, Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Kira Florita) Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, Da Capo Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music, Routledge (New York, NY), 2002.

Lost Highway: The True Story of Country Music, Smithsonian Books (Washington, DC), 2003.

(And producer, with others) Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues (television documentary; "American Masters" series), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 2005.

The Grand Ole Opry: The Making of an American Icon, Center Street (Nashville, TN), 2006.

Contributor to books, including The B.B. King Companion: Five Decades of Commentary, 1997. Annotator of more than 500 recordings; author of notes for sound recording Walk Right Back, Warner Archives (Burbank, CA), 1993. Editor of audiobook The Legend of Hank Williams, Mercury Nashville (New York, NY), 1996. Producer of The Complete Hank Williams (10 CD set).

SIDELIGHTS:

Record company operations manager and music historian Colin Escott has written books about the music industry and some of the biggest stars of early rock 'n' roll. Escott and frequent collaborator Martin Hawkins released Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll. The authors, wrote Publishers Weekly contributor Genevieve Stuttaford, "build a credible case for their assertion that the Sun studio was the birthplace of rock 'n' roll." Founder Sam Phillips, the coauthors explain, was the first to merge country music with rhythm and blues. What resulted was the distinctive "rockabilly" sound that future Sun superstar Elvis Presley would help popularize as rock 'n' roll.

Hank Williams: The Biography is Escott's study of the country icon who died at the age of twenty-nine from his excesses, which included alcohol and drugs. Born Hiram Williams in Alabama in 1923, Williams was the son of a Sawmill worker and a practical nurse. Williams was singing and drinking at eleven years of age and arrived in Nashville in 1946. New York Times reviewer Margo Jefferson noted: "Hillbilly culture was on view and on trial, and Williams, who was mixing his liquor with amphetamines and barbiturates, was expected to be a credit to his people as well as a star. But his music isn't at all upwardly mobile." His sad renditions included "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "I Can't Help It if I'm Still in Love with You."

Popular Music and Society contributor B. Lee Cooper wrote that Tattooed on Their Tongues: A Journey through the Backrooms of American Music is "a music lover's goldmine. Toronto-based discographer Colin Escott probes the roots of Rock by analyzing a variety of performers who soared (usually only once), crashed, and burned—but sometimes lived to describe their exciting flights. The venues of fame for many of these characters were ultimately limited to barrooms, honky tonk dives, juke joints, and roadhouses." The musicians profiled by Escott include Bobby Charles, Roy Head, Delbert McClinton, Tommy Tucker, and Tim Hardin. Cooper noted that Escott focuses on white, male artists and felt that he could have written about more female performers like Wanda Jackson, Brenda Lee, and Janis Martin. Cooper also named a number of "flawed but fabulous Black singers," including Hank Ballard, Junior Parker, Nolan Strong, and Little Willie John, noting that Escott might have provided a better racial balance by including these and other black singers.

For Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway Escott and coauthor Kira Florita "amassed a huge number of photographs, documents, and published and unpublished song lyrics," according to Library Journal reviewer James Perone. The memorabilia had been passed on from Williams's sister to contemporary country star Marty Stuart. Escott and Florita used many of them when they produced the ten-CD collection The Complete Hank Williams. Also included are the handwritten lyrics of thirty unrecorded songs, previously unpublished photographs, and Williams's first baby picture. Booklist review Ryan Olson commented that Williams fans "will treasure this treasury."

Elvis was not the only purveyor of the rockabilly beat, as Escott helps make clear. In Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music, he celebrates the "forgotten ones" of early rock: performers like Sonny Burgess, Wanda Jackson, and Onie Wheeler. In this book Escott also explores the popular acceptance of such 1950s icons as Patti Page, Perry Como, and Jim Reeves. Dave Szatmary, assessing Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway for Library Journal, concluded that on the whole the book "provides some interesting glimpses" into the performers whose talent helped shape a new generation of music.

Lost Highway: The True Story of Country Music provides insight into the business of country music as well as its roots. Escott notes that rights agency BMI helped country songwriters earn a decent wage and sings the praises of such greats as Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, and Vince Gill. He bemoans the changes that took place during the 1980s, when country music became commercialized. Writing in Hollywood Reporter, Gregory McNamee commented: "The genre, Escott writes, ‘had finally won its mass audience, but what had it lost? Its strangeness and its soul, perhaps.’ In a field dominated by Garth Brooks—who might as well have been Michael Jackson—such pinups as Faith Hill and Shania Twain, Clear Channel radio and songs written by committee, the soul indeed left the body." As McNamee noted, however, country music has had its comebacks, including with the film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, featuring the haunting music of Ralph Stanley and the Carter Family. A Hollywood Reporter critic concluded that this volume will appeal to "anyone who smiles on hearing the wail of a pedal steel or a mountaineer's throaty yodel."

Escott is writer and producer with others of Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues, a documentary film for the PBS "American Masters" series.

The Grand Ole Opry: The Making of an American Icon is Escott's history of the Nashville institution that began in the early 1920s, when radio station owner Edwin Craig hired George D. Hay away from Chicago. Hay, called "the Solemn Ol' Judge," had adapted the programming at the Chicago station to appeal to displaced Southerners, and he did the same in Nashville, beginning in 1925. The Opry grew and propelled the careers of country stars like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash, and Ernest Tubb, and the current Opry House is the fourth since its inception. The volume includes photos that enhance the history. Reviewer's Bookwatch contributor Eric Banister wrote: "Escott provides a fantastic overview of the history and importance of the Grand Ole Opry."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 16, 2001, Miriam Pace Longino, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. C4.

Booklist, April 1, 1991, review of Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll, p. 1535; September 15, 2001, Ryan Olson, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. 175; October 15, 2006, Ray Olson, review of The Grand Ole Opry: The Making of an American Icon, p. 14.

Bookpage, December, 2001, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. 41.

Bookwatch, June, 1999, review of All Roots Lead to Rock: Legends of Early Rock 'n' Roll: A Bear Family Reader, p. 6.

Come-All-Ye, fall, 1994, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 3.

Country Music, July-August, 1994, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 75; September-October, 1994, Rich Kienzle, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 82.

Entertainment Weekly, November 2, 2001, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. 71.

Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), December 8, 2001, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. D18.

Guitar Player, November, 1997, Tom Wheeler, review of The B.B. King Companion: Five Decades of Commentary, p. 140.

Hollywood Reporter, October 2, 2003, Gregory McNamee, review of Lost Highway: The True Story of Country Music, p. 10; December 4, 2003, review of Lost Highway, p. 23.

Kliatt Young Adult Paperback Book Guide, November, 1992, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 44.

Library Journal, March 15, 1991, Barry Miller, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 90; November 1, 1996, review of Hank Williams: The Biography and Tattooed on Their Tongues: A Journey through the Backrooms of American Music, pp. 41-42; December, 2001, James Perone, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. 126; August, 2002, Dave Szatmary, review of Roadkill on the Three-Chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music, p. 97.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 21, 1991, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 6.

Newsweek, July 25, 1994, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 54.

New York Times, August 24, 1994, Margo Jefferson, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. B2.

New York Times Book Review, July, 7, 1991, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 16; October 15, 1995, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 36.

Notes, June, 1993, Robert Burnett, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 1507.

Popular Music and Society, summer, 1996, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 242; December, 1997, B. Lee Cooper, review of Tattooed on Their Tongues, p. 149.

Publishers Weekly, February 22, 1991, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 204; June 12, 1995, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 59; April 19, 1999, review of All Roots Lead to Rock, p. 56; October 15, 2001, review of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway, p. 62.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 1999, review of All Roots Lead to Rock, p. 139.

Reviewer's Bookwatch, February, 2007, Eric Banister, review of The Grand Ole Opry.

Rolling Stone, June 13, 1991, David Fricke, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 198; December 29, 1994, Mark Coleman, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 63.

Washington Post Book World, April 7, 1991, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 13; August 7, 1994, review of Hank Williams: The Biography, p. 1.

West Coast Review of Books, February, 1991, review of Good Rockin' Tonight, p. 2.