Faron Young
Live Fast, Love Hard: Original Capitol Recordings, 1952-1962
Country Music Foundation
4.5 rating
review by Art Menius

It hit me listening to this Faron Young collection by the Country Music Foundation of his best sides during his decade on Capitol. I love the country music of the decade between World War II and mass television not just because of the wealth of exciting sounds based in tradition – bluegrass, hillbilly boogie, honky-tonk, Cajun, and western swing, followed by the rockabilly experiment, nor the emergence of rural singer-songwriters like Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, and Cindy Walker, nor even the continuing, reinvigorating influence of African-American music on country styles. Why underlay so much of this, what was responsible for some of the most enduring, as well as some of the most ephemeral, music of this century was that country music still included a significant youth, specifically teen, audience. Despite historical views that emphasize cheating, drinking, and divorcing songs, the pre-Elvis 1950s produced a lot of country classics aimed at the kids before rockabilly gave these southern youth a music of their own.

Faron Young, a monster on the country charts for most of two decades, epitomized this sound for much of his time on Capitol. Arguably the last singing cowboy, Faron possessed the teen-idol looks that earned him seven motion picture roles and made him the star of a TV series, "The Young Sheriff." The opening "Tattle Tail Tears" from 1952 permits him to show off his sweeping, rangy voice just within the three title words. The follow-up teen anthem "Goin’ Steady" hit big at #2 in the C&W charts in 1953. During his last period at the top, he would re-record the song for a 1970 top five smash. Two years of Army service helped Young’s career since he hosted a syndicated radio recruiting show with Leonard Nimoy as his announcer. The hits kept coming, and their titles reveal their youthful themes: "Just Married," "If You Ain’t Lovin’ (You Ain’t Livin’)," "I’ve Got Five Dollars and It’s Saturday Night," and "In The Chapel in the Moonlight." The latter displays the pop roots of both Faron and producer Ken Nelson. Young’s full, strong voice powers the rest above a fast, hard country beat that both presages rockabilly and fondly reflects back to the heyday of honky-tonk.

This sound reaches its apotheosis on Young’s artistic high point and first #1 record, 1955’s "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young." Waxed when Elvis Presley remained yet a rising new star, the Joe Allison composition matches lyrics rebellious enough for the teen culture with a honky-tonk hardwood floor beat that could move two generations of country listeners to put their coins in the jukebox slot. Forty years later it can be viewed as a last great stand of the youth oriented latter-day honky-tonk of Young, his mentor Webb Pierce, and Lefty Frissell before the onslaught of rockabilly and the revolution in music business demographics and marketing that followed.

With his pop culture exposure, Young weathered the difficult transition years of the second half of the 1950s better than most country performers. "It’s A Great Life (If You Don’t Weaken" and "I’m Gonna Live Some Before I Die" provide two more excellent releases in his wonderful early style, but the failure of the later to survive to a second week on the charts apparently convinced Young that the times were changing. His 1956 rendering of Don Gibson’s "Sweet Dreams" spent thirty-three weeks on the hit parade and stood as the definitive version until Patsy Cline’s lavish 1963 treatment. He revised the old approach for one last #1 in 1958 with "Alone With You" featuring a ringing guitar break from Hank Garland and rockabilly drumming. The last half of his years with Capitol witnessed increasingly mature and less exciting music from the Sheriff as he charted with songs from emerging writers like Bill Anderson ("Face To The Wall"), Roger Miller ("A World So Full of Love"), and Willie Nelson ("Hello Walls").

Faron Young left Capitol in 1962 for Mercury, where he continued to chart regularly throughout the 1960s, although visits to the Top Ten grew much less frequent. He enjoyed a second period at the top of the charts from 1969 through 1972 and continues to perform and record sporadically. Young reportedly has grown embittered at a country music industry that he feels abandoned him after a twenty-year run as an important artist. Despite his success Young doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories into which country music industry retrofits its manufactured linear history of ever greater mass popular acceptance. The vast majority of 24 selections on Live Fast, Love Hard prove that Faron Young was a country vocalist of the highest order who produced some of the finest moments of an under-appreciated period country music history. With this release and a recent Jean Sheppard collection, the Country Music Foundation rightly begins to shed light on those times.

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