Bobby Bare

Long before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson mounted their outlaw uprising, Bobby Bare battled for ownership of his master recordings, and following Johnny Cash he ranked among the earliest country performers to treat the album as a unified thematic statement instead of a loose assortment of hits and filler. Throughout the 1960s he focused on folk-inflected country; during the 1970s he freely combined novelty numbers, boisterous honky-tonk tracks and understated working-class anthems, sometimes within a single collection such as the 1973 LP Lullabys, Legends and Lies, his biggest commercial success. He secured Jennings’s first recording contract and stood among the initial supporters of country songwriters Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Shel Silverstein and Rodney Crowell. His understated, relaxed demeanor may help explain why broader recognition has remained elusive.

Bobby Bare’s personal history is nearly as compelling as his recordings. When he was five his mother passed away; his father lacked the income to support the children, so the family separated. By age fifteen Bare was laboring on a farm, later taking factory jobs and selling ice cream to make ends meet. In his late teens he constructed his first guitar and began performing with a local band from Springfield, Ohio.

In the late 1950s he relocated to Los Angeles. His initial recording credit came in 1958 with the talking-blues number “The All American Boy,” issued under the name Bill Parsons. After several labels turned it down, Ohio’s Fraternity Records acquired the master for fifty dollars, an amount that also transferred the publishing rights. Released in 1959, the single unexpectedly became the second-largest hit in the United States that December, crossing over to the pop charts and reaching number three while also climbing to number twenty-two in the United Kingdom.

Before he could build on that breakthrough, Bare was drafted. During his service Fraternity recruited another vocalist to tour as Bill Parsons. Once discharged, Bare shared an apartment with Willie Nelson and briefly pursued a pop career, appearing on bills with Roy Orbison and Bobby Darin and cutting sides for various California labels. Several of his compositions found their way onto other artists’ releases, including three songs featured in the Chubby Checker film Teenage Millionaire.

Although modest success followed, Bare felt unfulfilled by pop material and returned to country, fashioning a personal fusion of country, folk and pop. Chet Atkins signed him to RCA Records in 1962. By year’s end Bare scored a hit with “Shame on You,” notable as one of the first Nashville productions to incorporate horns in an effort to reach pop radio; the strategy succeeded and the single crossed over. In 1963 he recorded Mel Tillis and Danny Dill’s “Detroit City,” which again charted on both country and pop lists. He followed it with the traditional folk piece “500 Miles from Home,” another Top Ten entry on the two charts. Hits continued through 1964 and 1965, and he appeared in the Western A Distant Trumpet.

As the decade advanced, Bare further blurred country and folk boundaries under the influence of Bob Dylan and other contemporary writers, also traveling to England where he enjoyed popularity. In 1968 he teamed with Liverpool’s country band the Hillsiders for the album The English Country Side, underscoring his artistic ambitions.

He moved to Mercury Records in 1970 and remained there two years, generating Top Ten singles such as “How I Got to Memphis,” “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends” and “Come Sundown.” After departing, he cut This Is Bare Country for United Artists, an album kept unreleased until 1976 while the label instead issued The Very Best of Bobby Bare. He rejoined RCA in 1973.

Later that year Bare issued the double album Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies, a collection of Shel Silverstein material that marked the start of an extended partnership and is widely regarded as country’s first concept album, further fueling the outlaw movement. The set appealed to both country listeners and rock audiences, earning FM airplay. In 1974 “Marie Laveau” became his first number-one single. Another Silverstein project, Bobby Bare and the Family Singin’ in the Kitchen, appeared in 1975; shortly afterward his oldest daughter, then fifteen, passed away.

In 1977 rock promoter Bill Graham signed Bare to his management roster and declared him the “Springsteen of country music,” generating fresh exposure on college campuses and in Canada. That same year Bare switched to Columbia and self-produced the album Bare. Two years later he released Sleeper Whenever I Fall, which included contributions from Rodney Crowell and reworked rock songs such as the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” and the Byrds’ “Feel a Whole Lot Better.” He resumed work with Silverstein in 1980 on the live album Down and Dirty, which yielded humorous hits “Numbers” and “Tequila Sheila.” The 1981 release As Is demonstrated his ongoing interest in diverse writers including Townes Van Zandt, J.J. Cale and Guy Clark.

Despite consistent critical praise, album sales declined in the early 1980s; neither the 1982 Silverstein collaboration Drinkin’ from the Bottle, Singin’ from the Heart nor his 1985 EMI outing produced major singles. Bare nevertheless retained loyal audiences in the United States and United Kingdom, and his impact on later country artists stayed visible. Dualtone coaxed him out of retirement in 2005 for The Moon Was Blue, produced by his son Bobby Bare Jr. He continued regular concert appearances but did not return to the studio until 2012, when he recorded the folk collection Darker Than Light. Five years later Hypermedia issued Things Change, which featured a duet with Chris Stapleton on the earlier hit “Detroit City” and a version of the title track performed with Petter Øien at the 2012 Eurovision contest. Early in 2018 Bare’s recording of Mary Gauthier’s “I Drink” was released as a single, and he was re-inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, an institution he first joined in the early 1960s before drifting away during the 1970s.

In April 2020 BFD issued Great American Saturday Night, a Shel Silverstein–penned album Columbia had rejected in 1978.