LINDA HARGROVE

THE ORIGINAL
BLUE JEAN COUNTRY QUEEN
OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Singer
Songwriter
Musician
Producer
Engineer
Survivor

LINDA HARGROVE: BLUE JEAN COUNTRY  QUEEN SURVIVOR By Paul Davis

The uncrowned but generally acclaimed ‘Blue Jean Country Queen’ of the 1970s was singer/songwriter Linda Hargrove. For a sequence of five outstanding albums, this talented composer, session musician, producer, and performer built-up one of the most esteemed musical standings any woman has ever achieved in Nashville’s music industry. Against the male-dominated flow, she sailed into successful waters. Then life’s storms hit hard when she contracted cancer. But she ‘looked heavenward and turned to faith in Christ Jesus’ in the eighties. Her faith-inspiring story is worthy of recounting time-and-time again.

DESCRIBED AS INCURABLE

Today a battle-scarred Linda Hargrove resides in Panacea, Florida, grateful to be a Leukemia Survivor. Diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in 1986, the prognosis was described as incurable. She underwent an experimental Allogenic Bone Marrow Transplant in 1990 at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Hospital at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. She was the only patient out of 30 patients to survive the procedure and now is the longest survivor of the entire bone marrow transplant program.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida on February 3, 1949, when she arrived in Nashville in 1970, Linda was already renowned as a teenage survivor of more than a few rock and soul bands. In the years that followed a host of Music City celebrities queued to record one of Linda's songs. At the front of the parade was ‘single girl’ Sandy Posey. Playing on the session was steel guitarist/producer Pete Drake who quickly put Linda’s signature to a songwriting contract. Many master sessions followed as he commenced using her as a studio guitarist on albums by Waylon Jennings and Mac Davis and such. Down the years, she was instrumentally present on sessions for Tommy James and the Shondells, Leon Russell, John Stewart, Michael Nesmith, Pete Drake, Asleep at the Wheel and many others. She also sang background vocals for John Stewart, Leon Russell, Michael Nesmith, Vern Gosdin, and others.

Her personal rise to fame was set in motion by 1973 led by the music industry’s hard-bitten media critics when she met Michael Nesmith, of The Monkees who helped her land a recording contract with Elektra-Asylum Records. The 'Blue Jean Country Queen' was afforded outstanding national acclaim for her accomplishments. True , she was a marvellous creator and performer of gentle love songs, but her repertoire often embraced wilder, controversial themes. Linda's aggressive feminist ditties written from the so-called 'weaker-sex’s perspective' commonly traded on the social issues of lost-virginity, soiled-virtue, and the humiliation of life lived in the fast-lane of immorality, drugs and alcohol.

FACIAL COSMETICS AND GLAMOROUS GOWNS In spite of her growing favourable reception on Nashville’s Music Row as a songwriter and instrumentalist, the ‘Blue Jean Country Queen’ was not welcomed with open arms by the nation’s radio DJs. They and the fickle leaders of Nashville high-fashions of the times preferred that their ‘country queens’ dripped with facial cosmetics and dressed in glamorous evening-gowns rather than the no-nonsense, unpretentious attire Linda epitomised. She preferred blue denims, no makeup and long flowing folk-styled hair.

UNUSUAL FOR A FEMALE IN A MALE DOMINATED INDUSTRY

In the studio Linda became an accomplished record producer as well as a fine singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist. She sang on such notable advertising jingles as ‘Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet’; ‘Bob Evans-Down on the Farm’ ; ‘Valvoline’ ; and ‘Budweiser’. She wrote and produced the commercials for ‘Plymouth Convoy’, ‘Plymouth Voyager’, ‘Frito-Lays Natural Style Potato Chips’, ‘US Postal Service’, ‘Dodge Trucks’ and many other companies.

From 1973 to 1974 various Linda Hargrove singles were released internationally via ‘Elektra Records’. Her ‘Elektra’ Albums included ‘Music is Your Mistress’ and ‘Blue Jean Country Queen’. In the next year she signed as a ‘Capitol Records’ recording artist. Albums that followed accordingly in the next two years were ‘Love, You're the Teacher’, ‘Just Like You’ and ‘Impressions’. Again various Linda Hargrove singles were released internationally via Capitol Records (1975-1977) and then by ‘RCA Records’ (1978). Eight of these promising cutting-edge singles hit the USA’s country charts but rose only to reach the lower ends of the list. Nevertheless her fame and fortune grew. Linda’s songwriting credits include: BMI Country Music Achievement Awards (1976) for ‘Let It Shine’ recorded by Olivia Newton-John (MCA Records); ‘Just Get Up and Close the Door’ recorded by Johnny Rodriquez (Mercury Records); ’I've Never Loved Anyone More’ (co-written with Michael Nesmith) recorded by Lynn Anderson (CBS Records) , which was recently recorded as a duet by Willie Nelson and Ray Price and is scheduled for release later this year (2002). BMI Pop Music Achievement Awards (1976) for ‘Let It Shine’ recorded by Olivia Newton John (MCA Records). BMI Country Music Achievement Awards (1984) for ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ recorded by George Jones, (Epic Records).

In addition to the above, Jan Howard sang Linda's ‘New York City Song’; Ernest Tubb did her ‘Half My Heart's in Texas’. Other artistes who recorded Hargrove-penned songs amount to over 100 and include: Tammy Wynette, Leon Russell, Tanya Tucker, Michael Nesmith, David Allan Coe, Phil Vassar, Pam Rose, Marty Robbins, Ernest Tubb, Dionne Warwick, Julie Andrews, B.J. Thomas, Asleep At the Wheel, and many more.

Linda’s production/engineering experience was vast as various artists/singers used her expertise on custom projects, publishing demos and self-produced albums. They include producing Mark Miller (of Sawyer Brown)’s first sessions in Nashville in 1980. She signed Phil Vassar to his first publishing and production deals in Nashville in 1987-1988. She produced his demos for ‘My Next Thirty Years’, ‘I'm Alright' and others in 1993. Phil was the Academy of Country Music's Top New Male Vocalist in 2002.

GUN-IN-HAND

Fame, however, came at an awful cost to Linda. She admitted that, at one point in her life, ‘to be successful in the music business’ was all that she lived-for and the stress was killing her. “My appalling cocaine habit drove me to the position where everything was sour with my life and my career. I was burned out all the time. In desperation with gun-in-hand I was going to blow my brains out. I cried out loudly to God in my despair. Then to my amazement a miracle happened. In shining light, Christ appeared to me in my broken state. That encounter in 1979 with Jesus Christ forever changed the focus and direction of my life.”

A dramatic revolution took place as she turned in faith to Christ Jesus. She married Charlie Bartholomew, a mild-mannered Christian gentleman. They hit-the-road together as itinerant evangelists, settling in Louisiana from 1982-1985 to help some friends establish a church and returning once again to Nashville in 1985. “In 1981 I traveled to Great Britain with a group of other country artists not to promote the music I had created to serve my career, and myself but to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and to play gospel music for the first time at the famous Wembley Country Music Festival.” Artists who appeared with Linda at the gospel portion of Mervyn Conn’s Wembley Country Music Festival included George Hamilton IV, Jerry Arhelger, Donna Stoneman, Vernon Oxford, Erv Lewis, Marijohn Wilkin and several others .

Linda Hargrove recorded gospel LPs in 1981 and 1989 (‘A New Song’ (Fig Tree) and ‘Chosen Fast’ (David's Tabernacle)). However, her long battle with leukaemia began in 1986, and continued with chemotherapy until her miraculous recovery via a bone marrow transplant in 1990.

Amazingly, despite her ups and downs, Linda's reputation and fame linger having now developed into a legendary status. In the mid-nineties, she smiled as she commented on the incongruity of how her old, beatnik persona has becoming so accepted in modern country music. She states, “In my old life, I was an rough-edged, hard-drinking country queen. In those bad ole days that was the likeness that I was struggling to project. But the country establishment of the times wasn’t buying it back then. Yet nowadays ironically, the experts and the trendies are hyping it even though I'm not promoting it!” ‘

She continues to write and work with her songs and publishing companies. Linda performs locally in Florida and occasionally in Nashville. She still delights in helping new songwriters and working with up-and-coming bands and individuals. She produces and engineers for her production company, ‘Panacea Productions’. She currently is working on the final version of ‘One Woman's Life’ --  The final version will have 15 songs and 'slicker packaging'.  None of her older recordings can be found on CD.

PAUL DAVIS
Reprinted by permission from the UK COUNTRY ROUNDUP 2002

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