If he had done nothing but write honky-tonk standards like "Whiskey River," "Sound of A Heartache" and "When My Conscience Hurts the Most," Johnny Bush's place in the country music pantheon would be secure. If he merely contented himself with singing standard-setting versions of barstool anthems like "Green Snakes On the Ceiling," "There Stands the Glass" and "A Moment Isn't Very Long," Bush could look back on a career well spent. If he hadn't fronted his own acclaimed ensembles, including his groundbreaking Western Swing big band, the Bandoleros, Bush could take justifiable pride in putting the swing into Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys and Willie Nelson's early group, The Record Men.
In the course of a long and colorful life and career, Johnny Bush has done all of that and more. And in the process, he has met and surmounted a challenge to his life and livelihood that is almost Shakespearean in its diabolical irony.
Now, with the release of a new album, HonkyTonic, Bush demonstrates that, in his fifth decade of performing, his mastery of country music literally spans generations. In addition to his old friend, bandleader and mentor, Willie Nelson and fellow honky-tonker Tommy Alverson, Bush is joined on the album by the cream of Texas' new generation of country-rockers, including Kevin Fowler, Cooder Graw and Stephanie Urbina Jones.
Born John Bush Shinn III in 1935 in the hardscrabble blue-collar neighborhood of Kashmere Gardens in Houston, Texas, Johnny became an early devotee of the Western Swing music of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and the honky-tonk hits of Ernest Tubb, Marty Robbins and Lefty Frizzell.
Thanks to the encouragement of an uncle, Jerry Jericho, who had a radio program on KTHT in Houston, John and his brother made fledgling broadcasts that helped infect John with the performers' virus. It proved to be a lifelong condition.
After a move to San Antonio following his parents' divorce, John—only 17—began to immerse himself in the honky-tonk universe of wine, women and song. He even picked up a residency at a local club, the Texas Star Inn. Thanks to an announcer's trip of the tongue, the new vocalist was introduced one night as "Johnny Bush," and the name stuck.
Bush discovered a natural affinity for the drums, which served him well during his associations with dancehall bands like the Mission City Playboys, the Texas Plainsmen and the Texas Tophands. But when he joined Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys in 1963, (along with a brash young kid named Willie Nelson), Bush finally became a member of the honky-tonk Dream Team. Price's inimitable voice and his mastery of the Texas shuffle dance beat (his massive hit, "Crazy Arms," is the classic example) made the Cherokee Cowboys the top-shelf country band in the nation. Bush played drums for Price for three years in locales as far-flung as New York and even Paris, getting an invaluable education in country music at the hands of one of its masters.
His association with Price led Bush to Nashville in the mid-60s and he soon got a deal with a song publisher and began singing demos. Soon he had segued from Ray Price's band to Willie Nelson's group. Bush's first recording split his own tune, "Sound of A Heartache" with Willie's "A Moment Isn't Very Long." Nelson was just a blip on the country music radar (he was best known at the time as a songwriter, not a performer), but Bush found him infinitely inspiring and creative. Nelson produced Bush's first album, Sound of A Heartache, in 1967. The friendship and mutual admiration that the two struggling Texans crafted in Nashville endures to this day.
A series of regional hits on the Stop label, including "You Gave Me A Mountain," "Undo the Right," "What A Way To Live" and "I'll Be There," marked the ascent of Bush as a popular performer in his own right. Most of the tunes reached No. 1 in the Texas market, and in the Top 10 or Top 20 nationally.
Sharing bills with Nelson and working on his own,
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