Buck Owens: Let the Sad Times Roll On
(Capitol, 1965)
Wynn Stewart: I Can Take It or Leave It
(Capitol, 1965)
Gene Vincent: Catman
(Capitol, 1956)
(All songs produced by Ken Nelson)
When it comes to obituaries, why is there always more writing about the people we are least likely to forget? I suppose there is little about the obit business that makes sense. The occasion of someone's death is the hardest, foggiest time in which to reflect. What can one offer? How to the shake the feeling of erroneousness, of cheapness, that comes from trying to define an individual moments after their ability to define themselves has vanished?
The best obituaries deal with lives that have been, or are about to be, forgotten forever. As an A&R executive and producer at Capitol Records from 1948 to 1976, Ken Nelson played one of music's most invisible roles. Though he did not paint the music of Bakersfield, he colored it, framed it, and put it on display for all to hear. Capitol mainstays Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, and Merle Haggard are the names that define the sound of Calfornia C&W, but that mine of immortal music belongs as much to Nelson. He brought country to Los Angeles as surely as Mulholland brought it water, but Nelson's legacy is also the reminder that great records aren't born in a vacuum; they are brought into being by a team of unknown faces and bygone names. In the short, sweet LA Weekly obit he wrote for Nelson, Jonny Whiteside makes a small stand not just for one monumental L.A. "record man," but for all those names we'll never know.
