With the death this past week of country music legend Glen Campbell, I’ve heard much discussion about country music not being “country” anymore.

To some extent, I have to agree. It’s more “pop” these days than it is country, as I would define country.

However, I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. It just is.

Mostly these days I listen to old rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Joe Cocker and Van Morrison are among those that I can sing along with.

Now I was never a big fan of what I termed “corn pone” country. I could do without Porter Wagoner and that sequin genre. I was more into Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Tom T. Hall, Waylon Jennings,  etc. Add Dolly Parton, the Judds and Merle Haggard to that list.

Today there are those performers like Taylor Swift who get their start in country and then transition into pop. They make boatloads of money in a much bigger cross-over market.

But I will still turn the dial, trying to find some George Strait and Brad Paisley.

There was a time when I could hear a voice on the radio and know immediately who was singing. People like Charlie Pride, Vince Gill and Johnny Paycheck were unmistakable. Gill even recorded a song a few years back describing the transition. It was titled “Young Man’s Town,” with reference to Nashville. Now they all sound alike to me. I particularly don’t care for those renditions I call “white boy country rap.”

I used to dabble in writing country music and spent some time around Nashville. I was fascinated by the people behind the scenes … the musicians and the writers. Many of these people could not read music, but they knew the sound they wanted. And they found it… on flat top acoustic guitars, pedal steel guitars, upright pianos, the doghouse base, fiddles and banjos.

Being able to read music was not crucial to those guys. The note was here long before man came along and gave it a name. Their notes were on the neck of the guitar, not on a piece of paper.

In all of musicdom, there are only 12 notes. I don’t know why it’s that way. It just is. And all of the songs and orchestrations that have made our days brighter at times are constructed with those 12 notes. I guess the mockingbird was the first to discover this.

Early on, country singers and writers were often referred to as “blue collar poets.” It was Willie Nelson who taught Nashville that you could actually switch to another key in a country song. He illustrated that when he wrote “Crazy,” a big Patsy Cline hit.

Country music really took off in the ‘70s. There were the Nashville sound, the Bakersfield sound, and of course the Austin sound, which sprang from Willie and his “outlaw” colleagues.

Change is inevitable. I can’t blame those performers who take advantage of a growing pop market. But I’m kinda like Barbara Mandrell when she sang, “I was country when country wasn’t cool.”

But things change. That includes music. Even governments have found they can’t control music. Ed Sullivan gave it a shot but Jim Morrison would not be stopped. And protest songs in the ‘60s rankled some politicians.

So roads get paved and computers drive sound systems. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey, but in all of this expansion, save me a dirt road and a steel guitar.

Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com