Biography
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During a recent visit with the Colonel, whose business card reads, “Bluegrass is Whatever the Hell I Say It Is,” he immediately pulled a knife before announcing, “I have no problem calling up a critic and telling him that if he gets within three miles of me, I’ll eviscerate him — I hate those %*/?%%" If they don't like something I produce, blame me, but don't vilify my people; they're there because I wanted what they did.
As a lad in postwar Chicago, Silvers grew up enamored with opera, but, he explained, the Windy City was also “a hotbed of country music. They had the WLS National Barn Dance — which was broadcasting before the Grand Ole Opry — Randy Blake's Suppertime Frolics, some other country radio shows. and with my Zenith Trans Oceanic 100lb tube radio I could pick up stations all over the country including XERF Del Rio Texas with transmitters in Villa Acuna Mexico. My uncle, Syd Nathan, ran King Records. He had Ralph Stanley, Reno & Smiley and the Delmore Brothers on King, and I’d go down to his offices on Michigan Avenue, and while my friends all wanted to get the R&B records [King’s roster had everyone from Wynonie Harris to James Brown], I’d pick up records by Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins and Wayne Raney.”
Syd Nathan was legendary, one of the most notorious of cigar-chomping, pigheaded and underhanded record men ever to cook up a crooked contract, and while Silvers doesn’t share Nathan’s rapacious ways, their way with the English language is strikingly similar. (“When your goddamn dick gets hard and you’re skin crawls, that’s when you know” was how Nathan described his hit-discovering M.O.) As Silvers matured, he wound up in early ’70s Nashville, writing songs and shooting stars like Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb backstage at the Grand Ole Opry (“I told the manager I was the official photographer for the [country archive] JEMF, which wasn’t true, but he gave me the run of the Opry”) before drifting West to Martin Haerle’s garage.
At CMH, Silvers has produced numerous titles, notably Cash On Delivery, a Man in Black tribute that featured the likes of Wayne Kramer, Russell Means, the Adz and BellRays vocalist Lisa Kekaula. Silvers’ most notorious recent contribution to CMH was overseeing production of Strummin’ With The Devil, an all-bluegrass Van Halen tribute CD on which David Lee Roth himself performed two songs. The juxtaposition of Van Halen’s boozy, spandex-girded, buns-up-and-squealing metal assault and the by-comparison austere bluegrass tradition was an arresting exercise in creative miscegenation — and a typically idiosyncratic, Silvers-y conceit. Syd Nathan would be proud. Recently Silvers oversaw production of "Johnny Gimble, Celebrating With Friends" including Vince Gil, Garrison Keillor, Merle Haggard, Wilie Nelson and Ray Benson and Asleep At The Wheel.
The preceding was culled from the Jonny Whiteside attempt to apotheosise the subject, with very little editing by the man himself.
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Members:
Jim Silvers
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Sounds Like:
An amalgam of Franco Corelli/Webb Pierce/Eddie Fisher/Lester Flatt
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Influences:
2Hanks (Snow&Williams) - Jan Peerce - Roy Acuff - Franco Corelli - Lester Flatt - Frankie Laine - Richard Bennett - Verdi & Puccini - Henny Youngman - Richard Avedon
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AirPlay Direct Member Since:
05/04/08
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Profile Last Updated:
08/15/23 05:09:43