The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 134

2K Sunday. Ao 251999 ARTS ENTERTAINMENT: MUSIC June Carter Cash presses on with new CD Pinch-hitting Hal Linden replaces Steve Eydie '4 1 ajMin 1 lyiMiiiajajajajajajajajajaji if nBMmw.ii i hi ii upwi ww ufn. uu im-wmini i imnitmMMtm9mimujwijn.mjuitLijMKsm!BmwmimMmmmma ys''' i iraMaiMjaaJt iiiiiiiiimm i i Mir---'-'' immii i if iirnrniiMi and daughters, June, Anita and Helen) LES LEVERETT pose for a publicity shot in the 1960s. The familiar figure of Hal Linden will appear on a TPAC stage this weekend for a pair of Nashville Symphony shows. Getting there Mai Unden is special guest in the upcoming Nashville Symphony pops concerts, set for 8 p.m.

Friday-Saturday in TPAC's Jackson Hall, 505 Deaderick St. Call Ttcketmas-ter at 255-9600. the strong association. "It never got in my way really," he said. "In fact, it's the kind of association you like to have, with something as classy as that." Indeed, that show, though a comedy, is considered by many critics to be a model from which gritty police shows, like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, drew inspiration.

Linden described his upcoming Nashville dates as reflecting his long Broadway history and even featuring him as clarinetist? Though he's aware that Richard Stoltzman, probably the world's greatest living practitioner, recently performed Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with the symphony here, Linden might just tackle a portion of the same piece. But it's something he hasn't had a chance to discuss, given the late switch in scheduling, with Ronn Huff, the symphony's principal pops conductor. It's Huff who will lead the first half of the evening and present works spotlighting various orchestra members, from the percussion section to clarinetist Lee Levine to concertmaster Mary Kathryn Vanosdale. Expect an eclectic range of music from Rimsky-Korsakov, Count Basie and such film scores as Schwdlefs List, Star Trek and Fiddler on the Roof. 1 3 Ml PyAUNPOSTKK Sft Writer There are at least two things you should know about Hal (Barney Miller) Linden.

First, there's more to the man than the sum of Barney and Miller, though that popular TV sitcom did bring his face and name into more than a few American households in the late 70s and early Ws. The other thing: Linden has become a pretty good one-man emergency management team especially when it comes to replacing Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. Two years ago, when Lawrence came down with pneumonia, Linden, on a day's notice, filled in with the Omaha (Neb.) Symphony Orchestra. And V- i i just the other day, when the i Nashville Symphony discovered Gorme was suffering from an in- ner ear infection, forcing qancel-' lation of the scheduled Steve and Eydie appearances here, executive director Alan Valentine knew whom to call Hal Lin-, den. The man, it seems, is a life-saver for pops concerts.

"I spent the first seven years of my career as an understudy on Broadway," Linden said from his home in California. "I understudied Sydney Chaplin, Arthur Hill, Alan Alda and Louis Jour-' dan. I thought that period of my life was over, quite honestly, but they (Steve and Eydie) are dear friends." He may be a fill-in here, but he's hardly got second-class talent or credentials. Linden has the reputation of being a top-notch live entertainer. "Linden stopped the show with three standing ovations as he stretched a scheduled hour with an extra 20 minutes," a critic for The Oregonian wrote in 1998.

"The capacity crowd loved every minute of it." And that shouldn't surprise anyone who knows something more about Linden than his TV career. The Bronx-born performer won a 1971 Tony Award for best actor in a musical for The Rothschilds, but his Broadway credits as suggested by the range of his understudy work are numerous, including The Pajama Game, I'm Not Rappaport and Three Men on a Horse. He toured in Man of La Mancha and continues his TV work look for him soon (probably next month) on The Drew Carey Show. If you're wondering how Linden feels about his Barney Miller days, he's very proud of that series and doesn't seem to mind HUE 00 UNNY KRAVITI MM John Mellencauip win Son Volt SHANIA TWAIN 'TIM if 213 THE AlLMAN BROTHERS BAND 'NSYNC WITH am -r V- 1 Ffrff American Select Kcweratf' Rnl feunk It and Hm. Al ow feed spM June's performance.

Rubin hooked them up and Hamilton set in motion the early plans for recording Press On, The Cashes' son, John Carter Cash, co-produced the album along with J. Blair. The recording was done in a cabin on the Cash property, converted for use as a studio. "He just really has an ear for everything, hears everything, and as a producer he's fantastic," says John Carter's proud mama. For musical support, June enlisted two former sons-in-law, Rodney Crowell and Marty Stuart, as well as acoustic guitar ace Norman Blake, daughter Rosie Carter, bassist Dave Roe, drummer Rick Lanow and mandolinist Hazel Johnson.

"When June first called me about it, I thought it was the coolest idea I'd ever heard," says Stuart, who once was married to Cash's daughter Cindy. "She wanted me and Rodney Crowell (ex-husband of Rosanne Cash) and Nick Lowe (ex-husband of Carlene Carter) to help me do it, and she wanted to call the album June Carter and Her Ex-Sons-in-Law." Lowe couldnt make it, but Stuart and Crowell played key roles. "The minute I heard her sing the old Carter song, Little Moses (which is not on the record), I thought, this is totally millennium-based, cosmic Carter Family music," Stuart recalls. "June naturally brings a cosmic edge to everything." "It is not an ordinary country record. We both know it's not," says June, who'll turn 70 in June.

"I wouldn't have cut one. I've been in country music so long, and how can you be any purer than pure if your name is Carter? How can you get away from being a Carter? There's a part of you that's gonna come through. How do you keep from doing it? It's what you're born to do." June, of course, is the daughter of Maybelle Carter, who performed with her brother-in-law, A.P. Carter, and his wife, (Maybelle's cousin) Sara Carter, as pioneer country group the Carter Family. June and her sisters began performing with the Carter Family in the late "30s, singing on border radio stations in Mexico.

By 1947, Mother Maybelle the Carter Sisters had become stars in Richmond, and in 1950 they joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. In the late '50s they shared bills with Elvis Presley, and June went to New York to study acting with Elia Kazan at the Neighborhood Playhouse (she makes reference to those days in the song Used To Be Somebody). A photo from that period is included in the CD booklet, showing June as a beautiful, aspiring starlet By 1961 June was traveling with The Johnny Cash Show, and in 1963 she penned Ring of Fire, inspired by her growing attraction to the head-liner, though both she and Cash were married to other people at the time. "I'm sitting at my home one night, May -jrk, IV I I KROGER Wif'-i'it n-' it The Carter Family (Mother Maybelle and I had come to the conclusion, I thought, 'Oh Lord, I think I'm falling in love with Johnny Cash and he doesn't know it and I hope the world never knows it and I hope I never open my mouth to tell anybody I am. I feel like I'm falling in a ring of Eventually, of course, Johnny Cash and the rest of the world did find out.

The couple was married in March 1968, but it was years before June owned up to the song's real inspiration. "It was too painful a thing to tell anybody," she says. "There was so much pain. It was not a convenient time for me to fall in love with him. It was not a convenient time for him to fall in love with me.

Me, I'm a Puritan from the mountains. I hadn't moved into this new era that my children had already darted off into." June performed the song in its acoustic arrangement on An AR-Star Tribute to Johnny Cash, the recent concert and cable TV special honoring her husband. Following her performance with Stuart and fiddler Jason Carter (no relation to June, Jason plays fiddle for the Del McCoury Band), the audience at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom rose to give 11 12 (615) 255-9600 www.Ddietmaster.eorn I 1 1 Al 1 play our instruments. Just play for the fun of it That's exactly what we did." Her husband said he believes Press On more than justified delaying the Jamaica trip (they spent 4'A months at their home there before returning to the United States for the TV special and June's album release), and that the new album offers new proof of June's artistic abilities. "I know what she can do, and her potential has never been recognized and never been fulfilled.

There is so much she can do that people are not aware of, and she's done it on this album," he says. "People are going to see and realize that she has a streak of artistry in her that's really rare, that is part of the tradition in our business that comes from her mother and her family." The album ends with the Carter Family favorite, WiH the Circle Be Unbroken, with June singing and Marty Stuart playing guitar. To give new life to such a familiar tune, Stuart proposed a new approach. "I suggested to June that the song really and truly the saddest song ever written be treated like an old, Southern blues piece," he recalls. "I said, 'Who better than you to reset the clock for this The two of us sat there in the cabin and did it and I swear, time stood still when it happened.

"It's about time the world had a new June Carter record, anyhow," Stuart says. "She's a trip, man. It's brutally honest. I love it" 4-9 ARTS787) DntalUjadbdiaWnctic. tU3Si! June Carter Cash "Me, I'm a Puritan from the mountains" her a standing ovation.

Like the new version of Ring of Fire, all of Press On is simple and honest June's interpretations of the old songs give them new life, and her new material affirms her status as a talented songwriter. "I want this to be something very ethnic, very real," she told Hamilton during the planning stages. "No big glossed-over, produced kind of tiling. Just let me go back to the basics. Let me get some of the people I love and sit in our little chairs and May (by Wrfj.

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Nighfflf-Shoi-of amphdheat box omo All tickets subnet to sewce ctoges. Cwm and artists subiect to cnarfe nnttrnut notict. iUllill For group discounts call 615-770-2098 Tennessee Performing Arts Center Tick available at the TPAC Box Office Downtown, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, and all Mjm outlet, or Charge by Phone: IMUffi www.firstamricanmu$ic.coni The TENNESSEAN www.tennessean.cotn 3 Wth 61 5 55 www.lpac.org AlfctacttiaiMnciAagai. Ciwt vl-Ti wkwm i ftgNi tn iwQHiMcl Mdwffvavkt ot nmrwd PiaySaaniand Socy ConpiMr EfwAwMMiwiM.