TV REVIEW : A Rich Look at ‘Women of Country’

Don’t let the humdrum title of CBS’ “The Women of Country” (at 8 tonight on Channels 2 and 8) scare you off.

It sounds like yet another of those long-on-concept, short-on-insight shows the networks like to whip up by inviting three or four musicians onto a sound stage and lumping them together under some flimsy umbrella title.

Not this time.

Executive producer Bud Schaetzle, producers Martin Fischer and Douglas C. Forbes and scriptwriter Robert K. Oermann have tackled a meaty subject--the changing role of women in country music over the decades--and given it nearly as thorough a look as possible within the two-hour framework.

This is no formula grab-bag star turn for participants Emmylou Harris, Wynonna Judd, Kathy Mattea, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Trisha Yearwood, Suzy Bogguss, Pam Tillis, et al., even though all do sing during the show.

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Instead, the program is divided into 11 themed sections that are explored between commercial breaks: “Cowgirls in a Man’s World,” “The Rockabilly Era,” “The Nashville Sound” and so on. Each featured singer picks a song that, with an exception or two, deftly illustrates how that chapter in country history has influenced her music.

Yearwood, one of country’s hottest young stars, says the old-time “heartsongs” of such singers as Lulu Belle and Cousin Emmy “really tore me apart” and that now, “that’s the kind of song I look for.”

In the section on country’s pioneering Carter Family, warm reminiscences about Maybelle Carter by her daughter and granddaughter, June Carter Cash and Carlene Carter, are followed by Emmylou Harris singing A. P. Carter’s “Hello Stranger.”

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Other seminal women singers who give first-hand reports on what it was like in days gone by include Kitty Wells, Patsy Montana, Rose Maddox, Rose Lee Maphis, Dale Evans, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and Jean Shepard.

In addition, vintage photos, film and television footage sample them, and some long dead (Patsy Cline), in their performing prime. All join in for a grand finale singing Carpenter’s “The Hard Way,” which summarizes how their progress has been won.

Occasionally an interviewee is less than articulate, and had the show included comments by a male singer or two, it might have left less of an impression that women singers have influenced only other women.

The only subject that’s really soft-pedaled here is the present: Despite all the gains women have made in terms of pay, industry respect and chart success since Mother Maybelle was singing in the ‘20s, week in and week out women still chart only 20% to 30% of Billboard’s Top 20 Country singles.

Gone, largely, are social stigmas against a single woman traveling alone, against a woman working as a bandleader who can hire and fire musicians, and against a woman as the star of a show.

Nowadays, industry wags like to cite statistics showing that women buy the majority of country records, and conclude that they favor men singers.

As that other wise woman Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: “It’s always something.”