#patrick haggerty

[lauraepartain]

Rest in peace, Patrick Haggerty, it was a blessing to have met you. Haggerty was a country singer and queer activist, whose 1973 album Lavender Country is widely considered to be the first openly queer country album ever made. I originally became hip to Patrick through his 2016 StoryCorps short called “The Saint of Dry Creek”, a Sundance Film Festival selection that tells the story of being young and gay in rural america, and his father, a dairy farmer, who impressed upon him the beauty in being true to yourself.

“‘Look, everybody knows I’m a dairy farmer. This is who I am.’ And he looked me square in the eye. And then he said, ‘Now, how bout you? When you’re a full-grown man, who are you gonna go out with at night?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And he said, ‘I think you do know. Now, I’m gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you’re gonna remember when you’re an adult. Don’t sneak. Because if you sneak, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’ll ruin your immortal soul.’  And out of all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son, my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak. My reaction at the time was to get out in the hay field and pretend like I was as much of a man as I could be. And I remember flipping 50-pound bales three feet up into the air going, ”I’m not a queer. What’s he talking about?” But he knew where I was headed. And he, he knew that humiliating me and making me feel bad about it in any way was the wrong thing to do. I had the patron saint of dads for sissies, and no, I didn’t know at the time, but I know it now.” - Patrick Haggerty/Lavender Country

Patrick boldly made music that I know not only touched the lives of many of us, but provided a sense of comfort, confidence, and the power of feeling seen to his queer audience. He spent his life doing the opposite of sneaking, and left us with his art and spirit. 

Taken at the OG Basement in Nashville years back after his show there.

#patrick haggerty #lavender country #queer music #queer country #country music #kodak #kodak professional #hasselblad #on camera flash #lauraepartain #laura e partain #nashville tn #Downtown Nashville

[jacobwren]

But after an anonymous YouTube user uploaded his groundbreaking music, a flurry of streams and blogs led to 1973’s Lavender Country being unleashed anew. A reissue from North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors heralded a wave of accolades and interest for the self-declared “screaming Marxist bitch”. In the autumn of his life, Haggerty’s world turned upside down. And no one was more shocked than Haggerty himself. “It catapulted way further than I expected,” he said in 2014, of the album’s overdue embrace. “Lavender Country is going down in fucking history, and I lived to see it.”

#lavender country #patrick haggerty

[gwydionmisha]

#Patrick Haggerty #Lavender County #Queer history #Music History #In Memorium

[mywifeleftme]

69: Lavender Country // Lavender Country

Lavender Country Lavender Country 1973, Gay Community Social Services of Seattle Inc.

There’s an anecdote Patrick Haggerty tells in the little zine that comes with the 2014 Paradise of Bachelors reissue of Lavender Country that always makes me tear up. Haggerty was raised one of ten children on a tenant dairy farm in northern Washington in the 1950s. It was obvious to Haggerty’s father from a young age that his boy was gay and, perhaps surprisingly given the times, he was quietly accepting of it. By the time Haggerty was in high school, he enjoyed cross-dressing, and he decided to try out for the head cheerleader position at his school.

Dolled up for his tryout in glitter and “a big lipstick smile” the future singer, in a perfectly teenage moment, dodges his father (who’d come by the school to pick him up)—not because it occurred to Haggerty that his father would be embarrassed by him, but because he was embarrassed to be seen with a dad “with cow crap all over his jeans, his snaggle tooth, his four-day beard and his beat up old fedora hat.” After the tryout, they talked in his father’s car:

He said, ‘Listen to me. I don’t have time to change my clothes just to run up to the high school to go and pick you up. I’m a dairy farmer—these are the clothes that I wear. I’m proud of what I do. I don’t have to change my clothes; I don’t have a reason to change my clothes. Now, were you proud of yourself up on that stage with all that glitter and lipstick?’

I said, ‘Well, I think I’m gonna win.’

He said, ‘Yeah, I think you’re gonna win too, but that’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you were proud of yourself.’

I said, ‘Uh… er… well… um.’

He said, ‘Listen, when you leave this valley and go to the University of Washington Drama School, like you say you’re gonna do, who are you gonna run around with at night?’

And I said, ‘I don’t know.’

He said, ‘I think you do know. And it’s not gonna be that McLaughlin girl I’ve been trying to get you to date.’

At this point I am slinking to the bottom of my seat. I know full well exactly what he’s talking about—pretending like I don’t. My father says to me—my father is ill; he’s like a year and a half away from the grave, and he knows it, and so do I—and he says, ‘You know, I’m not gonna be here when you’re a full grown man.’

I said, ‘Yeah, Dad, I know that.’

He said, ‘Well, I’m gonna tell you something right now, and I want you to remember it.’

I said, ‘Okay, Dad, what?’

And he said, ‘Whoever you run around with at the University of Washington Drama School when I’m gone, don’t sneak. Because if you spend your life sneaking, it means you think you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you think you’re doing the wrong thing, you’ll ruin your immortal soul. So whoever you run around with, don’t sneak, and be proud of it. Do you hear me?’

And I said, ‘… Yes, Dad.’

Haggerty, who passed away in 2022 just one year shy of the 50th anniversary of his Lavender Country’s self-titled debut, grew up to be a skinny little guy, but one who didn’t sneak around anybody. Like a lot of lefty artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s, he believed sincerely that absurdity, surrealism, and satire were forces that could reveal the contradictions of systems of oppression, and thereby cause them to collapse. But he also believed shared appreciation for weirdo art was as important to the unity of a movement as a shared politics or philosophy. Lavender Country’s songs are intended to be sung at protests, a pink answer to oddball folkie anthems like Country Joe’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” and Phil Ochs’ “Love Me I’m a Liberal.” In 1973, a group of people singing a song like “Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears” was a message to the singers and the straight world alike: there are more people who can relate to this out there than you ever thought. I don’t think that message would be lost at a protest in 2023 either.

Lavender Country was a feeling listeners could take home with their copy of the record, even if that home was a place where it didn’t seem like there were any gays or long-hairs for miles. It was originally pressed in an edition of 1000, and the copies were moved hand to hand and via ads in alternative weeklies and the like over the next few years. It was eventually rediscovered in the late ‘90s, and CMT has even highlighted its historical significance as “the first openly gay country record”—though I imagine its gleeful vulgarity would present a tougher pill for the network to swallow than its queerness.

Taken purely on its musical merits, I’d recommend Lavender Country to anyone with a fondness for folk or country. By his mid-20s Haggerty already had the reedy but relaxing voice of a sentient rocking chair, and he leads his homespun band through a collection of fetching songs, like sweetly horny opener “Come Out Singing” and high-lonesome gender protest duet “Straight White Patterns.” It’s “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You” that rises above the rest, a should-be country standard reminiscent of The Flatlanders. Haggerty weaves a braid of cocksure boasts and compliments (“I can hit the sack like an aristocrat / If you’ll let me be your tricky box of Cracker Jack’s”; “You’re hotter than the popcorn dancing in the pan”), but it’s all raging against the closing of a door—the same old fiddle dance with a lover who won’t ever truly open up.

69/365

#lavender country #patrick haggerty #queer country #gay country #gay cowboy #country music #vinyl record #music review #'70s music #'70s country

[voidingintotheshout]

#lgbt #lgbtqia+ #lavender country #patrick haggerty #lgbtq musicians #lgbt country #rip #obituary

[loveboatinsanity]

R.I.P. Patrick Haggerty

#patrick haggerty #lavender country

[musicfordinner]

Giving it up to Lavender Country

I love reading tidbits of music history that’s why I subscribe to so many different music mags and get into it all.

I learned so much today about Lavender Country and feel much better for it . Plus the album kinda slaps.

Also, this great video with great advice from the lead singer’s father is something else!

#Patrick haggerty #lavender country #chantel’s sound diary #music exploration #music journal #music diary #crack magazine #youtube #music nerds

[deliciousmusiczombie]

Pioneering country artist Patrick Haggerty, known for releasing the first gay country album in 1973, passed away Monday at home in Bremerton, Washington, from complications following a stroke. He was 78 years old. Lavender Country was intended by Haggerty to be a viral message, long before the internet.Recorded in Seattle during the gay rights movement, and involving members of that movement, Lavender Country was a visceral, furious, beautiful, and loving album.

#Patrick Haggerty #pioneer Patrick Haggerty #music review magazine #american music guide

[julio-viernes]

En 1973 lanzó el por entonces único en su especie LP homónimo de Lavender Country, un prensaje privado de 1000 copias. Historias queer de carácter punk y títulos explícitos como "Cryin' These Cocksucking Tears", "Back In The Closet Again" o "I Can't Shake The Stranger Out Of You", el LP 'Lavender Country' es considerado como el primer álbum de música country abiertamente gay de la historia. Lo desconocía por completo, estoy escuchándolo y no está mal, a veces se asemeja un poquillo a la Incredible String Band más americana y naif.

#patrick haggerty #lavender country #incredible string band

[joanofarcisdead]

patrick haggerty didn’t didn’t write gay marxist country in the 1970s for tumblrinas to claim in the year 2024 that the people who come from country music’s strongholds are all regressive backwards hicks who need to be liberated by metropolitan and suburban gays

#patrick haggerty i am so sorry #lavender country #🥀🗡️

[manicbeans]

I had a dream that I snuck out of my grandmother's house to play a show with Lavender Country and Patrick Haggerty gave me a paper bag full of drugs that I was trying to figure out how to smuggle out of the dream world into the real world

#but patrick haggerty was leslie jordan which is homophobic of me #apologies to both of them

[anissapierce]

The lack of interviews and interest around Blackberri while he was still living is such a shame so im beyond glad theres one here that's professional

#also shout out to the late patrick Haggerty who did in fact bring his friend up w him when he rose to fame #put him on his second album #its just a shame that it happened so late in both of their lives #blackberri #Youtube

[vague-humanoid]

@midians-world @dirhwangdaseul

Missing pronouns and double-entendres

Historians have traced the roots of country music at least to the 17th century, but the “big bang” moment for the industry didn’t happen until the 1920s.

In 1927, record producer Ralph Peer traveled from New York City to Bristol, Tennessee to hold recording sessions with “hillbilly” artists from the surrounding areas. The Bristol Sessions, as they came to be known, introduced the world to artists like Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family, foundational figures in what we now call country music.

That same year, in New York, an artist named Ewen Hail recorded “Lavender Cowboy,” a story-song about a boyish figure “with only two hairs on his chest” who takes on a group of outlaws and dies a hero’s death. Adapted from a 1923 poem by pulp writer Harold Hersey, “Lavender Cowboy” appeared in the 1930 film Oklahoma Cyclone and has since been covered many times, most notably by Vernon Dalhart in 1939. 

A couple years later, the Prairie Ramblers recorded “I Love My Fruit,” a Western swing-style novelty song so ripe with double-entendres that the group recorded it using a pseudonym. Attributed to the Sweet Violet Boys, “I Love My Fruit” is gloriously homoerotic, with lyrics that extol the virtues of (among other things) chewing on banana skin.

The 1960s saw the emergence of Wilma Burgess, a mainstream star who wasn’t able to be out but also never hid her identity. A protege of prolific producer Owen Bradley — who saw her as a potential successor to Patsy Cline — Burgess insisted on recording songs where the love interest was not referred to by gendered pronouns. When she did occasionally record songs addressed to male lovers, she did so under the agreement with Bradley that her next recording would be a song of her choice. Her songs “Baby” and “Misty Blue” both cracked the top 10, and she still holds the record for the most charted singles by a gay country artist.'

Burgess left the country music industry in the late 70s, but she remained active in Nashville’s queer scene, opening one of the city’s first lesbian bars in the early 80s. 

Queer country music’s “lost pioneer”

No queer country history would be complete without the story of Patrick Haggerty, the man responsible for what’s widely considered the first openly gay country album, Lavender Country. 

Haggerty grew up on a dairy farm in rural Washington, the sixth of ten children born to hard-working parents. Despite growing up in the repressive climate of the 50s, Haggerty has said his father was accepting of his sexuality, which was evident from a young age.

After getting kicked out of the Peace Corps for being gay in 1966, Haggerty decided to devote his life to activism, becoming involved with the Gay Liberation Front. His anger over the injustices of the era became the basis for Lavender Country, the 1973 album that would define his legacy.

The album, which Haggerty recorded with his band of the same name, is scathing and often funny, featuring would-be classics like “Back in the Closet Again” and “Cryin’ These C**ksucking Tears” delivered in a loose, folky style. 

With the support of the Gay Community Services of Seattle, 1000 copies of Lavender Country were created, advertised in gay periodicals, and sold at gay bookstores. Despite the limited number of copies, the album attracted a fair amount of attention in the gay underground. “Lavender Country” played at Seattle Pride and other gay events in the region.

The band disbanded in 1976, and Haggerty thought his music career was behind him. A self-described “screaming Marxist b***h,” he became further involved in activist circles, later co-founding the Seattle chapter of ACT UP and running for Seattle City Council and the state House of Representatives as an independent. 

the article goes into more, like Lang's Shadowland

#Youtube

[finnglas]

So I'm on my phone so I can't track down a link for you but yesterday I learned that the first openly gay country album was released in 1973, the self-titled LP by Lavender Country, and today I listened to the song of the same name and Y'ALL. 1973. Hats off to Patrick Haggerty, A Real One.

Some lines:

"There's nothing left but holes

In your weary sexist roles

I'd trade those old PJs for a Goodwill negligee

Come out, come out my dears to Lavender Country

It don't matter here who you love or what you wear

Cause we don't care who's got what chromosomes"

Anyway, both of their albums (this one, and the later-released Blackberry Rose) have both been reissued on physical media and digital downloads and are available to listen to on most streaming services. Go have some feelings about our brave ass elders.

#late night radio with jules

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Queer Vintage Music

For no particular reason....have some Queer old music stars to listen to if you want~ Wilma Burgess! Honestly one of my favs and she also opened the first lesbian bar in Nashville in the 80s. She's such an icon. She also specifically picked love songs with no gendered wording, and was supposedly the first 'out to the industry' lesbian to hit Nashville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbiAlu2tpHI Lavender Country! Possibly the first full gay album in country music. Patrick Haggerty is a beloved icon for a damn good reason! A massive advocate against hate, his band disbanded only a few years after coming together but he married his partner and spent 30 plus years performing for both pride events and alzheimer's patients. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL1qqHKe8bQ Billy Wright! The man who inspired Little Richard, he was a flamboyant man for his era and even often wore drag. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-BjIQr-E4 Esquerita/The Magnificent Malochi/Fabulash! Another big inspiration for Little Richard, he was entirely self taught and had mad piano skills. He took on various names and performing-personas throughout his musical career. Sadly we lost him to AIDS far, far too young. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjJ6okMLGDs Jackie Shane! She came out as trans in the 70s which holy moly what a powerhouse to do so! She originally got her start from watching a Frank Motley concert. She went off to do solo work after a few years and ooh such a smooth voice! She stopped performing after the 70s and turned down at least one offer to sing for another band in order to take care of her mother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiDVfi5dVp0 Janis Ian! A lot of her music surrounds social issues, which I really appreciate. Good soft listening and she began her career at 14!! Came out in the late 90s and married her wife a decade later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESS0eKJpEZQ Johnnie Ray! Johnnie Ray was considered one of the 'top ten' artists amongst young people in the 1950s. He was hip, cool, and was given the nickname Mr. Emotion because of how out there and physically in tune with his music his facial expressions were. He sold it. Johnnie was deaf in one ear, and was Judy Garland's best man at her wedding. He never officially came out, only arrested for cruising, but passed of liver failure in 1990. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX82VcjJvew Johnny Mathis! He began his career in the 50s and had hits scattered up throughout the 70s! He came out in 2017 in an interview saying, "Hey everyone's a little gay in San Francisco." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCjTWYoRTzM Leslie Gore! The absolute icon behind "It's my Party" and "You Don't Own Me". She weas heavily influenced by the feminism and peace movements and didn't come out until after the peak of her career. One of my personal favorite artists of all time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09qLEYB8e0A Sister Rosetta Tharpe! Her career started in the late 30s, the godmother of rock n roll and the ORIGINAL soul sister. She was one of the first gospel artists to change genres entirely. She'd remain a powerhouse and sing alongside other amazing artists like Muddy Waters, unfortunately she was a massive target of both racism and sexism, often told that she "played like a man" when she often outplayed any guitar player that tried. Artists like Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, and Tina Turner called her the first and massive influence. She supposedly dated fellow gospel singer Marie Knight for quite a few years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9a49oFalZE And that's it for now! Obviously not a complete list, but a list of ones I find super influential and important, at least to me!

#queer music #music history #queer history #music #Just some fun things to share!

[kwebtv]

Special Branch  -  ITV  -  September 17, 1969   -  May 9, 1974

 Police Drama (53 episodes)

Running Time:  60 minutes

Stars:

Derren Nesbitt as Detective Chief Inspector Elliot Jordan (1969–1970)

George Sewell as Detective Chief Inspector Alan Craven (1973–1974)

Morris Perry as Charles Moxon (1969–1970)

Fulton Mackay as Detective Chief Superintendent Alec Inman (1969–1970)

Patrick Mower as Detective Chief Inspector Tom Haggerty (1973–1974)

Roger Rowland as Detective Sergeant Bill North (1969–1974)

Keith Washington as Detective Constable John Morrissey (1969–1970)

Paul Eddington as Strand (1974)

Frederick Jaeger as Commander Fletcher (1970–1974)

Wensley Pithey as Detective Superintendent Eden (1969)

Jennifer Wilson as Detective Sergeant Helen Webb (1969)

#Special Branch #TV #ITV #1970's #Police Drama #Derrin Nesbitt #Wensley Pithey #Jennifer Wilson