The country singer Tom Petty called “the greatest there is”
Every musician could benefit from stepping out of their comfort zone now and again. No one can spend their entire life stuck in one genre, and even the one-trick ponies that do their trick phenomenally well like AC/DC know how to switch things up and throw in some heavy blues into their sound every now and again.
In terms of vocal brilliance, Tom Petty knew that some of the finest singers in the world didn’t even have to come out of his rock and roll record collection.
If there’s one thing that Petty knew like the back of his hand, it was rock. He had that music surging through his veins from the moment he first laid eyes on Elvis Presley when he met him in Florida, and while he had the opportunity with some of the titans of the genre, something started to shift a little bit by the time he began working on his later records. Things had become a lot more mellow, but that didn’t mean the tunes dried up.
In fact, Wildflowers marks the moment where Petty hit his creative apex in terms of songwriting. He had taken all those years working with the Traveling Wilburys to do a lot of listening, and when he finally got back to making his own solo record with the Heartbreakers, Rick Rubin helped him get to the essence of who he wanted to be, whether that was a hard rocker on ‘Honey Bee’ or the tenderhearted romantic strumming away on his acoustic on ‘To Find A Friend’.
There’s a far more rustic quality to this era of Petty’s career, but that was because he had pieces of country coming into his sound as well. He had always been an avid admirer of country music from the time he started working on tracks like ‘Louisiana Rain’ and even a handful of tracks on Southern Accents, but working with Johnny Cash was a sure sign that he was as much a country artist as he was a rock and roll artist.
But even when working alongside ‘The Man in Black’ and getting to hear Roy Orbison’s croon, he admitted that nothing compared to listening to George Jones, saying, “I like so many kinds of music that I’m really sure we’ll try to explore a little bit. I listen to all kinds of things. A lot of old music. George Jones gets me. I think he’s the greatest singer there is. I like country music.”
Granted, some of Jones’s best material can be more than a little bit cringy for people who are used to the modern era of country music, but listening to his greatest ballads is still enough to break anyone’s heart. No matter what generation you come from, a song like ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’ is enough to get anyone crying in the right setting. Jones isn’t putting in as much power as other singers, but he doesn’t really need to.
And that’s what makes Petty’s voice work so well in the context of his work. He could go for the occasional high note when he wanted to, but throughout his career, his voice was perfectly suited to the kind of music that he was designed to play, as if he were painting a picture of America as Mike Campbell laid down the perfect guitar chime underneath him.
When broken down, Orbison might have a more elastic voice than Jones in many respects, but there’s no substitution for good taste whenever someone sits down to write a song, and Jones is among the finest artists to write about genuine heartache. It can be painful going back to some of his best ballads, but no one should be ashamed of getting choked up when listening to his songs. If anything, it’s a reminder that you’re still alive.
