By sampling Webb Pierceâs 1953 No. 1 hit, âThere Stands the Glass,â in his current single, âHard to Forget,â Sam Hunt has introduced Webbâs iconic song to a new generation of country music fans.
While hardcore, old-school country fans may liken Samâs sampling to blasphemy, the closer truth is that Sam has opened up the ears of younger fans to a country song thatâs more than 65 years oldâand thatâs a great thing. Not to mention, there are royalty checks for everyone involved. âHard to Forgetâ was co-penned by Sam, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne and Ashley Gorley, as well as crediting âThere Stands the Glassâ songwriters Audrey Grisham, Russ Hull and Mary Jean Shurtz.
As Sam told Kix Brooks of American Country Countdown, he follows his gut when it comes to sampling tunes.
âI wish I could break it down, but itâs more intuitive than anything else,â says Sam to Kix. âItâs a feel. You know, you can just . . . start playing. You can start sampling country songs and put drum sounds with âem or change the chord progression a little bit, and itâs hard to say why they donât work. You can sit in a room and play and start combining eras of country music with modern drum sounds and . . . itâs like, âNo, no, no, no, no,â and you miss a lot more than you hit, and Iâve missed a lot with other attempts at doing what the Webb Pierce sample does, but when I heard that one, I knew it was right, and I donât know why, it just felt right.â
Watch Samâs new acoustic video for âHard to Forget.â
photo by Curtis Hilbun, AFF-USA.com