The number 13 wasn't lucky for Montgomery on Saturday, but while
the city didn't crack the top 10 on Country Music Televisions "20
Greatest City Songs" it did make two appearances on the
broadcast.
Alan Jackson's "Midnight in Montgomery," which talks about how
the ghost of country great Hank Williams is still present in the
city he considered his home, came in at No. 13 on the list.
But it was a fine ad for the city. During the brief segment,
Montgomery was mentioned as "the birth place of the Civil War and of
civil rights," and the birthplace of Nat "King" Cole. The special,
which ran Saturday afternoon and evening, also featured scenes of
the Hank Williams Museum, Williams' gravesite, and the Little White
House of the Confederacy.
Local people who appeared in the segment included Montgomery
historian Mary Ann Neeley and Cecil Jackson, one of the founders of
the Hank Williams Museum.
"This kind of exposure is invaluable for fans to learnabout music
destinations in Alabama," said LeeSentell, the state's director of
travel and tourism. While Montgomery was the only city to have two
appearances on the program, the second appearance probably satisfied
few who were in it.
The show's initial segment included night shots of Montgomerians
singing "Midnight in Montgomery" around Williams' grave, but a scene
featuring between 75-100 Montgomerians singing the song during the
day at Old Alabama Town was relegated to a few seconds during the
show's closing credits.
CMT producer Ritch Sublett said he wasn't happy about not being
able to use the daytime scene, but that it just didn't fit.
"We were editing the footage we'd shot in Montgomery of people
singing the song with the Alan Jackson video," he said. "The footage
we'd shot at night around the grave worked, but it just didn't look
right when we tried to edit in the daytime footage."
He said although it didn't work in the main segment, he wanted to
at least get a shot of the people who came out to sing during the
day into the broadcast, and managed to get one in during the closing
credits.
What did CMT pick as the greatest city song? "Okie From Muskogee"
by Merle Haggard, "El Paso" by Marty Robbins, "Galveston" by Glen
Campbell, "Amarillo by Morning" by George Strait and "Luckenbach
Texas" by Waylon Jennings were the top five city
songs.
Alabama
