Posted 3:02 PM by Gene

Poor box-office doused Ring of Fire, but that wasn't all of it. Consider this credit, for instance:

JEFF LISENBY (Musical Director) has been conductor and/or keyboardist for Tennessee Repertory Theatre's Grease, Big River, A Chorus Line, Harlem Voices, Fiddler On The Roof, Sound Of Music, 1776; the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Chicago, Annie Get Your Gun, City Of Angels, Will Rogers' Follies; the Starlight Theatre's Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, Music Man; the Nashville Children's Theatre's SEUSSICAL [SIC]; and for Opryland USA. He has toured extensively with the Mills Brothers, Boots Randolph, and Brenda Lee, and has accompanied such singing artists as Luciano Pavarotti, Al Wilson, Mitch Ryder, Mel Torme, Blake Shelton, Roy Clark, Lee Greenwood, Donna Summer, Tricia Yearwood, Dolly Parton, Three-Dog Night, Jamie O’Neil, and David Cassidy. He has twice been the national accordion champion and bronze medalist in international classical competitions. Lisenby has been a faculty member of the School of Music at Belmont University in Nashville for many years, and is active as a recording-session conductor, pianist, accordionist, keyboardist, arranger, and producer.

That's a lot of baton waving and keyboard banging, and we doubt anyone outside the business knows who he is. We suspect some of the people he's backed may not know who he is. We don't mean to pick on him; we'd never heard of "Tony® Award winner Jarrod Emick" and "two-time Grammy® Award winner Lari White." And they won awards. But then so did that David Patrick Seymour Whatshisname, the guy who impersonated Truman, and all but the most diehard movie sadomasochists would be hard-pressed to tell him from a crowd. We all know who Johnny Cash was. And that's the problem -- with Ring of Fire and show-biz.