Down country road (From left:) George Jones hit big time in 1955 with the number Why Baby Why; the late Chet Atkins, also known as Mr Guitar, helped modernise country music in the 1960s, paving the way for the commercial force that it is today; the late Johnny Cash aka the ‘Man in Black’ gave a gritty view of the life of the working man; Willie Nelson’s 1975 album Red-headed Stranger cemented his reputation as a honky-tonk outlaw with a touch of the sentimental hippie in him Photos: Reuters. (Bottom right) Cowboy at heart: Bobby Cash Pic: Rajesh Kumar

An informal but intense survey on Bobby Cash leads us to the Big Truth. There are, clearly, two kinds of people in the country. One lot — the overwhelming majority —knits its brows and says: Bobby Cash, who? The second — a wafer-thin section — nods sagaciously and says: you mean Bal Kishore Das Loiwal, the country music singer who is now a rage in Australia?

The second lot has been rather active these days, for there is nothing that an Indian likes more than a native who has made it big in the West — even if, as in this case, the West is pretty much in the East. There is cause for celebration, because Bobby Cash — a little-known singer who crooned in Delhi’s five-star hotels — is today a big name Down Under. In India, most people still look nervously around when the man in the cowboy hat and leather boots walks by. In Australia, awe-struck fans stop him to shake hands and otherwise xenophobic immigration officials smilingly wave him in.

Internet sites are full of praise for Cash. Photographs pop out from all corners to show-case the 43-year-old man whose CD, Cowboy at Heart, features in Australia’s top 10 hits. Earlier this month, Australian television aired a 57-minute film called The Indian Cowboy —- One in a Billion. Two weeks ago, India’s local-but-vocal Cash fan club — including waiters at New Delhi’s Rodeo restaurant where the singer first made his mark — sat glued to their television sets as Discovery Channel beamed the film produced by Australian filmmaker Colin Bromley.

So, we do what anybody on the trail of a dream would — take an early morning train to Dehra Dun, picturesquely, if erroneously, referred to by Cash’s official Australian site as the place where he was born in the Himalayan foothills of North-east India.

He is there on the porch, to welcome us into a house that is being furiously renovated. The website describes him as an Imran Khan look-alike. He is, but only if you stretch the truth and the former Pakistan skipper’s skin and bones a bit.

The house, with pear trees lining a huge lawn, was built by his father, a Marwari businessman who is said to have squandered all his money. This is where Cash — then just two and simply known as Babu — played his first baby guitar, specially made for him by an uncle. This is where his Punjabi Christian mother’s music-loving relatives all gathered for informal musical sessions. And this is where Cash is still to be found when he returns home for short spells after long stints in Australia where he first sang his way to glory at the Tamworth country music festival last year.

“I didn’t go there to become a star. I wanted to go to Tamworth and enjoy myself there,” he says, lounging on a sofa in his dimly-lit living room, overrun by children of all sizes and shapes — two his own, and the rest, nieces and nephews. “I thought I would get back home and get on with life. It didn’t happen like that.”

What happened, instead, was success. He first sang at the festival’s fringes, but was soon singing at the main venue. Newspapers, television channels and Internet sites started promoting him as an Indian singing sensation (not the Apache kind, some helpfully explained). An Australian farmer with money and old Indian missionary connections heard him on TV and volunteered to finance his CD. Cowboy at Heart was released earlier this year and hit the top of the charts three months ago.

But Cash really owes his place in the sun to Colin Bromley. Cash was singing at the bar in the Oberoi Hotel in Delhi two years ago when the director, in India filming for ESPN, heard him. “I was sitting in the lounge of the Oberoi Hotel when I heard some of the most amazing guitar playing come from behind me,” says Bromley. “I turned and saw it was a guy wearing a cowboy hat, the full leather country gear playing a unique country/flamenco style of guitar.”

It was Bromley who egged him to go to Tamworth. The director also decided that he wanted to make a film on him. “Bobby was a chance to look at fame and what it takes to achieve it,” he says.

But fame is something that Cash, a practising Protestant, has seemingly come to terms with. “I am just the same guy with the same talent. It was a talent I was blessed with,” he says, as a stone-studded ring shaped like a horse-shoe glints beckoningly, drawing attention to fingers that are surprisingly square and sturdy for a guitarist.

But his is a gloriously sunny voice — the Merle Haggard meets Glen Campbell kind. The songs are his own and the lyrics, euphemistically put, are simple. The number one hit, Baby So Are You, goes like this: Slip on your dancin’ shoes, get ready to go/ And put some make-up on/ I know that you’ve got all the chores to do/ But Baby don’t be long.

They haven’t heard the song in India yet, though the album is expected to be released around September. It has already been launched in Romania, New Zealand and Denmark, apart from Australia, of course, where the song continues to be a big hit. “I am known all over Australia,” says Cash. “I am something of a sensation there.”

He was something of a sensation in India, too — though in a micro-circle of friends and fans. Rahul Ram, the bass guitarist of Indian Ocean, recalls how once the gathering at a concert organised by Friends of Music — a Delhi music lovers’ group — sat enthralled for two hours as Cash sang. “I am glad that he has done well; he is a great guy with a great voice,” says Ram.

But at a time when Daler Mehendi, leading a pack of the good, bad and ugly, was laughing all the way to the bank, Bobby Cash remained just a night-club crooner. He tried to make a dent in the Indipop scene by launching two of his own CDs, but neither the music nor the singer left a mark. “But that’s because Indipop was never his genre,” argues Ram. “Asking him to sing Indipop is like making Britney Spears do a thumri,” he says.

Indipop, clearly, rules. Bobby Cash insists that he has no problems with that. He believes that his Ruk Ja Baby (1999) did “pretty well” after the 1996 CD, Yeh Pyaar Hai, which a critic says was like an English padre doing a Hindi love song. “But my commitment to Indipop was not serious,” says Cash. “I pulled out of it because I thought if I do another CD, I’ll get sucked into Indipop.”

There are many who believe that the advent of Indipop was bad news — both for musicians who sought to keep their own identity and those who fell into the trap of make-a-CD-and-see-the-world dream. There are tales galore of the industry seeking to squeeze music and musicians into a set pattern that spelt an easy buck. There is one luminary — said to be behind the rise of many singers — who used to proudly tell musicians: “Give me the beat of a Michael Jackson song. I’ll put any song into it and turn it into a hit.”

In this pop-and-bhangra-led-race, Western country music is still at the starting line. And forget desi Western country singers, even John Denver and Kenny Rogers are way behind when it comes to popular taste.

“The Indian music industry does not have a market for the likes of Kenny Rogers, let alone an ageing guy like Bobby Cash,” says an industry insider bluntly. The owner of Adarsh music Shop in Delhi’s Janpath adds that country music just constitutes two to three per cent of all Western music records sold.

But Nondon Bagchi, Calcutta’s legendary drummer, warns that music should not be judged by the number of albums sold. “Western music may not have a presence in India in terms of record sales, but even if it’s being played in a pub packed to capacity, I think that’s important. Quality is more important than quantity.”

On that count, Bobby Cash would have little to complain about. He remembers how he first landed up in Delhi from Dehra Dun to try his luck out as a professional in 1995. Somebody had told him about Rodeo, and he landed up there — on a hot summer afternoon — to find that there was karaoke singing.

Cash took the mike and sang This is My Song — a Chaplin composition and a Petula Clark hit. “And then, suddenly everybody was applauding and the manager was asking me: Who are you? And why don’t you come and sing here?”

He played at the Rodeo every Sunday, and waiter Sandeep Paul says that the restaurant was always packed on those days. “Even now, we get booking calls with people asking: is Bobby still around on Sundays?” says Paul. “Most people don’t know he has made it so big.”

Sometimes, it seems as if even Cash finds it difficult to remember that he’s made it big. He still thinks of himself as the young Bobby Cash (not named after Johnny Cash, the singer insists, but from his name Babu Kishore) that his relatives always thought would do good. Life, when he is in Dehra Dun, carries on on an even keel. He listens to music (“everything — from Jim Reeves to Mozart to Hindi songs”), runs a school and a Bible study circle with wife Angelina. What jogs his memory is the nagging thought that he has sit to down and pen some songs.

There is not much time for him to do so, for his schedule from next month will be gruelling. He will be singing in Australia in August/September, and then touring India in September and October to promote his album. He will be back in Australia in November and is booked till January 2005. There may be a tour of the United States as well.

Baby, he’s got chores to do.