EVEN THE RECORD COMPANY HAS NO CLUE IF THE PRODUCTION OF A 1993 MUSIC VIDEO EVER ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE

The Unsolved Mystery of Lari White’s Lost Music Video

It started out as a simple question: does it exist or not? I know I’ve never seen it.

And I would have. After all, it was 1993 and like so much of the country at the time, that was exactly what I was into: country.

The Nashville Network (TNN) had been on the air for ten years and, by the summer of ‘93, the channel could be seen in over 50 million American homes. CMT, which had also been available on cable and satellite for a decade, found its success in airing round-the-clock country music videos, 24 hours a day.

But at least one video from that era — which aired in rotation on both networks — seems to have disappeared without a trace.

UPDATE! IN OTHER LEAD ME NOT NEWS . . .
ORIGINAL GARTH BROOKS DEMO JUST FOUND

90S NASHVILLE:

A CROWDED PLACE

“An incredible time for women in country music” is how one female artist described Nashville’s music scene of the early 1990s.

Countless new voices – including a couple of soon-to-be internationally recognizable faces – were about to breakout from Nashville’s class of 1993. The news media dubbed the year prior as “The Year of the Woman” and Nashville was just about to catch up.

PolyGram/Mercury was betting on newly-signed Canadian artist Shania Twain. Warner Bros. would soon have a string of instant hits with the debut of its newcomer Faith Hill. And over at legendary RCA Records, singer-songwriter Lari White was in the studio writing, recording and co-producing her first album, Lead Me Not.

THE POWER OF MUSIC . . . ON TELEVISION

Since the launch of MTV in the early 1980s, artists and producers of all musical genres were quick to realize the increasing power of the so-called “music video album.”

Warner commissioned four Faith videos in support her Take Me As I Am release. Mercury’s self-titled Shania Twain debut produced three videos. Lari White’s RCA album Lead Me Not led to two music video productions. All of Faith and Shania’s aforementioned first-year video clips are just a few YouTube searches away.

Lari White’s early productions, on the other hand, are an entirely different story.

'WHAT A WOMAN WANTS’ AND 'LEAD ME NOT’

If you’re lucky — not to mention persistent — you might eventually come across White’s very first video, What a Woman Wants, somewhere on the internet.

[ UPDATE: The music video for ‘What a Woman Wants’ has since been made available on YouTube by Vevo. Vevo is a joint venture made up of several major record companies. ]

What you won’t find, however, is the RCA newcomer’s follow-up video — the one shot for her first album’s title cut, Lead Me Not. In fact, you won’t even find a reference of the video’s existence, much less any still frame evidence of the elusive 1993 music video.

FILMING COUNTRY AND WESTERN IN HOLLYWOOD

It was the spring of 1993 and L.A. wasn’t just western — it was country. Mercury Nashville’s brunette newcomer Shania Twain’s second music video was being directed by Sean Penn while across town Joanne Gardner Lowell was doing the very same with RCA Nashville's dark-haired rising star, Lari White. 

“The Lead Me Not video was classic and beautiful,” recalled Joanne Gardner Lowell who directed both of White’s first two videos. “We had this gorgeous backdrop and she was beautifully lit. She just looked gorgeous.”

It’s understandable that Gardner Lowell has a much better recollection of directing White in her debut video just a few months earlier. Unlike Lead Me Not video — shot on a soundstage in LA — the first video was shot on location in Rome, Italy.

CANDLES & A PIANO:
FADING MEMORIES OF A LOST COUNTRY SONG

Award-winning cinematographer Tom Krueger was also on hand for the filming of both music videos. Like Gardner Lowell, Krueger’s mind also takes him back to the Italy video rather than the followup shoot in Los Angeles.

“I definitely remember how beautiful the [Lead Me Not] set was,” he recently told me when recalling the 1993 production in LA. “She was such a wonderful person to work with,” he said of the late singer-songwriter. “Now, I can’t remember a dang thing bout that [Lead Me Not] video. Just candles and a piano.”

What little director Joanne Gardner Lowell and cinematography Tom Krueger remember of filming Lead Me Not is actually a lot compared to the memory of the record label.

In fact, when the Nashville division of RCA Records responded to an email inquiry about the video, the label stated they simply had no record of any such music video ever being made.

“This screenshot shows the only Lari videos in our vault,” a representative for the label advised in the email message. The attached screenshot listed several music videos, including What a Woman Wants, but Lead Me Not did not appear to be part of RCA’s digitally archived collection. Furthermore, the label added, an RCA employee who was with the label at the time the Lead Me Not album was being promoted has “no recollection of this music video.”

“BUT IT WAS IN THE PAPER”

An April 1993 edition of the now-defunct Tampa Tribune newspaper spells it out in black and white: Lari White was in Los Angeles shooting her second music video, Lead Me Not.

R&R magazine, a music publication that tracked the reach of songs, also shows that a music video for Lead Me Not was added to both CMT and TNN’s on-air video rotation in June of 1993.

LOST FOR GOOD . . . OR JUST BURIED IN THE ARCHIVES?

The CMT of today — now part of the MTV-VH1-BET networks of Paramount Media — is down to just a few hours of country music videos per day. Most of CMT’s music video clips have been relegated to airing in the wee hours of the morning, often between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

In 2013 the network launched a campaign it called Next Women of Country. The former country music channel said that the goal of the Next Women campaign was to “to support and expose developing female talent.”

But what about the previous women of country? If it weren’t for the earlier generations of groundbreaking female artists kicking down Nashville’s doors, would today’s women of country even be here?

In 2020 CMT announced its latest female-focused campaign. The new objective is to give music videos by women artists and acts “Equal Play” on the network’s video lineup.

But before CMT launches anymore campaigns, maybe they should check their own archives for one woman artist’s lost music video treasure.

Lead Me Not sounds like a rare gem of a video — a song written, recorded and produced by a woman; a music video production directed by a woman.

Lari White’s Lead Me Not just might be worthy of a [re-]release, don’t ya think?

Do you think the lost 1993 must video will one day be found?
Share your thoughts by emailing author Joseph Fenity directly.

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