Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

This compilation is not accompanied by an instalment in the country history, because the next chapter goes with the next mix. And, in some ways, it makes sense that this mix has no history (of course, the timeframe is covered by past articles in the series) because the late 1970s was a time of hiatus.

Many of the stalwarts of just a few years earlier ceased having strings of hits, and those artists who had grown out of the Outlaw movement now had their day. In this mix, the likes of Guy Clark, John Anderson, Larry Jon Wilson and Moe Bandy owed something to the Outlaws. Even Tom T Hall, who wrote so many mainstream numbers without ever being mainstream himself, is calling for the Outlaw guys to stick to their country roots and return to Nashville (while one of the leading Outlaws, Kris Kristofferson, sang the praises of Hank Williams).

A few bluegrass musicians kept the flame of that genre alive: here we have veterans Jim & Jesse and, with a view to the future, Boone Creek, which included Ricky Skaggs, one of the country superstars of the 1980s who would later return to bluegrass.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R and includes home-baked front and back covers.

TRACKLISTING
1. Kris Kristofferson – If You Don’t Like Hank Williams
2. Jerry Jeff Walker – Standing At The Big Hotel
3. John Anderson – Country Comfort
4. Funky Kings – Slow Dancing
5. Guy Clark – Anyhow I Love You
6. Mickey Gilley – Bring It On Home To Me
7. Herb Pederson – Can’t You Hear Me Calling
8. Jim & Jesse – Ashes Of Love
9. Johnny Cash – One Piece At A Time
10. Skeeter Davis – Homebreaker
11. Razzy Bailey – She’s Anybody’s Darling
12. The Statler Brothers – Your Picture In The Paper
13. Emmylou Harris – Pancho & Lefty
14. Larry Jon Wilson – In My Song
15. Merle Haggard – Ramblin’ Fever
16. Charlie Rich – Rolling With The Flow
17. Bellamy Brothers – Crossfire
18. O.B. McClinton – Talk To My Childrens’ Mama
19. Johnny Paycheck – Take This Job And Shove It
20. Crystal Gayle – Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
21. Boone Creek – Dark Is The Night
22. Tom T. Hall – Come On Back To Nashville (Ode To The Outlaws)
23. John Prine – Sabu Visits The Twin Cities Alone
24. Billie Jo Spears – It Should Have Been Easy
25. Moe Bandy – I Cheated Me Right Out Of You

DOWNLOAD
(Mirror 1   Mirror 2)

…

Previously in A History of Country

The traditional country stars — Conway Twitty, George Jones, Tammy Wynette Charlie Rich, Dolly Parton, Charley Pride — were still selling many records in the 1970s, and periodically crossed over to the pop charts. Singers like Donna Fargo evoked the good old days with happy songs like The Happiest Girl In The Whole USA.  These were still the Opry years — in fact, in 1972 the Grand Ole Opry opened a theme park called Opryland, and wo years later moved out of its long-time home, the Ryman Theatre, to Opryland.

But the Nashville scene no longer monopolised country, nor did it define it. In the introduction to his live recording of Me And Bobby McGee, Kris Kristofferson deadpans: “If it sounds country, man, then that’s what it is: a country song.”  So John Denver, with his songs about the Rocky Mountains, was regarded as a country singer, and even won the 1975 Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award (Australian-born songbird Olivia Newton-John had won the female award in 1974). At the ceremony, the battle lines were drawn. Presenting Denver with his CMA award, 1974 winner Charlie Rich — the Silverfox who had started his career as a rockabilly singer on Sun Records and now crooned his way through chart fodder —  set fire to the card announcing Denver’s name, holding it up for the TV cameras. The act, which Rich attributed to medication and Gin & Tonics, all but killed his career.

Rich and his Nashville cohorts had no trouble crossing over to the pop charts with their housewife-friendly formula, which they shared with Denver. But a different constituency was now claiming the soul of country. The Outlaw Movement hit its stride in the 1970s, led by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kristofferson. It was Jennings’ song Ladies Love Outlaws, also the name of his 1972 album, that gave the movement its official name (some say it was invented by Tompal Glaser’s publicist, Hazel Smith). While traditional Nashville was suffocating from a lack of new ideas (and even Johnny Cash’s output was suffering), it was the Outlaws, many with contractual links to Nashville, that kept the genre going.

While the Nashville production line kept on churning out mostly uninteresting music (occasionally producing gems, such as George Jones’ 1980 hit He Stopped Loving Her Today), the Outlaws insisted on exercising artistic control, with Bobby Bare being the first to negotiate his freedom from the Nashville formula, shortly followed by fellow RCA artists Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.  Their freedom would create a new process of making country music, one that would give an answer to Jennings’ question, You Sure Hank Done It This Way?

Other artists, well out of the Nashville mainstream, began to record country music, often fused with folk. The likes of Gram Parsons, Townes van Zandt (who died in 1974 and 1997 respectively), and John Prine would have massive influence further down the line, on people like Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett in the 1980s, and on the alt-country scene that sprung up in the 1990s.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Bobby Bare – Music City USA
2. Skeeter Davis – My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You
3. Faron Young – It’s Four In The Morning
4. George Jones – A Picture Of Me (Without You)
5. Charlie Rich – I Take It On Home
6. Tom T Hall – Old Dogs Children And Watermelon Wine
7. The Flatlanders – Dallas
8. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Dark As A Dungeon
9. John Denver – Goodbye Again
10. Kris Kristofferson – Josie
11. Tony Joe White – I’ve Got A Thing About You Baby
12. Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn – Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man
13. Dolly Parton – Daddy’s Working Boots
14. John Prine – A Good Time
15. B. W. Stevenson – Shambala
16. Barbara Mandrell – The Midnight Oil
17. Lynn Anderson – Keep Me In Mind
18. Don Williams – I Wouldn’t Want To Live If You Didn’t Love Me
19. Johnny Cash – Oney
20. Gram Parsons – She
21. Tanya Tucker – Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)
22. The Statler Brothers – Whatever Happened To Randolph Scott
23. Merle Haggard – If We Make It Through December
24. Stoney Edwards – Honkey Tonk Heaven
25. Willie Nelson – Undo The Right
26. Porter Wagoner – Lonelyville
27. Barbi Benton – The Teddy Bear Song

DOWNLOAD
(Mirror 1   Mirror 2)

…

Previously in A History of Country
More CD-mixes

In the late 1950s and early ’60s country was in a good shape. The likes of Johnny Cash, George Jones,  Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline (who like Reeves would die in a plane crash), Don Gibson, Kitty Wells, Marty Robbins, Skeeter Davis, Ray Price, Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, ex-boxer Lefty Frizzell and Wanda Jackson were recording prodigious success, even in rivalry with its progeny, rock & roll.These were the comfort years before the social upheaval of the 1960s put into question old certainties, even in the world of country music.

By now, country was no longer confined to the South. In some ways, country influenced the English 1950s skiffle genre, particularly via rockabilly and western swing. In London, a young Keith Richards was obsessed with country even more than he was with the blues (and his love for the genre would return with force when he became friends with Gram Parsons in the late 1960s). In Liverpool, young George Harrison was obsessed with Carl Perkins. And a young Jewish songwriter from Minnesota based his sound on the folk music of Woody Guthrie –  who once was regarded a member of the country camp (which then was called folk, just to confused matters) – and the entire repository of country music. That singer caught the Zeitgeist of the 1960s when he announced that the times were a-changing. Country was not immune from a shifting society.

Spearheading that new age was Johnny Cash, who attracted audiences well beyond the traditional country set without compromising his sound. Outspoken on social rights issues — Cash recorded an album, Bitter Tears, bemoaning the treatment of Native Americans in 1964 — he also performed for President Richard Nixon (he refused to sing Nixon’s requests of right-wing songs, instead singing a defence of the counterculture which Tricky Dick so despised). A hellraiser in classic and acceptable country mode, he broke taboos — such as divorcing and then marrying June Carter — which scandalised the country set.

Yet, Cash also represented traditional values, particularly his deeply-held Christian faith. Cash was so mainstream that he hosted a TV show, and so alternative that he would invite acts that otherwise would never get an airing. And Cash stood with the downtrodden, performing in prisons (one such gig persuaded the inmate Merle Haggard to forego a life of crime in favour of making music), in the United States and outside. Cash was the first country singer to really provoke (and then stare down) the Ku Klax Klan, which once burnt a cross on his lawn.

Other musical forms were influenced by country, in turn influenced country and even fused with country. In 1962 Ray Charles released his Modern Sounds In Country And Western (employing a terminology for the genre that had no currency in country circles), a collection of shrewdly selected country songs. Around the same time, R&B artists were recording in the country medium, though not exclusively, as Charley Pride later would. These include Solomon Burke, Arthur Alexander, Clarence Frogman Henry, Stoney Edwards, Clarence Gatemouth Brown and even Joe Tex.

Before we get to the business end of this post, a little factoid: Anita Wood at one point was Elvis Presley’s girlfriend, and she recorded on the label which first launched Elvis, Sun Records.

TRACKLISTING:
1. The Louvin Brothers – Red Hen Hop
2. Don Gibson – Lonesome Number One
3. Hank Locklin – Happy Journey
4. Bill Anderson – Po’ Folks
5. Anita Wood – I’ll Wait Forever
6. Hank Snow – Conscience I’m Guilty
7. Patsy Cline – She’s Got You
8. Claude King – Wolverton Mountain
9. Freddy Fender – Wasted Days And Wasted Nights
10. Arthur Alexander – I Hang My Head And Cry
11. John D Loudermilk – Road Hog
12. Skeeter Davis – Don’t Let Me Cross Over
13. Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – Fiddle And Banjo
14. Charlie Rich – Sittin’ And Thinkin’
15. Ray Charles – You Win Again
16. Jean Shepard – Jealous Heart
17. Carl Smith – Air Mail To Heaven
18. Lefty Frizzell – Saginaw, Michigan
19. Willie Nelson – Half A Man
20. Sam McGee – Sam McGee Stomp
21. Buck Owens – Hello Trouble
22. Johnny Cash - Custer
23. Doc Watson – Born About Six Thousand Years Ago
24. George Jones – The Race Is On
25. Kitty Wells – Password
26. Tammy Wynette – I Don’t Wanna Play House
27. Faron Young - My Dream
28. Chet Atkins - Guitar Country

DOWNLOAD
(Mirror 1   Mirror 2)

…

Previously in A History of Country
More CD-mixes

.

It was a most significant year for me: I discovered two passions that have remained with me ever since: football (or what our American friends call soccer) and reading. The latter came first, in the shape of comic books. I never had much time for the Marvel comics type, which weren’t that big in West Germany anyhow. My first comic purchase, in 1973 when I was I Grade 2, was a rendering of Laurel and Hardy, known in Germany by the less than gratifying moniker Dick und Doof (Fat and Dim), which I bought on a train journey with my sister. But that wasn’t as good as the old film shorts which were shown on German TV on Friday afternoons. So I went on to the comic book version of Looney Tunes, with Porky Pig (or Schweinchen Dick), Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam, Tweety and Sylvester, Roadrunner et al. This coincided with a failed campaign to persuade German TV not to pull the weekly Looney Tunes show from its schedule, a decision made due to the cartoons’ violence. Read more…