(vintage) country-disco

was listening to the bill andersonn disco tracks recently.

horrifying

i can't go through this whole thread, but did anyone mention Kathy Barnes on this thread? Made pretty bad country records on Gene Autry's Republic Records label and then made the Body Talkin' album in 1979 which is actually good. the songs are either country, country soul, or flat-out disco. title tune is the best of the bunch. plus, she's naked on the cover.

so, as far as a country singer taking a successful stab at disco, it gets my vote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUoIVbL8tI

http://www.coolforever.com/temp/kathybarnes_bodytalking.jpg

really digging this record. true southern fried disco. on TK's Alston label. Janie Fricke on backing vocals.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YmTxZYM_iW0/SZxfkhOKOJI/AAAAAAAADng/TWO6KCpEOcA/s320/bill+pursell+01.jpg

So turns out the most unabashedly disco track -- okay, maybe slightly abashed, but not much -- on Sylvia's 1981 Just Sylvia LP (called, uh, just Sylvia on the front cover -- it's the album with her lone and great pop hit "Nobody") is "Not Tonight" (guy's leaving tomorrow but still all hers tonight, sound has a definite Donna Summer influence), but at least three other songs (probably my three favorites on the album outside of "Nobody") show a pretty pronounced and often synthy sense of dark Europop/dancey-AOR/flashdance-style space at least (rererence points: ONJ, Abba, Sheena Easton, Stevie Nicks, Laura Branigan, Terri Gibbs, though some of those obviously came later) -- "Mirage" (about a guy disappearing into nowhere, a popular sad disco theme, and built around a familiar looped semisymphonic Rhodes hook I can't place, though I swear there's some connection to the proto-synth-pop break in Del Shannon's "Runaway"); "You're A Legend (In Your Own Mind)" ("ode to t.c.," whoever that was, though he was apparently quite full of himself); and "The Mill Song (Somebody's Got A Dream)" (second of two side closers where Sylvia discusses returning to her home town and everything has changed since she left.) None of those were actually country hits, though two other tracks ("Sweet Yesterday" and "Like Nothing Ever Happened," both okay but more generic and not very memorable) were. Album was produced by Tom Collins (a ha -- bet he's "t.c."!); Joel Whitburn says Sylvia was inititally his secretary. Cover credits also include two synth players, two pianists, and a Rhodes guy -- not to menton "The Nashville String Machine" (who were fairly ubiquitous, I think?). (I also had a best-of CD by her once, though I'm not seeing it on my shelf; I either got rid of it or it's in storage. If the latter, I'll try to put it on someday, though given that no other songs I love here were singles -- and this was her highest charting of five early '80s albums -- I'm not that optimistic.)

Thanks in part to this thread I recently posted another country disco outing on my podcast; it includes some stuff that's been kicked around here (as well as plenty that hasn't). I was especially happy to learn about Carol Chase and Bill Purcell. You can hear it at:

http://www.dsco.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=608653

picked up this 12 inch yesterday. so great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfickh0_Sxw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZGJy35RAU

got a great record yesterday. KOUNTRY KILOWATTS by TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY.

i think its the album to beat for this thread. serious steel guitar/fiddle/mandolin disco instrumentals. titles like HIGH VOLTAGE, DOWN HOME DISCO, BANDIDO, BOOGIE YOUR BUTT OFF, HONKIN'. on Ovation Records. 1976.

apologies if its been mentioned. thread is kinda long.

i need to hear a lot more of this stuff.

So, Bill Anderson's Ladies Choice -- MCA, 1979. Probably the most country-disco album I've ever heard, so far; takes unashamed disco throb and orchestration (used on maybe 75 percent of the album --"I Can't Wait Any Longer," mentioned by Timmy Tannin at the top of this thread, is only one of the most blatant examples) as a natural extension of '70s schlock-ballad countrypolitan; includes covers of future country act Exile's Chinn/Chapmann-penned pop-chart-topping glam-disco-popper "Kiss You All Over" and future country one-hit-wonder Lionel Richie's r&b schmaltz classic "Three Times A Lady." Album title telegraphs the concept -- almost every song is a seduction number for the ladies, usually about one night stands, frequently set in singles bars for the presumably midlife-crisis impaired. Most ridiculous song: "Double S," where Bill picks up a babe in a bar whose nametag says "S.S." on it, and he tries to guess what those intitals stand for to no avail, and she orders a Scotch and Soda, and he drives her back to her hotel (the Surf And Sand, or something like that) because she's flying out tomorrow on a Seven Oh Seven (which he guesses because he's Super Smart.) (Only disapppointment is that they don't watch Sesame Street together after Sloppy Sex, since that show's where the alliterative cadence seems to come from, and she doesn't wind up revealing herself as a She Wolf of the S.S.) Next song is about making love to a "Married Lady," which sounds totally sleazy, but then at song's end, surprise, it turns out she's married to the singer, awww. Anyway, what really puts it all over the top is that Anderson recites most of the songs in a kind of hushed, talked tone that, as far as I can think of, might be unique in the country music realm -- with the disco embellishments, he winds up seeming like a country equivalent of Barry White, or maybe early '70s Isaac Hayes. Turns out, though, that that vocal style is not something Anderson concocted specifically for this album. AMG: "One of the most successful songwriters in country music history, Bill Anderson was also a hugely popular singer in his own right, earning the nickname 'Whispering Bill' for his gentle, airy vocal style and occasional spoken narrations." I don't know his other stuff at all, though he'd apparently been charting with country albums -- including lots of top 10s -- since 1964. But, according to the Whitburn country chart book I have, Ladies Choice, which peaked at #44, was his last regular issue LP to chart. (A Best Of hit #64 in '91, but that's it.) Not sure if that means the disco effectively killed his career; fwiw, his two previous albums in '77 and '78 (which may or may not have had country-disco on them) barely reached the lower 30s, so his era was clearly already on the wane.

.."On the wane" in chart terms, anyway; he's apparently still around, though, since he does a (mostly talked) duet with Jamey Johnson on the title track of JJ's forthcoming The Guitar Song album.

Closely related to this thread, there was some scattered talk earlier this year on the Rolling Country thread about Barbara Mandrell's r&b influences; here for instance (but search her name for more):

Rolling Country 2010

"Potential New Boyfriend" is cool. Parton also released a synthed-up covers album (produced by Motels and Kim Carnes fave Val Garay) the following year called The Great Pretender.

Check out "Save the Last Dance For Me" – and its opening chord!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzAPh5I2ua8

Frank Kogan suggests that Dottie West recorded some disco/adult-contemporary/country tracks, sometimes (if I'm understanding him right) as duets with Kenny Rogers. Not familiar with those off-hand myself, though I wouldn't doubt that I've heard some of them:

Rolling Country 2010

Think I mentioned upthread the Rolling Stone Record Guide review of the Addrisi Brothers' Nashville-recorded 1977 LP on Buddah, which the book referred to as "cracker disco." Well, I found a copy for a dollar last week, and had my hopes up a little, but it's not very good -- and also, even if those are Nashville studio pros playing on it ("strings and horns arranged by Sanchez Harley," if that helps anybody), there's nothing I'd identify as "country" on it, at all. Actually more calypso or reggae tinges (in two or three songs), and salsa-type Latin (in "Emergency," probably the best track), but mostly it seems like aging white pop guys trying to make a blue-eyed-falsetto-soul disco-era comeback, a la the Bee Gees obviously, or even the Four Seasons (circa "Who Loves You" in 1975 say, though "Emergency" actually sort of quotes "Let's Hang On!" from a decade earlier.) Turns out the Addrissi Bros were Massachusetts boys born 1938 and 1941, so they'd have been in their late 30s; they had a #62 hit in 1959 with something called "Cherrystone," then a #25 called "We've Got To Get It On Again" in 1972. Their biggest hit, "Slow Dancin' Don't Turn Me On," where they ask the DJ to play some disco or rock'n'roll not a ballad, is on this LP and got to #20, and two other tracks went Hot 100. But they also cover "Never My Love," which had hit #2 for the Association in 1967, and which it turns out the Addrissis wrote, so I guess those are the royalties that bought them that pool and those stomach-turning organgey fake tans on the LP cover. (Association's version is a lot prettier; so is Cobra Verde's actually.) They also say what's good for the goose is good for the gander on the last song on the first side and monkey see monkey do on the second song on the second side, so they apparently like sayings that compare people to animals. Latter also has Tarzan & Jane references, and attempts at jungle rhythms, sort of. Second side in general is slightly rougher and funkier and lower-registered than the first; some passably brassy early '70s style minstrel-pop in "Baguio," and the version of "Does She Do It Like She Dances" that ends the album seems a little meatier than the one that starts the album. So, not a horrible disco record, but not one I ever figure I'll want to play again, either. Mostly, they just come off as real sleazy singles-bar hacks, and look it, too:

http://www.shugarecords.com/images/records/9baab9a5-4381-44b6-bae5-dafae5c2e7f7-0.JPG

Kinda figures that Jerry Reed would've done this once or twice, given his whole funky white boy Dixieland minstrel talk-country ethos (hired great drummers too), but I never knew where 'til now: Answer is "I Get Off On It," on 1982's The Bird, a blatant disco-country track about people's quirks and kinks: woman who eats chocolate bars during sex, guy who loves chewing snuff, and most significantly a "pretty thing out in Los Angeles" who's actually a man dressed like a woman, which Jerry does not criticize except to the extent that fools like him get fooled. The crossdresser tells him "it ain't no skin off your nose/I just dig them ladies' clothes," upon which Jerry laughs and compliments his hose, which might or might not be a double entendre. (This was two years before Moe & Joe's Boy George-inspired trannie-country hit "Where's The Dress," 27 years before Phil Vassar's "Bobbi With An I".) Rest of the album's not disco, but still probably one of the funkiest county albums I've ever heard. Two top-two country novelty singles, both talked -- "The Bird," about a parrot who can perfectly imitate Willie Nelson and George Jones (and does, though I think Jerry figures out he's being scammed), and the divorce classic "She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft)" ("they split it right down the middle/and she got the better half"), which in retrospect mixes county, funk, hard rock powerchords, and rapped words in ways that predate the first Big N Rich LP by decades. Other two singles were apparently the cover of CCR's "Down On The Corner" (again, talked to the funky rhythm more than Fogerty did it) and "I'm A Slave," about addictions to smoking (I keep thinking it'll turn into "Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette" but it doesn't), loose women, etc. Other great song -- again, talked, not sung -- is "Good Time Saturday Night," about being poor during the Depression and then being poor again during the early '80s recession, and how the WPA then (which Reed says got his dad a job) and food stamps and unemployment benefits now (which he also doesn't badmouth) are continued proof that hard times are always with us. And there's another track called "Hard Times" itself that I could've sworn had Hank Jr. on it; might need to go back and check.

Nah, no Bocephus on that song; just Reed sounding like Bocephus -- like "A Country Boy Can Survive", which had gone #2 country the year before, to be exact. Except this isn't some proto-Tea Party small-town chauvinism thing; just Reed talking again, though angrier this time, about growing up poor, eating beans every night.

"The Bird," fwiw, actually samples the choruses of Willie's "Whiskey River" and "On The Road Again" and George's "He Stopped Loving Her Today" (decades before Shooter Jennings did the same thing with that same George Jones song, in "4th Of July.")

Is Millie Jackson's A Little Bit of Country album actually a little bit of country? I just picked it up for two bucks.

Awesome thread.

Chuck is a star.

love this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8MrObXGrY

chuck, are you a johnny d fan? you probably are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG0y7VdFSXM

chuck, the most disco sylvia song is actually "the matador". wonder if she was a Babe Ruth fan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zm7KejJrU4

I think I actually might've linked to that Johnny D video somewhere upthread. (Had the CD it was on too, but pretty sure I don't anymore -- It was lame, despite the promising concept.) And Millie Jackson for sure did country songs (she covers Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers songs on LPs I've got), so presumably that album bamcquern mentions is (one of) her country one(s), which I've definitely heard that she made.

Was thinking Disco Four were the pre-Fat Boys Fat Boys, but nope, that was the Disco Three. Do remember "Country Rock And Rap" existing before, though. (Don't think I ever owned it, unlike at least one Disco Three 12-inch I bizarrely got rid of.) And yeah, somebody else (Michael Freedberg maybe?) mentioned that Sylvia "Matador" song to me before. (Maybe even on this thread.)

"You Get High In N.Y.C.," first of four songs on Italodisco originators Mauro Malavasi and Jacques Fred Petrus's (seemingly partially Village People-inspired) pre-Change project Revanche's 1979 (and maybe only) album Music Man, goes into what sounds like an extended country hoedown part (within the Eurodisco rhythm) about a third of the way in; liner notes credit The Goody Music String Ensemble for "strings", but they sure seem more like fiddles than violins there. (Then, two thirds of the way in, there's an extended Latin conga break. Next song, "Revenge," should've been mentioned in the disco-metal appendix of my metal book due to its repeated hard rock guitar parts and tough guy vocals; like the 1982 Rose Tattoo song of the same name, which I was just listening to a couple days ago and couldn't figure out whether it was right-to-work or pro-union, Revanche's "Revenge" is a kind of blue-collar working man's anthem -- "we don't want to work for nothing.")

here's an amazing AMG review of mac davis's forty 82 LP:

You have to wonder if Mac Davis knew that when he signed to Casablanca Records there was a subliminal message in every contract that somehow every record on the label except for Kiss albums had to have disco elements -- even after disco was dead. After all, if they did it to T. Rex with Light of Love, why wouldn't they do it to the "I Believe in Music" man. This record is so bad it's almost surreal. Rick Hall should have had his producer's license taken away just for the opening cut, "Lying Here Lying," with its swirling strings, synthesizers, and funky drum machines popping off those ping sounds in the background. Even on the "country" songs such as "Late at Night," the guitars are so compressed they sound like thin spaghetti played through a Fender amplifier, and the keyboards can't make up their minds whether to sound like pianos or synths. Ugh. "The Beer Drinkin' Song," a self-penned, hedonistic racist anthem, is embarrassing in its blatant rip-off of Ray Wylie Hubbard and Jimmy Buffett. OK, that's just side one, and side two is worse. Enough said; hopefully all the remaining copies of this record in the warehouse -- and surely there were plenty -- were melted down and used for something constructive.

ok, now i want to hear this. anyone know this record?

Wow, had no idea about that Mac Davis LP. I definitely passed up some Mac Davis LPs in a 25-cent rack a couple weeks ago, too; now I wonder if that one was in there.

Carlene Carter's Blue Nun from 1981 (produced by hubbie Nick Lowe, my copy is a U.K. import on F-Beat) has what sounds to me like two fairly blatant disco attempts on it, both of which at least halfway seem to comment on the move in their lyrics/titles: "I Need A Hit" and "Born To Move," also two of the few tracks on the album not at least partially writing-credited to Lowe. (The latter's credited to "Fogerty" -- uh, apparently a Creedence cover from Pendulum? Interesting.) Neither seems all that great to me, though, or even really all that country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGECts7TZrM

There's a bunch of so-so, ok, and pretty great Travis Wammack disco cuts on two albums that were simultaneously released in 1982, "Follow Me," and "A Man... And A Guitar." This extended version of Hold On To Your Hiney is the best of 'em.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu1t4oeR7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVqXxK-gK0w&feature=related

Probably Tony Joe White got mentioned upthread, but has anyone heard his 'Real Thang" LP? Didn't look too hard, but "Get Off On It" is pretty nasty!

^ I mean, I haven't heard anything else off the album but this one song... would be interested to know what the rest of the album sounds like. There's a track called "disco blues" also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoasSfLFQ8

That was awesome. Thanks for posting.

really dig steve young but had not heard that one until today

Fabulous Poodles weigh in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEaI9xj9e8w

Just remembered this existed today, after at least 25 years - Presumably the only Eddie Rabbit cover ever produced by Was (Not Was).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS8OMOXIObA

Lacy J. Dalton - "Imagine That" (on #23-country-charting album 16th Avenue, 1982)

Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker - 'Why Don't We Just Sleep on It Tonight' is a lost country-disco classic. Just incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSW0ZjiNu_k

Sheila B. Devotion "Seven Lonely Days" (1979) sounds to me a like a pop-country song from that era given an over-the-top Eurodisco-synth rhythm.

Gimme Baby I'm Burnin' instead

This is not that different from Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing." In fact I think I prefer it.

That was a wild sequence of #1s though, the ones you mention. I remember it so well. Peak singles bar era.

Is Dolly the only country artist to get the proper 12" treatment or is this thread holding out?

Extended version of baby I'm burning is the best thing that ever happened to me. Did Tammy just do this with the klf?

not disco-era, but reba mcentire had a hit 12-inch when her version of "you keep me hangin' on" from her 1995 album was remixed