Rolling Country 2009 Thread

xp McGraw's 1999 album was actually A Place In The Sun, duh. (Title I listed above belongs to Little Big Town, eight years later.)

Also like The Tractors' debut album, from 1994. (Not sure where they fit into this. Seems like there might've been some kinda mini/semi/lite-Western-swing-rock revival on the country charts in the early/mid '90s. Which reminds me I also don't know the Mavericks' individual albums, but their Super Colossal Smash Hits Of The '90s best-of is good.)

In pre-'90s news, here is the very approximate order of how much I've (so far) liked a bunch of old vinyl country LPs I bought for $1 each in the past six months or so:

1. (Various) Motels And Memories (Warner Special Products 1981) (100% country cheating songs, from the mid '70s to early '80s)
2. The Delmore Brothers - The Best Of (Starday 1975)
3. Charlie Rich - I Do My Swingin' At Home (Epic 1973)
4. O.C. Smith - Hickory Holler Revisited (Columbia LP, 1968)
5. David Allan Coe - Longhaired Redneck (Columbia 1976)
6. George Strait - Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind (MCA LP, 1984)
7. The Forester Sisters - Perfume, Ribbons & Pearls (Warner Bros. 1986)
8. Georgia Satellites - Georgia Satellites (Elektra/Asylum, 1986)
9. Gene Watson - The Best Of (Capitol 1978)
10. Jason & the Scorchers - Lost And Found (EMI 1985)
11. Billie Joe Spears - Blanket On The Ground (United Artists 1975)
12. Billy Swan - Rock N Roll Moon (Monument 1975)
13. Merle Haggard and the Strangers - I Love Dixie Blues (Capitol 1973)
14. Bobby Bland - Get On Down With (Dunhill LP, 1974) (w/ covers of Merle Haggard and Charlie Rich songs)
15. Keith Sykes - I'm Not Strange I'm Just Like You (Backstreet 1980)
16. Rattlesnake Annie - Rattlesnake Annie (Columbia 1987)
17. Gary Stewart - Your Place Or Mine (RCA LP, 1977)
18. Dobie Gray - From Where I Stand (Capitol 1986)
19. Hank Thompson - Movin' On (ABC 1974)
20. Gary Stewart & Dean Dillon - Brotherly Love (RCA 1982)
21. Marshall Chapman - Marshall Chapman (Epic 1978)

Marshall Chapman and Stewart/Dillon went right into the "sell" pile; still on fence about the (presumably way past his prime, and not nearly Western Swingy enough) Hank Thompson. The rest appear to be keepers.

Oops (again), actually that Chapman LP (on which she lifelessly interprets both "I Walk The Line" and Bob Seger's "Turn The Page") is called Jaded Virgin; just hard to tell by looking at the cover.

And Stewart's Your Place Or Mine might objectively deserve to be higher on that list, except that I've owned its two best songs (title track and especially "Ten Years Of This") on his 1981 Greatest Hits (one of my favorite country albums of all time) for decades, and most of the rest doesn't leave as much of an impression as I wish.

I'm almost positive Marshall Chapman was marketed primarily to mainstream pop and rock. I remember seeing that LP cover in ads in many places.

Produced by Al Kooper
Album of the Year - Stereo Review

It sez on her website. Not much kindness meted out by Christgau, even on the follow-up in
1979. Course that means they might actually, in fact, rock.

The one I bought sure doesn't. (Interesting, though, who Xgau compares her too: "a lot more confident, clever, and animated than such Northern counterparts as Ellen Foley and Ellen Shipley, but she's a fairly one-dimensional conservative compared to Pearl E. Gates or Chrissie Hynde." But apparently she was based in Nashville, and I'd say she sounds more country than rock -- though I'm saying that with 2009 ears, of course.)

One guy who wrote pretty well about country in the early '90s, fwiw, was Ken Tucker (the future Entertainment Weekly/NPR Ken Tucker, not the future Billboard Ken Tucker); he did a one-time country-only Consumer Guide in the Voice that I really liked, and wish I still had a copy of.

I lurk/skim this thread and I was thinking of mentioning that Ken Tucker was writing about country back in that period you mentioned, but then I thought, nah, they probably don't like the way he covered it or something.

I'm confused by your comment though in regard to whether or not he is still active. I thought he was, but maybe I've been seeing this other Ken Tucker? There are two? I remember Ken Tucker from way back when Fresh Air first started up. I used to listen to it after school, in high school. (Thank god I was doing something intelligent instead of wasting my time feeling up high school girls or going down on them in their parents' garage!)

Sorry to burst in as a "country hater" and everything (although one who will be voting for Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift in this year's ILM poll, which is more than I can say for any rock acts).

Yep, definitely two Ken Tuckers out there -- (maybe even three or four!) And as far as I know, they're both still active (don't think I ever said otherwise, though maybe something I said was ambiguous.) I'm not sure whether the EW/NPR Ken still writes about country, though.

Trisha Yearwood and Lorrie Morgan a couple more '90s country stars who compiled best-of CDs worth keeping in the '00s. (Trisha's is more consistent than Lorrie's, but I was a big fan of Lorrie's '90s "Send In The Clowns"-bombastic marriage-on-skids cabaret-country wardrobe-closet ballad "Something In Red", and also her cover of Journey's "Faithfully" and her new wavey Roxette haircut. Didn't hate the albums I heard at the time, but also didn't like them near enough to hang on to them. But even more than Trisha she was clearly going for the desperate exurban housewife demographic, whose tastes I should probably bend to more.)

John Morthland's Best of Country Music Guide came out in 1984, and I don't know if any other rock critic tried anything like it subsequently

David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren put out Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles in 2003. It's a good book, and definitely includes assorted late '80s and '90s records, and they make good cases for pop crossover throughout (though they have a definite grudge, it seems, against the Urban Cowboy era.) So there's that. I'd also be surprised if there weren't certain country critics writing intelligently about country; more like, I just wasn't following them. And country records -- especially the more pop kind -- certainly weren't doing very well in, say, the Pazz & Jop poll at the time. (They're still not, but they do better than they used to.)

Relistening to that Corb Lund gambling song from the video that Frank linked, I'm thinking his singing is not as incompetent and wooden as I implied above. It's...functional. But plain, kind of lazy, and not exceptional in any way. He sounds more or less in the same category as any of the (right, mostly folkie/bohemian) "red dirt" guys that I hear on the more alternative-leaning country stations in and around Austin --Jason Boland, Robert Earl Keen, Randy Rogers, Ryan Bingham, those sorts of cowpokes. If I heard that song on the car radio (and around here, if he was from Texas, that'd be possible), I might be less bored by it.

Only '90s LeAnn material I've heard is the stuff on her Greatest Hits, which, to my surprise - it being a hits record - isn't as good as her regular '00s albums. I do like "Blue" and "How Do I Live" and "Can't Fight The Moonlight (dance mix)," which are the first three tracks on Greatest Hits. And as you say, "Moonlight" is 2000, and maybe even 2001 for the dance mix.

Amazingly (to me anyway), Billboard says that Taylor Swift being 2009's Billboard artist of the year (based on cumulative success on chart positions throughout the year) makes her "the first solo female or country act to earn the honor since 1997. That was when Leann Rimes, then herself a young country crossover star, took the honor home."

What's amazing about it is that I feel like I was more or less oblivious to Leann Rimes -- and definitely to how huge a crossover star she allegedly was -- in 1997. (This goes along with something Frank wrote this week on his blog, about how, even with really popular music, you can miss it if you don't make an effort to keep up with it.)

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

I still have Billy Ray Cyrus's Some Gave All (1992) on my shelf, though. As I recall, it's not bad. I should put it back on sometime.

Think I still have Kenny Chensney's 2000 Greatest Hits CD around here somewhere, too; he'd apparently put out five albums by then, none of which I've heard. I get the idea that Chesney and McGraw and Keith didn't really evolve their personalities on record until at least the tail-end of the '90s, but they were around for a while before then. So maybe the country audience detected personalities I didn't.

I was oblivious to Leeann back in the 90s too. It looks like in 1997 she had 2 #1 albums of cover songs, one "pop" and the other "inspirational"--so perhaps she was that era's Groban or Buble (or Streisand.)

Also, Montgomery Gentry's debut Tattoos And Scars was 1999. And though they made albums I loved more later, this is still a real good one, and seems like their personalities were in place from the git-go. (First rock critic I know who noticed them was Joshua Clover, who did a short single review of "Daddy Won't Sell The Farm" for me at the Voice.)

And duh, they just keep coming -- Speaking of Leeanns, Lee Ann Womack's Some Things I Know was 1998. Possibly my favorite album by her, though she got way more acclaim and respect later; definitely has my favorite song she ever did, namely "I'll Think Of A Reason Later."

I still pull down the John Morthland book whenever I come across some artist that I'm not familiar with. But even he dismisses the Urban Cowboy era (and that era was still ongoing when his book came out in 1984)and/or Country Pop crossover one. In a section called Countrypolitan, he says not to look for any info on Kenny Rogers, Alabama, Oak Ridge Boys, John Denver, etc. There is a review in his book of Ronnie Milsap and Eddie Rabbitt, mostly praising their early stuff but looking down on the Pop hits.
BTW- the Countrypolitan artists he does like: Crystal Gayle, Anne Murray and Glen Campbell. But that section of the book is very brief.

There's also The Blackwell Guide To Country Music, edited by Bob Allen, from 1994. I use it as a reference on occasion, but keep it on a secondary shelf in another room for good reason. Anyway, I should re-read Allen's "The 1980s And Beyond" chapter (which does seem to include writeups of several recommended albums toward the end) in the next couple days, but to give you a clue, here's how it starts: "The very early 1980s were, at least from a creative standpoint, a period of relative bleakness in country music." Later; this is awesome: "An even more disturbing barometer of how dismal and directionless country's commercial mainstream had become by the early 1980s was the LA-to-Nashville 'bimbo' invasion. During those years, any number of modestly talented but nubile Southern California pop songstresses recorded half-baked 'country' records which, remarkably, made minor dents in the country record charts. (A California singer named Carole Chase even had evanescent success with a Los Angeles-produced LP of 'country-disco' dubiously entitled Sexy Songs)." Ha -- dollar bins, here I come!

hey chuck this isn't country related, but i asked my parents/friends for stairway to hell for christmas, and they couldn't find it. is it out of print or something? i'm just curious, so as to see if i could find it somewhere else

Loooong out of print, but isn't it on Amazon for really cheap still?

Uh, guess it's considered "collectible" now; wtf?? Hey, I'll sell my copy for $133.75 + $3.99 shipping if somebody will pay me that.

http://www.amazon.com/Stairway-Hell-Chuck-Eddy/dp/030680817X

I wonder what dumb people pay for the first edition these days.

Hey $40 (second edition) on ebay. (Amazon's got several a lot cheaper; I just wanted to brag about that expensive one).

http://cgi.ebay.com/Stairway-to-Hell-:-Chuck-Eddy-(Paperback,-1998)_W0QQitemZ341320660834QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20091216?IMSfp=TL091216217001r32542

haha alright thanks, i checked amazon after christmas, and they had used copies, but i wasn't sure how much i trusted that, quality wise, i mean, but they are cheap, so i might just go ahead and buy one of them. thanks

But they are not cheap anymore! That was my point! I'm not sure when the prices went up. It's not my fault, honest.

Back to hillbilly music -- there is a Link Wray album in that book. And sundry '70s Southern Rock LPs. If I were to update it now, though...

Btw, another '90s country star who put out a solid best-of CD in the '00s is Travis Tritt. I suspect he may have made solid albums in the '90s (and ones that presaged this decade's country-rock crossover), but if so, I don't know that I've ever actually sat through any of them.

Tritt's best album was Down The Road I Go from 2000. It's All About to Change from 91 was his biggest seller - it's the one with "Here's a Quarter". Great voice, but I generally found his choice of material pretty bland.

Actually, come to think of it, calling even Tritt's The Very Best CD (Rhino, 2007) "solid" is stretching it -- at 20 songs, including stinkers like "Can I Trust You With My Heart" and "Tell Me I Was Dreaming," it's about twice too long. (My favorite tracks, last time I checked, were "Where Corn Don't Grow" and "Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man.") I might have even liked his indie-label The Storm album from the same year more, actually -- even had a pretty great Nickelback cover, in "Should've Listened." I'm guessing he's one guy who may have been freed up to do stuff more in tune with what he's best at when he stopped having big hits in Nashville. (Kentucky Headhunters, this decade, would be another one, though as I said their turn of the '90s hits were pretty good at the time. And nobody's mentioned John Anderson, who made consistently great albums in the early '80s, and has made sporadically real good ones since, as a star and then as a post-star -- I assume Seminole Wind would have to rank as one of the best country albums of the '90s, though I don't actually own a copy.)

Rolling Country 2010:

Rolling Country 2010