(vintage) country-disco

If teh disco is a barn

http://pdyer.trrill.com/blogimgs/c51.jpg

you think? (you mean the version with ann-margret, right? was there a disco version that i haven't heard?)

BECK, EAT YOUR DIANETICS HEART OUT

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Linda Ronstadt "American Dream" qualifies.

Lee Hazlewood - "Your Thunder And Your Lightnin"

>i'm going to use your suggestions to make a CDRGO. it'd be nice to have >a definitive tracklist. it could take a while to find all these... does >anyone feel generous enough to YSI a few things?

Please send this to me.

Yacht R & B. (by the by those tracks always sound like a direct influence on R Kelly's "Fiesta" and "Ignition"!)

Are there any early loft type songs that might pass?

There's an MP3 here http://www.mushrumps.com/shrumps/dailyshrump.php?idayno=7

but further.. I have no idea.

Wait, so is that the same Diesel who did "Sausalito Summernight"? I never thought of that as country:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZfrkWDAQpzI

But this is: Barbara Mandell, "Is It Love Yet"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nch-ENnAtRE

Related, somehow or other, and usually really weird:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PG0y7VdFSXM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpwRjmfgmSc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BccPbsKva0Q&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VCBm3LHUlBE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UXOe-1FA0h0

http://youtube.com/watch?v=enlAjUJCxuc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ifHqKm4W2Ns&feature=related

Also: Eddie Rabbitt's "Someone Could Lose A Heart Tonight" belongs on this thread somewhere.

has anyone mentioned Tony Joe White's disco stuff--"I Get Off On It," '80 on Casablanca? And George Jones' '78 Bartender's Blues cut "I Ain't Got No Business Doing Business Today" is also a great disco tune, complete with saucy background chicks.

what about T. Graham Brown?

Did T. Graham Brown every actually do any disco per se? I know he has lots of stuff that's basically soul music, but I don't know his dancier stuff well.

I'm really obsessed with the songs that are picked for country line-dancing on youtube, like that "Red Hot Salsa" one and the Leroy Parnell one about hot tamales, which all the videos call "Hot Tamales" (I guess that's the name of the dance?), even though that's not the name of the song. There are also line dance videos to John Anderson's "Funky Country" up on youtube. And thing is, these were never country hits. So I don't get if it starts with crate-digging by DJs hunting for country songs that have a great beat (just like hip-hop DJs back in the old days), or if certain songs are plugged to country line- dance clubs, or what. I'm curious about the process.

"Red Hot Salsa" -- which sounds like country set to Latin rhythms, but not Mexican ones -- is apparently by some guy named Dave Sheriff who I've never heard of before, and there are tons of videos up on youtube with people dancing to it, many of them in central Europe, where for all I know there's been a country dancing craze for years. Sheriff's version sounds better than the Mano Wyoming one I linked to.

boys don't cry - "i wanna be a cowboy"

Hey guys - can any of you recommend some Country-Rap-Disco? Something like Bubba Sparxx or Nappy Roots, with an uptempo beat.

Rob - I don't know of anything else along the lines of uptempoed Bubba (who made my 2003 country critics ballot) or Nappy, though I'm sure it's out there. David Banner's "Cadillac On 22s" got on enough country ballots (incl. mine) to make the Nashville Scene's year-end poll list, though I'd call that song country-blues-rap without any disco in sight. I assume you already know about Big & Rich's hip-hop nods (though their tendency is more funk than disco) and Cowboy Troy's hick-hop. The "Barn Dance Mix" of Troy's "I Play Chicken With The Train" is unabashed disco-country-rap (though not much like Bubba or Nappy) and was one of the few redeeming moments on his second album.

And a couple of us think that Taylor Swift's "Lose Yourself" (here in a blue dress and here in a violet dress) is the best non-hip-hop version of a hip-hop song ever, and it's totally Taylor, though again not particularly Bubba or Nappy or disco.

And as long as we're abandoning Jody Beth's "vintage" requirement, there's a bootleg "D-Bop Radio Edit" dance remix of Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" that veers towards freestyle and Italodisco. And Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" is basically a rockabilly song given a Moroder-disco beat (and is more country than the duet with her dad, though that's the track that got onto the country stations).

And Texas Lightning's "No No Never" (Germany's voyage in 2006 to a strange land called Eurovision) is a country song that doesn't disguise its Europop heart.

weird. i was just listening to Paul Delicato's "Off on an Island" record when i saw this thread. i bought it because it's on AVI records, but then heard this mix of disco & country and kinda recoiled in horror. it's mostly terrible with a few moments that shine through. will definitely be in the trash pile soon though.

http://dreamchimney.com/slvs/IMG_1644_20060814072359.jpg

Edd's nomination of Tony Joe White's Casablanca record might be the most exact fit, but I'm surprised to be the only one to say Tompall Glaser's "I Just Want to Hear the Music" off his '77 record (the opening song of which, "You Can Have Her," has one of the slinkiest funk basslines i've ever heard wobble on a country track); "Music" locks into a hi-hat disco groove and rides it all the way.

Dave and Sugar surely have a few records that fit the bill. I had a couple of their LPs, and definitely recall some thump in there, but "The Door is Always Open" is the only one that comes to mind.

Terri Gibbs is a good call, too. When "Somebody's Knockin'" hit, it really jumped out of C&W radio at the time with a modern kind of beat, a strangely minimal melody and a new-wavish sexual anxiety. When I first saw her on TV (Hee-Haw, probably), I thought the shades were cool, but when I realized she was blind, that made sense, too.

Mentioned this album upthread:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=u4nUmEragqg&feature=related

And if this doesn't count as uptempo country-rap-disco, I don't know what would:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rg5iOpwH8sw

This song is probably somewhere in the neighborhood too (though maybe not necessarily these versions):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YSf6Mrz9TtM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3HdbaHeFzYM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k68aWJB7ats&feature=related

Kool Moe Dee didn't sound country, but he was a cowboy anyway:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IuDL-TcKXoY

And actually, there were occasional old rap songs that incorporated a country influence, like Onyx's almost unknown single "Ah And We Do It Like This," from a few years before they had actual hits. (And don't Field Mob have a country-ish song or two? Probably not as country as Bubba, though, but he really only did it on his second album, right?)

Silver Spurz Orchestra, "Happy Trails"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O1kWKURg59M&feature=related

Skatt Brothers, "Life At The Outpost" -- holy shit!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eLTLbwT5CKc&feature=related

Hilarious biography of Showdown, of Welcome to the Rodeo non-fame:

http://www.canadianbands.com/Showdown.html

Tanya Tucker made some moves in this direction during the TNT era. Not from that album, but Crossfire of Desire is a hot one.

I was thinking Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds or Firefall ...

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