The critical consensus at the end of 2000 was that it had been one of the weakest film years in recent memory. Which may have been true, despite O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen brothers' delightfully warm and weird Depression-era re-telling of Homer's Odyssey. But for music lovers, 2000 was an amazing year at the movies, and it produced ...
Folsom Prison looms large in Johnny Cash's legacy, providing the setting for perhaps his definitive song and the location for his definitive album, At Folsom Prison. The ideal blend of mythmaking and gritty reality, At Folsom Prison is the moment when Cash turned into the towering Man in Black, a haunted troubadour singing songs of crime, ...
At the height of outlaw country, Willie Nelson pulled off perhaps the riskiest move of the entire bunch. He set aside originals, country, and folk and recorded Stardust, a collection of pop standards produced by Booker T Jones. Well, it's not entirely accurate to say that he put away country and folk, since these are highly idiosyncratic ...
Released in 1972, the double-album/single-CD All-Time Greatest Hits remains one of the best compilations ever assembled on Marty Robbins. Featuring 20 tracks -- including most of his big hits -- there are very few essential tracks missing from the collection. As an introduction, this relatively concise compilation is a bit more manageable than the ...
Willie Nelson recorded for many labels during the course of his lengthy career, but his greatest commercial success arrived during his time on Columbia during the late '70s and early '80s, which is one of the reasons that the career-spanning double-disc collection The Essential Willie Nelson appeared on Columbia/Legacy in 2003. The other reason, ...
Miranda Lambert didn't win the first Nashville Star in 2003, but she sure is the first bona fide star the televised music competition has produced, as her stellar 2007 sophomore album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt. Taking her cue from the vengeful spurned woman of "Kerosene," her hit debut single, Lambert has built her ...
Working with Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler had a rejuvinating influence on Chet Atkins. Knopfler has Atkins moving toward his country roots, but both guitarists still play with a tasteful, jazzy sensibility -- however, Atkins has abandoned the overt jazz fusion pretensions that sank most of his '80s records. With its direct, understated ...
Many of Johnny Cash's biggest hits, among them "Ring of Fire," "Understand Your Man," and "A Boy Named Sue," are included on Legacy's 16 Biggest Hits. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Bringing together Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt for the album Trio was a truly inspired idea, and not simply because they were three of the finest voices in country and pop music at the time. While a gifted entertainer, Parton is also a business-savvy professional who will willingly set aside her gifts as a pure country singer ...
12 Greatest Hits is exactly what it says it is -- 12 of Patsy Cline's biggest hits, including all of her classic singles: "Walkin' After Midnight," "I Fall to Pieces," "Sweet Dreams," "Crazy," "She's Got You," "Faded Love," and "Leavin' on Your Mind." There's also a number of lesser-known gems like "Why Can't He Be You," which are as good as the ...
Even though he also cut a slew of country ballads and honky tonk tunes, Horton's fame rests with these folk saga songs. After spending the majority of the '50s reworking the classic sound of Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Webb Pierce, Horton scored with country shuffle cuts like "Honky Tonk Man." It wasn't until 1958, though, that he broke ...
Widely agreed upon as technically perfect, this five-year-in-the-making collaboration among these Oprytown divas should be a diamond -- or three diamonds: a Trio II tiara. But this album, for all its harmonic, sopranic vibrato perfection, is not a glassy ride across the entire lake. Let Linda Ronstadt covet the tracks for her own album projects as ...
The Definitive Collection delivers 25 essential tracks by Don Williams, spanning his tenure with ABC, MCA, and Capitol Records. With the exception of "Stay Young," all of his chart-topping country hits from the '70s and '80s are here, including "Heartbeat in the Darkness," "Tulsa Time," "I Believe in You," "Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good," and "I ...
Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs was Marty Robbins' first album to consist entirely of Western and cowboy music. Containing the hit single "El Paso," the album was divided between originals, traditional cowboy songs, and contemporary Western songs. The result was a successful and thoroughly entertaining celebration of cowboy songs and Western ...
By 1994, Vince Gill was a bona fide country superstar. His recordings had sold into the millions and his tours were sellouts around the globe. He was ubiquitous on the radio as well. Producer Tony Brown took an even heavier hand on Gill's recordings, even though Gill's own songs dominated his records. The tightrope walk between a handsome tender ...
Though it is credited to Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, A Star Is Born is in effect the soundtrack album to the motion picture of the same name, a rock-oriented retelling of the story that had been filmed three times before. That it is not billed as a soundtrack only indicates that the album contains the songs featured in the film, but ...
Shout! Factory's 2006 Legends of Country: Classic Hits from the '50s, '60s & '70s was released in conjunction with a PBS television special of the same name, and where the TV show showcased live recordings, the album is a three-disc box set that serves up original recordings of 57 country standards -- roughly one disc apiece for the '50s, '60s and ...
Johnny Cash's fourth project with producer Rick Rubin continues on the same path as many of their previous releases: Cash's warm and rumbling baritone over minimal production and gentle duets with some surprising guests. One of the things that sets American IV: The Man Comes Around apart from the others is Cash's song selections. The success he ...
It's arguable that Miranda Lambert's debut album, Kerosene, is the first true Nashville product produced in the wake of Gretchen Wilson, crafted with an eye on the audience that Wilson's stylized redneck raunch won. Of course, with her golden blonde hair and good looks, Lambert seems like she would be crushed by the rampaging Gretchen, and there's ...
This compilation of patriotic and inspirational country music clearly is intended to respond to the national mood in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It is for the most part a label sampler of recordings from Sony's Columbia and Epic labels. The material has been assembled from existing sources rather than being newly written ...
Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge inaugurated their musical partnership in 1973 (also the year of their marriage) with Full Moon, which topped the country charts, and they quickly followed with 1974's Breakaway, another album with healthy sales. By the time of their third and final duo LP, Natural Act, a little more than four years later, much ...
This may be Randy Travis' second gospel album in three years, but that doesn't make it redundant. Travis, like George Jones, Merle Haggard, and George Strait, could sing the back of a can of peas and make it sound inspired. When the material he takes on is the absolute core of country gospel and public domain spirituals, the result is nothing less ...
It's a mystery why Columbia has so many Robbins compilations in print, since they all cover roughly the same territory. Lifetime of Song (1951-1982) isn't as comprehensive as the Essential Marty Robbins: 1951-1982 box, nor as concise as The Story of My Life; what it is, rather, is a kind of a follow-up to 1972's All-Time Greatest Hits collection, ...
Loretta Lynn retired from the music business in the '90s, returning to her home in Nashville to take care of her husband, Oliver Lynn, as he was dying. As it happens, she left the spotlight at a time that was not kind to country legends like herself, as they were exiled from country radio and left with a fraction of their audience. Some tried to ...
The Sons of the Pioneers went through so many different lineups over the decades -- especially from the end of the 1950s onward -- that it was often difficult to know precisely who was singing on various LPs drawn from different parts of their history. Cool Water, however, was the group's first stereo release, cut in June of 1959 as one of RCA ...
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![At Folsom Prison [1999 Expanded Edition]](http://images.alibris.com/cover/k51044kqn7y_t.jpg)
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