Mining the archives

Mainstream country music has been in the doldrums for the past few years, which makes it difficult for longtime fans to find interesting new music. Precious little has caught my fancy, since most of my favorite artists are either no longer recording on a regular basis, or have compromised their music considerably in order to remain relevant as far as country radio is concerned. Unable to find much that is both new and to my liking, I’ve been concentrating on older music that I haven’t heard before, either because I overlooked it when it was new, or because it has only recently been made available for purchase again.

I’ve lost track of how many CDs are in my collection, but the last time I counted several years ago, it was around the 500 mark. The bulk of them were purchased between 1988 and 2000. I couldn’t possibly afford to buy every new release that I liked during the 90s, so I had a core group of artists for whom I kept up with every new release, and others for whom I only bought hits compilations and occasional studio albums. Trisha Yearwood fell into the latter category, so when Nashville’s creative well began to run dry a few years ago, I began to collect some of her albums that I hadn’t bothered with when they were first released. From there I moved on to collecting the catalogs of Pam Tillis and Emmylou Harris.

Many of my favorite artists peaked commercially before I was old enough to earn my own pocket money to buy their music, and most of their studio albums didn’t make it to CD until recent years, so I’ve spent a lot of time filling in the gaps in my collection. Thanks to Germany’s Bear Family Records, I’ve managed to acquire a decade’s worth of George Jones’ music, encompassing three boxed sets, as well as a boxed set covering Connie Smith’s first nine LPs for RCA. I’m looking forward to a second Smith boxed set, which reportedly is in the works, but won’t be released this year as originally announced.

More recently I’ve begun to purchase some of Merle Haggard’s early albums for Capitol, and I’m just beginning to tackle the daunting task of familiarizing myself with Johnny Cash’s catalog. Cash had fallen out of favor with country radio by the time I started listening to it, and I didn’t fully appreciate this musical genius when I was younger. About two years ago I downloaded Cash’s The Definitive Collection, not realizing at first that the well-known titles it contained were re-recordings that he’d made for Mercury Records after ending a 27-year association with CBS. Many critics consider his Mercury recordings to be his weakest, but I quite enjoyed both the remakes and newer material on The Definitive Collection, which led me to purchase the albums from which the tracks were culled. In doing so, I discovered 1988’s excellent Water From the Wells of Home, which is truly an understated gem.

Digging into the back catalogs of these great artists has underscored for me how cheated today’s country music fans are — and that is not just an indictment of the quality of today’s country music. Artists like Johnny Cash, George Jones, Connie Smith, Waylon Jennings, and Loretta Lynn have left behind sizable bodies of work, whereas contemporary artists, releasing only one album every two or three years, will not. Shania Twain’s legacy will rest primarily on the strength of three successful albums. While not every cut in the catalogs of Cash, Jones, Smith, Jennings, and Lynn is a gem, I’m extremely grateful for their large catalogs which are helping me get through these meager times.

Who are some of the artists whose catalogs you feel you need to examine more closely?