Country music from a fan's point of view since 2008
The first major label album for Alabama was My Home’s In Alabama, although it was actually their fourth album. By the time RCA released this album in 1980, Alabama was a tight, cohesive band with a distinctive sound of their own and a decent track record of success with two of their MDJ singles having charted in 1979 (“I Wanna Come Over” at #33), and early 1980 (“My Home’s In Alabama” at #17).
With My Home’s In Alabama, Alabama was instantly transformed from a successful regional act into a national goliath Although the group was sometimes described as being country-rock or rock country, this album wasn’t close to fitting that category as the band didn’t begin to approximate the rockin’ sound of the Allman Brothers, Poco, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Marshall Tucker or even Hank Jr. for that matter. Even the title track is essentially a country song with extended instrumental breaks.
The album opens with “My Home’s In Alabama”, written by Teddy Gentry. I am not sure, but I think this track is a remake of the single released on MDJ. The track runs 6+ minutes and received considerable airplay after this album was released:
Drinkin’ was forbidden in my Christian country home
I learned to play the flattop on them good ol’ gospel songs
Then I heard about the barrooms just across the Georgia line
Where a boy could make a livin’ playin’ guitar late at night
Had to learn about the ladies; too young to understand
Why the young girls fall in love with the boys in the band
When the boys turn to music, the girls just turn away
To some other guitar picker in some other late night place
The next track is another Gentry-Owen composition “Hangin’ Up My Travelin’ Shoes”, a song which might have made a decent single but definitely not a better single than the actual singles that were released. The song is an up-tempo song about what the narrator is going to do now that he’s found the girl of his dreams:
‘I’m folding up my wings for you, I’m hanging up my travelin’ shoes’.
Teddy Gentry and Richard Scott penned “Why Lady Why” which was the second official RCA single released and the band’s second #1 single. The single was a slow ballad which Owen was able to wrap his vocal cords around to great effect. It is a nice ballad, although not especially country.
“Getting Over You” by Cary Rutledge, is a slow ballad , a good song but not particulary single-worthy. The next song, “I Wanna Come Over” written by Richard & Michael Berardi, actually was a single on MDJ, although I don’t recall hearing it while it was in single release.
“Tennessee River” was the first single released from the album and the first major label release for Alabama. It shot straight to #1 and has remained in the repertoire of bar bands and cover bands since it was first released 35 years ago. This upbeat song features a hot fiddle and was a great number for dancing (not that I, with my two left feet, ever danced to it):
I was born across the river in the mountains where I call home.
Lord, times were good there, don’t know why I ever roamed.[Chorus]
Oh, Tennessee River and a mountain man, we get together anytime we can.
Oh, Tennessee River and a mountain man, we play together in mother nature’s bandMe and my woman’s done made our plans on the Tennessee River, walkin’ hand in hand
Gonna raise a family, lord settle down where peace and love can still be found
“Some Other Place, Some Other Time” was written by Jeff Cook and features Jeff on lead vocals. The song is a nostalgic ballad and frankly, I don’t understand why RCA insisted that Randy Owen be the ‘face of the franchise’ as far as single releases were concerned.
Teddy Gentry wrote “Can’t Forget About You”, a nice ballad that was simply too long (5:39) to consider as a single. Yes, I know “My Home’s In Alabama” runs 6:27 and was issued as a single but that was a pre-RCA release.
“Get It While It’s Hot” was written by all three band members and Richard Scott. It’s kind of a funky R&B number, perhaps more suitable for dancing than listening. I regard it as the weakest track on the album, but it likely never was meant to be anything more that an album track.
The album closes with another Jeff Cook lead vocal on a track Jeff wrote with Richard Scott. “Keep On Dreamin’” is an excellent mid-tempo that would have made a good single.
I suspect this album featured more and better musicians that Alabama had available to them on MDJ, as the additional musicians are a Who’s Who of ace session men, including Jack Eubanks on acoustic guitar, Sonny Garrish on pedal steel guitar, Terry McMillan on percussion and Fred Newell on electric guitar. Alabama’s Jeff Cook plays lead guitar, with Teddy Gentry on bass guitar, Randy Owen on rhythm guitar and Mark Herndon on drums. All of the band members are involved with the vocal harmonies.
My Home’s In Alabama really got the ball rolling for the band, reaching #3 on the country album charts and #71 on Billboard’s all genre albums chart. Successful as this album was, the next eight albums would all reach #1 country and the next three would be top ten albums on the all genres album chart. As Frank Sinatra once sang “The Best Is Yet To Come”.
Alison Krauss’ contract with Rounder required her to alternate her solo albums with collaborations with her band. Two Highways is the first album under that arrangement credited to Alison Krauss & Union Station. Released in 1989 at a time when bluegrass was still largely regarded as country music’s red-headed stepchild, it is by and large a traditional affair. It has little of the genre envelope-pushing for which Alison would later become known, though it is a softer and more polished sound than was typical of bluegrass up to that time. It was produced by Bill Vorndick. Guest artist Jerry Douglas plays dobro along with regular band members Jeff White, Mike Harman, and John Pennell.
Even though she shares the spotlight with her band members, Alison — who was still only 18 years old when the album was released — is the glue that holds everything together. She plays fiddle throughout the album and sings lead vocals on the majority of the tracks, sounding at times like a young Dolly Parton. The similarity to Dolly is most apparent on the Larry Cordle-penned title track and Todd Rakestraw’s “I’m Alone Again”.
Bass player John Pennell, who contributed much of the material to Alison’s solo album Too Late To Cry, supplies three tracks here: “Love You In Vain”, “Here Comes Goodbye” and “As Lovely As You”, one of the highlights of the album which features Jeff White singing lead vocals with some lovely backing vocals from Alison. Two instrumental numbers – the traditional “Beaumont Rag” and Kenny Baker’s “Windy City Rag” allow the band to shine. The album’s best track is “Teardrops Will Kiss The Morning Dew”, a cover of an old Osborne Brothers song, and the most unusual is a remake of the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider”, which works surprisingly well with a bluegrass arrangement.
Two Highways did not produce any hit singles, nor did it make the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. It garnered little attention outside the world of bluegrass, but it did receive a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album in 1990 and it is one of the albums upon which future star Alison Krauss built her reputation.
Grade: A
Readers of The 9513 will be familiar with Paul W. Dennis’ excellent Country Heritage (aka Forgotten Artists) series. We are pleased to announce that Paul has agreed to continue the column for My Kind of Country:
A few years ago, the venerable Ralph Stanley issued an album titled A Short Life of Trouble: Songs of Grayson and Whitter. Neither Grayson nor Whitter, a musical partnership of the late 1920s, lived to be fifty years old. Beyond that I don’t know much about the duo, but the title certainly would apply to the life of Gary Stewart.
Gary Stewart was a hard rocking, hard drinking artist who arrived at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Often described as “too country for rock radio and too rock for country radio”, Gary simply arrived on the market at the wrong time for his rocking brand of hard-core honky-tonk music to achieve general acceptance, for his music was neither outlaw nor countrypolitan, the two dominant strains of country music during the 1970s.
Gary Stewart was born in Kentucky, the son of a coal miner who suffered a disabling injury when Gary was a teenager. As a result Gary’s family relocated to Fort Pierce, Florida, where Gary learned to play guitar and piano and started writing songs. Playing the clubs at night, while working a full-time job in an airplane factory, Gary had the good fortune to meet Mel Tillis. Mel encouraged Gary to travel to Nashville to pitch his songs. While early recording efforts for minor labels failed to interest radio, Gary achieved some success pitching songs to other artists. Among the early efforts were “Poor Red Georgia Dirt”, a 1965 hit for Stonewall Jackson and “Sweet Thang and Cisco” a top ten record for Nat Stuckey in 1969 . Other artists also recorded his songs, most notably Billy Walker (“She Goes Walking Through My Mind,” “Traces of a Woman,” “It’s Time to Love Her”) and Cal Smith (“You Can’t Housebreak a Tomcat”, “It Takes Me All Night Long”).
In 1968 Gary was signed by Kapp Records where he recorded several unsuccessful singles. Disheartened, Gary headed back to Fort Pierce, again playing the skull orchards and juke joints.
Read more of this post
Gretchen’s first independent release following her departure from Sony sees her taking the producer’s chair herself alongside Blake Chancey (and old friend John Rich on a handful of tracks). The end result is not that far removed from her Sony records, and fans of Gretchen’s rocking side will be happy. Admirers of her way with a ballad (Wilson’s most underrated talent) will be more disappointed.
Current single ‘Work Hard, Play Harder, is set to a relentless rock beat which led to a copyright infringement claim from the rock band the Black Crowes; the case was settled out of court and led to the writers of the latter’s song being given co-writing credit here, alongside the originally credited Wilson, John Rich and Vicky McGehee. This lyrically predictable and musically dull piece about a hardworking “redneck, blue-collar” bartender/waitress is already Gretchen’s biggest hit since 2006’s ‘California Girls’, perhaps because it fits into the pigeonhole Gretchen created for herself with her signature tune ‘Redneck Woman’.
It is one of only two tracks co-written by Gretchen. Dallas Davidson helped her with the other, the rocking sociopolitical statement ‘Blue Collar Done Turn Red’ which mixes a declaration of patriotism with some social criticism of modern changes:
We used to judge a man by the shake of his hand
And his honor and his honesty
Never knocked him down when he stood his ground
Cause it wouldn’t fit the policy now
There’s bailout bills and fat cat deals
Ex-SteelDriver Chris Stapleton and Terry McBride offer a trenchant criticism of modern country radio in ‘Outlaws & Renegades’:
Well, just the other day I was driving down the road
Listening to the stuff coming out of Music Row
I didn’t recognise a single song or none of the names
But it didn’t really matter cause they all seem to sound the same
Where’s all the outlaws and renegades?
Lord knows I miss those days
When they said what they thought
And what they thought was what was on your mind
It seems to veer off course in the last verse when it moves into another political complaint (about politicians and gas prices), and then back to music with a spoken outro namechecking Cash, Jennings and Nelson.
Their era is also recalled in the rather generic Southern Rock-country of the title track, written by consummate hit maker Jeffrey Steele and Tom Hambridge. This pays cursory tribute to various 70s Outlaw and Southern Rock acts – Waylon again, of course, plus the Charlie Daniels Band, Hank Williams Jr, and on the rock side of the border, the Allman Brothers, Z.Z. Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd. It is one of those tracks that strikes one as being more fun for the musicians to make than for the listener; it isn’t that interesting on record either musically or lyrically; it’s all about the groove and feel, which probably works better live.
My Kind of Country 