Music » Outlaw & Progressive Country Music

In 1970, after a string of not-quite hits and hard luck, Johnny Paycheck was singing for drinks in L.A. when Countrypolitan maestro Billy Sherrill gave him a second shot at a career. Paycheck's Epic debut with the producer, "She's All I Got," became a country smash and initiated a decade-long stint at the label that included the most commercially successful and some of the most emotionally complex work of his career (his much admired earlier sides--collected on the out-of-his-head The Real Mr. Heartache--notwithstanding). The Soul & the Edge draws from this fertile tenure, and though it omits a large number of charting hits from this period, much of what's here is prime Paycheck--"Slide off Your Satin Sheets," for example, and his signature "Take This Job and Shove It"--with many of these tracks otherwise unavailable on disc. Not to be missed are a conflicted pair of recitations, the notoriously rough and rowdy "Colorado Cool-Aid" (about a drunken knife fight) and the reverent "The Outlaw's Prayer." Best of all is the wrenching "I've Seen Better Days," where Paycheck comes to in someone's front yard, roused by Sherrill's wrenching, string-and-steel dynamics and squinting into the light of another miserable day. --David Cantwell

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Without A Song - Willie Nelson

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When an artist rerecords the songs that brought him fame, fans have a right to be skeptical. After all, such moves are generally prompted more by a yearning to restore one's financial rather than artistic standing. This project by country maverick Kris Kristofferson, however, has one major factor in its favor: Kristofferson's original early-1970s recordings of the likes of "Me and Bobby McGee," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," and "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33" were significant, but less than definitive. Here he returns to the tunes that helped lay the groundwork for the Outlaw movement of the '70s, but in place of the stolid Nashville arrangements on the originals is more sympathetic accompaniment. While The Austin Sessions is star-studded (guests include Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, and Alison Krauss), the project really rests on the broad shoulders of Kristofferson, who fares well. Never a threat to George Jones as a vocalist, he nevertheless sounds comfortable in a largely acoustic setting rasping his way through songs he should be prouder than ever for penning. --Steven Stolder

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Just like the lead character in his classic composition "Mr. Bojangles," Jerry Jeff Walker steps to a different tune. He gave himself the perfect title when he wrote his autobiography Gypsy Songman. Some consider "gypsy" a euphemism for irresponsible, some consider it eccentricity, and some call it artistic license, but whatever you want to label it, it was the fuel that provided the fire in Walker to write the songs he wrote. Walker writes from his own experience. He can take a microcosm of a thought and elaborate enough for its poetry to shine through. Gypsy indeed - this is a man who even chose his own name.

Born Ronald Clyde Crosby in 1942, the youngster grew up in Oneonta, New York, surrounded by music. His grandmother played piano, his parents loved to dance and he spent hours listening to their Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong records. It was his grandmother who bought him his first guitar at Christmas when he was 12 and he learned a few chords from the man who owned the local pizza parlor.

The "Jerry" part of his name came from a false I.D. he got when he was 19, since the drinking age was 21. For several years, he went by the name on that card--Jerry Ferris. After going AWOL from the National Guard in the early '60s, and settling in New Orleans (officially moving to Texas in 1971), he chose a new name. He liked the name Jeff and then partly as a tribute to a black jazz pianist he had befriended, Kirby Walker, he chose the surname of Walker. The friends who knew him as "Jerry" couldn't make the switch as easily, so Ronald Crosby, aka Jerry Ferris, became Jerry Jeff Walker.

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Array

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The first words from Willie Nelson's lips, "The sun is filled with ice and gives no warmth at all / the sky was never blue," warn the listener something is happening here. In a converted Mexican movie theater, producer Daniel Lanois surrounds the 65-year-old Nelson with the most startling and assured musical vision of his career: lush, rippling guitars, and swelling, splashing drum tracks, doubled and tripled over, sometimes in a Latin mood. Lanois allows Nelson freedom to solo in and around his sonic dreamwork, and with the presence of longtime fellow travelers Mickey Raphael, Emmylou Harris, and sister Bobbie, the record clearly smacks of Nelson's style and lyrical vision. The original material is decades old, but little known, and generally as haunting as Lanois's arrangements. (Only one song should have remained in the vaults: the emotionally-curdled "I Just Can't Let You Say Good-Bye.") So much could have gone wrong on this pairing. It's a thrill to hear how much truly goes right. --Roy Francis Kasten

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No Description Available.
Genre: Country & Western
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 26-AUG-2003

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So much gets made of countrypolitan's expansive, pop-influenced sound that it's easy to forget that it was also a medium of great singers. Few of them were as good as Sammi Smith. Blessed with a deep, husky voice that was nevertheless soft and tender, and breathing soulfulness, Smith had her best-known moment with 1970's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," a Top 10 crossover smash that she invested with a smoldering sense of emotional and physical need. On all of her best recordings, Smith's voice invites the listener into an emotional world so revealing and familiar that it often seems as if she's right there beside you, whispering into your ear. Such remarkable intimacies are only enhanced by their often breathtaking countrypolitan settings. --David Cantwell

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Release Date: 1997-08-26, Audio CD, Mercury Nashville

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It's ironic that the man who made his reputation by writing "Mr. Bojangles," one of the most enduring and oft-covered tunes of the late 20th century, succeeded in his career as a performer by singing the works of others, but that's the case. Walker has always been a fine judge of material, and over the years, picked up on some great stuff, such as Billy Joe Shaver's "Old Five and Dimers Like Me," Guy Clark's "Desperados Waiting for the Train" and "L.A. Freeway," Gary Nunn's "London Homesick Blues," Ray Wiley Hubbard's "Up Against the Wall Redneck," and Rusty Weir's "Don't It Make You Wanna Dance." This set gathers those remarkable cuts together with some of Walker's own songs, such as the party anthem "Sangria Wine," "Railroad Lady" (written with Jimmy Buffett), and, of course, "Bojangles." Great Gonzos gives you the flavor and the laid-back aesthetic of Jerry Jeff's seminal work of the '70s. There's more to the story, but this is where it all began. --Daniel Durchholz

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