A couple of vintage Eddy Arnold tracks appear on the playlist my wife and I have devised for Cooper (i.e. mostly oldies that may as well be made for kids). He hadn't really acknowledged them before, until last week when I discerned that his request for "monkey song" was actually Arnold's "The Cattle Call." Eddy Arnold: The Cattle Call Here's a clip of Arnold performing the song for a television show back in 1956, followed by a few bonus clips just for the hell of [...]

Seeing as the History of Country series is proving so popular, let us put on a Santa-red Stetson and have a country Christmas. This lot is old-skool: Ernest Tubb riffs (badly) on his 1941 honky tonk classic, Loretta Lynn socks it to it disagreeable Santa, while Brenda Lee aims to lassoo him, yee ha. George Jones goes X-Mas twisting, and Buck Jones provides some serious pathos. And if you had to choose one man to sing Little Drummer Boy, it would have to be Johnny Cash, right? Hey, even horrid old Jingle bloody Bells sounds good here! [...]

In the slipstream of Johnny Cash came what would become known as the Outlaw Movement, an informal response to Nashville's easy listening, corporate and safe style, often recorded in Texas, reviving the honky tonk sounds of Hank Williams with strong lyrical content. Starting in the mid-'60s with singers like Bobby Bare, Tompall Glaser and Johnny Darrell, the sub-genre's standard bearers would include Waylon Jennings and his wife Jessi Colter, Willie Nelson (after he grew his hair), Kris Kristofferson, Leon Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, Hank Williams Jr, Jerry Jeff Walker and Gram Parsons. More traditionally-minded country stars, many mentored [...]

In Volume 9 of the country history series, we look at the glory years of country, a time when the genre was at its most self-confident and profitable. It was still a vibrant genre, as this collection shows, though the crooners were already beginning to define the genre, a situation that would give rise to the outlaw movement, the protagonists of which were inspired by several of the artists on this mix. It's difficult to say who was the biggest star in 1950s country. The crooner likes of Eddy Arnold were immensely successful, but in terms of sales [...]

Some years ago, the brains at Rolling Stone grappled to identify the first ever rock & roll record. In the final face-off, they picked Elvis Presley's debut single That's All Right, a cover of R&B singer Arthur Crudup's song, over Bill Haley's Rock Around The Clock (itself a cover, though the song was actually written for the former western swing singer). It is, of course, a fruitless mission to identify a "first" rock & roll song, because the genre is a jumble of diverse influences that convened, not always simultaneously, in an untidy evolution. One might [...]

In this segment we briefly turn our focus on some of the individuals featured on this mix and the 1950/51 compilation . Pictured on the cover is the 1952 Cadillac in which Hank Williams died of heart failure on New Year's Day 1953, aged 30 (though he always looked much older than that). His was the first of a series of young celebrity deaths that created legends for all times. Among the more unexpected names in country must be that of Ole Rasmussen , a western swing bandleader who with [...]
George Strait earned himself his 83rd top ten song on Billboard's Country Songs chart with his new single "The Breath You Take". That makes the singer just 10 songs away from beating the record set by the late Eddy Arnold back in 1980. 10 songs almost sounds impossible but then again, so does 83. There's a big chance that he can do it. His accomplishments thus far have been ridiculously impressive! Congratulations to George and I wish him all the best in attaining glory. Do you think George can do it or is it a big long shot? I say [...]

As before, this album refers to artists and songs featured on both 1940s compilations. The importance to country music of Ernest Tubb 's Walking The Floor Over You cannot be underestimated. It was not the first honky tonk record, nor the first to use the new-fangled electric guitar. But it was the first really big hit to use electric guitar solos, performed by Fay 'Smitty' Smith, and is considered the breakthrough record for honky tonk music, a label that was variously used for different genres, but now [...]
Nothing much going on today, so I thought I'd offer up a couple of different versions of a song that Mrs. Big Geez and I differ on. You might recall that I did the same thing a month or so ago, in a piece called Choosing Young Love . I might also mention that my version won the poll last time - not that I'm gloating or anything. In the late Sixties a clean-cut and well-dressed Cincinnati group called the Casinos had a big hit with a song [...]
Cover Commissions is a monthly series in which a featured artist covers a reader-selected song for this blog. Any artists interested in participating, email me. We Are the Willows first hit the Cover Me radar back in December. Minnesota songwriter Peter Miller's ethereal singing entranced us, sounding like the Beach Boys if you removed everything but the highest harmony. We knew that voice

The other week Andrew Collins wrote on his blog that he shared his birthday with Bobby Womack . He illustrated the post with the magnificent portrait above. I first saw that photo on the cover of a compilation on the Trikont label called Dirty Laundry - the Soul of Black Country . It's a brilliant record that features the likes of Solomon Burke , Bettye Lavette and Etta James delivering soul and R&B takes on country classics. All of them prove that there's a whole lot more to African-American [...]

In perusing the list of musicians who passed on this year, I feel grateful in saying that, although I mourn the loss of all who passed from this earth in 2008 (some entirely too early), I didn't feel the impact of any nearly so much as I did for Dave Carter in 2002 or Rachel Bissex in 2005. Then I scanned the list again and sustained a sucker punch to the gut – oh my god... Eddy Arnold... I'd like to think I'm too young (even at the age of 54) to [...]
Absent Friends Freddie Hubbard, Cold Turkey. The Four Tops, Bernadette. Miriam Makeba, Mbube. Bob and Earl, Harlem Shuffle. Nappy Brown, Don't Be Angry. Mikey Dread, Saturday Night Style. Jody Reynolds, Endless Sleep. Bo Diddley, She's Alright. Bobby Lee Trammell, If You Ever Get It Once. Dee Dee Warwick, Foolish Fool. Johnny Adams, I Wish It Would Rain. Nathaniel Mayer and His Fabulous
I'm on vacation--the first in two and half years (barring holidays and family obligations). The past few months have been a blur of mounting responsibilities at work, unmet project deadlines, and numerous sleepless nights. "Make the World Go Away" - Eddy Arnold In short, I've spent the past few months of my life buried in my email inbox. The result has been an increasingly joyless existence, fraught with worry, dread and panic. Something has to change. [...]
Pionnier du Nashville Sound, Eddy Arnold est décédé le 8 mai à l'âge de 89 ans. Il comptait déjà de nombreux hits à son actif lorsque pour relancer sa carrière dans les années 60 Arnold adopta le son countrypolitan, subtile dilution de la country dans la variété américaine. Eddy Arnold fut ainsi considéré comme l'artiste qui permit de populariser la country dans tous les Etats-Unis, élargissant
After yesterday's post about black singers in country music , I decided to get away from the computer and chill with some more Ray Charles . I went to the stack o' vinyl, took out the LP, What'd I Say (pictured left), and hunkered down with the back cover liner notes. I was only to the third paragraph when I reached this fantastic quote from Ray: "Before anybody criticizes any kind of music, they ought to listen to it more. For example, I think a lot of the hillbilly music is wonderful. [...]

Friday night again, so here´s the usual grab bag fiesta for you. What´s the big deal tonight? Well, we´ll take a short look at FC Barcelona´s past, present and feature, accompanied by some cool tunes. Stax soul from Sam & Dave, or cool early Dutch punkrock from Ivy Green anyone? Got some country from the late Eddy Arnold too, and there´s Jimmie Dale Gilmore for all you Flatlanders fans out there. Plus two versions of the song I Had A Good Father And Mother ... or was that the other way around? We´ll see. [...]

[ There are 18 MP3s in this post. All but one feature gratuitous yodeling. Some even include bird impersonations. Don't say you weren't warned. ] Applied chaos theory in the information age? Whatever you want to call it, it happens to me quite frequently. Stuff somehow makes its way onto my hard drive, and I have no clue where it came from. So I had this MP3 compilation called "Yodel!" lying around for a while, and the title and artist information all seemed very suspicious. (Like [...]
:: Georgia On My Mind :: I guess I picked this album up because I liked the cover and because I find it hard to resist the wonderful sound quality of early RCA stereo pressings. I don't have much interest in owning any Eddy Arnold records generally because he's not exactly what you would call edgy. If anything he's the exact opposite of edgy. In my world you gotta have some edges, or you

A few weeks ago we had a lively conversation on the Bus about the definitive country music song. The whole discussion was instigated by Paul over at Setting The Woods On Fire when he posted his choices for the definitive song to represent country music. This past weekend Paul sent me a link to a few comments at Nashville Scene (scroll down to "WHAT IS COUNTRY MUSIC?:") I didn't read the original article that spurred these comments, but I see that the commenters echoed the comments made by riders on the Bus. [...]