Maybe Thompson's best LP, made up of songs about the rougher, raunchier sides of life, including "Cocaine Blues," "Little Blossom," "Deep Elem" (a real hot rocking number), and "Rovin' Gambler." This record was considered very controversial within conservative country music circles at the time, and in many ways broke a lot of ground within the field. This was also his first stereo album.

1965 was the year Hank Thompson & His Brazos Valley Boys began a run of drinking records, and this was the first. A Six Pack to Go is a classic by any country music standard: It is full of honky tonk songs, heartbreak songs, a couple of polkas, and a few Western swing tunes to boot. With all of the songs centering around drinking — the title track, "Drunkard's Blues," "Hangover Heart," the Bob Wills/Tommy Duncan classic "Bubbles in My Beer," "Honky Tonk Town," and the downright depressing "Hangover Tavern" among others. The delivery Thompson gives them is all but depressing, however. He is a bouncy singer with a band that always plays on the right side of honky tonk and has Western swing in the heart of everything they play. But what sets A Six Pack to Go apart from many of Thompson's other recordings is the playing of guitar icon Merle Travis kicking it on the lead. He bends and turns notes no matter how laid-back the track. Thompson's effortless delivery stands in sharp contrast to this and makes for a startling kind of intensity in the proceedings. Each song is a furthering of the journey into alcoholism, its cause — usually women — and no cure. While the songs have a cherry feel to them, this is one dark record, and there is no redemption anywhere present. A classic.

The single most influential album of Western songs in post-World War II American music, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs touched a whole range of unexpected bases in its own time and has endured extraordinarily well across the ensuing four decades. The longevity of the album's appeal is a result of Marty Robbins' love of the repertory at hand and the mix of his youthful dynamism and prodigious talent that he brought to the recordings, and the use of the best music production techniques of the era. Add to that the presence of a pair of killer original songs that were ready-made singles, "El Paso" and "Big Iron," and a third, "The Master's Call," that was startlingly personal, and the results are well-nigh irresistible. The range of material on this album is extraordinary, from love songs to spirituals, songs so old they have no known author, and originals by the singer, all of which seamlessly fit together. Robbins' subject is mostly the west of myth and movie, which benefits from his ability as a storyteller — "Big Iron" or "El Paso" may tell tales heard or seen 100 times onscreen, but he makes listeners feel like this is the first time they're hearing them, complete with excitement and anticipation of a poet in the middle of a spellbinding recital. The guitars, played by Robbins, Grady Martin, and Jack Pruett, and Bob Moore's upright bass all have a crisp sound, and the Glaser Brothers' understated vocal accompaniment embellishes the singing in key spots without intruding on the spell cast by Robbins' singing. Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs has been reissued several times on CD, paired with its follow-up, More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, as part of Bear Family Records' Under Western Skies box, and in an expanded edition in 1999 with three bonus tracks. "The Hanging Tree," written for the 1959 movie of the same name, was actually Robbins' first commercial recording of a cowboy song, predating the album by six months. Meanwhile, "Saddle Tramp" was a Robbins original recorded eight months after the album — their presence adds another significant dimension to the album and its scope. There was a reason why the Western movies and television shows started to be called "horse operas" — at their best, they had a sense of drama and were driven by charismatic leads. "Saddle Tramp" and "The Hanging Tree" both show Robbins as a kind of cowboy heldentenor creating two beautifully wrought vestpocket Western dramas that significantly add to the appeal of the original album, with the chorus on "Saddle Tramp" among Robbins' most beautiful moments on record.

Satan Is Real is the Louvin Brothers' best known album, largely because of its bold title and its eccentric cover artwork, in which Charlie and Ira Louvin, surrounded by flames symbolizing Hades, pose in front of a huge, cross-eyed model of the Devil. While more than a few hipsters have found an ironic laugh in the album's over-the-top imagery, one listen to the music confirms that the Louvin Brothers weren't joking in any way, shape or form. Satan Is Real is an album of fierce, plain spoken sincerity in which the Louvins, who started their career singing gospel material, perform songs that deal with the high stakes of sin and redemption, in which Satan truly does have power to rival the Lord. The opening title track sets the tone for the set, in which a man at a church service tells the congregation how he learned that Satan's treachery is every bit as real as God's love, and while not every song is as grim — "The River of Jordan" and "There's a Higher Power" are positively jaunty — the temptations of life in a fallen world and the consequences of sin are touched upon in nearly every track. The Louvin Brothers wrote many of the most memorable songs on Satan Is Real, and they rarely sounded as heartfelt as on "The Christian Life," "Are You Afraid to Die" and "The Angels Rejoiced Last Night"; as usual, their harmonies are luminously beautiful, and while Ira's superb mandolin work is missed, the simple arrangements (often incorporating a subdued gospel organ) are perfectly suited to the material. You don't need to share the Louvin Brothers' spiritual beliefs to be moved by the grace, beauty and lack of pretension of this music; Satan Is Real is music crafted by true believers sharing their faith, and its power goes beyond Christian doctrine into something at once deeply personal and truly universal, and the result is the Louvin Brothers' masterpiece.

The Fabulous Johnny Cash was Cash's first album for Columbia Records and one of his best for the label. Unlike some of his latter-day albums, there wasn't much filler on the record. At the time of its recording, Cash had just been freed from his contract with Sun. Instead of recording these songs for his last Sun sessions, he wound up saving much of his best material for his Columbia album, and that's what makes The Fabulous so consistent. The album builds on his basic, spare sound, but it is slightly more polished than his Sun records. But what makes it so entertaining are the songs themselves. From "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" and "Frankie's Man, Johnny" to "Pickin' Time" and "The Troubador," the album is filled with first-rate songs, with only a handful of mediocre songs like "Suppertime," which don't distract from the overall quality of the album at all.

Just turned 21 and beautiful beyond words, Wanda Jackson ripped through a red-hot, live Town Hall Party rockabilly session in 1958 that helped define the parameters of this raw, young music. Discovered singing on an Oklahoma radio station only two years earlier by honky-tonk recording star Hank Thompson and encouraged to cut loose musically by genre superstar/touring partner (and onetime boyfriend) Elvis Presley, Jackson was a perfect fit for Town Hall Party, the Los Angeles-based TV show that had already welcomed sets by rockin' luminaries Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins and Eddie Cochran. Backed by old friend and "King of the Strings" guitarist Joe Maphis, Jackson was in her element for the Town Hall Party session, tearing into "Mean, Mean Man," a career-defining tune she'd recorded only a few months earlier. Highlights of Jackson's set also include "Rock Your Baby," her current Capitol Records single, and "Alone (With You)," a Faron Young chart-topper, as well as her show-stopping finale, Jackson roaring through "Hard Headed Woman," a scorcher from Elvis' current movie, King Creole. Jackson would soon become a substantial force on the country music charts, specializing in aching, honky tonk ballads for the rest of her career.

In 1997, The Essential Hank Snow replaced I'm Movin' On & Other Country Hits as the one essential, single-disc retrospective of Snow's classic hits currently on the market. While it isn't quite as listenable as its direct predecessor, The Essential still captures all of Snow's styles, from Hawaiian music and country boogie to his famous traveling songs, featuring most of his best-known songs ("I'm Moving On," "The Rhumba Boogie," "Yellow Roses," "Silver Bell," "The Gal Who Invented Kissin'") along the way.

By Ryan R Williams (Durham, NC United States)

This CD only further proves to me that from the mid '60s to the early '70s, there may have been no better performer in country music than Waylon Jennings. I am much more captivated by the look and sound of the early Waylon than his outlaw years. Already on the cutting edge of country music, his wide selection of folk and honky tonk tunes, soulful voice and deft guitar picking (lots of bluesy licks) brought a fresh approach to the already classic '60s country sound. It's a shame the early Waylon years never got its due, but thankfully CDs like this are available. If you haven't discovered early Waylon, you don't know what your missing.

Buck Owens had his share of country hits prior to the release of I've Got a Tiger by the Tail and the hit single that spawned it. But "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" was Owens' national breakthrough, featuring everything right about his Bakersfield honky tonk sound sweated down to a 2:12 single that proved to be a irresistible piece of crossover magic to non-country fans without diluting his basic sound one iota. This 14-track CD reissue brings together the original Capitol tracks from that album (which also included the hit "Cryin' Time," later to be a crossover hit of its own when recorded by Ray Charles), along with two bonus tracks. These are live versions recorded in Bakersfield at the Civic Auditorium in October 1963 of "This Ol' Heart" and "Act Naturally," taken from the Capitol anthology album Country Music Hootenanny. The sound of Don Rich is all over this album, with his signature biting Telecaster guitar style, plus his vocalizing on "Wham Bam" (which features Owens on lead guitar) and a feature with Buck on a duet of Chuck Berry's "Memphis." Bass player Doyle Holly handles the vocal chores on "Streets of Laredo," while Don Rich's fiddle work is highlighted on the instrumental "A Maiden's Prayer." But ultimately it's Owens' show with tracks like "Trouble and Me," "We're Gonna Let the Good Times Roll," "If You Fall Out of Love With Me," "The Band Keeps Playin' On," and the ballad "Let the Sad Times Roll On" being classic examples of Owens' Bakersfield honky tonk sound at the height of its freight-train rumbling powers.

Perhaps this should have been titled The Freewheelin' Johnny Cash in homage to the watershed Bob Dylan album. Though conservative country music and liberal folk shared little audience base at the time, Cash crossed that bridge by covering three Dylan tunes on this 1965 classic (reissued here with three previously unreleased tracks). Cash sounds loose and frisky throughout, as he romps from the harmonica-driven title song through the traditional country of "Long Black Veil," the Irish standard "Danny Boy," and the rousing spiritual "Amen." The stripped-down arrangements give the material plenty of room to breathe, with only the female backing chorus sounding dated. Dylan subsequently crossed this musical bridge from the other side, inviting Cash to duet with him on the country-tinged Nashville Skyline.

At first thought:

Essential Hank Snow

I read it, just posted more as reaction without thought process. Sorry.

Definitetly a genre I've wanted to dive into especially after going to the Hall of Fame and listening to a ton of archives. Could have been there for hours and dug crap that my 13 year old self would've spat on.

Just about all that's around these days are "greatest hits" things, but don't let that stop you from getting your Ernest Tubb on in some fashion.

Also,

I fucking love that Marty Robbins so... much.

I'm amazed how many 50's and 60's country albums are not available.

I'm amazed how many 50's and 60's country albums are not available.

I was thinking that only Bear Family Records has any interest in putting this stuff out.

Billy, do you know about Oxford American magazine? This year we introduce our new SOUTHERN STATE SERIES OF CDs, kicking off with, naturally, the Natural State (aka Arkansas). This means that one of the two CDs you receive will focus on music from Arkansas. Says Editor Marc Smirnoff: “We are going to mess with people’s preconceptions about what Arkansas music means. It means the same thing that Southern music means: everything: the old, the new, the fresh, the forgotten, etc.” Sounds like something you'd like. If you want to hear them (the two discs), let me know.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/ ... sic-issue/

I just want to print this thread out, write "Squirrgle's X-Mas List" on the top of it and pin it to the fridge

I want to do the same thing, except I'll call it "Radcliffe's kryptonite".