Country & Western Appreciation

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Chris Cornell the singer from Soundgarden passed away recently. Here's Johnny Cash covering Soundgarden's Rusty Cash from the mid-90's.

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More Loretta Lynn

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It's been a while since we had a pro-drinking song herein (as opposed to the anti-drinking song above), so let's fix that by posting one of everybody's favorites: Grandpa Jones sings Mountain Dew, from 1947.



Note that in 1947 you could still get away with selling records that were just a singer backed up with 2 or 3 acoustic instruments. The early 1950s pretty much changed that.

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Posting that Grandpa Jones track makes me want to do another, so I will. We recently had a few tunes by "Mr. Country Music" himself, Roy Acuff, and here's another hit of his from 1943: Night Train to Memphis

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And now here's Grandpa Jones's version. it's rather more up-tempo.

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I can't remember if anyone posted Steve Earle yet? Here's Copperhead Road

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Jerry Lee Lewis

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Lee Ann Rimes

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Lee Ann doing Crazy

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I didn't realize how old this song is, but I guess it was originally released in the 80's



Of all people, there's Martin Sheen in the fore word.

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I can't remember if we've played this Conway Twitty song? Either way here's a live version from '90

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I believe I mentioned that the 1950s were sometime known as "the decade of the three Hanks" (Williams, Snow, and Thompson) in Country music. Here, then, are two of them, this time singing the same song. First, here's Hank Snow with a number one hit of his in 1954, "I Don't Hurt Anymore":

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Later, Hank Thompson changed the song's title slightly and, more importantly, gave it his characteristic Western Swing sound with the honky-tonk repetitive piano banging and the driving beat as well as the twanging peddle steel guitar (and Hank's own barroom vocals, of course):

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Listening to the honky-tonk piano in the last track makes me want to post the classic instrumental tune in the genre: "Last Date", by Floyd Cramer (1960):