The Official Needles and Grooves 1001 Album Generator Project (aka Preachin’ about the Preachers if today’s selection sucks)

My love for Buck Owens is an example of the full circle I’ve had with Country.

Hee Haw was a Saturday evening staple in my house when I was a kid and I hated it. At the time it just seemed lame but I think maybe my subconscious knew that playing the South as full of Bumpkins was offensive. We’ve tackled the peculiar nature of Southern Pride elsewhere, but that’s certainly what I don’t like about the show and it’s legacy now.

What I did enjoy as a kid were the musical guests. Basically anyone who was anyone in Country music did a performance on Hee Haw. It was hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark who would tell bad one liners dressed in overalls and straw hats. I didn’t realize as a kid that these guys were titans of Country Music.

As I got older, I started to despise country because of Hee Haw, the conservative politics of the genre as a whole, and because I was ashamed of my heritage. Mind you, this was before I understood the systematic way racism was downplayed and further institutionalized in school.

In college, the punk kids all respected Cash and the other outlaws and I started to reevaluate the genre as a whole. But even then it was another decade before I let my affinity for Country music (and R&B) be something I was comfortable enough to openly display and talk about.

I’ve really come to know the Bakersfield sound in the last decade and have become obsessed with Owens, Haggard, and especially the songwriting of Harlan Howard. A lot of this comes from a tribute album by Vince Gill:
www.allmusic.com

Bakersfield - Vince Gill, Paul Franklin | Album | AllMusic

Bakersfield by Vince Gill, Paul Franklin released in 2013. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com

Those old deep seated biases against Owens and the politics of Haggard late in his life kept me away from the music far too long. Fortunately my admiration for Gill as a guitarist (he’s a bit vanilla as a singer) changed that.

What’s really interesting is when it came time to really start exploring Owens is just how much of this album I knew. Many of the songs like the title song and Streets of Laredo were burned into my brain from that younger age (and probably countless covers) and those earliest memories of actually enjoying the music before I allowed outside influences (including my Dad who displayed an open dislike of the “old timey” music, specifically Hank Williams and Bob Wills, that his dad had liked - which is a topic for another day as Bluegrass … through its first exposure to me in high school… would play its own role in me accepting my love of country music).

This album has as much to do with the sub genre becoming popular as any other. Years before Outlaw became a crossover thing, Owens and the gang from California added rock to the country sound. This is its own cyclical thing in that both the Beatles and the Stones would play Bakersfield music which in turn influenced their sound and we know how influential both those acts were.

It’s a great record and if you think you hate country music, you should maybe check that bias at the door before listening.
 
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Lee Newman said:
My love for Buck Owens is an example of the full circle I’ve had with Country.

Hee Haw was a Saturday evening staple in my house when I was a kid and I hated it. At the time it just seemed lame but I think maybe my subconscious knew that playing the South as full of Bumpkins was offensive. We’ve tackled the peculiar nature of Southern Pride elsewhere, but that’s certainly what I don’t like about the show and it’s legacy now.

What I did enjoy as a kid were the musical guests. Basically anyone who was anyone in Country music did a performance on Hee Haw. It was hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark who would tell bad one liners dressed in overalls and straw hats. I didn’t realize as a kid that these guys were titans of Country Music.

As I got older, I started to despise country because of Hee Haw, the conservative politics of the genre as a whole, and because I was ashamed of my heritage. Mind you, this was before I understood the systematic way racism was downplayed and further institutionalized in school.

In college, the punk kids all respected Cash and the other outlaws and I started to reevaluate the genre as a whole. But even then it was another decade before I let my affinity for Country music (and R&B) be something I was comfortable enough to openly display and talk about.

I’ve really come to know the Bakersfield sound in the last decade and have become obsessed with Owens, Haggard, and especially the songwriting of Harlan Howard. A lot of this comes from a tribute album by Vince Gill:
www.allmusic.com

Bakersfield - Vince Gill, Paul Franklin | Album | AllMusic

Bakersfield by Vince Gill, Paul Franklin released in 2013. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com

Those old deep seated biases against Owens and the politics of Haggard late in his life kept me away from the music far too long. Fortunately my admiration for Gill as a guitarist (he’s a bit vanilla as a singer) changed that.

What’s really interesting is when it came time to really start exploring Owens is just how much of this album I knew. Many of the songs like the title song and Streets of Laredo were burned into my brain from that younger age (and probably countless covers) and those earliest memories of actually enjoying the music before I allowed outside influences (including my Dad who displayed an open dislike of the “old timey” music, specifically Hank Williams and Bob Wills, that his dad had liked - which is a topic for another day as Bluegrass … through its first exposure to me in high school… would play its own role in me accepting my love of country music).

This album has as much to do with the sub genre becoming popular as any other. Years before Outlaw became a crossover thing, Owens and the gang from California added rock to the country sound. This is its own cyclical thing in that both the Beatles and the Stones would play Bakersfield music which in turn influenced their sound and we know how influential both those acts were.

It’s a great record and if you think you hate country music, you should maybe check that bias at the door before listening.
Click to expand...
Great post. I think my introduction came by way of Dwight Yoakam. I grew up in a small Midwest town surrounded by rural farmland and HATED all things country as a result. Like you, the older I got, Johnny Cash was acceptable amongst me and my friends but that was about it. Early in college I think a read an article about Dwight’s then upcoming release dwightyoakamacoustic.net and the simplicity of the cover being basically a faux burned CD was clever enough to pique my interest so I bought a copy and it blew me away how good these songs were. A couple years later I decided to give Guitars, Cadillacs, etc., etc…. a go and loved that even more which led me to exploring other Bakersfield Sounds artists primarily Owens and Tiger was the first album I landed on. It was such a fun record it would inspire a deeper dive into country music as a whole. Merle, Willie, Waylon, etc… the further down the Country rabbit hole the more I loved it.
 
I think I mentioned my friend (when we discussed Ray Price), who is a total country aficionado and compiled some great country mix tapes and cd:s for me since the late 90’s that also got me hooked on the genre. Well, the very first mix tape I got from him started with “Let the sad times roll” from this album. And what a great song that is! The rest of this album holds up really well as well. Still, I can’t say that I’ve ever really explored Owen's catalogue they way I have with Ray Price, Willie, Parton and other legends in the genre.

The mix tape continued with “The Buck Starts Here” by Robbie Fulks, a modern equivalent of Owens in many ways and also one of my favorite songwriters in the genre, and someone y‘all should check out if you’ve just started to explore the genre.

I’m gonna see if I can find the mix tapes and cds now. Would be fun if I could recreate them as playlists in Spotify!
 
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This is the sound and style I imagine whenever I think of “country”; an extremely classic sound. Definitely not the type of country music that I grew up on or that I’d usually listen to but I’m glad I gave it a shot!

Definitely see why everyone who knew this album seem to really love it. Probably won’t go much deeper than this listen but it was a great listen

Fav tracks - “Let The Sad Times Roll On” and “The Band Keeps Playin On”. Special shout out to the wild “Wham Bam”
 
11/2/23
d914d694febeb885c5b6c41fa8ffeed74d01f580

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime



www.allmusic.com

Yank Crime - Drive Like Jehu | Album | AllMusic

Yank Crime by Drive Like Jehu released in 1994. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
 
Lee Newman said:
11/1/23
View attachment 186158
Buck Owens and his Buckaroos - I’ve Got A Tiger by the Tail



www.allmusic.com

I've Got a Tiger by the Tail - Buck Owens, Buc... | AllMusic

I've Got a Tiger by the Tail by Buck Owens, Buck Owens & His Buckaroos released in 1965. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more ...
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...

Lee Newman said:
My love for Buck Owens is an example of the full circle I’ve had with Country.

Hee Haw was a Saturday evening staple in my house when I was a kid and I hated it. At the time it just seemed lame but I think maybe my subconscious knew that playing the South as full of Bumpkins was offensive. We’ve tackled the peculiar nature of Southern Pride elsewhere, but that’s certainly what I don’t like about the show and it’s legacy now.

What I did enjoy as a kid were the musical guests. Basically anyone who was anyone in Country music did a performance on Hee Haw. It was hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark who would tell bad one liners dressed in overalls and straw hats. I didn’t realize as a kid that these guys were titans of Country Music.

As I got older, I started to despise country because of Hee Haw, the conservative politics of the genre as a whole, and because I was ashamed of my heritage. Mind you, this was before I understood the systematic way racism was downplayed and further institutionalized in school.

In college, the punk kids all respected Cash and the other outlaws and I started to reevaluate the genre as a whole. But even then it was another decade before I let my affinity for Country music (and R&B) be something I was comfortable enough to openly display and talk about.

I’ve really come to know the Bakersfield sound in the last decade and have become obsessed with Owens, Haggard, and especially the songwriting of Harlan Howard. A lot of this comes from a tribute album by Vince Gill:
www.allmusic.com

Bakersfield - Vince Gill, Paul Franklin | Album | AllMusic

Bakersfield by Vince Gill, Paul Franklin released in 2013. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com

Those old deep seated biases against Owens and the politics of Haggard late in his life kept me away from the music far too long. Fortunately my admiration for Gill as a guitarist (he’s a bit vanilla as a singer) changed that.

What’s really interesting is when it came time to really start exploring Owens is just how much of this album I knew. Many of the songs like the title song and Streets of Laredo were burned into my brain from that younger age (and probably countless covers) and those earliest memories of actually enjoying the music before I allowed outside influences (including my Dad who displayed an open dislike of the “old timey” music, specifically Hank Williams and Bob Wills, that his dad had liked - which is a topic for another day as Bluegrass … through its first exposure to me in high school… would play its own role in me accepting my love of country music).

This album has as much to do with the sub genre becoming popular as any other. Years before Outlaw became a crossover thing, Owens and the gang from California added rock to the country sound. This is its own cyclical thing in that both the Beatles and the Stones would play Bakersfield music which in turn influenced their sound and we know how influential both those acts were.

It’s a great record and if you think you hate country music, you should maybe check that bias at the door before listening.
Click to expand...

The Bakersfield Psychedelia Sound...

 
Lee Newman said:
11/2/23
d914d694febeb885c5b6c41fa8ffeed74d01f580

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime



www.allmusic.com

Yank Crime - Drive Like Jehu | Album | AllMusic

Yank Crime by Drive Like Jehu released in 1994. Find album reviews, track lists, credits, awards and more at AllMusic.
www.allmusic.com www.allmusic.com
Click to expand...


I always considered Drive Like Jehu the closest thing to The Jesus Lizard without actually being The Jesus Lizard. They basically dissolved because a key band member was also playing in Rocket from the Crypt.
 
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