When is a hit album not a hit album? When it is by two of countries biggest stars and still only moves 30K units. To put it another way, including Grandkids and Great Grandkids, cousins, seconds cousin, and former bandmate’s next of kin, nobody else actually bought the damn thing. Talk about going to pot.
The following excerpts from Steve Crawford’s book “1000 Essential Songs from the 1970s focuses on Texas born or Texas based artists with entries from Waylon, Willie, Ray Price, ZZ Top, Billy Joe Shaver, the late, great Townes Van Zandt, and many other musicians who were completely comfortable wearing cowboy hats.
The joyful tune sounds like an instant country classic for sure, and who could have thought that the drug revolution would have come from two octogenarians? (Willie is 81, Merle 78)… We live in a weed culture, and for once, we got grandpas for leaders!
Back then, though, Buck and Merle were closely associated; two of a kind. They defined the Bakersfield sound. Buck reached out to me in those days, and lifted up my spirits when I was down, I mean really down
This is a primer for all country friends and wannabe country fans out there. You don’t know where to start on your country collection, start in the 20th Century and start here
