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Traditional Country Artists
Artist |
Description |
Nashville Legend Charlie McCoy |
Feast your ears on one of the all time finest
musicians and Grammy Winning Multi-Instrumentalist.
Mr. Studio Player himself Charlie McCoy.
Congratulations Charlie for Country Music Hall of
Fame
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If you are a
professional Traditional Country recording artist and your project has been recorded using union
musicians, where if you became a Traditional Country popular artist, your CD can be played on the radio,
please submit the form for our review and
consideration of your participation.
Traditional Country Artists |
Description |
Jim Stafford |
James Wayne "Jim" Stafford
(born January 16, 1944, Eloise, Florida) is an American comedian, musician,
and singer-songwriter, prominent in the 1970s. Stafford is self-taught on
guitar, fiddle, piano, banjo, organ and harmonica.
Recordings: Stafford's
first chart hit was "Swamp Witch", which barely cracked the U.S. Top
40 in July 1973. By early 1974 he had charted his biggest hit, "Spiders and
Snakes", which peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 that March.
Stafford regularly performs with other guests at his theater in Branson,
Missouri and other venues.
TV:
The Jim Stafford Show appeared
on ABC in 1975. He appeared as well numerous times on music specials,
variety shows, and talk shows (he was a frequent guest on the Tonight
Show. He co-hosted Those Amazing Animals with Burgess Meredith
and Priscilla Presley, and also hosted 56 episodes of Nashville on the
Road. In 1967 and 1968, he performed regularly and served as head
writer/producer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. |
Leroy Parnell |
For Lee Roy and Full Band:
APA Nashville
Attn: Steve Lassiter
Phone: 615-297-0100
Email:
Slassiter@apanashville.com
For "Lee Roy & Friends" Acoustic Shows
LRP Inc.
Attn: Julie Albertson
Phone: 615-613-4863
Email:
Julie@leeroyparnell.com |
Rhodus Country Band
Tampa and Central Florida
813-766-6933 |
Gene Rhodus, Bass and vocals
Terry Richard, Keys and vocals
Randy Wade, guitar and vocals
Edwin Gotay, drums
Repertoire and Genre Include:
Traditional Country
Today's Country
Classic Rock & Roll
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Traditional Artist |
Description |
Cold
Hard Truth
Other George Jones Albums: The George Jones
Collection 16
Biggest Hits Anniversary: 10
Years Of Hits
Merle Haggard
& George Jones |
He's the voice of experience, the
voice of regret, or simply the Voice. Though George Jones suffered a near-fatal collision
while recording this album, his first for Asylum, Cold Hard Truth has the vocal command of
an artist with a new lease on life. Highlights such as
"Choices," "Our Bed of Roses," and the album-closing "When the
Last Curtain Falls" (with harmonies from Vince Gill and Patty Loveless) extend his
reign as the most heart-clenching singer of sob-song balladry in country music.
Without a doubt . . . the possum is awesome! |
Roses
In The Snow
Other Emmylou Harris Albums:
Profile:
Best Of Emmylou Harris Profile II: Best
Of Emmylou Harris
Duets Blue Kentucky
Girl |
Harris' 1980 back-to-the-roots album
marks a high point in her career. With stellar support fromm Tony Rice (acoustic guitar),
Albert Lee (mandolin), and Ricky Skaggs (fiddle), Harris wanders comfortably and warmly
through traditional-country and bluegrass pastures. Skaggs, Dolly Parton, and the
Whites add beautiful harmonies as Harris slides effortlessly from the Carter Family to the
Stanley Brothers to the Louvin Brothers to Paul Simon. Among the set's peaks are
Flatt and Scruggs's "I'll Go Stepping Too," with Rice, Skaggs, Lee (on superb
electric guitar), and dobro master Jerry Douglas turning up the instrumental heat, and the
spiritual "Jordan," with Harris, Skaggs, Rice, and Johnny Cash engaging in
buoyant four-part harmonies. |
Red
Headed Stranger
Other Willie Neslson Albums:
The Essential
Willie Nelson
16 Biggest
Hits
Always On My
Mind
Honky Tonk
Heroes |
Saddle up, and let Willie Nelson
take you on a mellow 33-minute trot through the Old West. Before this sparkling concept
album Nelson had been known primarily as a songwriter, having penned hits such as
"Night Life," "Crazy," and "Hello Walls." On this 1975
record, he creates a lonely and plaintive mood with an almost childlike lullaby quality.
"Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" thrust him into the spotlight, but ballads
such as "Time of the Preacher" and "Can I Sleep in Your Arms" also
receive sensitive treatments . Borrowing from turn-of-the-century cowboy music, Nelson
guides a 15-song journey that includes some lively instrumental stops, but mostly wanders
quietly through the sage. Other songs include: Red Headed Stranger, Remember Me
(When The Candle Lights Are Gleaming), Maiden's Prayer & Bandera.
|
Down
Every Road 1962-1994
Other Merle Haggard Albums:
The Best of Merle
Haggard
The
Lonesome Fugitive
The Merle Haggard
Box Coll.
Sing Me Back
Home |
For a long time, Merle Haggard has
been best known for his least-important music--"Okie from Muskogee" and its
sequels, "The Fighting Side of Me" and "Are the Good Times Really
Over." All three of these patriotic novelty songs are included on this four-CD box
set, but they are dwarfed by the riches around them. Songs such as "Running
Kind," "If We Make it Through December," and "I Started Loving You
Again" eschew sloganeering to draw powerful portraits of working-class folks pulled
in one direction by a longing for footloose freedom and in another by economic realities
and emotional ties. The catchy directness, the poetic vernacular, and Haggard's baritone
purr mark those numbers as examples of country music at its finest. Down Every Road is as
crucial as Robert Johnson's Complete Recordings, Hank Williams' Original Singles
Collection |
Strait
Out Of The Box
Other George Straight
Albums: Latest
Greatest Straitest Hits Does Fort Worth
Ever Cross Your Mind Right Or Wrong
Strait Country
|
When the hits come as effortlessly
as they do to Strait, it's easy for an artist to lose interest. The man who ushered
in country's hat-act era has spent a career bouncing from lifeless and fluffy to hard and
soulful. This four-CD box tells the story from 1976 (when he cut the first of three
singles for Houston indie D Records) through 1995. At his best--"Does Fort Worth Ever
Cross Your Mind," for example--he defines the modern heart song, but lightweight
stuff such as "Hollywood Squares" won't win him new converts.
4
CD Box Set . . . a must for every George Straight fans. |
Reba
McEntire Greatest Hits, Volume 2
Other Reba Albums: Live Greatest Hits
The Last One
To Know |
As the late 1980s gradually segued
into the early 1990s, the choices of material and the production values Reba McEntire
brought to her recordings often seemed to be guided as much by right-brained market savvy
as by true left-brain inspiration. This "hits" compilation skims the cream of
her commercial achievements during this prolific period in her career. Though there
are only 10 tracks, these include landmark No. 1 singles like "You Lie,"
"Fancy," "Is There Life out There," and "Does He Love You,"
a heartfelt duet with Linda Davis. |
Sadly Missed Classic
Country Artist |
Description |
40
Greatest Hits
Other Hank Williams
Albums: Alone
And Forsaken The Complete Hank
Williams Honky
Tonkin' The
Legend Of Hank Williams Live At The Grand
Ole Opry The
Original Singles Collection |
With a legend like Hank, than man who largely
dragged country music into the modern age, the question is how do you pick just 40 of his
songs? There were the immediately obvious biggies like "Hey Good Lookin',"
"Jambalaya," and "Move It On Over," but almost everything was a gem in
one way or another. Whether this collection is the greatest hits or not will depend on the
listener, but for anyone with even the slightest curiosity about country music, it's
essential listening. Hank was a landmark of the genre, and to hear him is to understand
how country could change from rural to urban. Essential listening for everyone.
It
has been said that "I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry" may have captured the soul of
country music . . . perhaps it is so. |
Gunfighter
Ballads
& Trail Songs
Other Marty Robbins Albums: The
Essential Marty Robbins: 1951-1982 All-Time Greatest
Hits (Legacy) Country
(1960-1966) |
A lonely Westerner in Nashville, Marty Robbins
salved his soul by cutting an album (in one afternoon) of mostly self-composed cowboy
ballads. One of them was a four-and-a-half-minute epic, "El Paso," that broke
every rule of Top 40 programming to become a No. 1 pop and country hit in 1960. Other
titles include "Big Iron" (also a Top 30 hit), three extra tracks flesh out the
1999 release, including "Saddle Tramp" (the B-side of "Big Iron") and
"The Hanging Tree" (title song from the 1959 Gary Cooper Western).
This
album is an all time classic . . . as is true of Marty Robbins. |
Patsy
Cline
12 Greatest Hits
Other Patsy Cline Albums:
The Patsy
Cline Story
The Essential
Patsy Cline
The Best Of
Patsy Cline |
In the late 1950s and the '60s, country music was
essentially a singles medium. This album, first released in 1967 and reissued on compact
disc in 1988, collects Patsy Cline's biggest hits--all of them from the country singles
market--including "Walkin' After Midnight," "Sweet Dreams (Of You),"
"Crazy," and "I Fall to Pieces." Producer Owen Bradley surrounds
Cline's full-throated, emotionally charged vocals with lush, sophisticated arrangements
that set the standard for Nashville's "countrypolitan" sound. Before Shania
Twain found a new (though not necessarily improved) way to combine country and pop in the
1990s, this was the top-selling country album of all time by a female artist. |
The
Patsy Cline Collection (MCA)
Other Patsy Cline Albums:
The Patsy
Cline Story
The Essential
Patsy Cline
The Best Of
Patsy Cline |
The Country Music Foundation offers 104
songs--more than four hours of music--even though Patsy Cline died at 30 after less than a
decade of recording. Given the wavering quality of her later string-laden work, four CDs
might be excessive, but this set comprehensively follows Cline from upstart country boomer
to pop diva. She could take charge of a song from day one, as the two 1954 radio
transcriptions prove. On her vibrant late-1950s work, she moves from honky-tonk and
rockabilly to soft ballads in commanding fashion. "Walkin After Midnight," her
first hit, features Don Helms's gentle steel guitar while her vocals blend raw power with
emotional vulnerability. By 1957, vocal groups had entered into the mix, and in 1961, hits
such as "I Fall to Pieces," "She's Got You," and Willie Nelson's
"Crazy" brought her pop stardom |
The
Essential
Waylon Jennings
Other Waylon Jennings Albums: Greatest Hits
Greatest Hits,
Vol. 2
Wanted! The
Outlaws Outlaws
Super Hits |
Drawn from Waylon's 20 restless
years with RCA, we hear him constantly challenging and reinventing himself. Waylon
understood simplicity, and heeded Buddy Holly's advice to master rhythm. Few more
rhythmically adventurous country records were ever made. Rooted for the greater part
in the '70s when Waylon was at his commercial and artistic peak, this 16-song collection
includes classics like "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line," "Good Hearted
Woman," "Waymore's Blues," "Just to Satisfy You," "Storms
Never Last," and 11 others. It's hard to fault each song individually, save to say
that most of them come from albums which deserve to be heard in their entirety. |
Essential
George Jones Spirit
Other George Jones Albums:
The George
Jones Collection
16 Biggest
Hits Anniversary:
10 Years Of Hits
Merle
Haggard & George Jones |
The quarter drops, and out comes the voice of
Despair, anxious at first, then desperate, with the singer sliding up a wail meant to
caress and exorcise his demons at the same time. He holds the cry as he might the last
bottle on earth and then plunges to the low notes in a moan that leaves no doubt--when you
talk about pain and suffering, George Jones has been there. The proof is in this
44-song, two-disc box set, a tear built into every groove, starting with the stripped-down
production of Pappy Daily's early Starday hits ("Why Baby Why"), segueing to the
Mercury years ("The Window up Above"), dipping into the United Artists and
Musicor material ("Love Bug"), and then moving on to the Billy Sherrill era at
Epic, where Jones secured his legend with his emotionally charged renderings of
melodramatic material ("The Grand Tour"). The set is rounded out with a
smattering of Jones's countrypolitan duets with Tammy Wynette ("Golden Ring"),
as well as "He Stopped Loving Her Today," the preeminent modern country song and
performance. |
George
& Tammy
Greatest Hits
Other George & Tammy Albums: 16 Biggest Hits
Golden Ring
The President
& The First Lady |
At the end of 1971, George Jones signed a 10-year
contract with Epic Records, where Tammy Wynette was enjoying the peak of her career with
Billy Sherrill. By then, Jones's hard-country style had fallen out of favor, and in part
to soften his clenched-teeth delivery, the producer paired him with Wynette, who rounded
her hard, strident delivery with sensuous lower tones. Jones's unconventional
style--alternately stretching or biting off the ends of his phrases, and sliding from one
end of his register to the other--was hard to follow, and Wynette learned to read her cues
in body language. A dipped chin meant he was going for a low note, a tipped head signaled
he was aiming high. But Wynette did more than just hang on. The combination made them the
President and First Lady of country music during their six years of marriage (1969-75),
and their musical partnership took them to the top of the singles charts three times:
"We're Gonna Hold On," "Golden Ring," "Near You." When the
storybook romance ended, the mood of the duets changed from devoted love to restrained
anguish. Every country fan wept |
Tears
Of Fire:
The 25th Anniversary
Other Tammy Wynette Albums: 20 Greatest Hits
Super Hits
D-I-V-O-R-C-E
|
Sometimes it is hard to be a woman. That, of
course, is the central line in Tammy Wynette's signature song, and the message that she
conveyed repeatedly over the course of her three-decades-long recording career. Wynette
was uniquely suited to convey pathos with pluck. She, along with Loretta Lynn, pretty much
defined country music from the female perspective from the late '60s through the '70s. But
while Lynn presented a mostly amiable façade, Wynette was the more gripping and imposing
artist. For starters, she possessed pipes that could tear your heart out of your chest.
Tears of Fire (and what and excellent--and appropriate--title) gathers all her hits and a
few oddities (1964's pre-flight "You Can Steal Me," her weird but captivating
1991 collaboration with the urban dance unit the KLF) in one three-disc package. Old fans
will find this essential; the merely curious with a skewed outlook on the down-home diva
based on "Stand by Your Man" will be stunned by how talented Wynette really was. |
The
Essential Jim Reeves
Other Jim Reeves Albums: Home [Box Set]
Best Of The
Best Of Jim Reeves |
As much as any performer this side of Patsy
Cline, Jim Reeves exemplified the Nashville Sound. Chet Atkins's lush production fit like
a cardigan sweater around the Texan's cozy baritone; it was a sound traditionalists
believed was antithetical to true country music. Record buyers, however, begged to
differ--in droves. The so-called countrypolitan movement produced its share of schlock,
but Reeves had much going for him, most notably a knack for finding apropos material,
including "Welcome to My World," "Four Walls," and "He'll Have to
Go." This 20-track overview features 20 trademark tunes cut between 1957 and his
death in a 1964 plane crash. For refined rural Romeos and Juliets, these are the cozy
tunes that established the country crooner as something of a Nat King Cole in cowboy boots |
Ray
Price
16 Biggest Hits
Other Ray Price Albums:
The
Essential Ray Price: 1951-1962 Prisoner Of Love
|
Here's a career that defies explanation. Ray
Price, the father of the Texas shuffle, achieved dance-hall immortality in 1956 with
"Crazy Arms," with its walking bass; heavily bowed, single-string fiddle; and
slightly tetched lyrics. He may never have topped it, but hits like "City
Lights," "The Other Woman," and "Heartaches by the Number" proved
it was no fluke. Price's big, mellow voice made country music sound erotic. Then in 1967
he threw away his honky-tonk reign with "Danny Boy" of all things, cut with a
47-piece orchestra. That one may have left something to be desired, but his 1970
reading of Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times" was certainly as earthy and
compelling as Countrypolitan got. It's hard not to want more Harlan Howard and Hank
Cochran songs, and less Jim Weatherly, but Price is as contrary as country stars come, and
this set represents him accurately. |
Essential
Johnny Cash 1955-83
Other s
Albums:
Legend at His
Best
At Folsom
Prison
Complete Live
at San Quentin
Best Of Johnny
Cash
The
Complete Original Sun Singles
The Man In
Black (1954-58) [Box Set]
The Man In
Black (1959-62) [Box Set] |
The art of Johnny Cash is as traditional and
innovative, as expansive, as the 20th century itself--so much so that The Man in Black now
stands as an honest-to-God American icon, a living link to the Carter Family and the very
origins of modern country music some 70 years ago. His own repertoire has touched upon
just about every significant development in the field ever since, and this three-CD,
75-song box set gives an impressive overview of just about all of it: the
rockabilly-boogie singles for Sun in the 1950s; his straight-country smashes from the '60s
and '70s; the Americana sagas he recorded during the folk revival; the pro-Indian and
antiwar protest songs; the legendary live prison sets; and so much more--all of it a
compelling testament to the art of simple storytelling and to the expressive power of a
unique human voice. While more is far better in this case, the single-CD Sun Years
captures the best early Cash available. So while calling this The Essential Johnny Cash is
certainly accurate, it's also a huge understatement. Call it, instead, an essential
document of 20th-century America. |
Ray
Charles: The Complete Country & Western Recordings 1959-1986 [BOX SET]
Other Ray Charles
Albums:
Modern
Sounds In Country and Western Music
Love Songs
|
Feeling is what Ray Charles is all
about--straight from the gut, exposed and vulnerable, real. And because it's the feeling
of his music that matters most to him, whether it's found in the words he's singing or the
notes he's playing, he has never seen any reason to limit himself to any particular style.
He's played blues and gospel, jazz and soul, pop and rock and country, and for a half
century now he's scored hits and created masterpieces with just about all of it--very
often all of it at once! But no matter how startlingly dynamic his arrangements, the focus
is always the feeling in Charles's voice. It's such an expressive, soulful instrument
that, regardless of what's swirling around it--strings? gospel choir? pedal-steel
guitar? all of the above?--it still demands the center of attention. Charles's version of
country music takes the listener to unexpected places, musically and emotionally.
Hearing all of his interactions with C&W pulled together like this
simply amazes. |
Honky
Tonk Girl: The Loretta Lynn Collection [Box Set]
Other Loretta Lynn
Albums:
20th
Century Masters: The Best Of Loretta Lynn
20 Greatest
Hits (Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty) |
Editorial Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/29/94-1/12/95) ...shows just how sorely the craggy character of her
voice is missed amid the blandness of so many '90s country ingenues...
This
3 CD set has many of the Greatest Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn Classics. |
Sons
of the Pioneers
Country Music Hall Of Fame
Other Sons of the Pioneers
Albums:
Songs
Of The Prairie [Box Set]
Columbia
Historic Edition |
The Sons of the Pioneers set the standard for
cowboy music that remains in place more than a half-century after their heyday. The group
(which Roy Rogers helped form) combined vocal and instrumental expertise with a
sure-shootin' flair for finding matchless material, whether that meant adopting a
traditional tune such as "Rye Whiskey" or generating original compositions.
Early member Bob Nolan penned "Way Out West," which helped launch the outfit in
the early '30s. It's on this sterling 16-song greatest-hits collection along with the
enchanting "Hills of Old Wyomin'" and, of course, "Tumbling
Tumbleweeds." Now that's white-hat Western music! Indeed, there may not be a better
CD for finding out how the West was won ... with song. |
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Will
Griffin