I Sleep With Strangers

Eilen Jewell - Letters From Sinners & Strangers (2007) {Signature Sounds SIG 2006}
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© 2007 Signature Sounds Recording | SIG 2006
Rock / Country Rock / Country / Country Folk / Roots Rock / Western Swing

There's an off-the-cuff manner to the opening songs of Eilen Jewell's Letters from Sinners & Strangers that makes the album easy to like. She builds "Rich Man's World" around bits and pieces of older folk songs, leaving the listener with the impression that she might have heard the song – somewhere – before. She follows with Eric Andersen's "Dusty Boxcar Walls," a song that likewise echoed Andersen's folk influences. Jewell's lazy Southern delivery on Letters from Sinners & Strangers, backed by full-band arrangements, reminds one of a mellower version of the Tarbox Ramblers' self-titled release.

Merle Haggard - Hag: The Capitol Recordings 1968-1976 - Concepts, Live & The Strangers (2008) {6CD Set Bear Family Records}
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© 1968-76, 2008 Capitol / EMI / Bear Family Records | BCD 16782 FK
Country / Bakersfield Sound / Honky Tonk / Folk Rock / Progressive Country / Traditional Country / Western Swing Revival

Twelve years after they released their first Merle Haggard box, The Untamed Hawk, Bear Family delivered the sequel, Hag: The Studio Recordings 1969-1976. This picks up where The Untamed Hawk left off, which is more of a musical dividing point than it initially seems. If The Untamed Hawk caught Haggard as he was reaching full flight, Hag captures him in his prime, as every single he released reached the Country Top Ten – often capturing the number one slot – and as he sometimes crossed over into the pop Top 40. Hag was without a doubt the biggest star in country music but the remarkable thing about his reign at the top was that he never played it safe.

The forthcoming David Bowie ‘era’ box set which covers most of the 1990s will be released in late November. Brilliant Adventures will be an 11CD box set or a 18LP vinyl box.

Various Artists - The Bakersfield Sound - Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974 (2019) {10CD Set Bear Family BCD16036}
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© 1940-74, 2019 Bear Family Records | BCD 16036
Country / Traditional Country / Bakersfield Sound / Honky Tonk

Buck Owens turned Bakersfield, California into the epicenter of hip country music in the mid-'60s. All it took was a remarkable streak of number one singles that steam rolled right through Nashville with their electrified twang, forever changing the notion of what constituted country music and codifying the Bakersfield sound as hard-driving rhythms, trebly Telecasters, and lean arrangements suited for honky tonks, beer joints, and jukeboxes all across America. Half-a-century later, these remain sonic signifiers of Bakersfield, so the term no longer conveys a specific sound, place, and era, a situation the weighty Bear Family box The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital of the West 1940-1974 intends to rectify.