These 20 CDs comprise over 25 hours of music captured on-stage in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s at KWKH’s legendary Louisiana Hayride radio show. Staged live in Shreveport, the Hayride featured national country music stars, soon-to-be legends, regional break-outs, and talented newcomers. Most of this music has not been heard since the day it was broadcasted.
Now in their 18th year, the Awards are a key highlight of the folk music calendar and serve to raise the profile of folk music. Talent, new and old, received accolades including Folk Singer of the Year, Best Duo, Best Album, Musician of the Year, Young Folk Award and more. Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented to Ry Cooder and Al Stewart.
It seems hard to imagine that a band inspired as much by breakfast cereal and Saturday morning cartoons as rock & roll could have created the album that spawned an entire movement – grunge. When Neurotica was released in 1987, it inspired hordes of punk/hardcore kids to put down the safety pins and pick up the guitar…
The Mississippi Delta has some of the most fertile soil in the world and became one of the richest cotton growing areas in the world which, before the American Civil War, was worker exclusively by black slaves brought over from Africa. The blues was forged on the anvil of poverty and hardship the black sharecroppers and tenant farmers had to endure. Born of the harsh, brutal conditions of life in the South, and full of pain, frustration and anger, the passionate, soulful sounds of the Delta revolutionised the sound of 20th-century music. This compilation celebrates some of its greatest exponents.
Before Steve Young became one of the founding fathers of country-rock with his 1969 album Rock Salt and Nails, he was a member of Stone Country, a short-lived pop group that fused country and rock in a very different way. Stone Country's sole album, released in the spring of 1968, is a polished but intriguing mixture of sunshine pop, progressive country, blue-eyed soul, and folk-rock, all wrapped up in a slick package created with the best of L.A. studio craftsmanship (producer Rick Jarrard and arranger George Tipton, who both worked on the album, were also helping Harry Nilsson create his sublime early albums at the same time). Stone Country goes in too many directions at once for its own good, but it's clear that this was a band packed with talent and full of great musical ideas; the opener, "Love Psalm," is a delightful bit of psychedelic pop punctuated with some solid bluegrass picking…