Elsewhere Online: New Jayhawks Tunes Coming

New West Records is preparing for the release of new recordings by original Jayhawks members Mark Olson and Gary Louris, and feature three of the new songs on their site. If you long for the days of Blue Earth and Tomorrow the Green Grass, this sounds like pretty good stuff. No word on a new version of “Sixpack on the Dashboard.” New West Jayhawks page: http://olsonandlouris.newwestrecords.com/

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Country Music Reclamation Project: Will Your Lawyer Talk to God

Kitty Wells is one of country music’s queens, as the first female to top the country charts (with 1952’s “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”), and has reigned a good long time, having just turned 89. Wells’ long career was very successful and consistently good, right up through the 1970s, with many hits, including “Making Believe” and “Heartbreak USA.” Wells surely provided inspiration for assertive female artists like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, who recorded their own statement songs in the 1960s. I’ve got numerous favorite Kitty Wells songs, but none is better than this one, as she …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: Cocaine Blues

Where did the concept of “outlaw country” come from? I know about Waylon and Willie, but I remember when they smelled more of bourbon and aftershave than leather and weed. When I think about the term, “outlaw country,” I picture big hairy guys in vests, playing pool and listening to weepy tunes about how they used to be tough, but got old. And it’s not a thought I want to think about for very long. I think “outlaw country” began with the clean-shaven and talented Roy Hogsed and his perky, homicidal song, “Cocaine Blues,” much better known as a hit …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet

For my dad, a rare and beautiful flower. Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet (recorded by many) Written by Marvin E. Baumgardner. Death is an angel sent down from above, Sent for the buds of the flowers we love. Surely it’s so, for in heaven’s own way, Each soul is a flower in the Master’s Bouquet. Gathering flowers for the Master’s Bouquet, Beautiful flowers that will never decay. Gathered by angels and carried away, Forever to bloom in the Master’s Bouquet. Loved ones are passing each day and each hour, Passing away as the life of a flower. But every …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: A-11

I read today that this fall’s college freshmen will have always had GPS as part of their lives. They will have never known the experience of getting lost, of staring at a map, of the humiliation of having to stop and ask for directions — and of course, will never have had the need to figure out where they are on their own. We’ve come a long way from life without indoor plumbing, electricity, cable TV, home computers, iPods and wi-fi. So why are some of us so nostalgic for life before convenience? The jukebox has survived this time of …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake

Traditional country music has hid many a cautionary tale within a melody. There is a surprising number of songs about women who should avoid intimate relations with men (Fair and Tender Ladies, The Knoxville Girl, Ode to Billie Joe immediately come to mind). There are also songs that suggest you should make amends with loved ones before it’s too late (Letter Edged in Black, The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea), don’t drink (She’s More to Be Pitied Than Scolded, The Bottom of the Bottle, again, The Kneeling Drunkard’s Plea), and thousands of songs suggesting you should get right with God, right now. …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: Sing Me Back Home

Merle Haggard used his experience as a prison inmate to create some of country music’s best story songs — Mama Tried, I’m A Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man — which may have made his 1957 arrest for armed robbery worth the while. At his best, Haggard deftly combined a crime writer’s stark depictions of criminal life with the pathos he hoped his real-life experience would generate. Sing Me Back Home was the title song to his 1968 LP. By that point, Haggard had had a remarkable run, with (From Now On, All My Friends are Going to be) Strangers, Sing a …

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Country Music Reclamation Project: That’s What I Like

Country music has a lot of comedy acts, almost all of whom aren’t funny. But the great country artists all seem to have a pretty good sense of humor, and there aren’t many who don’t have a humorous song in their act. Hell, Hank Williams recorded Settin’ the Woods on Fire and Nobody’s Lonesome For Me, and he suffered severe back pain for nearly all his 29 years. Onie Wheeler isn’t quite as well-known but was just as talented. He recorded plenty of heartbreakers and sacred numbers, but his original “That’s What I Like” is full of charm, even if …

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Passings: Bo Diddley

There are very few of rock and roll’s innovators left. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis are the only ones I can think of, now that Bo Diddley has gone. His records have always made me happy — the standard riff, the shuffling beat and tumbling bass. The songs were rarely about anything, and that worked out fine, since Bo Diddley found a groove and stayed in it. Music fans never got tired of it. The saddest thing was that most of the tributes I’ve read in the past day or so mentioned that, despite the enormous impact he …

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