Hank, Buck, and Marty

Avery loooooves Johny Cash (so do I!), so we wore him out on our drives home from preschool. So, I grabbed a few other old country/cowboy guys from the library. It’s kind of a fun connection for us.

Buck Owens - Greatest Hits
This was my least favorite of the bunch, though it wasn’t bad. The sound was a bit too polished, too cliche– definitely citified music, not country in much but name and style. Still, “Act Naturally” is kind of clever and catchy. “Made In Japan” is funny, about liking Japanese girls.




Marty Robbins - Gunfighter Balads & Trail Songs
“Big Iron” is one of my favorite songs already. “El Paso” is another great clasic. I gotta say though, the rest is pretty repetitive. Plus when you look at the CD inlay it shows a bunch of pictures of him, clean cut and in a suit. I know that’s how musicians did it then, but it kind of takes the steam out of the “gunfighter” bit. Its funny too that these guys got so much mileage singing about cowboys and the old west, a world that had mostly disappeared 50 years before these songs were written.

Hank williams - The best of Hank Williams
This CD is by far the best of the bunch and Avery’s standout favorite. The first three songs are awesome and classics, and you’d recognize them if you heard them. “hey good lookin, what you got `ookin?”… “son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou”… “move it on over… move over little dog cause the big dogs movin in”. Track 4, Lonesome Blue, is my favorite, it features some awesome yodelling style vocals, something you just don’t hear these days. Hank’s music strikes me as far more authentically countrythan the other two, and really even than Johny cash. My only disappointment is two songs with a chorus that is essentially the words “Honky tonkin”/”Honky tonk”. Either song is good on its own but together they seem repetitive.

Anyway, good stuff.

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