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Townes Van Zandt - Rear View Mirror

This reissue of a 1993 live album was never intended to memorialize Townes Van Zandt (in the saddest of posthumous ironies, its Sugar Hill sleeve includes a phone number to call for bookings), but it'll do for now. Originally released by Sundown, a tiny Austin indie with limited

Lefty Frizzell - That's the Way Love Goes: The Final Recordings of Lefty Frizzell

Perhaps Lefty Frizzell knew he was getting ready to check out. By 1972, his emotional, financial and physical health was failing. He'd gone eight years without a top-10 hit, and Columbia, the label he had blessed with a flurry of hits in the '50s, let him go.

Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

"We claim Gram Parsons as our unholy ghost, minister of the shotgun wedding of country and rock 'n' roll long before the Eagles crashed the reception." --No Depression Vol. 1, No. 1 If you accept this assertion, then Sweetheart Of The Rodeo is our Pentecost, the

Caution Horse - Trust the man with the star

Everyone knows about The Arch, but most people don't realize St. Louis has a Walk of Fame. In U City, the neighborhood around Washington University, the sidewalks are decorated with large bronze stars naming important cultural figures who have ties to St. Louis. Actress Betty Grable, fastballer Bob

Billy Jack Wills And His Western Swing Band - Self-Titled

While Billy Jack Wills may not be nearly as well-known as brothers Bob and Johnnie Lee, he and his short-lived band created some of the most exciting and innovative Western swing ever recorded. The youngest of the Wills brothers, Billy Jack got his start playing in his older brothers'

Billy Joe Shaver - Old Five and Dimers Like Me

Billy Joe Shaver is the real deal. Born in Corsicana, Texas, raised in Waco. Mother worked in a honky-tonk. Shaver himself worked as a bull rider and a bronco buster, in addition to more pedestrian go-rounds as a gas station attendant, car salesman and sawmill worker, where he lost parts

Gene Autry - Blues Singer 1929-1931: Booger Rooger Saturday Nite! / Riders in the Sky - Public Cowboy #1: The Music Of Gene Autry

While Gene Autry is best-known for his classic Western songs, it may surprise some of his fans to discover that at the beginning of his career, he was an unabashed Jimmie Rodgers imitator who sang the blues with gusto. A number of the songs included on Blues Singer 1929-1931 are