Around the same time, he hooked up with the greatest country supergroup of all time, the Cherry Bombs, featuring Vince Gill, Albert Lee, and a handful of Nashville stalwarts. The Cherry Bombs surfaced again recently as the Notorious Cherry Bombs, resulting in the 2004 country novelty hit "It's Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long)."
After a decade writing #1 hits for other people, Crowell hit the big time with 1988’s Diamonds and Dirt, the first country album to result in five number one singles (three of which show up on Essential). Unlike classic rock radio, which is willing to recycle hits forever (think Def Leppard — you still hear all the hits off Hysteria once in a while, from "Love Bites" and "Sugar" on down to dross like "Armageddon It"), country radio is a relentlessly cannibalistic medium that eats the old and slow.
I am a longtime fan of country music, and I cannot recall hearing even one of those five hits on the radio in the past 15 years. Consequently, Rodney Crowell, a legitimate triple threat as a songwriter, singer, and guitar player who once came thisclose to superstardom, resides today in the "where are they now" file next to Charley Pride and Ronnie Milsap.
All of which makes The Essential Rodney Crowell very welcome. The collection is a judicious but too-short 16-track collection that functions simultaneously as a career retrospective and as museum of 30 years of Nashville fads. Although he started as one of the New Traditionalists, Crowell quickly left country conventions behind when producing his own music, a strategy that sometimes hasn’t dated so well.
Maybe I'm being a bit uncharitable to Crowell by dismissing his productions as painfully pedestrian, but when a beautiful song like "Shame on the Moon" features gated snare drums and a compressed-to-heck Strat solo plus a saxophone, I don't think, "Oh, how lovely." I think, "Oh, how 1981." That being said, "Shame on the Moon" is just one of at least 10 songs on The Essential Rodney Crowell that deserve a legitimate shot at country immortality. As a go-to hit machine for other people, Crowell has had his shots, but it’s a mystery why some of these songs – perfect country songs – aren’t total classics.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Well I much more enjoyed reading your take about country music than I do listening to it. (are there any country music podcasts out there???)
I like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and even Dolly Parton (9 to 5 and Jolene, Coat of Many Colors are faves). There's very little today I can stand. My brother tried sending me a Big and Rich CD ... Well, he did send it to me saying it was one of the few country groups he liked, but it sounded the same.
Something about fake country accents and, I don't know. Something's wrong, I just don't like the genre at all - and I'm a pretty wide-open guy when it comes to musical tastes.
You point out an interesting country radio phenomenon that I, of course, have never noticed. I wonder if other long-time country music fans share the same experience.
Saying all that, I promoted this review to Advance.net. That means I put it here (and these places) where it could potentially be read by another few hundred thousand readers.
- Thank you for the post. Temple Stark
2 - Temple Stark
Now that you mention it here, yeah, you wrote a killer review.
And I heard the Revisited on the Johnny Cash Legend series. It was truly great. I didn't know it was his father-in-law though. Well, actually I think I did but then forgot again.