Country music can divided into 6 generations. 20’s, 30-40’s, 50-60’s, 70-80’s, 90’s and 2000-now. From early hillbilly, bluegrass, folk and gospel right through to country pop, alt country and country rap… country boasts so much history and many sub-genres.
We’ve delved deeper into the stories of our top 3 playlist tracks this month.
I Can Get Off On You - Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
Waylon & Willie is a duet album by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, released on RCA Victor in 1978. It stayed at #1 album on the country album charts for ten weeks.
Jennings was famously arrested in ‘77 after a long lasting cocaine addiction which started when he was living with Johnny Cash in the mid 60’s. Nelson, also known as a notorious pothead, celebrate the triumph of new love or past vices.
Ain’t Leaving Your Love - Townes Van Zandt
Ain’t Leaving You Love is on the 1987 released album At My Window. This was Van Zandt's first studio album in the nine years that followed 1978's Flyin' Shoes, and his only studio album recorded in the 1980s.
Ain't Leavin' Your Love features an unusual saxophone solo and the record overall marks Van Zandt’s songwriting, described as a ‘gentle hard living man, one of the finest songwriters to have ever worked in a country-folk vein’.
‘Big Cheeseburger and Good French Fries’ is from the 2010 released record Sittin’ By The Road which captures Blaze Foley on his earliest known recordings. Described as ‘straightforward and strong’, the record contains a dozen tracks recorded during Blaze’s ‘treehouse’ days in Georgia. It was recorded in the mid 1970s on a home reel to reel machine.
Foley's music is featured prominently in a feature-length documentary film about him entitled Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah, released in 2011 by filmmaker Kevin Triplett.
From dedicated TV channels, festivals, feature films and award shows - the country music genre goes so deep into the history of popular music and modern culture. We invite you to add your favourite country tracks to our collaborative Spotify playlist.
