The Best Country Albums of 1994, Part 2

David with 39 honorable mentions

I shared my “Best Country Albums of 1994” list on Friday. But there was so much more country music that year worth hearing beyond those 15 picks.

For example: Was 1994 country music’s greatest-ever year for Various Artist collections? I may well still be missing some of those but, including the notably integrated and self-consciously Rhythm Country and Blues set that I already included in Part 1, I’d say there were at least eight of those from the year that are still worth tracking down and checking out. I’ll start “The Best Country Albums of 1994, Part 2” by collecting those, in no particular order, and then I’ll move on to alphabetizing the rest of my big-tent picks from individual acts for the year’s country-album runners-up—with anywhere from one-to-four suggested tracks. Would love to hear what I’ve missed…

Various Artists - 8 Seconds: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I’ve never seen this rodeo flick, and as its leads are Luke Perry and Stephen Baldwin, I may never. (Then again, a pre-celebrity Renee Zellweger plays “Buckle Bunny,” so…) On the other hand, the soundtrack album, which as far as I can tell is mostly material making its first appearance, features strong cuts from John Anderson (“Burnin’ Up the Road”) and Pam Tillis (“Pull Your Hat Down Tight”) as well as solid contributions from Karla Bonoff, Brooks & Dunn, and Reba.

Various Artists - Red Hot + Country

The country addition to the “Red Hot” series benefitting the fight against AIDS/HIV is 17 songs deep, most of them being covers of Baby Boomer rock faves: Sammy Kershaw sings “Fire and Rain,” for example, while Suzy Boggus, Kathy Mattea and Alison Krauss team with CS&N on “Teach Your Children.” Mattea also joins Jackson Brown for a nice “Rock Me on the Water,” and Johnny Cash sings “Forever Young.”  Dolly Parton and Patty Loveless contribute tracks, too, but the standout for me, then as now, is Wilco (a brand-new band at that moment—with their very first release?) and Syd Straw on a chest-thumping acoustic take on all the all-too red-hot “The T.B. Is Whipping Me.”

Various Artists - The Great Dobro Sessions

This is just what it says it is. Resonator guitar heroes Jerry Douglas, Mike Auldridge, Gene Wooten, Rob Ickes and Josh Graves, among others, join forces on 21 instrumentals—and invite some pretty good fiddlers (Vassar Clements, Kenny Baker, ) mandolinists (Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury), banjo players (Alison Brown, Bela Fleck), and more to help them out. The whole thing’s a delight, but Bashful Brother Oswald leading the group through a closing “The End of the World” might be my favorite.

Various Artists - For a Life of Sin: Insurgent Chicago Country, Vol. 1

Like a key album from an earlier country-rock era, Elvis Costello’s Almost Blue, this Bloodshot Records sampler was more consequential than it was, you know, good. Each of the label’s subsequent collections would prove great leaps forward. But For a Life of Sin did serve as a marker of, and next-level catalyst for, an emerging “alt.country” scene, with wildly varying competencies and with a sense of slumming irony that, at least in the beginning, was nearly pervasive. Much of what’s here didn’t hold up even in its moment: Both Moonshine Willy and Iggy Yoakam & His Famous Pogo Ponies sound somehow worse than their groaner names would’ve predicted, while other insurgent country contributors, Jon Langford and Robbie Fulks especially, were going to get much, much better. You may already know the keepers here—Freakwater’s “Drunk Friend” and the Bottle Rockets’ “Every Kinda Everything” were both singled out in the 1993 installment of this list—but if nothing else, these seventeen cuts provide a snapshot of a scene being born.

Various Artists - Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album

A half decade after Whitley’s death, came this fine tribute, with a perfect guest list considering Whitley’s life and legacy: Alan Jackson, Ricky Skaggs, Joe Diffie and Lorrie Morgan, along with Diamond Rio and Alison Krauss. Bonus: A trio of actual Keith Whitley tracks, early versions of songs he later made hits.

Various Artists - Mama’s Hungry Eyes: A Tribute to Merle Haggard

Various Artists - Tulare Dust: A Songwriters Tribute to Merle Haggard

[In my The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard, I go on about these twin tributes for a few pages, but here’s the opening to that section.] The week following [Merle’s] Hall of Fame induction saw the release of Mama’s Hungry Eyes: A Tribute to Merle Haggard. The various-artists collection gave several of Merle’s biggest hits the mainstream Nashville treatment, with mostly solid results from the likes of Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, Alabama, and Randy Travis. Brooks & Dunn contributed a version of “The Bottle Let Me Down” that seemed to have nothing at all to do with the failures of self-medication, but that had everything to do with helping folks achieve an equally worthy end, scooting their boots. Radney Foster’s version of “The Running Kind,” chosen as the project’s single, didn’t really sound like it had done much running, but its blend of Buckaroo beats and Desert Rose Band guitar jangle was positively beautiful.

Only a couple of weeks later, a second collection was released, Tulare Dust: A Songwriters’ Tribute to Merle Haggard. It featured a lineup of like-minded Americana cohorts--Peter Case, Lucinda Williams, Marshall Crenshaw, John Doe, etc.--most of them traveling light, guitar and voice only. The spare approach fit skimpy indie recording budgets, but did aesthetic work, too: Less-is-more signified less is more real. On that score, the Tulare acts were of a piece with Cash’s American Recordings, and in line with alt.country sensibilities generally, favoring a closer–to–deep catalogue version of Haggard’s songbook. Mama’s Hungry Eyes had the obvious classics--“Mama Tried,” “Sing Me Back Home,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Today I Started Loving You Again,” and the title cut, among others--just as you’d have figured it would. Tulare Dust skipped those, choosing off the charts instead (Joe Ely, for instance, sounding sick to death but getting used to it on “White Line Fever”) or at least choosing less frequently anthologized hits like “My Own Kind of Hat” or “Kern River.”

Here’s the rest of 1994’s Best Country Albums, big-tent style…

Dave Alvin – King of California (“Fourth of July,” the title track, and a dustier-than-before version of his “Every Night about This Time”)

John Anderson - Christmas Time (“Blue Christmas,” “Christmas Time,” basically just all of the secular holiday tunes are swell, for those into that sort of thing. The hymns, not so much…)

John Anderson - Country Till I Die (the title track, “The Good,” “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” and a rock-guitar rerecording of Anderson’s signature “Swingin’.”)

David Ball - Thinkin’ Problem (“Thinkin’ Problem” was a No. 2 country hit, “Look What Followed Me Home,” “12-12-84”)

Beacon Hillbillies - More Songs of Love and Murder (An up-to-date string-band project from Blood Orange Jimmy Ryan. “Omie Wise,” “Whiskey Donna”)

Matraca Berg - Speed of Grace (Berg plays the blues, especially on “Slow Poison,” “Tall Drink of Water” and “Come to Mama.” Also, from back when it was still a fairly novel choice, “Jolene”)

Brooks & Dunn - Waitin’ on Sundown (“Little Miss Honky Tonk” was a chart topper. So was Kix singing “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone”)

Marty Brown – Cryin’, Lovin’, Leavin’ (“Summer’s Gone,” “It Tortures Me,” “Why Do You Crucify Me”)

Richard Buckner - Bloomed (“Rainsquall,” “22”)

Mary Chapin Carpenter - Stones in the Road (the chart-topping “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and the Top Ten “Tender When I Want to Be”)

Mark Chesnutt – What a Way to Live (“Goin’ through the Big D” want to No. 2, “Gonna Get a Life” No. 1. Also, “Rainy Day Woman” and the Willie-Nelson penned title track)

The Continental Drifters - The Continental Drifters (“Invisible Boyfriend”)

Rodney Crowell - Let the Picture Paint Itself (Crowell’s title track only went to #60, the album didn’t chart at all, but both return him to the style at least of Diamonds & Dirt. “Loving You Makes Me Strong”)

Dionne Farris – Wild Seed, Wild Flower (“I Know” and, before Beyonce thought of it, “Blackbird”)

Radney Foster - Labor of Love (“Willin’ to Walk,” “Everybody Gets the Blues”)

Cleve Francis - You’ve Got Me Now (“Love or the Lack Thereof,” “The Only Explanation”)

Geraldine Fibbers - Get Thee Gone (“Marmalade,” “The Grand Tour” and, sure, why not, cover of “Jolene”)

Vince Gill – When Love Finds You (“You Better Think Twice” and “Which Bridge to Cross (Which Bridge to Burn)” both went to No. 1. “Go Rest High on that Mountain” only climbed to No. 14 but is today one of his signatures.) 

Nanci Griffith – Flyer (“Southbound Train,” “These Days in an Open Book”)

Merle Haggard – 1994 (“Set My Chickens Free,” “What’s New in New York City,” and a Hot New Country version of “Ramblin’ Fever”)

Mike Henderson - Country Music Made Me Do It (“Hillbilly Jitters,” the title track)

Hootie & the Blowfish - Cracked Rearview (“Hold My Hand,” “I’m Goin’ Home,” “Only Want to Be with You”)

Toby Keith – Boomtown (Keith at his early career best. “Who’s That Man,” “Upstairs Downtown,” and “You Ain’t Much Fun” were all big hits and remain on my short list of Keith favorites.)

Jim Lauderdale - Pretty Close to the Truth (“This Is the Big Time,” “Can’t Find Mary”)

Willie Nelson – Moonlight Becomes You (Willie with a small jazzy combo doing Tin Pan and Pop Country standards. Floyd Tillman’s “I’ll Keep on Loving You,” “You Always Hurt the One You Love,” the Bing Crosby-associated title track)

Nirvana – MTV Unplugged Live in New York (“Oh Me,” “Where Did You Sleep Last Night”)

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Acoustic (“Sarah in the Summer,” “How Long?”)

Tom Petty - Wildflowers (“Honey Bee,” “Wildflowers,” “You Don’t Know How It Feels”)

John Prine – A John Prine Christmas (“Everything Is Cool,” a live version of “Christmas in Prison”)

The Schramms – Little Apocalypse (check out the cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Side of the Road”)

Southern Culture on the Skids - Ditch Diggin’ (“My House Has Wheels”)

Marty Stuart - Love and Luck (pre-Superlatives Marty doing Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips” and a bluegrass number called “Marty Stuart Visits the Moon”)

The Tractors – The Tractors (“Baby Likes to Rock It” was a No. 11 hit and their biggest. “I’ve Had Enough”)

Violent Femmes – New Times (“Don’t Start Me on the Liquor”)

Clay Walker - If I Could Make a Living (His fourth No. 1 “If I Could Make a Living”, but I prefer “The Melrose Avenue Cinema Two”)

***

Want more country album lists? I did something similar for 1993 last year and made a quixotic, three-part, nearly 200-album long stab at listening to every country album of 1973 too.

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