For the longest time, whenever anyone would ask me what kind of music I liked, I'd reply, "Anything but Country." However, I eventually realized that what I didn't like was modern, top 40 Country à la Garth Brooks and the legions of other Wrangler-clad muzak-makers. If you dig into the roots of the genre, you find some really beautiful stuff: simple, straight-forward song-writing about universally-appealing subjects of lost love, hard labor, and good times. None of this 'I'm proud to be redneck' crap that so much of modern country boils down to. In this mix you'll find most of the OGs: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, et al. I also included some stuff that may be considered more "traditional" than strictly "country", but it's exactly that period in American music when genre labels didn't define your art or your audience that I'm interested in exploring here, so I threw them in the mix. As usual, my last song is a bit of an outlier -- a live version of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind" that begins with Etta saying to the audience:
"I always fantasized of being a Country and Western singer. No shit!"
Hey, if Etta likes Country, so can I.
Enjoy, y'all.
Classic Country Mix
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