(vintage) country-disco

COUNTRY-DISCO
Based on country music from the American South, this style of disco is an unusual and rare blend. Did Americans really need to make such an abrupt change from "Saturday Night Fever" to "Urban Cowboy"? Maybe they could have mixed the two some more!
---- Examples:
"Baby I'm Burnin'" by Dolly Parton (1978)
"Double S" by Bill Anderson (1979)
"I Can't Wait Any Longer" by Bill Anderson (1978)
"Yippy-i-aye Yippy-i-yo (Ghostriders in the Sky)" by Boots Clements (1981)

that could work -- country, disco, and a little glam rock.

As written by barry Gibb of the Bee Gees...

she got the goldmine roxors!

I could YSI that and a few others, I guess. Not like I'm getting anything done tonight as it is!

Not sure if Dr. Hook really counts, but their 1977 track Sexy Eyes is soooo Disco it hurts.

If teh disco is a barn

http://pdyer.trrill.com/blogimgs/c51.jpg

you think? (you mean the version with ann-margret, right? was there a disco version that i haven't heard?)

BECK, EAT YOUR DIANETICS HEART OUT

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Linda Ronstadt "American Dream" qualifies.

Lee Hazlewood - "Your Thunder And Your Lightnin"

>i'm going to use your suggestions to make a CDRGO. it'd be nice to have >a definitive tracklist. it could take a while to find all these... does >anyone feel generous enough to YSI a few things?

Please send this to me.

Yacht R & B. (by the by those tracks always sound like a direct influence on R Kelly's "Fiesta" and "Ignition"!)

Are there any early loft type songs that might pass?

There's an MP3 here http://www.mushrumps.com/shrumps/dailyshrump.php?idayno=7

but further.. I have no idea.

Wait, so is that the same Diesel who did "Sausalito Summernight"? I never thought of that as country:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZfrkWDAQpzI

But this is: Barbara Mandell, "Is It Love Yet"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nch-ENnAtRE

Related, somehow or other, and usually really weird:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PG0y7VdFSXM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fpwRjmfgmSc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BccPbsKva0Q&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VCBm3LHUlBE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UXOe-1FA0h0

http://youtube.com/watch?v=enlAjUJCxuc&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ifHqKm4W2Ns&feature=related

Also: Eddie Rabbitt's "Someone Could Lose A Heart Tonight" belongs on this thread somewhere.

has anyone mentioned Tony Joe White's disco stuff--"I Get Off On It," '80 on Casablanca? And George Jones' '78 Bartender's Blues cut "I Ain't Got No Business Doing Business Today" is also a great disco tune, complete with saucy background chicks.

what about T. Graham Brown?

Did T. Graham Brown every actually do any disco per se? I know he has lots of stuff that's basically soul music, but I don't know his dancier stuff well.

I'm really obsessed with the songs that are picked for country line-dancing on youtube, like that "Red Hot Salsa" one and the Leroy Parnell one about hot tamales, which all the videos call "Hot Tamales" (I guess that's the name of the dance?), even though that's not the name of the song. There are also line dance videos to John Anderson's "Funky Country" up on youtube. And thing is, these were never country hits. So I don't get if it starts with crate-digging by DJs hunting for country songs that have a great beat (just like hip-hop DJs back in the old days), or if certain songs are plugged to country line- dance clubs, or what. I'm curious about the process.

"Red Hot Salsa" -- which sounds like country set to Latin rhythms, but not Mexican ones -- is apparently by some guy named Dave Sheriff who I've never heard of before, and there are tons of videos up on youtube with people dancing to it, many of them in central Europe, where for all I know there's been a country dancing craze for years. Sheriff's version sounds better than the Mano Wyoming one I linked to.

boys don't cry - "i wanna be a cowboy"

Hey guys - can any of you recommend some Country-Rap-Disco? Something like Bubba Sparxx or Nappy Roots, with an uptempo beat.

Rob - I don't know of anything else along the lines of uptempoed Bubba (who made my 2003 country critics ballot) or Nappy, though I'm sure it's out there. David Banner's "Cadillac On 22s" got on enough country ballots (incl. mine) to make the Nashville Scene's year-end poll list, though I'd call that song country-blues-rap without any disco in sight. I assume you already know about Big & Rich's hip-hop nods (though their tendency is more funk than disco) and Cowboy Troy's hick-hop. The "Barn Dance Mix" of Troy's "I Play Chicken With The Train" is unabashed disco-country-rap (though not much like Bubba or Nappy) and was one of the few redeeming moments on his second album.

And a couple of us think that Taylor Swift's "Lose Yourself" (here in a blue dress and here in a violet dress) is the best non-hip-hop version of a hip-hop song ever, and it's totally Taylor, though again not particularly Bubba or Nappy or disco.

And as long as we're abandoning Jody Beth's "vintage" requirement, there's a bootleg "D-Bop Radio Edit" dance remix of Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman" that veers towards freestyle and Italodisco. And Miley Cyrus's "See You Again" is basically a rockabilly song given a Moroder-disco beat (and is more country than the duet with her dad, though that's the track that got onto the country stations).

And Texas Lightning's "No No Never" (Germany's voyage in 2006 to a strange land called Eurovision) is a country song that doesn't disguise its Europop heart.

weird. i was just listening to Paul Delicato's "Off on an Island" record when i saw this thread. i bought it because it's on AVI records, but then heard this mix of disco & country and kinda recoiled in horror. it's mostly terrible with a few moments that shine through. will definitely be in the trash pile soon though.

http://dreamchimney.com/slvs/IMG_1644_20060814072359.jpg

Edd's nomination of Tony Joe White's Casablanca record might be the most exact fit, but I'm surprised to be the only one to say Tompall Glaser's "I Just Want to Hear the Music" off his '77 record (the opening song of which, "You Can Have Her," has one of the slinkiest funk basslines i've ever heard wobble on a country track); "Music" locks into a hi-hat disco groove and rides it all the way.

Dave and Sugar surely have a few records that fit the bill. I had a couple of their LPs, and definitely recall some thump in there, but "The Door is Always Open" is the only one that comes to mind.

Terri Gibbs is a good call, too. When "Somebody's Knockin'" hit, it really jumped out of C&W radio at the time with a modern kind of beat, a strangely minimal melody and a new-wavish sexual anxiety. When I first saw her on TV (Hee-Haw, probably), I thought the shades were cool, but when I realized she was blind, that made sense, too.

Mentioned this album upthread:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=u4nUmEragqg&feature=related

And if this doesn't count as uptempo country-rap-disco, I don't know what would:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rg5iOpwH8sw

This song is probably somewhere in the neighborhood too (though maybe not necessarily these versions):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YSf6Mrz9TtM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3HdbaHeFzYM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k68aWJB7ats&feature=related

Kool Moe Dee didn't sound country, but he was a cowboy anyway:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=IuDL-TcKXoY

And actually, there were occasional old rap songs that incorporated a country influence, like Onyx's almost unknown single "Ah And We Do It Like This," from a few years before they had actual hits. (And don't Field Mob have a country-ish song or two? Probably not as country as Bubba, though, but he really only did it on his second album, right?)

Silver Spurz Orchestra, "Happy Trails"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O1kWKURg59M&feature=related

Skatt Brothers, "Life At The Outpost" -- holy shit!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eLTLbwT5CKc&feature=related

Hilarious biography of Showdown, of Welcome to the Rodeo non-fame:

http://www.canadianbands.com/Showdown.html

Tanya Tucker made some moves in this direction during the TNT era. Not from that album, but Crossfire of Desire is a hot one.

I was thinking Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds or Firefall ...

Pussycat -- "Mississippi" ('70s Euro hit, apparently):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbi2i0j0k9M

Well, it says "disco" in the background of that clip, anyway, though maybe that was the TV show's name. But it's really more Abba-country than disco-country (as is the Pussycat LP with that song on it.)

Just noticed this in the first/1979/red edition of the Rolling Stone Record guide; anybody heard them?:

Addrisi Brothers / Bud. 5694
Slick, processed disco sung by this songwriting duo and produced and recorded in Nashville by country session master Norbert Putnam. Will 1977 be remembered as the year of cracker disco? Probaby not. -- J.S.

Youtube search turns up four clips -- two seemingly non-country pop disco, one vocal performance from 1959 (that's when they had their first Top 100 hit, according to Whitburn, and then they didn't get another one until 1972, 13 years later -- also, one guy wrote "Never My Love" for the Association), and what seems to be a slowed down cover of the Nanny and the Professor theme song. (Unless the song was slower than I remember it -- I'd forgotten all about that show. Definitely liked it as a kid.)

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=addrisi+brothers&search_type=

just picked up this 12"

chuck mentions donna summer upthread. don't know if he had this song in mind, but country-disco is how i've always thought of it.

I love this stuff, and there's more of it that you'd think (I tell you now, two years too late). Disco daddy David Mancuso got the ball rolling when he used to play cuts from funky Nashville supergroup Area Code 615 (especially "Stone Fox Chase") during the early days of the Loft, which means that the shotgun marriage twixt disco and country goes way, way back to the start. Let me also steer you to Bobby Rush, "I Wanna Do the Do" and Phily Cream with their Southern-fried disco turn on "Soul Man." I've got all three of those as well as the Tony Joe White stuff mentioned earlier in this thread in a couple of my pocasts at www.dsco.libsyn.com should you want to hear 'em. Finally, Stevie Wonder seems to have one foot in the stirrup and the other on the dance floor with "I Ain't Gonna Stand For It" on Hotter Than July.

More, maybe:

Country techno

Gotta say I never thought of the opening of "Born To Be Alive" as country music, but maybe it is.

Finally, Stevie Wonder seems to have one foot in the stirrup and the other on the dance floor with "I Ain't Gonna Stand For It" on Hotter Than July.

I was just going to mention this song.

Ha ha, that Stevie Wonder song description reminds me of this verse from "Last Child" by Aerosmith (who were maybe never country-disco, per se' though they were definitely a little bit country on occasion -- e.g., "Chip Away At The Stone" -- and probably at least a little bit disco sometimes, as well):

Hates in the city
And my loves in the meadow
Hands on the plow
And my feets in the ghetto

And Big Al Downing, a black guy mainly known as a country (and, earlier, rockabilly) singer supposedly made a disco move in the late '70s too, I believe; whether he stayed country when he went disco is a subject for further research, I guess.

― xhuxk (xheddy)

"I'll be holding on" by Big Al Downing is one of my favourite disco songs, it's not very country though with the exception of it including good bit of banjo playing.

Alicia Bridges' "I Love the Nightlife (Disco Round)" sounds country on the verses & then goes disco on the choruses.

maybe i just imagined that k-tel dance country compilation

No I didn't -- except it's not on K-Tel; It's Warner Special Products. It's called Swingin' Country, subtitled "Dance To The Best Of Country"; came out in 1984. Songs by John Anderson, Emmylou Harris, Gary Morris, The Whites, Hank Williams Jr, Earl Thomas Conley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Lee, Gail Davies, Bellamy Brothers, Mel Tellis, Gilley's "Urban Cowboy" Band, and T. G. Sheppard. Not sure off hand whether any of them are remotely disco, though; someday I'll go back and check.

Ronnie Milsap's "Stranger In My House" surely counts here, no?

Bonnie Tyler -- "Got So Used To Loving You." (Most country-rock-disco track on her Euro-country-heavy 1978 The Hits Of LP, though "Heaven" is also notable for sounding a lot like "Itchykoo Park.")

Lotta Love * Nicolette Larson ( 12" Extended Disco Version )

Disco band Belle Epoque's excellent 1979 album Now has a couple blatant Euro-country songs in the middle of its second side ("Loving You" and especially the very Bonnie Tyler-like "Stranger Once Again"), but like lots of acts they seem to keep their disco in a separate box. (The track I really love, "Lose My Man," is more blues-rock, almost. And in "Com'On Tonight" they revive the Diddley beats they'd used in their earlier hit "Miss Broadway").

you have to listen to it all or maybe it'll just sound like disco

This seems like a good thread to ask: can anyone think of any country songs with overt use of synthesizers? (I say "overt," because I've checked out, for instance, a couple early '80s Dolly songs in which a synthesizer player is listed but damn if I can actually hear them... I mean synths as providing essential riffs or at least highly audible background texture.) Only one I'm aware of for sure is Rosanne Cash's "Seven Year Ache," which I totally love.

Not sure if there's technically a synth here or not, Scott (she's playing a piano, and I don't have my copies of her LPs handy to check the liner notes), but the burbling pulse bears a startling resemblance to "I Feel Love" regardless:

There are definitely also '90s country dance mixes (for bands like, say, Confederate Railroad) that have moments in them that sound electronic. But those tend almost inevitably to feel like gratuitous add-ons, more than "essential riffs" (and they usually don't make the songs sound dancier to me, though country line dancers may well disagree.)

The first song on the new Dierks Bentley album (a sort of Bad Company style fugitive boogie) credits "space bass," for whatever that's worth.

Ah, thanks xhuxk -- you're right, I think there are some lightly-burbling synths in the Terri Gibbs (pretty sure I heard about this song from you, years ago... I really like it -- I actually turned a dance DJ I know on to it several months back; he considers himself an '80s expert and was amazed that he'd never heard of it).

Space Bass counts, far as I'm concerned. I'll look into it.

Kind of surprised, frankly, that synths didn't enter into country in a big way (I mean, it seems like drum machines did, right? like with Shania Twain and stuff... or am I wrong?).

doesn't Donna Summer, even, do one or two country-ish tracks on *Bad Girls* or *Once Upon a Time*? I'm blanking out on what they're called, though

"There Will Always Be A You" on Bad Girls was one of them.

Hot Chocolate's "So You Win Again" was also a country move of sorts, I think (though I'm told they're only considered a disco group in the U.S., not in Europe, where they were much bigger.)

See, I'm sure you could come up with a (fairly) sizable list from the other direction: synth-based music gone country, but country gone synth-pop seems more far-fetched, oddly enough.

It's neat how the Gibbs and Rosanne Cash are both 1981, too (my favourite music year, incidentally). I might even consider lumping "Bette Davis Eyes" in there: not strictly speaking country, but at the time, I think I may have thought of it as such, at least for a while (and it strikes me as the sort of thing that might've crossed over into that territory, though I don't know).

I imagine there's a fair bit of country-rock, like Eagles and stuff, with synths, however, and that sort of counts too.

Just checked K.T. Oslin's Greatest Hits album Songs From An Aging Sex Bomb, and she credits synth players (usually Glen Ballard) on several songs. Suspect it's not as rare as you think, Scott. (And if you like Terri Gibbs, I suspect you might like K.T. as well.) Might be tough, though, to come up with country songs where synths are a prominent instrument. (Did you skim through all the songs on this thread, though? Bet there's some on here, somewhere. Not remotely convinced that there are more dance-to-country crossovers than the other way around, as much of this thread probably bears out.)

Synths credited in several tracks on Confederate Railroad's Rockin' Country Party Pack, too (not just the "club mixes.") And I bet lots of times, when artists vaguely credit "keyboards" or "percussion," that includes synths; maybe they're just scared to be more specific. Would be really surprised if there aren't a few, too, on some of those '80s Milsap records mentioned upthread.

(Okay, possibly not "percussion", who knows; guess that might imply drum machines more than synths. Ditto "drum loop programming," which I'm seeing on some credits. But a latter-day Mindy McCready CD -- self-titled, 2002 -- lists synths per se' too, fwiw.)

Suspect it's not as rare as you think, Scott.

Well, I think in regards to what I'm looking for, it's possibly even rarer: country music with obvious synth hooks or synth sections, a la "Seven Year Ache" (not to say it has to sound like that, but it has to use synths in as central a way). I dunno... these examples all sound interesting, but it seems to require some serious digging around and to some degree relying on credits. Not that that's a problem or anything, my inquiry's really a shot in the dark to begin with. (Maybe it's safe to say that country absorbs disco and Euro more with its use of beats and subject matter and stuff.)

I mentioned Ronnie Milsap above, but in particular on the synth in country question he's a good one. There are a number of choices here (e.g. "Back On My Mind Again") but consider in particular his cover of "Any Day Now" (from 1982) (#1 country, #14 pop):

Watching that video makes me think of Avalon, both the videos and the songs themselves.

Okay wow, that Terri Gibbs song above, I used to hear it on the radio a lot as a kid, and always thought the singer was male. I thought it was a little weird that a man was singing those lyrics. Now all these years later I learn it's a woman.

Another example of overt synths on a country song is Sylvia's "Nobody" (#1 country, #15 pop). Naturally it's from 1982. I've linked to a youtube version of the original recording below; but youtube also has two live versions from the era where the synths are replaced with horns.

Yeah, I just linked to "Nobody" last week on that Alphabetic Video Jukebox thread; should've thought of that. And here's another one from 1981 (somebody should do a mix CD of this stuff...)

And "Islands In The Stream" (1983) must have some synths, right?

Thinking of Eddie Rabbitt: his duet "You And I" with Crystal Gayle (country #1, 1982) has synths, thought not as overt as the others here, it's a softer cut.

"Islands In the Stream", definitely. In fact most of Kenny Rogers hits from 1980 on are heavy on the synths. For instance, "Love Will Turn You Around":

Juice Newton "Love's Been a Little Bit Hard on Me"

So, on a hunch that this might happen (especially given the slick outfit he's wearing in the foldout gatefold), I plopped down $1 for a copy of Ronnie Milsap's 1979 Images LP at Austin's Citywide garage sale last month. First side turned out to be mostly vulnerably hurt sad-sack ballads -- often good, with soul and blues in the phrasing. But then I flipped the record over, and Holy Toledo -- the five-minute-long opening and closing cuts of Side Two, a cover of Tommy Tucker's 1964 r&b hit "Hi Heel Sneakers" and another song called "Get It Up," are absolutely, unabashed disco tracks, period. Almost with no country in them; in fact, "Get It Up" sounds basically like a late '70s live-band party funk number. "Hi Heel Sneakers" is glitzier, but in both cases, Ronnie leaves no doubt about what he was going for here. (Third cut on the side, "Delta Queen," fits on this thread too, just not as blatantly as those other two -- it's probably as disco as Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights," though.)

Album went #5 country; # 98 pop. And "Get It Up," according to Wiki, did not chart country but went to #43 on the pop chart (a position Joel Whitburn confirms, though AMG for some reason skips it in their discography.) I'm guessing it got disco play; curious whether it crossed over to black radio.

Here's "Get It Up." Wasn't kidding, was I?

wow, that's a hot track! My Ronnie Milsap fandom is mostly from the early 1980s, but it sounds like I'll want to dig deeper.

"Delta Queen" fits on this thread too, just not as blatantly as those other two -- it's probably as disco as Glen Campbell's "Southern Nights"

...mainly because it borrows outight the bassline from "Southern Nights," it turns out. But both songs sound more "swamp" than "disco" to me, to be honest. (And nothing else on Glen Campbell's disappointing Southern Nights LP, which I also just bought for $1, is anywhere near as good, or has much of a groove at all. Unless you're into a dead-assed slowed-down version of "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, a/k/a the theme from Big Love).

One thing I don't think anybody has talked much about on this thread is how country some (lots of?) really early disco probably was in the first place, simply by virtue of Southern Soul and country music often being kissing cousins. "Morganton, North Carolina," on Johnny Bristol's 1975 Feeling The Magic, definitely has some country in it, to my ears -- from its title on down. And Bristol (born in Morganton, Joel Whitburn confirms) is one of the guys who was then inventing disco, first with "Hang On In There Baby," which went #8 on the pop chart in '74. Curious now about his other stuff, and other '70s Southern soul guys who might fit here.

Guess Big Al Downing (mentioned a few times above) might be an obvious example of that, come to think of it. (But I still don't know his disco stuff, only his country stuff -- and not sure to what extent he ever straddled the line between the two genres.)

post-Angry-Samoans-gig Metal Mike-DJ'd dance-contest party songlist on Angry Samoans myspace lists mostly obvious disco/Euro/dance-pop type stuff (Toy Box, Vengaboys, Gina G, Jocelyn Enriquez, Lady Gaga, Hues Corporation, Carol Douglas, A*Teens, Archies, Kylie, KC, etc.), but also the following three c&w tracks; not sure whether that makes them discofied or not:

YOU CAN FEEL BAD - Patty Loveless
BLACK EYES BLUE TEARS - sHaNiA TwAiN
I'M DIGGIN' IT - Alecia Elliott

"X-Country" by Invisible Man's Band (former 5 Stairsteps of 1970 "O-o-h Child" fame), off Invisible Man's Band (Mango 1980, bought for $1 last month): history's only explicit merger ever of square-dance hillbilly music and Vaughan Mason-type rollerskate disco?: "This here square dancin' for squares/Let's hear that banjo Slim/Don't he play good/Swing your partner round n round/Doo-cee-doe and don't let her go/PROMENADE -- ROLLERSKATE!" Sort of a precursor of Malcolm McLaren's "Buffalo Gals" too, I guess. (Album's got other interesting stuff as well, especially a disco protest called "Rent Strike" -- "We the tenants of 200 W. 100 & 1/8 St. declare Rent Strike all right!" -- and some Marvin Gaye-style funky-space-reincarnation-style astronomy disco called "Full Moon," and some vulnerable early-disco-style falsetto-soul disco called "9 Xs Out Of 10." "All Night Thing" apparently went #45 on the pop chart, but it might only be my fifth favorite out of the six songs here.)

Six of ten songs credit synthesizers on Juice Newton's very new-wavey looking 1983 Dirty Looks ( a sealed copy of which that is no longer sealed cost me a buck), but the only one I could honestly make a claim for "sounding disco" is the LP-opening title track, which clearly takes its electro-dance pulse from Blondie's "Call Me" (which may have taken its own electo-dance pulse in turn from Black Sabbath's "Children of the Grave" but never mind); only thing is, I don't know how "country" I'd say "Dirty Looks" sounds -- not very; it's closer to early-Benatar Blondie-discoed rock moves like "We Live For Love" or "Treat Me Right," probably. Went #90 as a single in Billboard; next song, a cover of the Zombies' "Tell Her No," went to #27, though I swear I never heard it before. The other track I like a lot is second-side-opener "Don't Bother Me," glam-shout powerchord country-pop that sounds like a missing link between Suzi Quatro and Shania Twain (with maybe one part in 100 of Stacy Lattisaw's "Attack Of the Name Game" in the rhyme scheme, though that's probably just my imagination.) Also: one slightly rockabillish number and too many ballads, though "Slipping Away" sounds a lot like the sort of slower track Donna Summer could have done in the early '80s, after she "went rock."

Wow! I thought Ronnie Milsap was nothing but sad sack ballads. But that track above is pretty hot (could be hotter pitched up a few notches).

And it leads to more potential country-disco on youtube. Here's Roy Orbison's "Easy Way Out" off 1979's very disco looking Laminar Flow album which I've never heard:

And here's Dave Marsh getting all cranky about what a betrayal this album supposedly is including the occasional "trumped-up disco rhythm."

Although I gotta admit that both the Milsap track and the Orbison one shortchange the country if it exists at all.

Okay there, here's Juice's "Dirty Looks" (theoretically live). Probably some '80s Stevie Nicks in there too, now that I look at it:

27-song playlist I did for Rhapsody a few weeks back. (I'd ammend some of it now, but what the hey):

http://www.rhapsody.com/playlistcentral/playlistdetail?playlistId=ply.28077918

someone (ahem) needs to put together a CDR of this shit. awesome thread. thanks for the links chuck.

The shotgun marriage of country and disco has been a past obsession on mine that was recently reawakened/refueled by this very thread. First, I've got a few things to add to the list:

"A Country Party" -- Jerline & Friends
"Tennessee Waltz" -- Silver Blue
"Nashville Soul" -- The Syndicate (a group that billed themselves as "Nashville's disco band")
"Hot in the Saddle" – Meco
"Big West" – Bionic Boogie

I've also done two podcasts that feature several of the tracks on this thread. You can find them at:

http://www.dsco.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=500440

http://www.dsco.libsyn.com/index.php?post_year=2008&post_month=11

So...anybody ever heard Carole Chase??? (See here):

Rolling Country 2009 Thread

I'm not sure, but maybe this is what you're looking for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4h9775AAfk

The sound isn't good, b/c I gather the sound comes from the record being played onto the video, not a direct rip. But it was on Casablanca West, a subsidiary of the familiar disco label. You can read a bit about the intention for this label here.

It doesn't sound very disco there, I admit. And this is the first I've heard of it; I'm no expert. But the bass comes in loud enough to hear a few times, and its pulse has a disco throb.

She's been singing back-up for Lynryd Skynryd for about 20 years, and writing these songs:

Do You Know Where Your Man Is Tonight - Recorded by Pam Tillis

True Blue Fool - Recorded By Martina McBride

Civil War - Recorded by Ronnie Milsap

Baby, Take a Picture - Rickey Van Shelton

seconding Dolly's "Potential New Boyfriend"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olM4F-w16Ac

had a feeling that track would be mentioned when I clicked this :)

haha yeah the new box is amazing, up until the last five or so songs and I'll warm to them too eventually

I think Joe Ely's Hi-Res album from 1984 deserves a mention on this thread. Not really disco at all, but definitely extremely synthesizer-based, not to mention very influenced by '80s AOR songs (in the vicinity of Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger" and Aldo Nova's "Fantasy" maybe) that had in turn been inspired by disco. Got horrible reviews as a sell-out at the time, maybe deservedly in the sense that it's not nearly as good as most of Ely's earlier albums. But I found a $1 copy last month, and I'm finding it pretty interesting regardless -- seems the most compelling cuts aren't so much technobilly things like "Cool Rockin' Loretta" as the slower, spacier, more stretched-out ones near the ends of both sides (murder mystery or whatever "Letter To Laredo," for instance, and "Locked In a Boxcar With the Queen Of Spain"), where Ely's using electronics not so much for beats as for spooky spaghetti-western atmosphere. Plus, the move was gutsy, and as far as I know unique, whether it totally worked or not. (On some other thread, though, I compared it to Neil Young's Trans, which is an exagerration; possibly closer to Warren Zevon's Transverse City from 1989, though I admittedly haven't heard that in over 20 years.)

Theme from The Electric Horseman -- sounds like if the Allman Brothers went full disco.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG8qq0b3_ZU

was listening to the bill andersonn disco tracks recently.

horrifying

i can't go through this whole thread, but did anyone mention Kathy Barnes on this thread? Made pretty bad country records on Gene Autry's Republic Records label and then made the Body Talkin' album in 1979 which is actually good. the songs are either country, country soul, or flat-out disco. title tune is the best of the bunch. plus, she's naked on the cover.

so, as far as a country singer taking a successful stab at disco, it gets my vote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmUoIVbL8tI

http://www.coolforever.com/temp/kathybarnes_bodytalking.jpg

really digging this record. true southern fried disco. on TK's Alston label. Janie Fricke on backing vocals.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YmTxZYM_iW0/SZxfkhOKOJI/AAAAAAAADng/TWO6KCpEOcA/s320/bill+pursell+01.jpg

So turns out the most unabashedly disco track -- okay, maybe slightly abashed, but not much -- on Sylvia's 1981 Just Sylvia LP (called, uh, just Sylvia on the front cover -- it's the album with her lone and great pop hit "Nobody") is "Not Tonight" (guy's leaving tomorrow but still all hers tonight, sound has a definite Donna Summer influence), but at least three other songs (probably my three favorites on the album outside of "Nobody") show a pretty pronounced and often synthy sense of dark Europop/dancey-AOR/flashdance-style space at least (rererence points: ONJ, Abba, Sheena Easton, Stevie Nicks, Laura Branigan, Terri Gibbs, though some of those obviously came later) -- "Mirage" (about a guy disappearing into nowhere, a popular sad disco theme, and built around a familiar looped semisymphonic Rhodes hook I can't place, though I swear there's some connection to the proto-synth-pop break in Del Shannon's "Runaway"); "You're A Legend (In Your Own Mind)" ("ode to t.c.," whoever that was, though he was apparently quite full of himself); and "The Mill Song (Somebody's Got A Dream)" (second of two side closers where Sylvia discusses returning to her home town and everything has changed since she left.) None of those were actually country hits, though two other tracks ("Sweet Yesterday" and "Like Nothing Ever Happened," both okay but more generic and not very memorable) were. Album was produced by Tom Collins (a ha -- bet he's "t.c."!); Joel Whitburn says Sylvia was inititally his secretary. Cover credits also include two synth players, two pianists, and a Rhodes guy -- not to menton "The Nashville String Machine" (who were fairly ubiquitous, I think?). (I also had a best-of CD by her once, though I'm not seeing it on my shelf; I either got rid of it or it's in storage. If the latter, I'll try to put it on someday, though given that no other songs I love here were singles -- and this was her highest charting of five early '80s albums -- I'm not that optimistic.)

Thanks in part to this thread I recently posted another country disco outing on my podcast; it includes some stuff that's been kicked around here (as well as plenty that hasn't). I was especially happy to learn about Carol Chase and Bill Purcell. You can hear it at:

http://www.dsco.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=608653

picked up this 12 inch yesterday. so great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfickh0_Sxw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZGJy35RAU

got a great record yesterday. KOUNTRY KILOWATTS by TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY.

i think its the album to beat for this thread. serious steel guitar/fiddle/mandolin disco instrumentals. titles like HIGH VOLTAGE, DOWN HOME DISCO, BANDIDO, BOOGIE YOUR BUTT OFF, HONKIN'. on Ovation Records. 1976.

apologies if its been mentioned. thread is kinda long.

i need to hear a lot more of this stuff.

So, Bill Anderson's Ladies Choice -- MCA, 1979. Probably the most country-disco album I've ever heard, so far; takes unashamed disco throb and orchestration (used on maybe 75 percent of the album --"I Can't Wait Any Longer," mentioned by Timmy Tannin at the top of this thread, is only one of the most blatant examples) as a natural extension of '70s schlock-ballad countrypolitan; includes covers of future country act Exile's Chinn/Chapmann-penned pop-chart-topping glam-disco-popper "Kiss You All Over" and future country one-hit-wonder Lionel Richie's r&b schmaltz classic "Three Times A Lady." Album title telegraphs the concept -- almost every song is a seduction number for the ladies, usually about one night stands, frequently set in singles bars for the presumably midlife-crisis impaired. Most ridiculous song: "Double S," where Bill picks up a babe in a bar whose nametag says "S.S." on it, and he tries to guess what those intitals stand for to no avail, and she orders a Scotch and Soda, and he drives her back to her hotel (the Surf And Sand, or something like that) because she's flying out tomorrow on a Seven Oh Seven (which he guesses because he's Super Smart.) (Only disapppointment is that they don't watch Sesame Street together after Sloppy Sex, since that show's where the alliterative cadence seems to come from, and she doesn't wind up revealing herself as a She Wolf of the S.S.) Next song is about making love to a "Married Lady," which sounds totally sleazy, but then at song's end, surprise, it turns out she's married to the singer, awww. Anyway, what really puts it all over the top is that Anderson recites most of the songs in a kind of hushed, talked tone that, as far as I can think of, might be unique in the country music realm -- with the disco embellishments, he winds up seeming like a country equivalent of Barry White, or maybe early '70s Isaac Hayes. Turns out, though, that that vocal style is not something Anderson concocted specifically for this album. AMG: "One of the most successful songwriters in country music history, Bill Anderson was also a hugely popular singer in his own right, earning the nickname 'Whispering Bill' for his gentle, airy vocal style and occasional spoken narrations." I don't know his other stuff at all, though he'd apparently been charting with country albums -- including lots of top 10s -- since 1964. But, according to the Whitburn country chart book I have, Ladies Choice, which peaked at #44, was his last regular issue LP to chart. (A Best Of hit #64 in '91, but that's it.) Not sure if that means the disco effectively killed his career; fwiw, his two previous albums in '77 and '78 (which may or may not have had country-disco on them) barely reached the lower 30s, so his era was clearly already on the wane.

.."On the wane" in chart terms, anyway; he's apparently still around, though, since he does a (mostly talked) duet with Jamey Johnson on the title track of JJ's forthcoming The Guitar Song album.

Closely related to this thread, there was some scattered talk earlier this year on the Rolling Country thread about Barbara Mandrell's r&b influences; here for instance (but search her name for more):

Rolling Country 2010

"Potential New Boyfriend" is cool. Parton also released a synthed-up covers album (produced by Motels and Kim Carnes fave Val Garay) the following year called The Great Pretender.

Check out "Save the Last Dance For Me" – and its opening chord!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzAPh5I2ua8

Frank Kogan suggests that Dottie West recorded some disco/adult-contemporary/country tracks, sometimes (if I'm understanding him right) as duets with Kenny Rogers. Not familiar with those off-hand myself, though I wouldn't doubt that I've heard some of them:

Rolling Country 2010

Think I mentioned upthread the Rolling Stone Record Guide review of the Addrisi Brothers' Nashville-recorded 1977 LP on Buddah, which the book referred to as "cracker disco." Well, I found a copy for a dollar last week, and had my hopes up a little, but it's not very good -- and also, even if those are Nashville studio pros playing on it ("strings and horns arranged by Sanchez Harley," if that helps anybody), there's nothing I'd identify as "country" on it, at all. Actually more calypso or reggae tinges (in two or three songs), and salsa-type Latin (in "Emergency," probably the best track), but mostly it seems like aging white pop guys trying to make a blue-eyed-falsetto-soul disco-era comeback, a la the Bee Gees obviously, or even the Four Seasons (circa "Who Loves You" in 1975 say, though "Emergency" actually sort of quotes "Let's Hang On!" from a decade earlier.) Turns out the Addrissi Bros were Massachusetts boys born 1938 and 1941, so they'd have been in their late 30s; they had a #62 hit in 1959 with something called "Cherrystone," then a #25 called "We've Got To Get It On Again" in 1972. Their biggest hit, "Slow Dancin' Don't Turn Me On," where they ask the DJ to play some disco or rock'n'roll not a ballad, is on this LP and got to #20, and two other tracks went Hot 100. But they also cover "Never My Love," which had hit #2 for the Association in 1967, and which it turns out the Addrissis wrote, so I guess those are the royalties that bought them that pool and those stomach-turning organgey fake tans on the LP cover. (Association's version is a lot prettier; so is Cobra Verde's actually.) They also say what's good for the goose is good for the gander on the last song on the first side and monkey see monkey do on the second song on the second side, so they apparently like sayings that compare people to animals. Latter also has Tarzan & Jane references, and attempts at jungle rhythms, sort of. Second side in general is slightly rougher and funkier and lower-registered than the first; some passably brassy early '70s style minstrel-pop in "Baguio," and the version of "Does She Do It Like She Dances" that ends the album seems a little meatier than the one that starts the album. So, not a horrible disco record, but not one I ever figure I'll want to play again, either. Mostly, they just come off as real sleazy singles-bar hacks, and look it, too:

http://www.shugarecords.com/images/records/9baab9a5-4381-44b6-bae5-dafae5c2e7f7-0.JPG

Kinda figures that Jerry Reed would've done this once or twice, given his whole funky white boy Dixieland minstrel talk-country ethos (hired great drummers too), but I never knew where 'til now: Answer is "I Get Off On It," on 1982's The Bird, a blatant disco-country track about people's quirks and kinks: woman who eats chocolate bars during sex, guy who loves chewing snuff, and most significantly a "pretty thing out in Los Angeles" who's actually a man dressed like a woman, which Jerry does not criticize except to the extent that fools like him get fooled. The crossdresser tells him "it ain't no skin off your nose/I just dig them ladies' clothes," upon which Jerry laughs and compliments his hose, which might or might not be a double entendre. (This was two years before Moe & Joe's Boy George-inspired trannie-country hit "Where's The Dress," 27 years before Phil Vassar's "Bobbi With An I".) Rest of the album's not disco, but still probably one of the funkiest county albums I've ever heard. Two top-two country novelty singles, both talked -- "The Bird," about a parrot who can perfectly imitate Willie Nelson and George Jones (and does, though I think Jerry figures out he's being scammed), and the divorce classic "She Got The Goldmine (I Got The Shaft)" ("they split it right down the middle/and she got the better half"), which in retrospect mixes county, funk, hard rock powerchords, and rapped words in ways that predate the first Big N Rich LP by decades. Other two singles were apparently the cover of CCR's "Down On The Corner" (again, talked to the funky rhythm more than Fogerty did it) and "I'm A Slave," about addictions to smoking (I keep thinking it'll turn into "Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette" but it doesn't), loose women, etc. Other great song -- again, talked, not sung -- is "Good Time Saturday Night," about being poor during the Depression and then being poor again during the early '80s recession, and how the WPA then (which Reed says got his dad a job) and food stamps and unemployment benefits now (which he also doesn't badmouth) are continued proof that hard times are always with us. And there's another track called "Hard Times" itself that I could've sworn had Hank Jr. on it; might need to go back and check.

Nah, no Bocephus on that song; just Reed sounding like Bocephus -- like "A Country Boy Can Survive", which had gone #2 country the year before, to be exact. Except this isn't some proto-Tea Party small-town chauvinism thing; just Reed talking again, though angrier this time, about growing up poor, eating beans every night.

"The Bird," fwiw, actually samples the choruses of Willie's "Whiskey River" and "On The Road Again" and George's "He Stopped Loving Her Today" (decades before Shooter Jennings did the same thing with that same George Jones song, in "4th Of July.")

Is Millie Jackson's A Little Bit of Country album actually a little bit of country? I just picked it up for two bucks.

Awesome thread.

Chuck is a star.

love this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8MrObXGrY

chuck, are you a johnny d fan? you probably are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG0y7VdFSXM

chuck, the most disco sylvia song is actually "the matador". wonder if she was a Babe Ruth fan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zm7KejJrU4

I think I actually might've linked to that Johnny D video somewhere upthread. (Had the CD it was on too, but pretty sure I don't anymore -- It was lame, despite the promising concept.) And Millie Jackson for sure did country songs (she covers Merle Haggard and Kenny Rogers songs on LPs I've got), so presumably that album bamcquern mentions is (one of) her country one(s), which I've definitely heard that she made.

Was thinking Disco Four were the pre-Fat Boys Fat Boys, but nope, that was the Disco Three. Do remember "Country Rock And Rap" existing before, though. (Don't think I ever owned it, unlike at least one Disco Three 12-inch I bizarrely got rid of.) And yeah, somebody else (Michael Freedberg maybe?) mentioned that Sylvia "Matador" song to me before. (Maybe even on this thread.)

"You Get High In N.Y.C.," first of four songs on Italodisco originators Mauro Malavasi and Jacques Fred Petrus's (seemingly partially Village People-inspired) pre-Change project Revanche's 1979 (and maybe only) album Music Man, goes into what sounds like an extended country hoedown part (within the Eurodisco rhythm) about a third of the way in; liner notes credit The Goody Music String Ensemble for "strings", but they sure seem more like fiddles than violins there. (Then, two thirds of the way in, there's an extended Latin conga break. Next song, "Revenge," should've been mentioned in the disco-metal appendix of my metal book due to its repeated hard rock guitar parts and tough guy vocals; like the 1982 Rose Tattoo song of the same name, which I was just listening to a couple days ago and couldn't figure out whether it was right-to-work or pro-union, Revanche's "Revenge" is a kind of blue-collar working man's anthem -- "we don't want to work for nothing.")

here's an amazing AMG review of mac davis's forty 82 LP:

You have to wonder if Mac Davis knew that when he signed to Casablanca Records there was a subliminal message in every contract that somehow every record on the label except for Kiss albums had to have disco elements -- even after disco was dead. After all, if they did it to T. Rex with Light of Love, why wouldn't they do it to the "I Believe in Music" man. This record is so bad it's almost surreal. Rick Hall should have had his producer's license taken away just for the opening cut, "Lying Here Lying," with its swirling strings, synthesizers, and funky drum machines popping off those ping sounds in the background. Even on the "country" songs such as "Late at Night," the guitars are so compressed they sound like thin spaghetti played through a Fender amplifier, and the keyboards can't make up their minds whether to sound like pianos or synths. Ugh. "The Beer Drinkin' Song," a self-penned, hedonistic racist anthem, is embarrassing in its blatant rip-off of Ray Wylie Hubbard and Jimmy Buffett. OK, that's just side one, and side two is worse. Enough said; hopefully all the remaining copies of this record in the warehouse -- and surely there were plenty -- were melted down and used for something constructive.

ok, now i want to hear this. anyone know this record?

Wow, had no idea about that Mac Davis LP. I definitely passed up some Mac Davis LPs in a 25-cent rack a couple weeks ago, too; now I wonder if that one was in there.

Carlene Carter's Blue Nun from 1981 (produced by hubbie Nick Lowe, my copy is a U.K. import on F-Beat) has what sounds to me like two fairly blatant disco attempts on it, both of which at least halfway seem to comment on the move in their lyrics/titles: "I Need A Hit" and "Born To Move," also two of the few tracks on the album not at least partially writing-credited to Lowe. (The latter's credited to "Fogerty" -- uh, apparently a Creedence cover from Pendulum? Interesting.) Neither seems all that great to me, though, or even really all that country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGECts7TZrM

There's a bunch of so-so, ok, and pretty great Travis Wammack disco cuts on two albums that were simultaneously released in 1982, "Follow Me," and "A Man... And A Guitar." This extended version of Hold On To Your Hiney is the best of 'em.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEu1t4oeR7E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVqXxK-gK0w&feature=related

Probably Tony Joe White got mentioned upthread, but has anyone heard his 'Real Thang" LP? Didn't look too hard, but "Get Off On It" is pretty nasty!

^ I mean, I haven't heard anything else off the album but this one song... would be interested to know what the rest of the album sounds like. There's a track called "disco blues" also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMoasSfLFQ8

That was awesome. Thanks for posting.

really dig steve young but had not heard that one until today

Fabulous Poodles weigh in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEaI9xj9e8w

Just remembered this existed today, after at least 25 years - Presumably the only Eddie Rabbit cover ever produced by Was (Not Was).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS8OMOXIObA

Lacy J. Dalton - "Imagine That" (on #23-country-charting album 16th Avenue, 1982)

Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker - 'Why Don't We Just Sleep on It Tonight' is a lost country-disco classic. Just incredible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSW0ZjiNu_k

Sheila B. Devotion "Seven Lonely Days" (1979) sounds to me a like a pop-country song from that era given an over-the-top Eurodisco-synth rhythm.

Gimme Baby I'm Burnin' instead

This is not that different from Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing." In fact I think I prefer it.

That was a wild sequence of #1s though, the ones you mention. I remember it so well. Peak singles bar era.

Is Dolly the only country artist to get the proper 12" treatment or is this thread holding out?

Extended version of baby I'm burning is the best thing that ever happened to me. Did Tammy just do this with the klf?

not disco-era, but reba mcentire had a hit 12-inch when her version of "you keep me hangin' on" from her 1995 album was remixed