Haggard Boxed Cd Set A Country Cornerstone

A couple of country music’s most important musical packages are being reissued on compact disc.

The most important, a cornerstone of any representative country collection worth having, is Capitol’s “Merle Haggard: Down Every Road, 1962-1994,” a 100-song boxed set of the most notable music by one of country’s all-time greatest.

Spanning his best from “Skid Row” in 1962 to “In My Next Life” 32 years later, and accompanied by a detailed and picture-studded liner essay by the Country Music Foundation’s Daniel Cooper, Haggard’s music could well be the best representative body of work by a single performer in country music history.

In addition to classics like “The Fugitive,” “Branded Man,” “Mama Tried,” “Hungry Eyes,” “Silver Wings,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Okie From Muskogee” and “If We Make It Through December,” the box of four CDs also contains six previously unreleased cuts, including ones of Don Gibson’s great “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and Haggard’s own “White Line Fever.”

The collection depicts a lot of working class Americans who, even when they’re out having fun, often seem dogged by the specter of their own mortal humanity, of the sorrows that punctuate life’s joys.

“In his music, Haggard has created his own world of hard-working, troubled men and women, his own private cast of indomitably proud yet stoop-shouldered casualties of the American Dream,” Cooper writes.

“When he sings of their lives, his observations are keen and his honesty arresting. The road-weary narrator of ‘White Line Fever’ is not a randy good-old-boy on road day No. 6” - as was the gear-jamming hero of Dave Dudley’s truckdriving celebration “Six Days on the Road” - “but a solitary everyman being slowly destroyed by his own life choices.”

Dwarfed in importance by the Haggard collection but still extremely noteworthy both as music and as a benchmark of the broadening of Nashville’s musical interests in the 1970s is “Wanted! The Outlaws,” a 20th anniversary package from RCA that re-releases an original 11-track album that was the first in Nashville history to be certified as a seller of a million copies.

Along with the 11 tracks by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser, the 1996 “Wanted! The Outlaws” package includes nine others recorded during the same period.

It also contains a newly-recorded track, a Jennings-Nelson duet of the Steve Earle song “Nowhere Road.” Earle, whose uncompromisingly rockish artistry and perhaps even his persona were highly influenced by Nashville’s musical outlaws, produced the recording, which was made in February.

Finally, there is “Lonely Weekends: The Best of the Sun Years,” a 25-cut collection of the first and some of the best work of the late great pianist, songwriter and singer Charlie Rich. The album covers a five-year period from the late 1950s into the early ‘60s on the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis, during which Rich wrote more hits than at any other time during his career.

These included “The Ways of a Woman in Love” and “Thanks a Lot” for Johnny Cash, “Break Up” and “I’ll Make It All Up to You” for Jerry Lee Lewis and “Lonely Weekends,” “There Won’t Be Any More,” “Who Will the Next Fool Be” and “On My Knees” for himself.

Released now on the AVI Entertainment label, the Rich collection was digitally remastered from original recordings in the Sun Records vault.

Yoakam just like Elvis

Dwight Yoakam recently played to sold-out crowds in Australia, where his current album (“Gone”) got into the national Top 20. One reviewer compared his performance to the excitement generated by Elvis Presley at the height of his powers.

Yoakam hits the U.S. concert road in May (and comes to Spokane June 6).

Diamond Rio’s odd ovation

A recent Diamond Rio performance embarrassed Rio member Dana Williams when he lowered himself onto a stool for the instrumental part of the show and the stool broke into several pieces.

Williams managed to stay on his feet, and his agility was rewarded by the audience with an immediate standing ovation.

“So that’s all we have to do for a standing ovation?” Williams wryly inquired.

Loveless ‘weird’ about win

Looking back, Patty Loveless recalls that she felt a bit “weird” about winning the Country Music Association’s 1995 Album of the Year award after her “When Fallen Angels Fly” package was substituted for Alison Krauss’ “Now That I’ve Found You: A Collection,” which was disqualified because most of its tracks had been previously released.

“Alison has sung on my records, and I think she’s a wonderful talent, but Alison’s going to be around a long time - probably a lot longer than I am: she’s a lot younger,” Loveless says.

“Alison, to me, is almost like a female Vince Gill. She sings on everybody’s records, she plays on everybody’s records, she does her own, and she produces - even Vince doesn’t produce. There’s a lot of talent in that girl.”

Stevens returning to Branson

Ray Stevens, who drew more than 1.6 million theatergoers to his show in Branson, Mo., over a 17-month span a couple of years ago, is returning to Branson this summer on another raid.

“In the immortal words of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, I have returned,” Stevens announced, adding that he will perform in Branson 44 times this summer.

Stevens is scheduled to perform at the 2,700-seat Wayne Newton Theatre on May 6-13, July 15-27, Aug. 12-24 and Sept. 2-14, with all shows at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Stevens’s latest video project, a music video movie titled “Get Serious,” is scheduled to be released in stores this summer.