DC,
I'll see if I can track down the Cowboy album you mentioned. Sounds interesting. Do you know if it's in print?
I agree with you about the way your view seems to widen the more you get into this stuff. Admittedly, the definiton of country-rock is as subjective as the albums on any given list. For example, Neil Young's "Comes A Time" and "Harvest" strike me as country rock, but "Tonight's the Night" and "Rust Never Sleeps" don't. Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" (mentioned earlier) doesn't sound like country-rock to me, but "Nashville Skyline" (which I obviously should have listed) does. I love the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revivial, but they don't really strike me much as country-rock either. Who really knows?
My grandpa used to play clawhammer banjo and guitar in a bluegrass outfit, and not long before he died somebody played him a couple of tracks off a Randy Travis album to get his reaction to "new" country music. He paused for a moment after listening and said, "Well, if that's country music then I'm a Baptist preacher." He wasn't.
In general, if it's got a fiddle, a banjo, a dobro, a pedal-steel guitar, or a harmonica in it, there's a good chance I'll like it. If somebody got cheated on, or somebody died, or somebody got too drunk, the chance doubles.
I'll see if I can track down the Cowboy album you mentioned. Sounds interesting. Do you know if it's in print?
I agree with you about the way your view seems to widen the more you get into this stuff. Admittedly, the definiton of country-rock is as subjective as the albums on any given list. For example, Neil Young's "Comes A Time" and "Harvest" strike me as country rock, but "Tonight's the Night" and "Rust Never Sleeps" don't. Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" (mentioned earlier) doesn't sound like country-rock to me, but "Nashville Skyline" (which I obviously should have listed) does. I love the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revivial, but they don't really strike me much as country-rock either. Who really knows?
My grandpa used to play clawhammer banjo and guitar in a bluegrass outfit, and not long before he died somebody played him a couple of tracks off a Randy Travis album to get his reaction to "new" country music. He paused for a moment after listening and said, "Well, if that's country music then I'm a Baptist preacher." He wasn't.
In general, if it's got a fiddle, a banjo, a dobro, a pedal-steel guitar, or a harmonica in it, there's a good chance I'll like it. If somebody got cheated on, or somebody died, or somebody got too drunk, the chance doubles.