Various Artists - Red Hot + Country

First time on vinyl!

Various Artists — Red Hot + Country (2024 Remaster) 2LP

Red Hot + Country came about because of a controversy at a Country Music Award show where performers were told they could not wear red ribbons to show support for People with AIDS. One performer, Kathy Mattea, was so upset she approached Red Hot and asked if we could do an album together to raise awareness among country music artists and fans.

The first idea was to use John Lennon's music, which Yoko Ono graciously donated; but that didn't work out and the direction of the project turned to a variety of music featuring covers of rock legends such as Bob Dylan ("Forever Young"), Crosby, Stills & Nash ("Teach Your Children"), Jackson Browne ("Rock Me on the Water"), James Taylor ("Fire and Rain"), Carl Perkins ("Matchbox"), Willie Nelson ("Crazy"), Johnny Cash ("Folsom Prison Blues") as well as traditional and original songs.

The quality of the music and musicians had a great deal to do with the involvement of Randy Scruggs as the overall music producer, who also brought on his father Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson to do an all-star recording of "Keep On The Sunny Side."  The album closed with the first track released by Wilco, a cover of the classic "The TB is Whippin' Me" by Jimmie Rodgers (as interpreted by Ernest Tubb,) the father of country music who died of an incurable disease in the 1930s.

Red Hot + Country was poised to be a smash hit album, but country radio stations largely kept it from their playlists and from the larger audience it was designed to reach.

 

LP 1 Side A

1. Teach Your Children (Suzy Bogguss, Alison Krauss and Kathy Mattea with Crosby, Stills, and Nash)

2. Rock Me on the Water (Kathy Mattea and Jackson Browne)

3. Forever Young (Johnny Cash)

4. The T.B. Is Whipping Me (Wilco with Syd Straw)

LP 1 Side B

1. Crazy (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Willie Nelson)

2. Matchbox (Carl Perkins, Duane Eddy, and The Mavericks)

3. Folsom Prison Blues (Brooks & Dunn and Johnny Cash)

4. You Gotta Be My Baby (Dolly Parton)

LP 2 Side A

1. Up Above My Head / Blind Bartimus (Marty Stuart with Jerry Sullivan and Tammy Sullivan)

2. Willie Short (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

3. Fire and Rain (Sammy Kershaw)

4. If These Old Walls Could Speak (Nanci Griffith and Jimmy Webb)

LP 2 Side B

1. When I Reach the Place I'm Going (Patty Loveless)

2. Keep on the Sunny Side (Randy Scruggs with Earl Scruggs, and Doc Watson)

3. Close Up the Honky Tonks (Radney Foster)

4. Pictures Don't Lie (Billy Ray Cyrus)

5. Goodbye Comes Hard for Me (Mark Chesnutt)

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