Kicking off with Doug Sahm’s song about his hometown — a wild, rangy “(Is Anybody Going To) San Antone” — this sixth volume of Bear Family’s ongoing country-rock history Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels: The Blissed-Out Birth of Country-Rock is immediately livelier than its singer/songwriter predecessor. Some of those cowboy poets of 1972 show up again here in 1973 — Townes Van Zandt is deservedly inescapable; his standard “Pancho & Lefty” arrives in the first five songs — but there are more bands here, including the wildly funky Little Feat and open-road rebels the Allman Brothers Band, two bands that are just marginally country-rock. This is an indication of how things were changing in country-rock in…
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…1973, how rockers were treating country as just one of their roots, but the bigger story is the rise of the backwoods funk and long-haired hippie outlaws. Doug Sahm is at the forefront of that movement (he’s also heard toward the end with the anthem “Texas Tornado”) and so is his Austin cohort Willie Nelson, joined by Billy Joe Shaver (and Bobby Bare singing Billy Joe), Hoyt Axton, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Jim Ford. Alongside these redneck renegades are the rocking Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, the woolly Western swing revivalists Asleep at the Wheel, and the Earl Scruggs Revue singing Shel Silverstein’s dirty jokes. Times were changing, to be sure, and what was happening was the crystallization of what we’d later know to be country-rock and roots rock, so in addition to being terrifically entertaining, this is instructive as well.
CD1
1. Doug Sahm and Band – (Is Anybody Going To) San Antone
2. Willie Nelson – Shotgun Willie
3. Gram Parsons – That’s All It Took
4. Delbert & Glen – California Livin’
5. Zandt, Townes Van – Pancho & Lefty
6. Walker, Jerry Jeff – Gettin’ By
7. Bare, Bobby – Ride Me Down Easy
8. Shaver, Billy Joe – Old Five And Dimers Like Me
9. Cale, J.J. – If You’re Ever In Oklahoma
10. Wilson, Hank – Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms
11. Clark, Gene – Don’t This Road Look Rough And Rocky (aka Rough And Rocky)
12. Earl Scruggs Revue, The – Salty Dog Blues
13. New Riders Of The Purple Sage – Lonesome L.A. Cowboy
14. The Band – Crying Heart Blues
15. Goose Creek Symphony – (Oh Lord Won’t You Buy Me A) Mercedes Benz
16. Roberts, Rick – Glad To Be Goin’
17. Ozark Mountain Daredevils – Country Girl
18. Borderline – Please Help Me Forget
19. Linde, Dennis – Burning Love
20. Little Feat – Roll Um Easy
21. Hicks, Dan & His Hot Licks – Payday Blues
22. Sahm, Doug And Band – It’s Gonna Be Easy
23. Walker, Jerry Jeff – Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother
CD2
1. Nelson, Willie – The Troublemaker
2. Axton, Hoyt – Sweet Misery
3. Cale, J.J. – Lies
4. Little Feat – Dixie Chicken
5. Allman Brothers Band, The – Ramblin’ Man
6. Parsons, Gram – She
7. Earl Scruggs Revue, The – If I’d Only Come And Gone
8. Asleep At The Wheel – Take Me Back To Tulsa
9. Walker, Jerry Jeff – Sangria Wine
10. Commander Cody – Everybody’s Doing It
11. Ford, Jim – Big Mouth USA
12. Delbert & Glen – To Be With You
13. Friedman, Kinky – Sold American
14. Goose Creek Symphony – Me And Him
15. Nesmith, Michael – Winonah
16. Clark, Gene – Here Tonight
17. Parsons, Gene – Sonic Bummer
18. Taylor, Chip – 101 In Cashbox
19. Shaver, Billy Joe – I Been To Georgia On A Fast Train
20. Zandt, Townes Van – If I Needed You
21. Parsons, Gram & Harris, Emmylou – Sleepless Nights
22. Sir Douglas Quintet, The – Texas Tornado
23. Walker, Jerry Jeff – London Homesick Blues