Culture

My word, that Ozark twang is something magnificent...Sweet is the Melody indeed. I’m inclined to think Iris could be Emmylou’s successor. If, that is, she wants or wanted to be. I hope she does.

Country music ain’t always about cowboys and outlaws; there’s the distaff side of strong and righteous ladies too. Notably, in this instance, Loretta Lynn and her warning that You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)…

There was almost as much hackery as brilliance in Johnny Cash’s career and even his terrific late American albums are pretty uneven. But when he was good he was very good…So here he is lamenting – or celebrating? – those old Folsom Prison Blues...

I’ve been listening to George Jones a lot, lately. So here’s video of a younger Possum singing, in his usual style, Things Have Gonel to Pieces which is, I suppose, a decent-enough summary of an entire school of country music.

Been a long time since this pair featured in this slot. Too long. So here they are performing their already-classic I Want to Sing That Rock’n’Roll at St Luke’s in London a few years ago: Bonus: There’s another, perhaps even better but sadly unembeddable version, here.

Taking Sophocles’ least-known play and reinterpreting via the hymns and songs of gospel music is, damn it, just the sort of thing that you expect from Edinburgh* in August. Thankfully, Lee Breuer’s plundering – adaptation is too limited a term – of Oedipus at Colonus is a monumental success. If you ever get the chance

Hands-up if you think Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams are a good combination? That’s most of you, eh? Good. Well here they are with a very Nelsonesque take on Williams’s Over Time:

You can never have too much Emmylou and her appearance, backed by the brilliant Hot Band, on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 is a joy from start to finish. Here she is with Making Believe – a Jimmy Work song that had previously been a hit for the great Kitty Wells too.

You don’t get much more old school than Jimmie Rodgers do you? No you don’t. Here he is with the classic Waiting for a Train. Terrific and chock-full of the things that would become country staples.

Been a while since Waylon was in these here parts. No longer! So here’s the Great Outlaw with some marriage advice for y’all…

Philip Glass doesn’t approve of intervals. Last week, at Yale University’s Sprague Memorial Hall, the prolific composer gave a preview of what audiences in Dublin, Edinburgh and Cork could expect from his piano performances a few days later. He starts by declaring that pauses in performance “damage the concentration” – and he ended it in

Occasionally, people complain that this series isn’t contemporary enough and that it ignores the good country music that is still being produced in spite of the commercial interests of Nashville-pap. That’s a fair criticism. So here’s an acoustic version of Josh Ritter’s Folk Bloodbath – a hymn to the murder ballad which is, as Radley

I reckon it’s been too long since Dolly Parton featured here. So here she is making her debut on the Porter Wagoner Show way back in 1967 and performing Dumb Blonde:

Way back when back in the distant times I was at college I had – still do, in fact – a friend who was a John Denver fanatic. Aged 20 or so he’d seen the great troubador more than 20 times. In those days I had not yet seen the country light and, sad to

This week I am handing over the column to David Vick, who has contributed what I regard as the best (so far) of all the Top Tens I have received. Sound in judgment and admirably wide-ranging, Vick has in particular introduced me to Kurt Elling, an amazing jazz vocalist, still only in his early forties,

Mercifully, the election ain’t the only show in town. There’s actual, real good news elsewhere. For instamce, 57 years after his death Hank Williams has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to American culture. Better late than never. So here, to celebrate, is audio of perhaps his most famous and thus perhaps the

Another rare old tune from a marvellous concert we’ve featured here before. This time they’re performing an old Carter Family tune The Storms are On the Ocean. Terrific stuff.

Their 1970s album was called More a Legend than a Band and that was about right since it and they disappeared for 20 years. Happily the Flatlanders returned and continue to amaze with their groovy, mildly mystical brand of Texas country. Here they are with a song from their album Hills and Valleys called Homeland

At his best Willie’s pretty much a marvel and when he’s singing Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain you get a whole lot of Willie at his best.

When you’ve got a song called If Drinking Don’t Kill Me (Her Memory Will) then you know you’re travelling through the country of country. But that’s fine, because the Possum is keeping you company. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr George Jones…

Kitty Wells was born in 1919 and she’s the oldest living member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. So it’s well past time she featured here and, this being so, it’s sensible to play her first big hit It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. If Hank Williams was the inspiration for everyone