COUNTRY MUSIC ONLINE - Lone Star Beer...For All Our Cowboy..., Red Steagall

This CD pairs two prime Red Steagall records from the mid-1970s and reveals just why the Texan has become a pillar of Western music. The 1976 collection Lone Star Beer and Bob Wills Music marks the pinnacle of his recording career, offering a wonderful assortment of Western swing and Texas tonk. The title creed remains his biggest hit, but there are a number of other original songs--barroom ballads like "Neons and Nylons" and "Whatever Made Me Think" and two-steppers like "My First Night Without You" and "The Walls of This Old Honky Tonk"--that display his ample gifts as a direct, down-to-earth songwriter (he was a successful songwriter before he was a performer). Steagall enlisted a superlative cast of musicians including guitarist Leon Rhodes, fiddler Johnny Gimble, and steel man Sonny Garrish to help him carry out his vision. For All Our Cowboy Friends, from the following year, is a quaint and heartfelt tribute to the cowboy and rodeo lifestyle (he was a rodeo rider and horse breeder before he was a songwriter) that oozes personality and authenticity. Together, these two albums form a definitive Western music manifesto.

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