Jim Reeves ~ Distant Drums [Orginally released in 1966]
Jim Reeves was born in Galloway, Texas, a small rural community near Carthage. Winning an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas, he enrolled to study speech and drama, but dropped out after six weeks to work at the shipyards in Houston. Soon he returned to baseball, playing in the semi-professional leagues before signing with the St. Louis Cardinals farm team in 1944 as a right-handed pitcher. He stayed in the minor leagues for three years before severing his sciatic nerve on the pitching mound which ended his athletic career.
Reeves began to work as a DJ, and sang live between songs. In the late 1940s, he was signed to a couple of small Texas-based record labels, but with no success. Influenced by such Western swing artists as Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican, as well as popular crooners Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Frank Sinatra, it was not long before he got a foothold in the music industry. He was a member of Moon Mullican's band and made some early Mullican-style recordings like "Each Beat of my Heart" and "My Heart's Like a Welcome Mat" from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.
He eventually landed a job as an announcer on KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, home to the popular Louisiana Hayride. His musical break came when singer Sleepy LaBeef was late for a performance on the Hayride, according to former Hayride emcee Frank Page, and Reeves was asked to fill in. (Other accounts—including Reeves himself, in an interview on the RCA album Yours Sincerely—name Hank Williams as the absentee.)
On July 31, 1964, Reeves and his business partner and manager Dean Manuel (also the pianist in Reeves' backing group, The Blue Boys) left Batesville, Arkansas en route to Nashville in a single-engine Beechcraft Debonair aircraft, with Reeves at the controls. On the morning of August 2, 1964, the bodies of Reeves and Manuel were found in the aircraft wreckage and at 1:00 p.m. (local time) radio stations across the United States formally announced Reeves' death. Thousands turned out to pay their last respects at his funeral on August 4. The coffin, draped in flowers from fans, was driven through the streets of Nashville and then to Reeves' final resting place near Carthage, Texas.
Alan Jackson - Little Bitty [Orginally released in 1996]
Alan Eugene Jackson (born October 17, 1958, in Newnan, Georgia) is an American country music singer, known for blending honky tonk and mainstream country sounds and penning many of his own hits. He has recorded 14 studio albums and several compilations, all on the Arista Nashville label. More than 50 of his singles have appeared on Billboard's list of the "Top 30 Country Songs". Of Jackson's entries, 25 were number-one hits. He is the recipient and nominee of multiple awards. Jackson is also a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
Kenny Rogers - Coward Of The County [Orginally released in 1979]
Kenneth Donald Rogers, better known as Kenny Rogers (born August 21, 1938) is an American country music singer-songwriter, photographer, record producer, actor and entrepreneur. He has charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres and topping the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone.
The Judds - Cry Myself To Sleep [Originally released in 1986]
The Judds were an American country music duo composed of Naomi Judd and her daughter, Wynonna Judd. Signed to RCA Records in 1983, the duo released six studio albums between then and 1991. One of the most successful in country music history, The Judds won five Grammy Awards for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and eight Country Music Association awards. The duo also charted twenty-five singles on the country music charts between 1983 and 2000, fourteen of which went to Number One and six more of which made Top Ten on the same chart.
Wynonna left the duo for a solo career in 1991 after Naomi was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. She and Naomi occasionally reunited for special tours, the most recent of which began in 2010.
"The Spirit of the Hawk" is a country-dance song by the Swedish band Rednex, released from their second album, "Farm Out". The lyrics include the spoken lines "My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no shelter, no food. No one knows where they are. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. I will fight no more," taken from Chief Joseph's famous speech.
The song Witchqueen of Eldorado by Modern Talking is very similar to this song.
Country & Western music
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