This powerfully emotional feminist anthem works like a sequel to Dolly’s Nine To Five, with a video to match.

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The Bee Gees song written for Otis Redding but redone as a hippie country-soul heartbreaker. Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, give it a country twang replete with pedal steel guitar that was entirely absent from the original.

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Ringo Starr releases the first track from a new album of country songs written and produced with T Bone Burnett at the age of 84.

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Leroy Van Dyke’s first job as a livestock auctioneer inspired the song that brought him to fame back in 1956.

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Ray Charles is rightly credited with almost single-handedly inventing soul and R&B in the early 1950s. But in the 1960s he surprised his fans, and the whole of the pop world, by turning his hand to country-and-western.

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“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That one line summed up Kris Kristofferson’s singular songwriting skill. It was like the entire Sixties ethos in a single phrase.

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The name of JD Souther, who has just died, might not mean a lot to most music fans. But his legacy surely will when you hear his songs.

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Dwight Yoakam came along at just the right time for me, in the mid Eighties, launching a lifelong love of country music.

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This is the opening track from Gillian Welch’s debut album, presaging the revival of old-time music and the emergence of Americana. (more…)

Today I’m feeling a little bit country and a little bit rock’n’roll, just like Donny and Marie once did. So here’s a bit of Buck Owens. This song never fails to put a big fat smile on my face. It just swings, and rocks, and twangs in all the right places.

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