Love and Wealth: The Lost Recordings

The Louvin Brothers

The Louvins recorded these 29 demos for other country performers. As Ira says in his spoken intro, they “done the best [they] could,” meaning, among other things, that they did not scrimp on their high-lonesome vocal harmonies. The gospel songs reflect the brothers’ hardscrabble, Alabama-Baptist upbringing. The courtin’ songs do too, even if their propriety was more honored in the breach than the observance. The sharpest 1:50 of comic relief reflects (and lampoons) the widespread post-Depression misconception that television sets were a must.

King of the Road: A Tribute to Roger Miller

Various artists

As befits an homage to a tunesmith known for his sense of humor, King of the Road begins with the tribute’s subject getting laughs from a crowd with “My name is Roger Miller, probably one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived.” What’s even funnier is that, at least on the basis of these 31 performances, Miller might not have been joking. True, he probably should have said “one of the greatest country songwriters that ever lived,” but even Huey Lewis, Ringo Starr, CAKE, and John Goodman (!) deliver.

Muscle Shoals: Small Town, Big Sound

Various artists

One critic has written that this album’s 21 guest vocalists breathe new life into the 15 FAME Studios highlights on which they’re featured. If anything, though, it’s the highlights that breathe new life into the singers. You think Steven Tyler’s pipes are shot? Listen to “Brown Sugar.” You think Kid Rock’s a poseur? Listen to “Snatchin’ It Back.” One could go on—about Alan Jackson’s “Wild Horses,” for instance, or Eli “Paperboy” Reed’s “Steal Away,” or about how Michael McDonald should consider recording the entire Etta James songbook.

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Jon Troast

The more comfortable that this recently married house-concert troubadour gets in the studio, the larger the role that details such as background vocals (“One More Step [Pacific Ave.]”), piano (“Drunk on Love”), stereo guitars (“Train Song”) play in defining his still predominantly acoustic sound. If he isn’t careful, he’ll soon have raised his fans’ sonic expectations to the point that he’ll have to travel with a band. Not a big one, of course—just one capable of reproducing his latest five-song EP’s quietly optimistic newlywed aura.

ENCORE

The first of the two latest installments in Omnivore Recordings’ Buck Owens series, The Complete Capitol Singles: 1967-1970, begins with Owens’ 13th No. 1 (“Sam’s Place”) and ends with his 32nd Top 10’s B-side (“No Milk and Honey in Baltimore”). The second installment, 1975’s mostly previously unreleased Country Singer’s Prayer, begins and ends with the last Buckaroos recordings to feature the contributions of Don Rich.

That between ’70 and ’75 Owens was best-known for Hee Haw might lead one to expect a heaping helping of corn. In fact, there’s nary a trace. What there is is an entertaining overview of the path that the Bakersfield Sound took from its roost at the pinnacle of country music in the ’60s to the perennially well-springing niche status that it enjoys to this day. Most entertaining of all: how hard it is to tell Owens’s B-sides from his A-sides half a century down the road. —A.O.