The move was genius together the duo have scored 21 No. “I didn’t know a middle ground.”īut in 1990, Arista Records’ Tim DuBois urged Dunn to join forces with another struggling solo artist, and Brooks & Dunn was born. Oh, get down, turn around, go to town, boot scootin'. “When I was growing up I gravitated from one extreme to the other,” says Dunn, whose father died in 1986, before his son’s music career took off. Chorus Yeah, heel, toe, do-si-do come on baby let's go boot scootin' Cadillac blackjack, baby meet me outback we're gonna boogie. He describes his father as a hard drinker who dreamed of being a country singer and his mother as a Bible-quoting teetotaler.
Dunn, in particular, felt a strong tug in opposite directions. It closes with the bluesy ballad “Again,” a Darrell Brown/Radney Foster-penned tune with a chorus that’s almost impossible not to hum.īoth men say the songs reflect the extremes of their rearing. The album is produced by Tony Brown, who’s worked with everyone from Steve Earle to Reba McEntire. The first single, “Play Something Country,” and “She Likes to Get Out of Town” are foot-stomping fun, and Dunn even raps on the title track: “Put on the smell good / Put on the Skynyrd / Head into town like / A NASCAR winner.” Thematically, a song like “Whiskey Do My Talkin,”‘ a dark rocker in which a guy draws his courage from a bottle, and “Believe,” a soulful affirmation of life after death, is a long way from the 1992 dance smash “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” or the 1996 chart topper “My Maria.”īut the new songs aren’t all heavy.
Sheryl Crow and Vince Gill sing background on “Building Bridges,” a mid-tempo, radio-friendly song. But that's a story for another day.Individually or collectively, Brooks and Dunn wrote nine of the 13 tracks on “Hillbilly Deluxe.” Songs such as “My Heart’s Not a Hotel,” “One More Roll of the Dice,” “Her West Was Wilder” and “Just Another Neon Night,” echo the loose, rootsy rock they grew up with. By the time Elvis came along, making his first records with an acoustic guitar in Tennessee, hillbilly boogie was history, and Los Angeles was mixing country and pop, waiting for a new country generation to come along. Nashville stayed more traditional and more acoustic during the early 1950s, and the gap between the two coasts just widened as time went on. Capitol's studio musicians were second to none: Along with Merle Travis, they had Telecaster virtuoso Jimmy Bryant and steel guitarist Speedy West, whose instrumental albums wowed other musicians, as well as more open-minded jazz fans. In fact, the music-business term, Country & Western, was accurate: This music was at least as much Western as country, which was Nashville's specialty. But it also pointed out a growing division in country music: The war had brought lots of people from Texas and Oklahoma to California, and Capitol was only one of the labels recording a new kind of country music. 1 country hit at the end of 1950, and pretty much represented the height of the hillbilly boogie craze. "Shot-Gun Boogie," sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford, was a No. Travis was in the studio band for the genre's biggest hits, including "Shot-Gun Boogie." With the addition of Travis and banjo player Grandpa Jones, they became the gospel-singing Browns Ferry Four, and Travis' ability to play the bass with one finger while picking a melody at the same time - called "Travis picking" - came out of his boogie period and revolutionized American guitar playing.īy the end of the '40s, Travis had moved to Hollywood and joined the new Capitol label, which was recording West Coast country talent, and the boogie craze was in full swing. It's hard to tell, but it's likely Travis is the third guitar behind Alton and Rabon Delmore, the Delmore Brothers, in the track "Mobile Boogie." The Delmores recorded dozens of boogies, which revived a career they'd started in the '30s.
Travis was not only a solo performer, but also in demand as a studio musician.
One of the most influential was Merle Travis, who was from Kentucky and learned a lot of his guitar style from his barber, Ike Everly, who had a family radio show featuring his sons. Music Reviews Ella Mae Morse: The Voice Of Capitol's First Hits