.................................the blog nobody reads: "Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels" Vols 1-7 COMPLETE

Love this series and have been playing little else lately so have at it (them!?) TwilightZone says:

The Blissed-Out Birth of Country Rock

Appropriately enough, the first volume of Bear Family's seven-volume country-rock series Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels kicks off with the voice of Gram Parsons, the man who wrote the line that gives this project its title and the man commonly acknowledged as the Hank Williams of country-rock...

. . . ....Parsons wasn't the first or only West Coast cowboy to get to this hybrid of Bakersfield country, Nashville craft, hippie ideals, and rock & roll amplification, which this double-disc, 41-track set makes perfectly clear. Gram gave country-rock a mythos and enduring sex appeal but he was supported by a number of long-haired refugees, Music City freaks, and Hollywood misfits, all of whom feature prominently on this compilation. Covering the years 1966-1968, this first volume happily blurs borders not just between country and rock but between the respectable and not, rightly finding place for Rick Nelson and the Monkees' "What Am I Doing Hangin' Round" in between Parsons' first band International Submarine Band and his second, the Byrds. Other L.A. folk-rockers show up, namely Buffalo Springfield and Bobbie Gentry -- who was always halfway between California and Tennessee -- and they also have a strong presence on the first disc. The second has places for the Band and Bob Dylan but this collection of 1968 sides is heavy on the Byrds (who had then enlisted Parsons to complete their country makeover, the Dillards and the Beau Brummels, along with the Everly Brothers, who were the only '50s survivors working in this idiom. Every one of these names will be familiar to aficionados of country-rock and perhaps even to fellow travelers, but surprise isn't quite the goal of this set. What this intends to provide is a portrait of the rise of country-rock in all its wooly glory and Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels does so, quite gloriously.

(Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic)

TWILIGHT ZONE - TRUCKERS, KICKERS COWBOY ANGELS Vol I

TWILIGHTZONE - TRUCKERS, KICKERS, COWBOY ANGELS Vol I Disc 2

TWILIGHT ZONE - TRUCKERS, KICKERS, COWBOY ANGELS Vol II Disc 2

The second volume of Bear Family's seven-disc country-rock history Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels focuses on 1969, a crucial year in the music's development...

...It was the year Gram Parsons broke free from the Byrds to form the Flying Burrito Brothers, it was the year Bob Dylan released "Lay, Lady Lay," the year where the Band consolidated their success with their second album and its single "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," the year when the San Francisco-exiled Doug Sahm started to pine for "Texas Me," and, just as crucially, Glen Campbell adopted cinematic Hollywood production for "Galveston" as Buck Owens drenched "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass' with fuzz guitars. Every one of these developments illustrated how country-rock was breaking into the mainstream and not from any one direction, either: there are bunches of Bakersfield twang but also Southern-fried soul, sultry Nashville production, a bit of proto-outlaw storytelling, and plenty of stuff that lies somewhere in between. What impresses most about this second volume of Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels -- because this, like its predecessor, doesn't dig deep as much as it establishes history -- is how vibrant and exciting all these cultural cross-currents feel. The two years covered on Vol. 1 were the preamble: this is year zero of country-rock and in this excellent history, it still sounds invigorating and surprising

(Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic)

TWILIGHTZONE - TRUCKERS, KICKERS, COWBOY ANGELS Vol III

On the third volume of Bear Family's seven-entry country-rock chronicle Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels: The Blissed-Out Birth of Country-Rock, the label moves into 1970, a year that saw a nascent, long-haired Americana gain popularity but also get a bit weirder......

. . . . Thanks to the Band's success -- Music from Big Pink turned heads in 1968, but 1969's The Band found its way onto the Billboard Top 10, bringing the group to the cover of Time in the opening weeks of 1970 -- there were now hordes of fellow travelers, including hippies like Jefferson Airplane, trying on overalls for size. The Airplane brought in Jerry Garcia to play steel on "The Farm," one of the 38 tunes featured on this double-disc set, a collection of songs that also includes two cuts from the Grateful Dead's twin '70 releases, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. If the San Franciscan hippies were embracing roots, so were the blissed-out Los Angelenos. Led by Gram Parsons, who spent much of 1970 closing out his run with the Flying Burrito Brothers, these creatures of the Canyon included Mike Nesmith, who was just breaking free from the Monkees, and Rick Nelson, continuing the path they started in 1969 -- a journey that can be heard on the second volume of Truckers, Kickers, Cowboy Angels -- but the '70s saw the rise of idiosyncratic singer/songwriters like Jesse Winchester, Eric Andersen, and Townes Van Zandt, along with Nashville rebels David Allan Coe and Kris Kristofferson, the latter also seeing success via a cover of "Me and Bobby McGee" from Janis Joplin. A new wrinkle came in the form of the wooly, hard-driving rockers from the south, a breed typified by the Allman Brothers Band but also encompassing Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. A lot of the lesser-known names here -- Swampwater, Goose Creek Symphony, Country Funk, Wildweeds -- fall outside of these parameters, skewing closer to the bright, wide-open sound of Poco, a feel that might typify how country-rock felt at the start of the '70s: after all the heaviness of the '60s, it seemed like a new day was dawning.

(by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic)

TWILIGHTZONE- Truckers, Kickers Cowboy Angles Vol III Disc 2