Country Music Then And Now

Album review

Nostalgia is the theme of the Statler Brothers' 1972 album Country Music Then & Now, so much so that even the "now" is "then" -- many of the group's new compositions concern the past in one way or another. The album's TopTen hit, "The Class of '57," is one of the most poignant and melancholy expressions of aging and faded dreams in popular music -- the kind of song that moved Kurt Vonnegut to call the Statlers "America's poets." "1953 Dear John Honky Tonk Blues" is an ode to the country hits of the '40s and '50s, with an instrumental riff patterned after Hank Williams' yodel in "Honky Tonk Blues." Side One is dominated by the introduction of the Statler Brothers' comedy alter-egos, Lester "Roadhog" Moran & The Cadillac Cowboys, on a nearly 10-minute-long parody of an old-time live country music radio program. Overall, the jokes are too weak and the playing too intentionally poor to give the skit much enduring value, although anyone who remembers the third-rate talent that often filled air time on regional country music stations in the 1930s-'50s will appreciate the premise. The Statler Brothers raised nostalgia-mongering to an art form in the '70s, and Country Music Then & Now contains a few prime examples.

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