Various - And The Answer Is Great Country Answer Discs From The '50s And Their Original Versions Vol.1 (CD)

followed by Betty Codys I Really Want You To Know. A total of 14 great hits plus 14 answer songs!

These days, country music suffers from having friends in high places, specifically academia. For years the blues has suffered from the same fate: academic analysis and dissection to the point that poor old Howlin' Wolf probably wouldn't recognize himself. Now it's country music's turn. Academics look for levels of social significance in country music that were never there in the first place. To do this they have to ignore the dumb, fun, carny aspect of country music, like Porter Wagoner's suits, outhouse jokes...and answer discs.

The answer disc is an extinct species these days, but there was a golden age of answer discs in the fifties and sixties, and here are some of the best, reveling in their tastelessness and lack of redeeming social value. Academics, don't be fooled into thinking that Kitty Wells' It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels is a statement of neo-feminist values. Not only was it written by a man, but it was written by a man sniffing out an easy buck. J.D. Miller later cut wonderful swamp blues records as well as the ultimate politically incorrect records (Move Them Niggers North, Lookin' For A Handout etc.) for his own Rebel label.

He realized that the melody of Wild Side Of Life was in the public domain, which meant that he wouldn't have to surrender half the copyright to the writers of the original, as most writers of answer songs have to do. The melody had in fact come from England several hundred years earlier, although it's doubtful that Miller knew this. Inspiration struck him on Rte. 90 in Louisiana, and he pulled his car over and scribbled down his sequel. The then-unknown Kitty Wells cut it not because she empathized with the lyrics, but because she needed the session fee. The capriciousness of the music business is such that she still has to sing it twice a night.

Webb Pierce cut songs that lent themselves to answer discs because he loved songs that ruffled feathers, just as he later loved upsetting one of Nashville's tonier neighborhoods by inviting the tour buses in to look at his house, his guitar-shaped pool, and his silver dollar encrusted Pontiac. True to form, Webb would also try to sell the tourists some records while they were there from a little rack he had mounted by the pool. He was a man who knew that any publicity is good publicity.

On Back Street Affair and There Stands The Glass he forthrightly addressed subjects that had usually been tiptoed around. The answer-discs, in comparison, take the high moral ground and suffer as a result.

Goldie Hill made something of a career out of answer-discs. The sister of songwriter and producer Tommy Hill and later the wife of Carl Smith, Goldie first broke through with I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes, and, like most country singers in that day and age, once she'd found a horse that looked like a sure thing she rode it until it could barely make it out of the gate. Don't Let The Stars Get ...