Jimmy Webb’s Wikipedia entry calls Glen Campbell “the finest interpreter of Jimmy Webb songs,” and I would have to say that “interpeter” is the perfect word choice, because who knows what Jimmy Webb is talking about most of the time?
That’s not a slight (at least not in my universe) — I’m about as big a [...]

This mighty titan of a country song was written by two people who have passed on in the last couple years — Cindy Walker (who also wrote “Sugar Moon” with Bob Wills) and Eddy Arnold. Arnold and Jerry Vale both charted with it in 1956, but when Ray Charles covered it in 1962, people wept [...]

Country music specializes in either “I’m deliriously happy” or “I’m completely miserable” songs, and Buck Owens was great at both. He could sing so you could hear the smile in his voice, and when he told you he was gonna lay around the shack till the mail train came back, you believed it. But he [...]