''Cedartown, Georgia'' is a studio album by American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

artist

Waylon Jennings Waylon Jennings (June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He pioneered the Outlaw Movement in country music. Jennings started playing guitar at the age of eight and performed at age f ...

, released in 1971 on

RCA Nashville RCA Nashville is an American country music record label based in Nashville, Tennessee. It is distributed by Sony Music Nashville which is part of Sony Music. Current artists *Kane Brown *Andrew Jannakos *Miranda Lambert *Niko Moon (RCA/River Hou ...

Background

Jennings' second release of 1971 finds the singer moving further away from the

Nashville Sound The Nashville Sound originated during the mid-1950s as a subgenre of American country music, replacing the chart dominance of the rough honky tonk music, which was most popular in the 1940s and 1950s, with "smooth strings and choruses", "sophist ...

that had dominated his early albums at RCA. Its title track, a morbid tale of murder, reached #14 on the country singles chart, and the LP also contains "It's All Over Now," written by Waylon's wife

Jessi Colter Mirriam Johnson (born May 25, 1943), known professionally as Jessi Colter, is an American country singer who is best known for her collaborations with her husband, country musician Waylon Jennings, and for her 1975 country-pop crossover hit " I' ...

, who duets with Jennings on

Paul Simon Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and actor whose career has spanned six decades. He is one of the most acclaimed songwriters in popular music, both as a solo artist and as half of folk roc ...

's " Bridge Over Troubled Water" and also appears on the album cover with him. Like most country albums during this period, ''Cedartown, Georgia'' contains songs that were recorded during numerous sessions that stretched back over periods of months and even years, depriving the album of any sense of continuity. As Michael Striessguth's laments in his book ''Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville'', "Because RCA-Nashville failed to embrace the idea of the concept album, it happily dropped unreleased scraps from earlier sessions into those collections, spoiling any semblance of cohesion that they might have had." In his autobiography Jennings wrote, "They always needed a marketing plan...Music is just music, and people who put labels on music are those who have to merchandize it. It makes their job a lot easier. I wanted to cut my records a whole different way; I wanted to build the song in the studio, not in the control room. I wanted the dynamics to happen out there with the band."

Critical reception

The album peaked at #27 on the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' country albums chart, his fourth LP in a row that failed to crack the Top 10. At the time of its release, however, the LP got an unexpected rave from ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'', which enthused, "It's this album that Waylon goes after everybody (including your mother) and intends to bring everybody over to his side. It's all ''Dynamite stuff''...Word is that if Waylon Jennings isn't already a country superstar, he soon will be." Thom Jurek of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

praises Jennings' performances but disparages the production of Danny Davis: "The window dressing added by Davis waters down its impact and makes Jennings' job as a singer more difficult... ''Cedartown, Georgia'' feels just like what it is, a decent collection of songs and inspired performances marred by production nonsense. Indeed, a quick listen to the album and it becomes difficult to see why Davis worked with Jennings at all."

Track listing

References

{{Authority control 1971 albums Waylon Jennings albums RCA Records albums Murder ballads