The broad term “Country and Western” encompasses a very wide variety of music. You’ve got your bluegrass, your waltzes, your Western Swing. Here are a few examples.

Vernon Tonges and the Inepti “Slow Poke” (Pee Wee King)
Every year cartoonist Heather McAdams puts out her Country Calendar. It celebrates country and western artists famous and obscure. Every December she and her husband Chris Ligon put on a show to promote the calendar. Chris and Heather’s Country Calendar Show is a Chicago legend. They invite their many musician friends to each play a few songs from the artists featured on the calendar. This recording is from one of those shows.

I know that Chris really likes Vernon Tonges. He’s told me so more than once. Most of the people I know who have seen Vernon play live refer to him as “the fat guy who shouts.” But his style works well on this little ditty.

The Meat Purveyors “Round And Round” (Ratt)
The Meat Purveyors were a great live band. Their shows always featured a killer cover or two, along with original songs about getting wired on trucker speed.

Danny Barnes “Sympathy For The Devil” (Rolling Stones)
The former banjo/guitar player for the Bad Livers is still recording and performing, bless his heart. I think that’s the Devil on fiddle.

Sally Timms “Cry, Cry, Cry” (Johnny Cash)
It’s just not possible to do a collection of country covers without at least one Johnny Cash song. Here Sally Timms makes a radical departure from her work with the Mekons to lend her glorious voice to a charming waltz. This is from an album she claims never to listen to called Cowboy Sally’s Twilight Laments.

The Handsome Family “Faraway Eyes” (Rolling Stones)
A second Stones song, but this is their country song.

The Handsome Family is the husband and wife team of Brett and Rennie Sparks. They usually play happy-sounding country and folk songs about mayhem, death and insanity so this is a change of pace for them. Brett has one of the best baritone voices this side of Johnny Cash.