Billy Joe Shaver

   
Artist: Billy Joe Shaver

   Genre(s): 
Country
   Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 Greatest Hits

   Year: 2007   
Tracks: 18


   
 The Real Deal

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 17


   
 Billy and the Kid

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 11


   
 Freedom's Child

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 15


   
 Electric Shaver

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 12

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Billy Joe Shaver never became a family name, just his songs -- including "Good Christian Soldier," "Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me," and "I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train" -- became country standards during the '70s and his reputation among musicians and critics didn't diminish during the ensuing decades. One of the best synopses of Shaver's breeding is his possess song, "I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train." When he sings, "my grandma's eld pension is the cause that I'm standing here today," he ain't kidding. The "good Christian raising" and "one-eighth gradation education" -- not to mention being deserted by his parents shortly after organism born, operative on his uncles' farms or else of departure to high school, and losing part of his fingers during a job at a sawmill -- ar all part of his life account. "I got all my country learnedness," he sings, "picking cotton, upbringing blaze, and bailing hay."


Electric razor did a warm turn in the Navy and worked a series of nowhere jobs (including the 1 in the sawmill) earlier trying his luck in Nashville. After several back and forth trips betwixt Texas and Tennessee that gained him no response, he appeared i day in 1968 in Bobby Bare's Nashville office, where he convinced Bare to listen to him play. Bare ended up giving him a writing job. Shaver recorded i song for Mercury, "Chicken on the Ground," which went nowhere, merely shortly his songs began to see the light thanks to Kris Kristofferson ("Good Christian Soldier"), Tom T. Hall ("Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me"), Bare ("Ride Me Down Easy"), and afterwards, the Allman Brothers ("Fresh Mama") and Elvis Presley ("You Asked Me To"). Shaver's material breakthrough, though, came in 1973 when Waylon Jennings recorded an album composed nigh totally of Shaver's songs, Whitey Tonk Heroes -- largely considered the first-class honours degree true "outlaw" album.


Shaver's debut album was Older Five and Dimers Like Me, produced by Kristofferson and released by Monument (Kristofferson's judge) in 1973. Along with the title track, it contained the now-classic Shaver songs "Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me" and the said "Georgia on a Fast Train." Shaver switched to MGM a class by and by, just no record album materialized. "Nurture hellhole" was, as he had sung, part of his life-style at the time, and it unbroken him taboo of pot for a duad years. In 1976 Shaver resurfaced with When I Get My Wings on Capricorn, and followed it up a class by and by with Romany Boy. In 1978 Johnny Cash recorded "I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal (Only I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day)," a birdcall Shaver wrote just after he chose to yield up drugs and liquor and turned to God for help oneself. Religious references do crop up his songs (including "Chunk of Coal"), only they never dominate the emotions or get in the way of the earthy rhythms and melodies.


Child switched labels again, this time to Columbia, in 1980, and recorded trey more than albums during the future decennium: I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal, He-goat Joe Shaver, and Salinity of the Earth. The latter was produced by Shaver with his boy, Eddy, wHO has played on every Billy Joe record since Old Chunk of Coal (he also toured in Dwight Yoakam's band in the 1980s). After a few more age out of the spotlight, Billy Joe returned once once again in 1993, this sentence recording under the appoint Shaver. Tramp on Your Street, released on Zoo/Praxis, featured Eddy on lead guitar and Billy Joe's own raspy just loveable voice, and approach out during a time when hunky hat acts where the new savor in Nashville, it was promptly recognised as one of the strongest and hardest land records to attain the shelves in many age.


Electric shaver toured regularly over the adjacent mates of days and recorded a live record album for Zoo, Unshaved, in 1995, simply was dropped by the label a year afterwards. Victory followed on the New West label in 1998, with Galvanic Shaver appearance a year by and by. The rock-oriented Earth Rolls On appeared in give 2001. His adjacent four albums, Freedom's Child (2002), the emotional Billy and the Kid (which saw Shaver vocalizing songs written by his late boy, Eddy Shaver) (2004), Real Deal (2005), and Everybody's Brother (2007), were all released on the Compadre label. 2007 too saw the release of Fabricator, a live set recorded in 1992, on Sugar Hill Records.





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