Hi, there! This page is part of an opinionated guide to what I call "hard country" music -- the real stuff -- with a bunch of record reviews and recommendations by me, Joe Sixpack. Naturally, it's a work in progress, and will hopefully be expanded on quite a bit, as time allows.
This is the first page covering the letter "V"
Leroy Van Dyke - see artist discography
Mack Vickery "Live At The Alabama Women's Prison" (Bear Family, 1970/2008)
A gender-flipped send-up of the fabled Johnny Cash prison concert albums: the cover art shows Vickery striding in front of a cell full of love-starved female convicts. Pretty goofy, but there is some great music on here. Not sure what else Vickery did, though he apparently had a few minor entries into the charts around this time...
Howard Vokes "Songs Of Tragedy And Disaster" (Starday, 2000)
A wide-ranging collection of classic weepers, many of them drawn from the back-catalogs of other, older artists. Train wrecks, dying children, doomed lovers, mining accidents, ship wrecks, and dogs like Old Shep who die saving their masters. This is not a dazzling set -- Vokes is a very limited singer, and the studio musicians give uniformly indifferent performances -- but for fans of the tragedy ballad genre, this is a pretty rich wellspring of material. This album draws on various Starday albums, and some tracks are earthier than others, including a few duets which have a little more texture and depth.
Howard Vokes "Sadness And Happiness In Country And Gospel Songs" (Vokes)
