Nothing by Dwight Yoakam

Label: Reprise 17734
Year: 1995
Condition: M
Price: $6.50

From a warehouse find, this is a new, unplayed stock copy... pristine Mint. Hardly one of Dwight Yoakam's signature tunes, nonetheless "Nothing" is a great demonstration of the qualities that make him one of the greatest American singer/songwriter of the last 20 years. For me, Yoakam's willingness to bend the country music genre---to reach out and incorporate musical elements from from pop, rock, & soul---put him in with the class of heroes that made American music from the last half of the 1900's the worldwide phenomenon it became.

Only the American melting pot could have produced Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Charlie Rich, James Brown, Eddie Cochran, the Dell-Vikings, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Sam Cooke, John Fogerty, Buck Owens, Little Willie John, Ray Charles, George Jones, and all the hundreds of other pioneers of rockabilly, rock & soul. And it was those folks who, in turn, so inspired Britain's youth that the rock & roll revolution regained momentum and started rolling in whole new directions. Dwight Yoakam's muse reaches back into that melting pot, harmonizing beautifully with the qualities that made those early pioneers great. And this humble tune is simply a nice, seldom-heard example of Yoakam's genius. Note that both sides hit the country chart, as the rollicking rockabilly B side took off in early 1996. Unfortunately, despite Yoakam's clear "crossover" appeal, pop/rock radio has pretty much ignored him.