Album: Gotcha Covered, Vol. 1
Label: Heartland Records
Release date: Jan. 20, 2017
Jeff Cook is a founding member of the Country Music Hall of Fame group Alabama. With the band on a break from touring, Cook has turned to his Allstar Goodtime Band and has released an album of covers called Gotcha Covered, Volume 1.
“My goal putting this band together was to have the ability to play the music that targets places like casino show rooms, fairs, festivals, that sort of thing,” Cook notes. “I think that’s probably what’s happened. If we go to play an R&B song, it sounds like R&B. If we go to play country, it sounds country, and everybody’s got enough knowledge of the differences to make it sound that way.”
It is, in some ways, a return to Cook’s pre-fame past. For those not in the know, Cook was a late-night disc jockey at Fort Payne, Ala., radio station WFPA for eight years during the ’60s when radio stations — particularly small-town outlets — played music from a wide variety of formats. Even Alabama, prior to its multi-platinum era, made its mark playing music at the Bowery in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the band routinely vacillated between songs of different genres: Muscle Shoals soul classics, Creedence Clearwater Revival rock and Waylon Jennings country.
That Nashville Sound has links to all of the tracks on the album below that you can listen to individually.
Track listing:
1. Because
2. Well (Baby Please Don't Go)
3. Crutches
4. I Feel Fine
5. Loney Teardrops
6. I Found Somebody
7. Red River (feat. Cash Creek)
8. Third Rate Romance
9. She's a Woman (She's About a Mover)
10. Save the Last Dance for Me
11. All Day and All of the Night
12. Gone Fishin'
13. Party On, Dude- Medley: Louie Louie / Hang on Sloopy / I'm a Fool
Jeff Cook is one of the founding members of Alabama, possibly America's most successful and revered country music band but he was never the strongest vocalist. The record's front cover already had me fearing for the worst. It really looks like one of those records you can buy in Hotels and cruise boats from local performers. And, unfortunately, my fears were justified. Everything in here screams Karaoke, from the vocal deliveries to the arrangements, the instrumentation, ... As the record title suggests, this is a cover album, including Alabama's own Red River, and well-known hits like Amazing Rhythm Aces's Third-Rate Romance (later reprised by Sammy Kershaw) and The Drifters's Save the Last Dance for Me. Because Jeff Cook sounds as if he's singing while writing down his grocery shopping list, I was already bored and yawning before the first song was over. This record is an embarassment.
ReplyDelete