I Love Dixie Blues
| I Love Dixie Blues, So I Recorded Live In New Orleans | ||||
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| Live album by Merle Haggard | ||||
| Released | 1973 | |||
| Recorded | May 13, 1973 in New Orleans | |||
| Genre | Country | |||
| Length | 36:14 | |||
| Label | Capitol | |||
| Producer | Ken Nelson, Fuzzy Owen | |||
| Merle Haggard chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |
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| Robert Christgau | (C) |
I Love Dixie Blues (subtitled So I Recorded Live in New Orleans) is a live album by American country singer Merle Haggard, released in 1973.
Haggard had originally planned on releasing a studio-themed album called I Love Dixie Blues - test pressings and cover art had been prepared - but changed his mind, opting to rerecord some of the tracks live in New Orleans. The album was Haggard's third live LP in four years and features his usual backing band the Strangers augmented by a small horn trio named the Dixieland Express. The album is noteworthy for featuring several songs originally recorded by Emmet Miller, a minstrel show performer and recording artist from Georgia whose high falsetto and yodel-like voice had been a major influence on country stars like Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, and Hank Williams, and it is likely that Williams became aware of "Lovesick Blues" from Miller's 1928 version.
The album produced three hit singles, the first being the #1 hit "I Wonder If They Ever Think of Me," which sees Haggard return to the subject of the Vietnam War, this time from the perspective of a POW. The other singles include the honky-tonk blues "The Emptiest Arms in the World," which peaked at number 3, and "Everybody's Had the Blues," another number one that also rose to #62 on the pop chart, his first appearance there since the single "Carolyn" in 1971.
I Love Dixie Blues... was released in July 1973 and topped the Billboard country albums chart. In his 2013 biography Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, David Cantwell wrote the album "is a thrilling document, loose and lively in a way Haggard had rarely been even at his finest. The addition of the Dixieland Horns gives the songs drives and character without sounding quaint..."
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Wikipedia