My Love Affair with Trains / The Roots of My Raising (Audio CD)

     I used to have both of these albums on vinyl, but I got rid of them in the early nineties and only recently got around to buying this twofer. Combining an album of train songs with a more conventional country album, these albums are both brilliant in their different ways. The conventional album produced two number one country hits, but the trains album is just as interesting even though it produced only one country hit. Normally a prolific songwriter, Merle only wrote one song on each album.My love affair with trains, the first album here, avoids all of the obvious train songs, though Railroad lady, the penultimate track, has been recorded by a few other singers and may be more familiar than most of the other tracks here. Here comes the freedom train, the only hit to come from the album, is another song that might be familiar even if you haven't heard the album, but there are plenty of other great tracks here.The title track is a really bouncy, upbeat song that...Read more