Rodney Crowell – Diamonds and Dirt

These three reissues — the first from Legacy’s top-shelf “American Milestones” series, the latter two from Lucky Dog’s “Pick of the Litter” series — comprise the “commercial” portion of Rodney Crowell’s solo recording career. These albums were preceded by an encouraging run of releases at

Warner Bros. that cemented his reputation as a songwriter par excellence but failed to move him to the star-status of Emmylou Harris, with whom he began his career as a songwriter, harmony singer and acoustic guitarist. After these records came a somewhat disappointing several-album stay at MCA, during which his career fell back to cult singer-songwriter status.

Diamonds And Dirt is the commercial and, perhaps, creative zenith of Crowell’s career. With its run of five consecutive #1 singles, unheard-of in the pre-Garth/Shania world of country music, it initially caught the public’s ear with “It’s Such A Small World”, a duet with his then-wife Rosanne Cash in which the couple takes on the guise of former lovers who, by a chance meeting, are briefly reminded of the best parts of their time together. Four singles later, he gloriously revived Harlan Howard’s gem “Above And Beyond”, a staple of Buck Owens’ Bakersfield sound.

The rest of the album is full of well-worn country music themes (e.g., the lost-love laments of “I Didn’t Know I Could Lose You” and “After All This Time”), written with a self-effacing charm and clarity, sung confidently, and played by a band that, in its day, rivaled the Desert Rose Band and Dwight Yoakam’s backing unit as the tightest pseudo-honky-tonkers in country music. When I lived in New England in the mid-’80s and was questioned by friends about how a preppy, dyed-in-the-wool garage-rock devotee could be interested in contemporary country music, this was one of a few albums I could play to show them why and be absolutely sure they would understand.

In retrospect, it is easy and not altogether inaccurate to view Keys To The Highway and Life Is Messy narrowly through important events in Crowell’s personal life. Keys followed the death of Crowell’s father and centered around “Things I Wished I’d Said”, a redemptive chronicle of a father and son’s reconciliation prior to the father’s passing. Crowell’s marriage to Cash disintegrated around the time of Keys and was behind him by Life Is Messy, which looks toward new understandings of love (“What Kind Of Love”) and the passing of judgment (“It Is Not For Me To Judge”). Neither of these albums has the optimistic glint or off-the-cuff panache of Diamonds (and each sold significantly less than their predecessors), but Keys does have some of Crowell’s best songs, including “If Looks Could Kill” and “The Faith Is Mine”.

Consumer tips for potential buyers: Diamonds contains demos of several good Crowell songs written around the same time as those on Diamonds; and the artwork and packaging for Keys and Life are only revised versions of what was included in the original releases.