Swinging Doors

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Swinging Doors
Swingingdoors.jpg
Studio album by
Merle Haggard and the Strangers
ReleasedOctober 3, 1966
RecordedAugust, December 1965, June, August 1966
Capitol Records Studio, Hollywood, CA
Genre Country
Length29:51
Label Capitol
Producer Ken Nelson, Fuzzy Owen
Merle Haggard and the Strangers chronology
Just Between the Two of Us
(1966)		Swinging Doors
(1966)		 I'm a Lonesome Fugitive
(1967)
Singles from Swinging Doors
  1. "Shade Tree (Fix-It Man)"
    Released: October 1965
  2. "Swinging Doors"
    Released: February 28, 1966
  3. "The Bottle Let Me Down"
    Released: August 1, 1966

Swinging Doors is the second studio album by country singer Merle Haggard and The Strangers, released in 1966 on Capitol Records. It is sometimes called Swinging Doors and The Bottle Let Me Down.

Album collection of recorded music, words, sounds

An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP records played at ​33 1⁄3 rpm. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s.

Merle Haggard American country music song writer, singer and musician

Merle Ronald Haggard was an American country singer, songwriter, guitarist, and fiddler. Along with Buck Owens, Haggard and his band the Strangers helped create the Bakersfield sound, which is characterized by the twang of the Fender Telecaster mixed with the sound of the steel guitar, vocal harmony styles in which the words are minimal, and a rough edge not heard on the more polished Nashville sound recordings of the same era.

The Strangers (American band)

The Strangers are an American country band that formed in 1965 in Bakersfield, California. They mainly served as the backup band for singer-songwriter Merle Haggard. However, from 1969 to 1973, they issued several records independent of Haggard, released on Capitol Records. Merle Haggard named the band after his first hit single "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers". The Strangers were voted touring band of the year by the Academy of Country Music eight times. The band continues to tour with longtime member Norman Hamlet, as well as Haggard's children Ben and Noel Haggard.

Contents

Recording and composition

In April 1966, Haggard traveled to Nashville to record for the first time with disappointing results. "Seemed like there was a period where I was paddlin' around in the water tryin' to do something and it just wouldn't work," Haggard recalls in the American Masters episode about his life, "and a lot of hair pullin' tryin' to figure out what I was doing wrong and what I could do right in order to make it work. And all of a sudden it just started workin'." Focusing on the sharper edges that had made "Swinging Doors" a Top 5 hit, Haggard returned to the studio in late June 1966 and cut "The Bottle Let Me Down," which would peak at number 3, his biggest hit up to that point.

<i>American Masters</i> American television series

American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and those who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States. It is produced by WNET in New York City. The show debuted on PBS in 1986.

Haggard's new recordings largely centered on Roy Nichols's Telecaster, Ralph Mooney's steel guitar, and the harmony vocals provided by Bonnie Owens. As Owens recalled to Daniel Cooper in the liner notes to the Haggard box set Down Every Road, "The only person that either of us knew that had any success at all—that we knew personally—was Buck Owens. And so...we had to kind of pattern most everything from what Buck would talk to us about... Certain things, like...'The Bottle Let Me Down.' 'Tonight the bottle'—and he says 'let me down.' We were accenting what he's saying by himself... The only reason for harmony is to accent... Buck always taught me that." [1] Haggard and producer Ken Nelson also began employing session players like James Burton and Glen Campbell (who both played on "The Bottle Let Me Down") to help flesh out the tunes. During a marathon session on August 1, Haggard recorded "I'll Look Over You" and the Tommy Collins composition "High on a Hilltop," which had been inspired by the foul language used by the waitresses at the Blackboard Cafe, a club where both Collins and Haggard had played.[ citation needed ] Liz Anderson, who had composed Haggard's first Top 10 hit "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," penned "This Town's Not Big Enough" but the majority of the songs were written by Haggard, who was becoming a prolific songwriter.

Roy Nichols American musician

Roy Nichols was an American country music guitarist best known as the lead guitarist for country music legend Merle Haggard's band The Strangers for more than two decades. He was known for his guitar technique, a mix of fingerpicking and pedal steel-like bends, usually played on a Fender Telecaster electric guitar. Nichols is considered one of the founders of the country music subgenre the “Bakersfield Sound,” which includes such notable country artists as Haggard, Buck Owens, and Don Rich.

Ralph Mooney was a well-known steel guitar player. He was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1983. He was the original steel guitarist in The Strangers.

Steel guitar type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument

Steel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii by Joseph Kekuku in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use of a bar or slide called a steel. The earliest use of an electrified steel guitar was first made in the early 1930s by Bob Dunn of Milton Brown and His Brownies, a western swing band from Fort Worth, Texas; the instrument was perfected in the mid to late 1930s by Fort Worth's Leon McAluff, who played for western swing band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Nashville later picked up the use of the steel guitar in the early days of the late 1940s and early 1950s "Honky Tonk" country & western music with a number of fine steel guitarists backing names like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce. The term steel guitar is often mistakenly used to describe any metal body resophonic guitar.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svg [2]
Pitchfork Media Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [3]

Swinging Doors would top the Billboard country albums chart. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote in his review: "In addition to the two masterpieces from which the album took its name, the record included a terrific version of Tommy Collins' "High On A Hilltop," and plus excellent songs like "The Girl Turned Ripe," "If I Could Be Him," and "Someone Else You've Known." There's a few weak tracks, but Haggard and his band are in fine form, making the filler enjoyable." [2]

AllMusic online music database

AllMusic is an online music database. It catalogs more than 3 million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musical artists and bands. It launched in 1991, predating the World Wide Web.

Track listing

All songs by Merle Haggard unless otherwise noted.

  1. "Swinging Doors" – 2:51
  2. "If I Could Be Him" – 2:51
  3. "The Longer You Wait" – 2:18
  4. "I'll Look Over You" – 2:07
  5. "I Can't Stand Me" – 2:16
  6. "The Girl Turned Ripe" – 2:17
  7. "The Bottle Let Me Down" – 2:45
  8. "No More You and Me" – 2:18
  9. "Somebody Else You've Known" – 2:07
  10. "High on a Hilltop" (Tommy Collins) – 2:58
  11. "This Town's Not Big Enough" (Liz Anderson, Donna Austin) – 2:43
  12. "Shade Tree (Fix-It-Man)" – 2:20

Personnel

The Strangers:

with

William Robert Mize was an American steel guitarist, band leader, vocalist, songwriter, and TV show host.

Bonnie Owens American singer

Bonnie Owens, born Bonnie Campbell, was an American country music singer who was married to Buck Owens and later Merle Haggard.

and

Chart positions

Chart (1966)Peak
position
Billboard Country LPs1

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References

  1. ↑ Down Every Road 1962–1994 compilation album. Liner notes by Daniel Cooper
  2. 1 2 Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Swinging Doors > Review". Allmusic . Retrieved February 20, 2015.
  3. ↑ Deusner, Stephen M. "Swinging Doors > Review". Pitchfork Media . Retrieved February 19, 2015.
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