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:: Georgia On My Mind ::

I guess I picked this album up because I liked the cover and because I find it hard to resist the wonderful sound quality of early RCA stereo pressings. I don't have much interest in owning any Eddy Arnold records generally because he's not exactly what you would call edgy. If anything he's the exact opposite of edgy. In my world you gotta have some edges, or you might as well live in a padded cell.

Because of this lack of edge and a lot of other factors, Eddy Arnold is one of the biggest selling recording artists of all time. His career began in the 1940s, and his last album came out in 2005. He was managed by Colonel Tom Parker long before Elvis came along, and he's been married to the same woman for 60 some odd years. I gotta hand it to him - not a bad job.

Of course Georgia On My Mind is one of those songs that was recorded by a million different artists. It was written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael and lyricist Stuart Gorrell about Hoagy's sister Georgia. Although it may have been written about a woman, the song became forever associated with the peach state especially after Ray Charles made it his own in 1960. Eddy Arnold's version was recorded a couple of years before the Genius got hold of it, and although the arrangements are dissimilar, I can hear how Ray may have gotten a bit of inspiration from this version. Or maybe not. In any case, it's always been one of my favorite songs, and this Chet Atkins produced "Nashville Sound" edgeless rendition has done nothing to change my mind.


Mike

This entry was posted on Monday, March 03, 2008 at 6:49 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.