Almost Blue

Almost Blue, 1981

Excerpt from the Rhino liner notes:
"By the time I first arrived in Nashville to record this album, my country music collection contained the accumulated swag of five U.S. tours with many spare suitcases being bought to carry home hordes of thrift store vinyl. My tastes were running to Stonewall Jackson, Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Webb Pierce, and Janis Martin. I had a shelf full of George Jones albums on Starday, Mercury, and recent releases on Epic. I was working my way through everything by Charlie Rich from Sun through Smash to Epic, a bunch of great Johnny Cash songs, Jerry Lee Lewis’ country sides on Mercury, early Willie Nelson songs and great albums like Red Headed Stranger and Stardust, Patsy Cline, anything by Loretta Lynn, and the only Hank Williams that I knew existed, the one the now call “Senior”.

When I went to Billy Sherrill’s office to discuss the repertoire, there was a big dustbin liner sitting on his desk. He tipped out the contents to reveal a stash of cassettes submitted by publishing houses from all over town. I suppose this was standard practice for a new artist coming to record, but the songs ranged all the way from the lame to the downright bizarre. Hill and Range submitted “Heartbreak Hotel” with all apparent seriousness. Best of all was an early Willie Nelson demo of a song called “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye” (unreleased until the Teatro album), a homicidal ballad that contained the chilling lines: “The flesh around your neck is pale/Indented by my fingernail”. I told Billy that I already had all the songs we needed.

The South Bank Show documentary of the making of this album contains a wonderful sequence in which Billy Sherrill is questioned about my song choices while driving his speedboat. He admits that he is “worn out on” a lot of the songs (he had engineered the Sun version of Charlie Rich’s “Sittin’ And Thinkin’” and produced the Epic remake in the early ‘70s), but he was willing to see what we could do with them … “unless we write a new one”. He certainly took extra special interest in his own composition “Too Far Gone”, cajoling me to attempt the “spoken” second verse with the timeless advice: “There isn’t a woman in the world who ain’t a fool for a talking bit”. "

Track listing

Side 1
01. Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used To Do)? [1:35]
02. Sweet Dreams [2:56]
03. Success [2:38]
04. I'm Your Toy [3:20]
05. Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down [2:06]
06. Brown To Blue [2:37]
Side 2
07. Good Year For The Roses [3:06]
08. Sittin' And Thinkin' [3:00]
09. Colour Of The Blues [2:18]
10. Too Far Gone [3:24]
11. Honey Hush [2:11]
12. How Much I Lied [2:48]]

Credits

• Produced by: Billy Sherrill
• Musicians:

Elvis Costello - vocals, guitar

Steve Nieve - piano, organ

Bruce Thomas - bass

Pete Thomas - drums

John McFee - lead guitar, pedal steel

Tommy Millar - fiddle

Nashville Edition - background vocals