Omnivore
's 2013 compilation
The Buckaroos Play Buck & Merle
is a two-fer by any other name, combining the group's 1965 album
The Buck Owens Song Book
with 1971's
The Songs of Merle Haggard
. Both LPs pay tribute to the titans of Bakersfield country,
Buck
being
the Buckaroos
' bread and butter while
Merle
is the man who gave the group its name and often rivaled
Owens
' popularity. That's where the similarities between these two albums end.
adheres pretty closely to the Bakersfield blueprint, an entirely instrumental selection where either
Don Rich
picks out a melody on his twanging Telecaster or
Tom Brumley
plays it on a steel guitar as the band cheerfully rolls on. These sound pretty close to
's originals, which inevitably suggests how he's nowhere to be heard, but it's nice to hear the band just play.
is another matter entirely. Here, the band is considerably softer in its approach, a shift emphasized by organs or pianos tinkling out the melodies and by the warm, cooing vocals on the choruses. Nominally, this is country, but in practice this is straight-up easy listening, something that's much, much closer to
Floyd Cramer
or
the Sandpipers
than
Merle Haggard & the Strangers
. That means this LP isn't a great place to hear
just play, as it contains very little of their lean hard-driving strengths, and yet that's also the charm of the album: it's a shag-carpeted, wide-collared curio of its time and that tackiness means it's actually a more entertaining listen than its companion LP on this CD. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine