A Nice Mix for ‘Perfect’ Soundtrack

Country music may be bigger than ever, but you still can’t hear it on mainstream pop radio.

Unless you tune in a country station, you’re not likely to come across anything by Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd or Alan Jackson even though they each sell millions of albums.

That wasn’t always the case, as the soundtrack album for the new Warner Bros. film “A Perfect World” nicely demonstrates. The heart of the album consists of five excellent country records from the late ‘50s and early ‘60s that were hits in both the country and pop fields.

The selections--Don Gibson’s “Blue, Blue Day” and “Sea of Heartbreak,” Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way,” Marty Robbins’ “Don’t Worry” and Hank Locklin’s “Please Help Me, I’m Falling (In Love With You)”-- are all classics in a happy/sad country approach that mix tales of romantic disappointment or longing with generally upbeat musical backing.

The package also includes contemporary versions by Chris Isaak of two other pop hits of the ‘50s, “Dark Moon” and “The Little White Cloud That Cried,” as well as Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star,” Rusty Draper’s “Night Life” and George Hamilton IV’s “Abilene.”

The reason the songs are brought together on the film and the album is because they are songs that Kevin Costner’s character might have been listening to on the radio while trying to elude Texas Rangers in the fall of 1963.

Strangely, the album doesn’t include any R&B-pop; hits, which almost certainly would have been played before and after many of these hits on radio at the time. Indeed, Bob Wills’ version of “Ida Red,” which kicks off the album, has been credited by Chuck Berry as being the musical model for Berry’s first rock hit, “Maybelline.”

Though there are no liner notes addressing the way country was an accepted part of Top 40 and rock stations at the time, the point is stressed in the Reprise Records press release announcing the release of the album.

“What was remarkable about assembling the tracks for (the album),” notes Lenny Waronker, Warner Bros. Records president and one of the album’s executive producers, “was that they were able to move back and forth between pop and country, looking for material that really defined the time. Back then, a song’s appeal could transcend categories much more easily than it unfortunately does today.”

Added Steve Baker, another of the album’s executive producers: “(Director Clint Eastwood) was very receptive to an eclectic mix of material, which was exactly what was happening in music at the time. It was a world where ‘Ida Red’ shared the same airwaves as ‘Catch a Falling Star.’ There was something fresh and innocent about the period and that was the element we wanted to bring to the music.”