Recommend me some well recorded country

The closest I get to country music is bluegrass.  It's found in the country section of the record store so I consider it country.  :)

An album that I really enjoy listening to is "Skip, Hop & Wobble" by Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg, and Edgar Meyer.  Some consider it newgrass rather than bluegrass.  I just enjoy.  Nicely recorded.  Edgar Meyer is amazing in "From Ankara to Izmir".  It's all acoustic instrumental.

Probably not the type of country you were thinking of.  But it fits your stated requirements.

A few things I dig…

Keith Whitley - I Wonder Do You Think Of Me

Iris DeMent - My Life

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

dolly parton - jolene album

fantastic recording.

merle haggard - hag (the anthology).  extremely well recorded songs and a well mastered greatest hits.

as they are (mostly) early stereo recordings, crossfeed is almost a must.  but, with crossfeed, the songs sound about as good as the beatles remasters.  just stunning sense of sound stage and depth.  really super.

oh, and if i might offer another word or two.  be careful not to confuse "polish" with well-recorded music.

new country, while certainly polished, suffers from the same problems that plague other popular music.  namely, compression and anonymity.  the music is played by professionals, and each individual drum head (for instance) is mic'd within an inch of its life, and then each sound is compressed so as to fall perfectly in line.  and then the overall mix is compressed some more.

stick with classic country if you want "microphone in a room" quality recordings.  with a few exceptions, perhaps.

It's live though, but well recorded, listen to some samples at Grooveshark

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/search/songs/?query=down%20from%20the%20mountain

Alison Krauss & Union Station.  Blue grass country with pop feel. Amazing vocals.

geez.  does no one on this forum listen to real country music?

hank williams, willie nelson, johnny cash, merle haggard, dolly parton, loretta lynn?

nobody?

so... dude asks for well-recorded country music recs and he gets no less than 3 bluegrass recs. 

that's fine.  i listen to a little mountain music, too, and yes it's a "virtuosic" genre.  and well recorded as a rule.

and, therefore much more safe to admit you listen to on head-fi than country.  right, guys? 

but, being from Alabama, i refuse to accept that bluegrass is either a substitute for, or a superior genre to, country music.

they ain't the same thang, fellers. 

poorly played, head-fi.  poorly played.   

You're right.  They aren't the same thing.  But I'm still going to suggest "Roots" by the Everly Brothers - a couple of good Merle Haggard covers at least.  And then there's "T for Texas" which is indisputable country.

everly brothers are fair game.

they're from that hard-to-categorize group of vocalists that also includes patsy cline and roy orbison.

played on country stations back in the day because it was palatable to southerners.  good stuff, too.

I'd like to second the recommendation for "Skip, Hop & Wobble".  It's definately one of my top 10 albums of all time. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheWuss 

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so... dude asks for well-recorded country music recs and he gets no less than 3 bluegrass recs. 

... 

but, being from Alabama, i refuse to accept that bluegrass is either a substitute for, or a superior genre to, country music.

 

they ain't the same thang, fellers. 

 

poorly played, head-fi.  poorly played.   

He seemed into the bluegrass/vocals thing:

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by High_Q 

Quote:

Its possible that that country I was listening to was bluegrass and maybe typically they are recorded well?  Does bluegrass have alot of emphasis on vocals?

Quote:

Originally Posted by High_Q 

Quote:

Its possible that that country I was listening to was bluegrass and maybe typically they are recorded well?  Does bluegrass have alot of emphasis on vocals?

Bluegrass can have vocals, often the harmonizing style of vocals.  But the vocal generally isn't the emphasis.  There's lots of just instrumental bluegrass.

I joke that one of the stages of audiophile disease is getting an interest in bluegrass.  Bluegrass can sound good, it's good playing with good musicians, doesn't get the compression and loudness treatment (and autotune) of modern country, and can have a nice jam style of playing.

Try a YouTube search on "bluegrass" and see if anything there sounds like what you were listening too.