Curb Special Markets
1979
Family Tradition
About This Album
Family Tradition followed The New South by a couple of years and delved deeper into Hank Williams Jr.'s spirit of adventure in reinventing his music to fit him as an individual. Far from giving a damn about what Nash Vegas thought of him at this point, Williams worked with three different producers on this set: Jimmy Bowen, Ray Ruff, and Phil Gernhard. While it's true that this set doesn't have the grit that Hank Williams, Jr. & Friends or The New South had, it does showcase Williams as a singer of real distinction and his love of soul and R&B music. An example of how willing he was to experiment was on the opening track, where he covers the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody" with a chorus of backing vocalists. And he pulls it off in spades. It's moving, it swings, and it has that gospel feel that the hint of this song always contained but which had never been brought out before. He follows the R&B tip on "Old Flame, New Fire," an Oskar Soloman song that fuses country and Memphis-style R&B -- again, with the female chorus raining down all around him. On Steve Young's dark and tenuous love song "Always Loving You," Charlie Daniels fiddles his way through the background in his inimitable style and Reggie Young's electric guitar can be heard trading fills with Brad Felton's steel.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,7 and 8)

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