Joe Diamond – I Start All Over
[A Tribute To His Days With Johnny Paycheck]
We’ll say three Western Swing tracks and two marginally Western songs qualify this one for review here. Joe Diamond is a veteran performer who still has it together vocally, residing solidly with the Paycheck/Buck Owens school of performers. The swinging medium tempo title track “I Start All Over” comes from Cheryl Durham Owens, the uptempo entry from Charlie & Ira Louvin is “Are You Teasing Me” and the slower one is Diamond’s original “My Angel’s Gone To Hell,” so we’ve got the Western Swing dancers covered!
The one Johnny Paycheck-penned entry in the collection definitely does not subscribe to the old saying “the older the fiddle the sweeter the tune!” Paycheck’s “Old Violin” demands equal time on that claim, dourly equating the instrument’s fate to being put away and forgotten. A second Joe Diamond original in this collection extols the healing properties of returning to the “Corpus Christi Sun.” The remainder of the release is Country in the more Classic mold all the way and should be welcomed and championed by those who decry that Country ain’t “Country” anymore. Recommended for them, ten tracks total.
– by Rick Huff
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Joe Diamond – I Start All Over