Jim Ed Brown - Bottle, Bottle

In this week's episode we're featuring a dynamite outlier from the late 60s career of Jim Ed Brown: "Bottle, Bottle" (1968). A lot of Brown's full-length albums of this era were on the slicker side and hard country gems were a little elusive. However, "Bottle, Bottle" is a full-on dive into the hard country side of the spectrum, dripping with the steel guitar of Pete Drake. Looking and sounding typically dapper, Jim Ed Brown's silky smooth vocal sounds right at home on a country shuffle (of which there are several), songs of loving and leaving and the necessary barroom laments (with a name like "Bottle, Bottle", it's expected). The likeable Arkansan cut just enough of this kind of material on this album to have this reviewer wanting to take a second look at Brown's catalogue to see what else has been missed. A-class.