(In the liner notes of the LP, Yoakam wrote: "VERY SPECIAL THANKS: to Buck Owens for all his records that still serve as an inspiration for the California honky-tonk sound.") Additional musical influences can be found in the cover songs Yoakam chose to record for the album, including Stonewall Jackson’s 1959 hit "Smoke Along the Tracks," a radical reworking of Lefty Frizzell’s " Always Late with Your Kisses," and Elvis Presley’s 1961 song " Little Sister," which would be the album's first single and biggest hit, peaking at No. (It topped the country charts in Canada.) In the "Beyond Nashville" episode of the 2003 documentary Lost Highway, Yoakam admits the elongated opening vocal was an approximation of Buck Owens trademark singing style on songs like "I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail." "Little Ways" is distinctly an homage to Buck, a signature combination of the drawn-out phrasing and hard-twang guitar that had distinguished so many of his hits. There's no sophomore slump here…In fact, it can be heard and viewed as Yoakam and producer/guitarist Pete Anderson cementing the commitment to Bakersfield-styled honky tonk music." The album opens with the newly-written " Little Ways," which peaked at No. The result was a second album of remarkable high quality, with AllMusic noting, " Hillbilly Deluxe is proof that beyond a shadow of a doubt, Dwight Yoakam's Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. It wasn't that any of them was basically better, but we couldn't put all three on the same record. So right now you’ve got three albums’ worth of material." So he had "South of Cincinnati," " I Sang Dixie," and "Johnson’s Love" that were all slow tempo tunes. So I said to him, "Let’s do seven of your songs and three covers on every album. When we started, Dwight had twenty-one songs that were really good, that we played on the bandstand. Hillbilly Deluxe appeared in April 1987, a mere thirteen months after his debut LP. As one writer put it, "Remaining in Los Angeles distanced Yoakam from the Nashville music industry to advance his recording career through radio play, but it allowed him to develop as a live performer, to work the circuit, sharpen his chops, find his audience, and forge his own path." Recording and composition Critics responded by questioning the Kentucky-born songwriter's hillbilly credentials, and his refusal to play ball with Nashville likely cost him radio play and award nominations from the powerful Country Music Association, although he was immensely popular with the Los Angeles-based Academy of Country Music. Yoakam was largely unimpressed when he first visited Music City earlier in the decade and touted the open-minded creativity of the west coast scene. However, as his star rose, Yoakam did not mince words in interviews when asked about the music industry in Nashville – such as his disdain for executives at Columbia Records after they dropped Johnny Cash from the label, among other things – and quickly gained a reputation as an opinionated outsider. Yoakam developed his sound in the bars and punk rock clubs of Los Angeles and released a six-song EP that would eventually get him signed to Reprise. Aided by producer and guitarist Pete Anderson, he put a fresh spin on the honky-tonk sound of his Bakersfield hero Buck Owens to create a unique style that revitalized interest in traditional country music, as opposed to the more pop-friendly approach that dominated Nashville in the early and mid-Eighties. 1 on the Billboard country albums chart, Yoakam emerged as one of country music's hottest stars. With the success of his debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., which hit No.
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