The Sailor

The Sailor
Studio album by Mickey Newbury
Released 1979
Recorded 1979
Genre Country
Length 26:45
Label Elektra
Producer Ronnie Gant
Mickey Newbury chronology
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
(1978)		 The Sailor
(1979)		 After All These Years
(1981)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic

The Sailor is the 1979 album by singer-songwriter Mickey Newbury. The album features a contemporary country production style.

The Sailor was collected for CD issue on the eight-disc Mickey Newbury Collection from Mountain Retreat, Newbury's own label in the mid-1990s, along with nine other Newbury albums from 1969-1981.

Recording & Composition

The Sailor was Newbury's third album for Hickory Records in three years. Unlike his earlier albums on Elektra in the 1970s, which sounded like nothing else coming out of Nashville, The Sailor displayed a much slicker sound, with Newbury retaining the services of producer Ronnie Gant and string arranger Alan Moore in a concerted attempt to reach country radio. The eclectic nature of his earlier albums, not to mention the length of some of the cuts, had made country radio programmers wary. Newbury once remarked to Country Song Roundup, "I understand their problems. They got commercial spots and everything...They gotta understand that I've gotta do what I feel. If it's not gonna be saleable, then I'm sorry...You can't worry about keeping up with the trends. If you do, you'll always lag behind." By the end of the decade, however, Newbury toned down many of the elements that had become trademarks of his sound; clocking in at just over 27 minutes, the between-track transitions, sound effects, and song suites were nowhere to be found.

"Blue Sky Cryin'", "There's a Part of Her Still Holdin' On Somehow", and the 2/4 time "Let It Go" are all pure country pop while the southern rock-tinged "Lookin' For the Sunshine" and the tongue-in-cheek "A Weed Is a Weed" provided some bounce to an extremely laidback batch of songs. Moore's strings dominate, in keeping with the countrypolitan sound that had dominated country radio in the 1970s. In his AllMusic review for the LP, Thom Jurek praises "Let's Have a Party" as a standout, "perhaps Newbury's anthem, not because of its title, but because it's one of the most beautiful confessional songs he's ever written. The production by Gant is straightforward and Newbury's voice is clearly in the foreground."

"Looking For the Sunshine" would reach #82 on the Billboard country singles chart. A second single, "Blue Sky Cryin'", would peak at #81.

Reception

The Sailor was Newbury's third consecutive album not to chart. In his Newbury memoir Crystal & Stone, biographer Joe Ziemer takes a dim view of the LP, calling it "Newbury's low ebb of the decade". AllMusic: The Sailor, once again, refused to sell, perhaps because it was too late, perhaps because it was too early - Merle Haggard and George Jones made records that sounded exactly like this only three years later and scored big...Nashville's radio machine wasn't having it, and therefore the public never got the chance to make up its mind. In fact, the way Newbury's entire career was handled by Nashville is evidence enough to raze the entire town and start over."

Track listing

All tracks composed by Mickey Newbury

  1. "Blue Sky Shinin'" - 2:54
  2. "Let's Have a Party" - 3:17
  3. "There's a Part of Her Still Holding On Somehow" - 2:53
  4. "A Weed is a Weed" - 2:21
  5. "Let It Go" - 2:48
  6. "Looking for the Sunshine" - 3:15
  7. "Darlin' Take Care of Yourself" - 3:02
  8. "Long Gone" - 2:43
  9. "The Night You Wrote That Song" - 3:37

Personnel

Technical

References

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