Harlan Howard
wrote "Heartaches by the Number" back in 1959 and it swiftly became a country standard, taken toward the top of Billboard's country charts by
Ray Price
, who was the first of countless artists to sing it.
George Jones
,
Waylon Jennings
Jerry Lee Lewis
Buck Owens
, and
Dwight Yoakam
are among the artists who have covered it, so it's not entirely a surprise that
Scott Bomar
's Memphis-based retro-soul uses it as the album title and touchstone for their 2016 excursion into country-soul.
Heartaches by the Number
relies heavily on classic country tunes --
Hank Williams
' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,"
Freddy Fender
's "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights," and
Floyd Cramer
's "Last Date" are all here -- but there are a handful of originals scattered throughout, along with sharply chosen obscurities like
Merle Haggard
's "The Longer You Wait," a cut buried on one of his earliest
Capitol
albums. The album's anchor might be a rendition of "She's All I Got," a song written by soul maverick
Swamp Dogg
and popularized by
Johnny Paycheck
, which provides a clear intersection of the two stylistic paths, but the joy of the record is how
the Bo-Keys
stay true to the southernness of both country and soul. All the grooves on
are deeply southern -- they stem from the sound of American Sound Studios and
Hi
-- and the inflections are proudly country, a sensibility that underscores how all this music flows from the same southern origins. In a similarly all-inclusive spirit,
invite
Stax
legend
Don Bryant
to sit in on the title track, and the American Studios vocalists
the Masqueraders
to sing on "She's All I Got," while guitarists
John Paul Keith
and
Al Gamble
pop up elsewhere, and the result is a joyous, open-hearted celebration of the American south. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine