Reprise Please Baby: The Warner Bros. Years

Full Title - Reprise Please Baby The Warner Bros. Years. From his '86 multi platinum debut Guitars, Cadillac's, Etc., Etc. through '01s South Of Heaven and West Of Hell, this expansive 4CD boxed set culls material from Yoakam's entire Warner Bros. Career.

Though Dwight Yoakam casts himself as the classic outsider, no contemporary country artist has been able to achieve more mainstream success while retaining more alternative credibility. This four-disc set (including more than an entire disc of previously unreleased material) documents the uniqueness of Yoakam's musical legacy, as he combines a core commitment to the hard twang of honky-tonk--in breakthrough hits such as "Guitars, Cadillacs" and the Buck Owens duet "Streets of Bakersfield--with a stylistic expansiveness that knows no limits. In addition to his underrated strength as a songwriter, no other country artist could extend himself from Queen ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love") to Cheap Trick ("I Want You to Want Me") to the Clash ("Train in Vain"), while paying the obligatory tributes to Elvis Presley, George Jones, and Merle Haggard. The three new recordings may be inconsequential (a shuffle rendition of "Mercury Blues" holds the most interest), but the archive of previously unreleased material includes a 10-song demo from 1981 (before Yoakam's pivotal pairing with guitarist/producer/bandleader Pete Anderson), two duets with Kelly Willis, and the eight live performances that conclude the set. --Don McLeese