The Soul & The Edge: The Best of Johnny Paycheck

In 1970, after a string of not-quite hits and hard luck, Johnny Paycheck was singing for drinks in L.A. when Countrypolitan maestro Billy Sherrill gave him a second shot at a career. Paycheck's Epic debut with the producer, "She's All I Got," became a country smash and initiated a decade-long stint at the label that included the most commercially successful and some of the most emotionally complex work of his career (his much admired earlier sides--collected on the out-of-his-head The Real Mr. Heartache--notwithstanding). The Soul & the Edge draws from this fertile tenure, and though it omits a large number of charting hits from this period, much of what's here is prime Paycheck--"Slide off Your Satin Sheets," for example, and his signature "Take This Job and Shove It"--with many of these tracks otherwise unavailable on disc. Not to be missed are a conflicted pair of recitations, the notoriously rough and rowdy "Colorado Cool-Aid" (about a drunken knife fight) and the reverent "The Outlaw's Prayer." Best of all is the wrenching "I've Seen Better Days," where Paycheck comes to in someone's front yard, roused by Sherrill's wrenching, string-and-steel dynamics and squinting into the light of another miserable day. --David Cantwell