Out Among the Stars (Merle Haggard album)

Out Among the Stars is an album by American recording artist Merle Haggard released on Epic Records in 1986. It reached number 15 on the Billboard country albums chart.

Background

Out Among the Stars features a plethora of producers and more of Haggard's increasingly sentimental and mellow sound. Aside from the Dixie blues of "Pennies from Heaven," the album is dominated by romantic and tearful ballads adorned with the smooth keyboards and processed guitars that were typical of Nashville recording at the time. The album was the result of songs consisting of left-over tracks from his days with MCA Records which were bought out by Epic and the reason many of the songs have a dated sound. The only newly recorded tracks appearing here are "Out Among The Stars", "The Show's Almost Over", and "Almost Persuaded". The single "Out Among the Stars" failed to crack the Top 20 and a second single, "Almost Persuaded" (produced by Billy Sherrill, who also co-wrote the tune) peaked at #58.

The Stars

The Stars is a Japanese psychedelic rock band. It consists of ex-members of the band White Heaven including Michio Kurihara (Ghost, collaborations with Boris, Ai Aso) on guitar, You Ishihara on vocals and Chiyo Kamekawa on bass.

Discography

Notes

Johnny Cash

Johnny "J.R." Cash (February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, and author, who was widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century and one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million records worldwide. Although primarily remembered as a country music icon, his genre-spanning songs and sound embraced rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal won Cash the rare honor of multiple inductions in the Country Music, Rock and Roll and Gospel Music Halls of Fame.

Cash was known for his deep, calm bass-baritone voice, the distinctive sound of his Tennessee Three backing band, a rebelliousness coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor, free prison concerts, and a trademark look, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black". He traditionally began his concerts with the simple "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash", followed by his signature "Folsom Prison Blues".

Out Among the Stars

Out Among the Stars is a posthumous studio album from Johnny Cash, released through Legacy Recordings on March 25, 2014. The recordings come from lost 1980s sessions with famed countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill which were shelved by Cash's record company, Columbia Records, and discovered by Cash's son John Carter Cash in 2012. Cash also recorded the 1981 album The Baron with Sherrill in an attempt to turn around his dismal album sales but the strategy did not work, leaving his record executives eager to end his affiliation with the label. The album also doubles as a posthumous release for singer June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash's wife, who is featured on vocals on two tracks, and for Minnie Pearl and Waylon Jennings, who provide vocals on two other songs.

Two of the tracks would later be rerecorded by Cash at American Recordings and would be released posthumously prior to earlier versions being included here; "I Came to Believe" on American V: A Hundred Highways and a non-duet version of "I'm Movin' On" appears in the box set Unearthed.

Star

A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest stars gained proper names. Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations.

For at least a portion of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core, releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Once the hydrogen in the core of a star is nearly exhausted, almost all naturally occurring elements heavier than helium are created by stellar nucleosynthesis during the star's lifetime and, for some stars, by supernova nucleosynthesis when it explodes. Near the end of its life, a star can also contain degenerate matter. Astronomers can determine the mass, age, metallicity (chemical composition), and many other properties of a star by observing its motion through space, luminosity, and spectrum respectively. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant of its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star, including diameter and temperature, change over its life, while the star's environment affects its rotation and movement. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (H–R diagram), allows the age and evolutionary state of a star to be determined.