Rating: NN
It shouldn’t be that hard to assemble a tribute to late, great country outsider Johnny Paycheck, since he has more than enough artist admirers and he composed many great songs worth covering, apart from the one he didn’t, Take This Job And Shove It, written by David Allan Coe. And although Touch My Heart producer Robbie Fulks assembled a worthy cast of interpreters, including Paycheck’s country contemporaries (George Jones, Bobby Bare and Johnny Bush) and credible contemporary journeymen (Al Anderson, Dave Alvin and Dallas Wayne), where Fulks fails is in matching the material with the right singer. Mavis Staples finds the soul of the title track in the lone inspired moment, but just about everything else fails to click. Whether it’s Neko Case laying down the law to her woman on If I’m Gonna Sink, Marshall Crenshaw’s battle with the bottle on I’m Barely Hanging On To Me or George Jones drinking water on She’s All I Got, these versions simply don’t ring true as Paycheck’s own renditions always did.
