Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman & Marty Stuart Sweetheart of the Rodeo: 50th Anniversary Live 2LP (Clear Gold Vinyl)

In 2018, Byrds co-founders Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman teamed up with country and bluegrass star Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives for a 50th anniversary salute to the Byrds' watershed 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, a work that helped usher in the whole genre of country-rock music.

Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sweetheart of the Rodeo on Friday Music. The live event will be pressed on clear gold vinyl and featured in a stunning gatefold cover, which includes tour photos and the historic Jo Mora Sweetheart of the Rodeo album jacket elements.

The album includes 24 amazing tracks, selected from various stops on the 23-city, 27-show tour by Stuart's audio engineer and the album's producer, Mick Conley (Marty Stuart), and mastered impeccably for vinyl release by longtime Byrds reissue producer Joe Reagoso.

Over the decades, Sweetheart of the Rodeo has become widely recognized as a flashpoint in the emergence of country-rock music, and for helping lay down a template for what eventually would be known as Americana music, that invigorating amalgam of rock, country, blues, folk and gospel music. Rolling Stone placed it No. 120 on its ranking of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

"I love the songs and playing with wonderful musicians," McGuinn says. "I loved playing with Marty and the Superlatives, and Chris too. It's a great band to play with, and they are pros. This is the best sounding Byrds' record ever made! It was a privilege to work this band."

"It was one of the best tours—if not THE best—I was ever on in 60 years of being in music. Every night was exciting," Hillman says. "I couldn't think of anybody else to do that presentation with other than Marty and the Superlatives," which also includes bassist/steel guitarist Chris Scruggs, guitarist Kenny Vaughan and drummer Harry Stinson. "Listening to this live recording puts me right back on stage with Roger, Marty, Kenny, Harry and Chris," Hillman adds.

Stuart echoed these sentiments. "Everybody won," he said recently. "That's my thought: As a band, we got to be the Byrds, and Roger and Chris got to be Roger and Chris without having to put up with anything that had to do with band life, and the audience saw things and heard things that they never thought they'd ever see again or have never heard or seen before, right?"

Beyond the joys of the musical performances, the Sweetheart 50th tour treated audiences to something of a master class in the evolution of country-rock. The album includes songs written and recorded well before Sweetheart to show the musical road that led to the album. These include Hillman's early country-rock song "Time Between," Bob Dylan's "My Back Pages," and Porter Wagoner's 1955 country classic "Satisfied Mind." Also included is "Old John Robertson," the folk-country ballad Hillman and McGuinn collaborated on.

The second part of the evening (and the album) is devoted to the Sweetheart songs, all of which McGuinn, Hillman, Stuart and the Superlatives played using the original arrangements, although not in the original album's sequence. That portion of the show did, however, start with the same song that opens the album, "You Ain't Going Nowhere." McGuinn credits his wife, Camilla, for the structure and script of the narrative used at each show.

One of the impressive things about Sweetheart was the diversity of the material: from two previously unreleased Dylan songs—"You Ain't Going Nowhere" and "Nothing Was Delivered"—and Woody Guthrie's classic fable of social injustice "Pretty Boy Floyd," to Haggard's sobering country ballad "Life in Prison," the Louvin Brothers' country gospel tune "I Like the Christian Life," Parson's timeless contributions—"Hickory Wind" and "One Hundred Years From Now," both sung here by Hillman–and Memphis musician William Bell's soulful slice of romantic longing, "You Don't Miss Your Water." The differences between the versions the Byrds laid down 50 years earlier and what McGuinn, Hillman, Stuart and the Superlatives put forth from the stages are both significant and subtle.

Following the ovations the six musicians typically received, they returned nightly for an encore segment that included two more Byrds' classics: "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" and "Turn! Turn! Turn!" On the final night of the tour, however, on a cool mid-December night in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., they added the tour's only live performance of "Eight Miles High," which, fortunately, was recorded and is included here.

"Any intimations of mortality went unspoken," Chris Willman wrote for Variety in his review of the first L.A. Sweetheart concert in 2018, "but it was…that much more moving that McGuinn and Hillman are here to do this in their 70s…and to do it so well, after showing no particular urgency about reliving their past in intervening decades." "To everything there is a season," he concluded, "but the Americana movement they had such a huge part in kickstarting hasn't really been off-season since. Bully for them for acceding to a characteristically gentle victory lap."

Friday Music is very pleased to announce this wonderful sounding and amazing recording. They believe it will be one of the most important albums to be released this year. Please join Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives and enjoy the sounds that can only be known as Sweetheart of the Rodeo.