Randy Travis gave us some of the greatest country albums of all time.
And on this date in 1990, he released his sixth studio album Heroes & Friends. Aside from the title track, every single one of the 14 songs on the tracklist is a duet with another artist.
The duet with George Jones (one of Randy’s personal heroes, if we’re interpreting the title literally), “A Few Ole Country Boys,” was released as single and peaked at #8 on the U.S. Hot Country Songs chart, with “Heroes & Friends” peaking at #4 on that same chart.
It also included duets with the likes of Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and Willie Nelson, just to name a few.
At the time, Randy had burst on the scene as one of the buzziest “young traditionalists” in the genre, which goes to show how and why he was able to get some of the most iconic names in the genre to work with him on the record.
And actually, duet albums similar to this used to be a lot more common in country, and I miss when artists would work like this together so often.
I mean, it created some of the most classic country songs and records that exist, and it’s really just plain cool when your favorite artists join forces for a song or two, right?
Funny enough, it was recently announced a couple of Heroes & Friends tribute concerts in Randy’s honor, one in Huntsville, Alabama on October 24 and one in Grand Prairie, Texas on November 15th, are coming soon, which will be amazing, I’m sure.
And of course, every tune on the Heroes & Friends record is top-notch, but here’s just some of my favorite’s:
“A Few Ole Country Boys” (with George Jones)
“Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” (with Dolly Parton)
“Birth of the Blues” (with Willie Nelson)
“All Night Long” (with Merle Haggard)
