Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

John Anderson was a rock-and-roller to start. As a youngster, he got interested in the music of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and he played in a rock band as a teenager. But Anderson’s older sister sang in a country band, and that turned Anderson’s ear to country music. When Anderson’s sister moved to Nashville, Anderson followed not long thereafter.

Working odd jobs to support himself while playing Nashville clubs at night, Anderson was eventually spotted by Warner Records executives and was signed to the label. It took a few tries before Anderson hit paydirt, but in 1982, Anderson released his fourth album, Wild & Blue, and went to the top of the country charts with the song, “Swingin’” — a song that is explicitly about spending time hanging out on a front-porch swing. “Swingin’” also proved a crossover hit for Anderson, reaching No. 43 in the Billboard Hot 100. Later, the title track from Wild & Blue also went to No. 1 in the country charts.

Although Anderson’s subsequent albums didn’t see as much success as Wild & Blue, he continued to land several songs in the charts in the 1980s and ‘90s, whether he recorded them himself or if they were recorded by others. In 2014, Anderson was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.

In 2022, Easy Eye Sound released the compilation album, Something Borrowed, Something New: A Tribute to John Anderson, on which a number of artists — including Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, John Prine, Nathaniel Rateliff, Sierra Ferrell, and Sturgill Simpson — recorded covers of songs written or performed by John Anderson.

For today’s Classic Americana pick, we’ll hear Brent Cobb’s cover of John Anderson’s “Wild & Blue” from that Easy Eye Sound compilation album.  

You can find Anderson’s original 1982 rendition in our Classic Americana playlist on Spotify:

External Links

John Anderson – official site

John Anderson – Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame site