Vern Gosdin - Out Of My Heart

In this week's episode we're featuring Vern Gosdin's final charting album on Columbia: "Out Of My Heart" (1991). Already into his 50s by the time commercial success finally came his way in the 1980s and having suffered his share of setbacks, Gosdin's voice had aged to perfection by 1991. Described as "a walking heartache" by one reviewer, Gosdin's music during his commercial peak relied heavily on haunting background vocals - hearkening back to his history with brother Rex Gosdin in the 60s as some of the West Coast's finest harmony singers. With three divorces to draw from it was true that Gosdin's musical trademark was sorrow. And there are plenty of weepers on this week's feature album. The equally painful "A Month Of Sundays"; "The Song Wrote Itself" (while I cried) and the forlorn "The Bridge I'm Still Building On" have Vern in comfortable territory. But to see the lines on his face when Gosdin sang the exquisite and tragic "The Garden" on The Grand Ole Opry in 1991 is to understand the feeling the man put into his music and how he earned the nickname "The Voice".