Raul Malo - After Hours

In approaching the material on his 2007 release After Hours, Raul Malo drew his inspiration from the classic Nashville productions of the fifties and sixties era.

'This record definitely pays homage to the kind of country music Owen Bradley created,' Malo acknowledges. 'But the Ray Charles album Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music was the specific inspiration for this one. Ray proved that country music can be sophisticated and jazzy as well, and we wanted to do our take on it.' says Malo.

'I wanted to make an album that showed these songs can be treated as pop standards, because that's what they are, really. It's just that the artists who had success with them were country artists, although Tony Bennett had a hit with a Hank Williams song, so it isn't that unusual for the genres to cross each other.'

• Welcome To My World
• (Now And Then There's) A Fool Such As I
• For The Good Times
• Pocket Of A Clown
• Crying Time
• Cold, Cold Heart
• You Can Depend On Me
• Husbands And Wives
• It Only Hurts Me When I Cry
• Take These Chains From My Heart