Diamonds & Dirt is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, released in 1988.[4][5] His fifth studio album, it was his second release for Columbia Records.[2] The album was his most successful, achieving RIAA gold certification. All five of its singles reached Number One on the Billboard country charts, setting a record for the most Number One hits from a country album.[6] In order of release, they were "It's Such a Small World" (a duet with then-wife Rosanne Cash), "I Couldn't Leave You If I Tried", "She's Crazy for Leavin", "After All This Time", and a cover of Buck Owens' "Above and Beyond (The Call of Love)".
The album was reissued by Columbia Legacy, with three bonus tracks.
Production
Diamonds & Dirt was Crowell's first album recorded entirely in Nashville and the first aimed squarely at a country audience.[7] It was produced by Tony Brown and Crowell.[3][8]
Critical reception
The Rolling Stone Album Guide called the album "a stirring treatise on the quest for understanding and balance in a relationship."[3]No Depression wrote that the songs are "played by a band that, in its day, rivaled the Desert Rose Band and Dwight Yoakam’s backing unit as the tightest pseudo-honky-tonkers in country music."[9] Reviewing the reissue, The A.V. Club wrote that the album "still sounds pretty good ... especially in light of the sort of unnatural, reverb-laden late-'80s production that makes everything go 'poof'."[10]Spin deemed it "a traditional country record [on which Crowell] ends ups rocking harder than ever before."[11]
Diamonds & Dirt (cassette liner notes). Rodney Crowell. Columbia Records. 1988. 44076.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
