Brow Beat

Patrick Stewart’s Cowboy Classics Is Right About Cowboy Classics but Wrong About K-tel Ads

Patrick Stewart has released perhaps the strangest benefit album ever, a five-track CD called Patrick Stewart’s Cowboy Classics Sampler. Produced by Ethan Eubanks, who also directed the ad, the album is raising funds for the International Rescue Committee to help with the Syrian refugee crisis. Stewart’s rendition of the Cowboy Classics sounds fine—he’s an actor, after all. But there’s something sacrilegious about someone as British as Sir Patrick Stewart tackling one of America’s most treasured native art forms: the K-tel/Time-Life compilation ad. He gets the broad strokes right, but any red-blooded son or daughter of our great country will see he’s missed some of the late-night cable TV subtleties that are a such a valued part of our heritage. So, as a sort of primer for any other non-Americans interested in flying too close to the K-tel sun, Slate presents Cowboy Classics Classics, a collection of the hottest country & Western compilation album ads from the greatest compilation record labels of all time. Here are just a few of the classic Cowboy Classics ads on Cowboy Classics Classics:

K-tel Records: Marty Robbins: Gold

This legendary Cowboy Classics classic has some of the vibe Patrick Stewart was going for, focusing on a single performer and putting them in every shot. But a close look at the original shows how far astray he went. Stewart probably thought he was doing things on a budget by using green screen effects instead of location shooting. But Marty Robbins has real Cowboy Classics authenticity: one set, mediocre lip-syncing, probably shot in less than two hours, including hanging out at craft services. And the announcer’s frantic “the Hindenberg is going up in flames” delivery is what separates a Cowboy Classics classic from a regular old Cowboy Classics.

Cindy Lou’s Musical Mail Order: Marty Robbins: No. 1 Cowboy

Of course, as this ad shows, you can do location shooting without losing authenticity—it just has to be terrible location shooting. This 1990s ad for another Marty Robbins collection has the worst saloon set ever built, a boring gunfight and a bored horse. But that’s not all: While K-tel was able to secure at least a few hours of Marty Robbins footage, Cindy Lou’s Musical Mail Order had to make do with a Marty Robbins mustache-alike, gazing straight at the camera in the ad’s big reveal. (Robbins had died in 1982.) It’s those little touches that separate American originals like Cindy Lou’s Musical Mail Order from wan imitators like Patrick Stewart.

K-tel Records, 25 Polka Greats

K-tel Records’ 25 Polka Greats is not a compilation of cowboy songs and should not have been included in Cowboy Classics Classics.

K-tel Records, 25 Old Tyme Fiddle Hits

This 1972 compilation promises 25 of your all-time favorite fiddle hits. I know what you’re thinking: only 25? But as influential as 25 Old Tyme Fiddle Hits was as an album, it was even more of a landmark as an ad. K-tel showed the world how, with enough Benzedrine, an editor could turn 30 seconds of gym class square dance footage, a single shot of a fiddler, and a hastily scrawled drawing of a mockingbird into a seizure-inducing dystopian nightmare. Stewart tries for the same effect with much less success in his floating-head “Ghost Riders in the Sky” sequence.

K-tel Records, 25 Polka Greats

K-tel Records’ 25 Polka Greats is still not a compilation of cowboy songs and still does not belong here.

Time-Life Music, Country Christmas

Stewart’s bouncy cover of “Here Comes Santa Claus” seems to owe a little to Willie Nelson sleepwalking his way through “Jingle Bells” on this classic 1990 album ad. But it’s the extraordinary ’70s-sleaze photo of Marty Robbins in semi-tinted eyeglasses that you’ll treasure every Christmas. And as a gesture of goodwill towards the Commonwealth, this ad’s Canadian!

K-tel Records, Kooky Toones

Is this about the stupid polka record? Are you really making everyone listen to “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose” because I said 25 Polka Greats wasn’t a Cowboy Classics classic? Fine. Sir Patrick Stewart should have taken something from this Kooky Toones ad to make his Cowboy Classics ad seem more authentic. Probably, um, the animated hillbilly drinking moonshine.  OK? Are you happy?

K-tel Records, 25 Polka Greats

I hate you so, so much.