Happy Anniversary: Travis Tritt, T-R-O-U-B-L-E

24 years ago today, Travis Tritt released his third solo album, an endeavor which provided him with his third consecutive top-10 LP on the Billboard Country Albums chart.

T-R-O-U-B-L-E found Tritt working once again with producer Gregg Brown, who’d also been behind the console for his 1990 debut album, Country Club, and his sophomore effort, It’s All About to Change, but like the cliché says, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s clear from the subsequent chart success of T-R-O-U-B-L-E’s singles that there was absolutely nothing broke about the Brown / Tritt collaboration. In addition to picking up another #1 country hit with “Can I Trust You With My Heart,” Tritt also scored another top-5 country single with “Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man,” two further top-20 country singles with “Looking Out for Number One” and the album’s title track, and even a top-30 country single with “Worth Every Mile.” Of those singles, “Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man” is arguably the most notable, owing to the fact that its backing vocalists include Brooks & Dunn, T. Graham Brown, George Jones, Little Texas, Dana McVicker, Tanya Tucker and Porter Wagoner.

In retrospect, T-R-O-U-B-L-E wasn’t quite as successful as its predecessor on the charts, and when Tritt released his next album, Ten Feet Tall and Bulletproof, it actually charted a few places higher, but it’s still seen as one of the classic country albums of the early 1990s.