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South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack)

album by Dwight Yoakam

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 31, 2025
Entity authorityQ2304612 ↗
Source-derived summary

South of Heaven, West of Hell is country singer Dwight Yoakam's 12th studio album, and the first soundtrack album to the motion picture of the same name in which he starred, co-wrote and directed. Yoakam portrays a lawman in the early 1900s in the "wild west" of the Arizona Territory. Half of the tracks in the album are country music tracks. The other tracks are short snippets of straight dialog scenes from the film itself. There are many well-known co-stars in the movie, including Peter Fonda, Bridget Fonda, Paul Reubens, Billy Bob Thornton, Warren Zevon and Vince Vaughn. This was also Yoakam's only album for Warner Bros. after leaving Reprise.

Background

Yoakam, a former drama student who received good reviews for playing an assortment of weirdos and psychopaths in the Nineties, decided to write, produce, score, and star in his own film. On just about every front, the project was an unmitigated disaster. Shortly before production began, the financier backed out and Yoakam made the decision to finance the film on his own, partially through the sale of his home in Malibu.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack)” as album by Dwight Yoakam. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around South, Heaven and West.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current 182-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2000. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with South, Heaven and West providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack)”, the useful work is to connect “album by Dwight Yoakam” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2304612. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack) primary sources, South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack) archive and South research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “South of Heaven, West of Hell (soundtrack)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.