I've had this on CD for ages, but seems to be first vinyl reissue for more ages, maybe ever:
Steve Young, Rock Salt and Nails: In Earth-steady orbit since 1969, this shotgun shack is centrally located by Young’s hard, never inexpressive, almost vibratoless searchlight voice (not so far from that of John Coltrane, when he’s flexing the lines of songs and vice-versa), here melded to the country soul of Roosevelt Jamison’s “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” the lost soul of Utah Phillips’ title track, and the descending skyway steps of Young’s “Seven Bridges Road” (AKA Montgomery’s Woodley Road, in its usual guise). Also follows the call of nature through Peter La Farge’s “Coyote” (sic, AKA “Coyote, My Little Brother”), Marvin Rainwater’s “Gonna Find Me A Bluebird,” and homegrown “Holler In The Swamp.” Ace accompaniment provided by James Burton, Gram Parsons, Chris Ethridge, Gene Clark, Bernie Leadon, Richard Greene, David Jackson, Don Beck, Meyer Sniffin, and Hal Blaine, with an occasional orchestral measuring cup courtesy of strings arranger Bob Thompson and producer Tommy LiPuma.
Linda Martell, Color Me Country: this remaster, for the 70th Anniversary of Sun, of Martell’s sole LP, released in 1970, def pushes past the slight filtering that Bandcamp streams sometimes have, at least on my headphones, no matter the computer---so it's even more vivid than before, maybe----if there is such a thing as country soul, this is it, vocally and thematically: depression-defying details of ever-braced and bracing realism, traveling on via insistent clarity of hope (at least the hope that putting it in a song will bring some relief, anyway gotta do it), hang-ups hung up not out of reach. with just a bit of folk-rock occasionally, always honky tonk shuffle momentum (with rock and r&b appeal, but not any overt crossover aimed instrumentation so much---electric sitar showing up in the midst of one track has a country twang and gets along fine with fiddle etc.) https://lindamartell.bandcamp.com/album/color-me-country-sun-records-70th-remastered-2022
Not one of my core interests, no more than a sunset is a dog's, or vice-versa, but after 2 hours of Hank Williams' I’m Gonna Sing: The Mother’s Best Gospel Radio Recordings, I believe that there is balm in Hank, Audrey(!), and the Drifting Cowboys' Southern Gothic sunshine and storms. Some of the words are otherwise too other, but they do fly and waltz and traipse and discreetly boom-chick by---and the finale fits perfectly. There's also an amazing bluesiness, layers, seams, veins of loss (often mentioned) and decay and struggle and surging and searching, also the sense of justice in judgement applied to self and others, the worn poise of witness, for a moment (these are mostly v. short), on the sunny, stormy road to death and Glory, hopefully (Hank requests a little cabin in the shade of the Tree of Life, where he can maybe "shakehands with Jesus") Then there's there the one where "Death comes down, an angel from Heaven," gathering flowers for the Master's bouquet: a lovely waltz.
Give up, you won’t survive, you’ll never get out alive, this world won’t letcha I betcha, and if it did, what’s it gonna getcha, what counts is, how you feel inside—cause life’s a, sweeeeet riiiiiiide
Thus Dusty Springfield blissfully calls over the crest of The Sweet Ride. which wiki sez is a 1968 American drama film with a few surfer/biker exploitation film elements. It stars Tony Franciosa, Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset in an early starring role. The film also features Bob Denver in the role of Choo-Choo, a Beatnik piano-playing draft dodger. Sarrazin and Bisset were nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer, Male and Female respectively.
Seems promising, but right now I must focus on the contrast between Dusty and Lee (there’s a duo!)’s delivery of this key and opener to Lee Hazelwood's The Sweet Ride: Lost Recordings 1965-68, in which Light In The Attic does right by LH yet again, with a cohesive round-up of spare change, all about keeping your highest and lowest on point, on the fence of your sense, so for instance he here hunkers down and squeezes the end of the line over a rinky-tink piano. Just sit back and relax it, some day they’ve got to tax it—and when you can’t do that no more, nor shrug it off with a Roger Miller-worthy quirk over your acoustic guitar, just bug out toward Lou Reed Hazlewood cabin creak and even creekside tour guide to self-aware fantasy memories: whatever it takes to be taken etc. Relistenable beyond completism, with no need for signature layers of finished product atmospherics.
David Grisman is, without showboating, romping all over 2022 reissues of Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard's 1965 debut, Who's That Knocking?---along with (take it away, Bandcamp)
Chubby Wise, arguably the architect of bluegrass fiddling...and Lamar Grier, who played banjo as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1960s
---and follow-up Won't You Come and Sing For Me?, where Grisman and Grier are joined by fiddler Billy Baker, with guest shots of Mike Seeger and Fred Weisz.
Hazel plays bass, Alice guitar and some clawhammer, while they sing with such fearless vitality that even the darkest, potentially dankest down-in-the-holler undertow is fun.
They sing it all straight, mind you, while never changing pronouns, never kissing ass, and eventually playing a lot of women's music festivals, incl. where no men were allowed. ("We still didn't get it.")
Good enough variety too, with a bit of Appalachian swing and some bluesier things, incl. one nocturnal prowl that makes me think of "St. James Infirmary" and Kurt Weill, accompanied by Mike Seeger's processional guitar.
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/whos-that-knocking
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/wont-you-come-and-sing-for-me
Both albums (which I somehow like better sep, in their original running order), plus a good previously unreleased track and essays by H., A., their producer Peter Siegel, and Laurie Lewis, comprise Pioneering Women of Bluegrass: The Definitive Edition.
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/pioneering-women-of-bluegrass-the-definitive-edition
I haven't played the earlier reissue of Rounder Records' 1973 Hazel and Alice yet, but how bad could it be?
https://hazeldickensandalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/hazel-alice
And this is real freaking good, from 2018:
set of newly unearthed recordings, Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, 1965-1969, out September 21 on Free Dirt Records. Sourced from Alice's private archive and digitized with help from the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC Chapel Hill, the recordings invite us to witness the creative process of these towering figures—just two voices and a handful of instruments working out arrangements at home. Across 19 tracks the duo sings the classic country of The Carter Family, The Louvin Brothers, and Jimmie Rodgers; contemporary hits of the 1960s penned by Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard; and barn-burning traditional standards that blur the line between old-time and early bluegrass. Sing Me Back Home is a raw, unfiltered listen to Hazel & Alice at the height of their collaborative energy.
https://hazeldickensalicegerrard.bandcamp.com/album/sing-me-back-home-the-dc-tapes-1965-1969
Brooklyn cowgirl Mimi Roman was crowned Queen of the Rodeo at Madison Square Garden, but didn't zoom into the musical aspects of horse & cow culture 'til she paid visits to an injured colleague, whose typical AM radio pulled in stations from all over the continent at night---yadda yadda, she won Arthur Godfrey's radio talent contest by singing Jimmie Rodgers with the exciting equanimity of Patsy Cline, and, I say, Jo Stafford, a jazz-tinged mainstream pop singer who also did brilliant country parodies under another name. More yadda, Mimi moved to Nashville, sang more Jimmie, also Hank, then the kind of western swing that knew it had to keep up with rockabilly, then rockabilly, then more kinds of country, incl. with a kind of speculative, flux-wise, end-of-the-50s vibe---before moving back to NYC, hosting cats like Elvis, singing demos full-time, headlong, also wisely, incl. for the likes of Carole King and moving beyond the bounds of this round-up, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of these pop-rock sides, recorded as Kitty James, turned up in the collections of Lou Reed and David Johansen.
From her personal stash, we now get the mostly excellent First of the Brooklyn Cowgirls, as Bandcamp sez: This stable of acetates, publishing demos, and radio & television appearances are corralled for the first time! https://mimiroman.bandcamp.com/album/first-of-the-brooklyn-cowgirls
Her Kitty James recordings are also on BC:https://mimiroman.bandcamp.com/album/pussycat
And here's a dandy doc: Brooklyn Cowgirl--The Mimi Roman Story
No comments:
Post a Comment