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Sharps & Flats

Thu, 27 Jul 2000 19:00:00 +0000

"On the 14th day of April of 1935/There struck the worst of dust storms that ever filled the sky."

So begins "Dust Bowl Ballads," Woody Guthrie's great song cycle, recorded (most of it, anyway) on a single day in April 1940 at RCA Victor's Camden, N.J., studio. For his efforts, Guthrie was paid $300, which he used as a down payment on a car. "This bunch of songs ain't about me," he wrote in the album's original liner notes -- but of course they were. "They are 'Oakie' songs, 'Dust Bowl' songs, 'Migratious' songs, about my folks and my relatives, about a jillion of 'em, that got hit by the drouth, the dust, the wind, the banker, and the landlord, and the police, all at the same time."

Sharps & Flats

Wed, 21 Jun 2000 19:00:00 +0000

Doug Sahm
"The Return of Wayne Douglas"
Tornado Records If ever there was a performer who defied labels, it was the late, great Doug Sahm, who died of a heart attack in November in a Taos, N.M., motel room, at 58. Throughout his long career as a singer and guitarist he played rhythm and blues, rock, blues, country rock, Tex-Mex -- you name it. He probably played damn good polka, too.

A musical child prodigy, "Little Doug" Sahm was playing steel guitar when most kids were playing cowboys and Indians. At 9, he was a featured performer on San Antonio radio shows, backing up local and national Western swing bands. When Hank Williams came to town, the boy got his picture taken sitting on the master's lap. The pull of rock 'n' roll was strong, however, and soon a teenage Sahm was fronting his own combos -- the Knights, the Pharaohs, the Twisters, the Mar-Kays, the Dell Kings and others -- and playing passable rhythm-and-blues music. (The highlights from Sahm's earliest period can be heard on the recent release "San Antonio Rock: The Harlem Recordings, 1957-1961," on Norton Records.)

Sharps & Flats

Thu, 08 Jun 2000 19:00:00 +0000

"I ain't ever satisfied," Steve Earle sang on his second album, "Exit 0," released in 1987. Thirteen years later, he's still restless as hell, desperate for love and happiness but ready to hit the highway at a moment's notice. Trouble is, as Earle confesses on the title track of his superb new album, the "backroads never carry you where you want 'em to/They leave you standin' there with them ol' transcendental blues."

When you consider that Earle, 45, defines transcendence as "being still enough long enough to know when it's time to move on," his ramblin' ways seem inevitable. The boy can't help it. Born in Virginia but raised in Texas, Earle made a big splash in 1986 with "Guitar Town," his acclaimed debut album. "The hillbilly Bruce Springsteen," he was called, not altogether inaccurately. His early albums were more rock than country, and his gritty songs, mostly about rebels and outcasts, had some of the same anthemic quality as "Born to Run"-era Springsteen.

Sharps & Flats

Thu, 18 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

In the summer of 1955, Johnny Cash, a gaunt 23-year-old singer from Arkansas, stepped up to the microphone in Sam Phillips' tiny studio on Union Avenue in Memphis and recorded "Folsom Prison Blues," with its irresistible twangy guitar intro and these now-famous (and still shocking) words: "When I was just a baby/My momma told me, 'Son/Always be a good boy/Don't ever play with guns'/But I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die." He was so cool and convincing that to this day, there are people who assume Cash was singing about himself.

Unlike Merle Haggard, who served time in San Quentin State Prison for armed robbery, Cash, even in his hard-livin', motel-trashin' younger days, was never more than a small-time offender. According to Nicholas Dawidoff's authoritative "In the Country of Country," Cash was jailed on seven different occasions, each time for just one night. Once, he got thrown in the slammer in El Paso, Texas, after trying to smuggle amphetamines across the border from Mexico. (Cash's early self-destructive habits are legendary and well-documented.)

Sharps & Flats

Mon, 20 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

The Lonesome Strangers were one of the great cowpunk bands to emerge from the same 1980s Los Angeles scene that produced acts like Dwight Yoakam, X and the Blasters. Jeff Rymes and Randy Weeks, the band's core members, were known for their close country harmonies, which evoked the work of legendary duos such as the Delmore Brothers and the Everly Brothers. The Lonesome Strangers recorded three critically acclaimed albums, and they even managed to crack the Top 40 with a remake of "Goodbye Lonesome, Hello Baby Doll," an old Johnny Horton number. But two years ago, shortly after the appearance of a fine album called "Land of Opportunity," Rymes and Weeks went their separate ways.

For his strong debut solo album, "Madeline" (HighTone), Weeks hasn't entirely abandoned his country roots, but he has added a healthy dose of soul and blues to the mix, with help from guitarist Tony Gilkyson (X, Lone Justice) and organist Skip Edwards (Dwight Yoakam). If Robbie Fulks and Tony Joe White ("Polk Salad Annie") were somehow merged into one person, Weeks might be the result. He has the boyish, nasally voice of the former and the soulful attitude of the latter. An odd combination, perhaps, but it works.

Sharps & Flats

Fri, 11 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Its hard to imagine, but there was a time when Willie Nelson -- who will be honored with a lifetime achievement Grammy award on Feb. 23 -- was just a funny looking songwriter struggling to make it as a singer and a performer. "I guess Nashville was the roughest," a soon-to-be outlaw Nelson sang in 1971, near the end of his frustrating seven-year stint at RCA Victor.

As a writer, Nelson had already proved himself, having penned such classics as "Crazy," "Night Life" and "Funny How Time Slips Away." But fame as a recording artist was more elusive. His producer at RCA, legendary guitarist and Nashville Sound architect Chet Atkins, couldnt quite figure out what to do with the chubby fellow from Texas with the quirky vocal phrasing. Sometimes Atkins had the good sense to keep things simple, but too often he laid the syrupy strings and the mushy background vocals on a little too thick. Of the dozen or so albums Nelson recorded for the label, a few are superb, particularly the first, "Country Willie -- His Own Songs" (1965), recently reissued on Buddha, and "Yesterdays Wine" (1971). Most, however, are pretty forgettable -- and long out of print. None sold very well.

Sharps & Flats

Tue, 25 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

A gifted singer and songwriter from rural Alabama, Shelby Lynne was barely out of her teens when, in 1987, she was discovered on the Nashville Network's "Nashville Now" program. Touted as the Next Big Thang, Lynne signed a deal with Epic, where she recorded a duet with George Jones, "If I Could Bottle This Up." Her three albums for the label earned decent reviews and produced a few singles, but Lynne never hit it big, and she grew tired of Nashville's rigid approach to music making. Picked up by the now-defunct Morgan Creek label, Lynne explored Western swing and jazz on "Temptation" (1993). Switching to another independent, Magnatone, in 1995, she recorded "Restless," a critical favorite that disappeared without a trace. It seemed entirely possible that Lynne might do the same thing: You can't even buy her albums these days -- sadly, they're all out of print.

Sharps & Flats

Mon, 10 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Don't let the title mislead you. "The Very Best of Robbie Fulks" contains none of the quirky songs that have made the Chicago singer-songwriter an alt-country favorite. You won't find "She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died)," from his acclaimed debut album, "Country Love Songs." Also missing is "Fuck This Town," Fulks' bitter (but hilarious) account of his three-year stint churning out "dumb-ass" mainstream country pablum for a Nashville publishing company, one of the highlights of his second album, "South Mouth." (None of his Nashville songs, it should be noted, were ever recorded.) And there's nothing from "Let's Kill Saturday Night," Fulks' major-label debut.

Instead, Fulks' latest is an odd assortment of singles, live recordings, soundtrack music and other obscurities. It's a hodge-podge collection, and the results are less than satisfying.

Sharps & flats

Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

While mainstream country continues to purvey a megaplatinum blandness, alternative country -- or Americana, or insurgent country, or whatever you want to call it -- is still thriving, artistically if not commercially. And one of the most distinctive, though largely unheralded, singer-songwriters working on the fringes of Nashville these days is Buddy Miller. His first two albums, "Your Love and Other Lies" (1995) and "Poison Love" (1997), were masterpieces of country soul, filled with twangy songs about passion, longing, pain and suffering -- the great themes of both hard country and classic soul music.

His newest, "Cruel Moon," recorded in his Nashville home studio, is as good as the first two. As usual, Miller is assisted by his equally talented wife, Julie, who wrote or co-wrote many of the songs on the album and also sings harmony vocals on quite a few. Other alt-country soul mates, including Jim Lauderdale, Kim Richey, Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris, pitch in. (Miller plays guitar in Spyboy, Harris' backup band.) But Miller, who has a raw, bluesy voice that borrows as much from Otis Redding as it does from Hank Williams, is the main attraction.

Fujiyama Mama

Tue, 20 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

It's something of a shock to witness the great Wanda Jackson, a 61-year-old grandmother who became a born-again Christian in the 1970s, belt out a song like "Fujiyama Mama" -- the two minutes of explosive sexuality that Jackson recorded in 1954 and released three years later. "I'm a Fujiyama mama/And I'm just about to blow my top," she howled in Denver this weekend. "And when I start eruptin'/Ain't nobody gonna make me stop." For years, Jackson refused to sing her wonderful rockabilly hits, incendiary songs like "Rock Your Baby" and "Let's Have a Party." But her fans insisted, and after consulting with the Lord (and her husband), Jackson relented.

Good thing. Jackson, who was discovered in Oklahoma City by honky-tonker Hank Thompson, has always been a great country singer, but it's her rock numbers that endure, even if they didn't sell particularly well back in the 1950s. America, apparently, wasn't quite ready for a female version of Elvis (whom she toured with in '55 and '56). "Wanda Jackson," writes Colin Escott in his liner notes to Rhino's recent box set "Loud, Fast, & Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of '50s Rock" (which contains two of her songs), "insists she really wasn't that kind of girl, but while other women singers were simpering about where the boys are, Wanda always sang as if they were in her hotel room." "Let's Have a Party," which Elvis had recorded for his 1957 film "Loving You," was Jackson's breakthrough to the pop charts in 1960, but by then she was well on her way to giving up on rock and returning to her country roots.

Sharps & flats

Fri, 09 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

George Jones is one of a handful of contenders for the title Greatest Living Country Singer. Born in 1931 and raised in dirt-poor conditions in East Texas, he began his singing career imitating his idol, Hank Williams. He quickly found his own remarkable voice, and after hitting it big with "Why, Baby, Why" in 1955, he went on to produce some of the most enduring music to come out of Nashville -- songs like "Color of the Blues," "The Window Up Above" and "She Thinks I Still Care." His 1969 marriage to Tammy Wynette was fodder for the tabloids -- they were known as "Mr. and Mrs. Country Music" -- and Jones fell into a well-chronicled spiral of drug and alcohol abuse that nearly killed him. Shortly after Jones recorded "These Days (I Barely Get By)" (1975), Wynette walked out the door, and they soon divorced. When he published his autobiography, "I Live to Tell It All," in 1996, he promised his self-destructive ways were way behind him.

Sharps & flats

Thu, 17 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Some of the finest country music ever produced was recorded not in Nashville but in Los Angeles, specifically at the Capitol Records tower on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. From this futuristic building, designed to look like a stack of records, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and others -- under the direction of Ken Nelson, Capitol's in-house country producer -- created a hard-driving West Coast sound that relied heavily on twangy Fender electric guitars and pedal steels.

In the early 1950s, Capitol hired ace guitar players Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West to play backup behind Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Starr. Bryant, a transplanted Georgian, played a Fender Broadcaster, one of the first solid-body guitars. West, from Missouri, played pedal steel. Together, they created a sort of manic country bebop -- think of them as the Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie of country music.