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| John Hiatt
Love, in many of its infinite guises, is explored on Bring the Family like on few other contemporary albums. John Hiatt’s last chance masterpiece from 1987 is in many ways the best and most complete exposition of that four lettered word ever put to tape. I know that’s saying a lot but I’ve not yet come across another record where each song is a precise and concise sermon on LOVE.
I don't know about you
But there's a lot of things
I never stood up to
Even as I turned and walked away
I guess that's why I'm standing on my own
two feet today
Til the last heart broke in two I didn't know it would be so hard Learning how to love you There was a life that I was living In some cracked rearview Where no future was given To a heart untrue That my will could force me through I didn't know it would be so long Learning how to love you  01 Memphis in the Meantime 02 Alone in the Dark 03 Thing Called Love 04 Lipstick Sunset 05 Have a Little Faith in Me 06 Thank You Girl 07 Tip of My Tongue 08 Your Dad Did 09 Stood Up 10 Learning How to Love You |
Showing posts with label Americana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Americana. Show all posts
Monday, April 1, 2013
Love's Many Splendours: John Hiatt
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Pusherman Prophet: Johnny Cash
One of my earliest musical memories was hearing Ring of Fire cracking out of my dad’s
Rambler’s AM radio as we crossed the middle expanses of America in the early
60s. My dad took his religion seriously and still does. But he always had time
for Johnny Cash. Several years later
when we were back in India, he brought me a cassette of Johnny’s greatest hits from one of his foreign trips. I thrilled to hear the mariachi trumpets of Ring of Fire once again, but also got my
first introduction to Cash’s basic
repertoire: Five Feet High and Rising,
Ira Hayes, I Walk the Line and Were You There When They Crucified My Lord and
of course, Folsom Prison Blues.
That Johnny sang
heaps of gospel songs, many that my dad recognized from his own poor, rural
American childhood, was no doubt what attracted him to the Man in Black. As for
me, sure, I liked the gospel songs too, but not as much as his clackety clack
railway train guitar rhythm style or his out of this world bass voice. After, Ring
of Fire, the only Johnny Cash
song I knew was his duet with Bob Dylan,
Girl From the North Country. The
depths, both sonic and emotional, that Cash plumbs in that song are simply
inspired.
Amazingly it was not till many years later that I began to
understand what a true giant of American music Johnny Cash was. His songs were so simple, a sort of musical
amalgam of Hemingway and Steinbeck.
Johnny never left you in any doubt about the point of his song. Whether he was telling you about murdering for
fun, and going crazy on cocaine or whether he was telling you how much he loved
America yet couldn’t countenance the injustice America meted out to its
natives, blacks or poor.
Kris Kristofferson
wrote what is about the best and most beautiful summation of Cash in his song Pilgrim Chapter 33:
He's a poet, he's a picker--
He's a prophet,
he's a pusher--
He's a pilgrim
and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned--
He's a walkin'
contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin' ev'ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.
It is that walkin’ contradiction part of Johnny Cash that means more to me these
days than even his voice. A man who was
equally believable and compelling when he was giving the finger to society as
when he was on his knees calling on the love of Jesus. Johnny
Cash had a huge resurgence in
popularity the last decade of this life.
Since his death I think his peers and fans and the critics have realized
just how deep and wide is the hole he has left in American music and society.
Always one of the Greats when he was living, in his passing he has ascended to
the level of one of the very Greatest.
I hope you enjoy this collection of Johnny Cash faves from
Washerman’s Dog.
Track
Listing:
01 Johnny
Cash Show Intro And Theme
02 Five Feet High And Rising
03 Guess Things Happen That Way
04 Get Rhythm
05 One
06 Closing Medley: Folsom Prison
Blues/I Walk The Line/Ring Of Fire/The Rebel Johnny Yuma
07 Were You There (When They
Crucified My Lord)
08 Ragged Old Flag
09 Joshua Gone Barbados
10 One Piece At A Time
[Album-Version]
11 Girl From the North Country (w
Bob Dylan)
12 Have A Drink Of Water [Album
Version]
13 The Man Comes Around
14 Jackson (With June Carter)
15 How Great Thou Art (Previously
Unreleased)
16 Gospel Boogie (A Wonderful
Time Up There)
17 We'll Meet Again
18 Over The Next Hill (We'll Be
Home) [Album Version]
19 Hurt
20 Far Away Places
21 Big River [Demo]
22 There'll Be Peace In The
Valley
23 Life's Railway To Heaven
[Album Version]
24 Satisfied Mind
25 Folsom Prison Blues
26 Wide Open Road [Album Version]
27 Delia's Gone
28 The Old Account Was Settled
Long Ago
29 Veteran's Day
30 Put The Sugar To Bed [Single
Version]
31 When He Comes (w. Rosanne
Cash)
32 I'm On Fire
33 I Walk The Line (w Bob Dylan)
34 Ring of Fire
35 Bird On A Wire
36 What On Earth (Will You Do For
Heaven's Sake) [Album Version]
37 I Walk The Line [Early Demo]
38 Careless Love (w Bob Dylan)
39 Cocaine Blues
40 Highway Patrolman (Album Version)
41 Luther Played the Boogie
42 Long Black Veil
Monday, April 30, 2012
Travelin' Light: JJ Cale
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| JJ Cale |
The roads into new music are
sometimes improbable and unexpected.
In 1978, after a year in
India, I took up residence in a rooming house in Dinkytown, that rather famous
little neighborhood in Minneapolis, where Bob
Dylan played his earliest public shows. The same day I moved in, the room
across the hallway got a new resident too. He was an Iranian who’d recently
arrived from the UK and his older brother asked me to make him feel
welcome. The thought of someone who
shared a non-American perspective on life appealed to me and Navid and I hit it off. Over the next
12 years he and I had jobs together, fell out and came back together, shared
our homes with each other, drove cabs for the same company and saw each other
get married and have sons.
The basis of our friendship
centered on politics and music. It was the last days of the Shah when we met
and I immediately became immersed in the fevered political discussions of Navid and his circle of Iranian
friends. In our small smoke filled rooms I listened as they debated the pros
and cons of Khomeini and the communists and the royalists. Interestingly, in
all of those nights and weeks of conversations and arguments they never ever
played any Iranian music. I learned nothing about Iranian singers or music. All we listened to was rock n roll.
Navid
sneered at my music collection. One of our first fights came right after he
walked into my room and turned off my stereo as it was playing a Dan Fogelberg record. I was incensed.
“Who gave you the right?” I asked. “Who gave you the right to listen to shit?”
he shot back.
All he could talk about was Genesis, Eric Clapton, Gordon Giltrap, Pink
Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Jethro
Tull. As a rule he ignored American music and preferred British rock ‘n’
roll. I resisted, more out of spite than anything else and tried to push the
virtues of The Eagles. Somehow we remained friends.
One day he brought an album
into my room and excitedly put it on the turntable. It was the one I share
tonight, Troubador by JJ Cale. Here, at last was something I
could get into. The laid back guitar stylings and whispered vocals immediately
hit a chord. I’d never heard anything like him and for once I didn’t mind when Navid played the record a second time.
I loved Travelin’ Light, Navid, raved about Cherry. We had a hit on our hands and a certain trust was
established. I was henceforth more open to his suggestions and eventually came
to love Peter Gabriel and Gordon Giltrap and Camel. He never got Dan
Fogelberg but JJ Cale proved to
him that Americans could make good music even if their politicians supported a
corrupt regime.
With
his laid-back rootsy style, J.J. Cale
is best known for writing "After Midnight" and "Cocaine,"
songs that Eric Clapton later made
into hits. But Cale's influence
wasn't only through songwriting -- his distinctly loping sense of rhythm and
shuffling boogie became the blueprint for the adult-oriented roots rock of Clapton and Mark Knopfler, among others. Cale's
refusal to vary the sound of his music over the course of his career caused
some critics to label him as a one-trick pony, but he managed to build a
dedicated cult following with his sporadically released recordings.
Born in
Oklahoma City but raised in Tulsa, OK, Cale
played in a variety of rock & roll bands and Western swing groups as a
teenager, including one outfit that also featured Leon Russell. In 1959, at the age of 21, he moved to Nashville,
where he was hired by the Grand Ole Opry's touring company. After a few years,
he returned to Tulsa, where he reunited with Russell and began playing local clubs. In 1964, Cale and Russell moved
to Los Angeles with another local Oklahoma musician, Carl Radle.
Shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles, Cale began playing with Delaney & Bonnie. He only played
with the duo for a brief time, beginning a solo career in 1965. That year, he
cut the first version of "After Midnight," which would become his
most famous song. Around 1966, Cale
formed the Leathercoated Minds with
songwriter Roger Tillison. The group
released a psychedelic album called A Trip Down Sunset Strip the same year.
Deciding that he wouldn't be able to forge a career in Los Angeles, Cale returned to Tulsa in 1967. Upon
his return, he set about playing local clubs. Within a year, he had recorded a
set of demos. Radle obtained a copy
of the demos and forwarded it to Denny
Cordell, who was founding a record label called Shelter with Leon Russell. Shelter signed Cale in 1969. The following year, Eric Clapton recorded "After
Midnight," taking it to the American Top 20 and thereby providing Cale with needed exposure and
royalties. In December 1971, Cale
released his debut album, Naturally, on Shelter Records; the album featured the
Top 40 hit "Crazy Mama," as well as a re-recorded version of
"After Midnight," which nearly reached the Top 40, and "Call Me
the Breeze," which Lynyrd Skynyrd
later covered. Cale followed
Naturally with Really, which featured the minor hit "Lies," later
that same year.
Following the release of Really, J.J. Cale adopted a slow work schedule, releasing an album every
other year or so. Okie, his third album, appeared in 1974. Two years later, he
released Troubadour, which yielded "Hey Baby," his last minor hit, as
well as the original version of "Cocaine," a song that Clapton would later cover. By this
point, Cale had settled into a
comfortable career as a cult artist and he rarely made any attempt to break
into the mainstream.
So Navid, wherever
you are, thanks for the introduction to this great album all those years ago.
Track Listing:
01 Hey Baby
02 Travelin' Light
03 You Got Something
04 Ride Me High
05 Hold On
06 Cocaine
07 I'm A Gypsy Man
08 The Woman That Got Away
09 Super Blue
10 Let Me Do It To You
11 Cherry
12 You Got Me On So Bad
Friday, April 20, 2012
Farewell Great Helmsman: Levon Helm
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| Levon Helm
The Great Helmsman of the cracking North
American roots group, The Band, has
put his drumsticks away forever. Levon
Helm the man who never gave up, who always kept going, who took forever to
get over the breakup of the group he founded, has passed away.
My brother Gregg had the album we highlight
tonight and told me one day, ‘Every song is a classic.’ He especially liked Rag Mama Rag. I’ve always loved Up
on Cripple Creek. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
Listen to one of the best American albums
since the birth of rock n roll as you read the obit
from the Little Rock News.
Track
Listing:
01 Across The Great Divide
02 Rag Mama Rag
03 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
04 When You Awake
05 Up On Cripple Creek
06 Whispering Pines
07 Jemima Surrender
08 Rockin' Chair
09 Look Out Cleveland
10 Jawbone
11 The Unfaithful Servant
12 King Harvest (Has Surely Come)
13 Get Up Jake (Outtake-Stereo Remix)
14 Rag Mama Rag (Alternate Vocal Take-Rough Mix)
15 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Alternate Mix)
16 Up On Cripple Creek (Alternate Take)
17 Whispering Pines (Alternate Take)
18 Jemima Surrender (Alternate Take)
19 King Harvest (Has Surely Come) [Alternate
Performance]
29 Ophelia (bonus track)
Listen here.
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