Monthly Archives: January 2010

Frank Sinatra: Strangers in the Night

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Sinatra climbs past the Beatles to the top of the heap

By 1966 Frank Sinatra had ridden the roller coaster of artistic and commercial success to several high points, maintaining an unmatched profile of fame through radio, live performance, recording, television and film. He’d broken through as a swing-era big band singer, wowed bobby-soxers with his solo crooning, and reinvented himself (with the help of legendary arrangers such as Nelson Riddle) as a sophisticated interpreter of standards, a deep-feeling balladeer, and a ring-a-ding-ding hipster. In the last half of the 1950s he unleashed a string of iconic albums that showed his thorough mastery of down-tempo ballads, lush orchestration and snappy up-tempo romps, and in 1961 he literally became the chairman of the board, as he founded the Reprise record label.

Sinatra’s Reprise albums of the early 1960s continued to sell well, but his action on the single’s chart had been curtailed by pop music’s skew to a younger audience, the arrival of the Beatles and the musical revolution that followed in their wake. Sinatra had scored recent Top-40 singles (and a chart-topper on the adult contemporary chart with “It Was a Very Good Year” earlier in ‘66), but his last major success on the pop hit parade remained 1958’s “Witchcraft.” As had been the case when the big band era closed, and again as Sinatra’s solo career wound down in the early 1950s, many thought that Sinatra had finally estranged himself from broad popular acclaim. But someone as talented and as artistically resilient as Sinatra couldn’t be counted out so easily.

The genesis of his mid-60s resurgence was the album’s title track, combining a memorable Bert Kaempfert melody (from the film A Man Could Get Killed) with lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. The other key ingredient was producer Jimmy Bowen. Bowen had started out as a contemporary of ‘50s rock singer Buddy Knox, but edged his way into production as his singing career faltered. By the mid-60s he was working with all three members of the Rat Pack, and brought “Strangers in the Night” to Sinatra. Ken Barnes’ liner notes recall the urgent circumstances under which the single was recorded and distributed to radio, and how it scooped two contemporary versions to become Sinatra’s first pop chart topper. All of this was accomplished by a fifty-year-old Sinatra, who iced the cake by knocking the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” from the top slot.

With the single winding its way to #1 – it took three months to reach the top – Sinatra returned to the studio with his regular producer, Sonny Burke, to record a supporting album. The sessions reunited Sinatra with Nelson Riddle, who’d helped Sinatra re-launch his career once before with 1954’s Songs for Young Lovers and the brassy swing of 1956’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers! Here he and Sinatra split their attention between reanimating songs of the 1920s and 1930s, and finding something for Sinatra to say with a few contemporary numbers. In addition to the title track, Sinatra turned Johnny Mercer’s “Summer Wind” into an easy listening favorite, picked up Lerner and Lane’s “On a Clear Day” from the then contemporary Broadway show, and wrestled unsuccessfully with a pair of Tony Hatch tunes, “Call Me” and “Downtown.”

The pop tunes are given the full Riddle treatment, including a modern and soulful organ, but Sinatra isn’t impressed by either, and tosses off “Downtown” as a sop to the then-modern pop tastes. Riddle’s arrangements are typically energetic throughout, but his sublime take on “Summer Wind” inspires Sinatra’s most effortless and artful vocal in this set. Sinatra sings the older songs with a nod to their period origins, but also a free-swinging verve that brings them up-to-date. As an album this ends up schizophrenic as Sinatra moves through Bowen’s pop edgings, Riddle’s punchy charts and Hatch’s ill-fitting pop songs. The original album ends with a frenetic arrangement of “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” which brought down the curtain. Concord’s reissue adds three bonus tracks: live takes of “Strangers in the Night” and “All or Nothing at All” that demonstrate Sinatra’s 1980s stage presence, and a previously unreleased first take of “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” that doesn’t vary greatly from the master recording.

Though this LP was one of Sinatra’s most popular, his voice was in fine form and Nelson Riddle’s arrangements add some pizzazz, it wasn’t one of his truly great artistic achievements. The hit singles are memorable and essential elements of the Sinatra catalog, but the album cuts don’t match up with his earlier pioneering work. Unlike his Capitol albums of the 1950s, Sinatra wasn’t pushing forward anymore; he was looking back to earlier successes and looking sideways at popular music forms that didn’t excite him. This is certainly worth hearing, but if you’re just starting to build a collection of Sinatra albums, you’re better off starting with his key works of 1954-1961. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Sugar Blue: Threshold

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Contemporary blues and more from harmonica legend

Sugar Blue (born James Whiting) is best known to pop music fans for his harmonica playing on the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You,” but his resume as a blues musician is deep, having played with with Muddy Waters, Brownie McGhee, Roosevelt Sykes, and Willie Dixon throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He recorded a pair of albums as an ex-pat in Paris and returned to the states, where he eventually resumed recording in the mid-90s, laid off for a decade, and picked up a third time with 2007’s Code Blue. Blue grew up in Harlem surrounded by the blue notes of jazz singers, and though his return from Paris landed him in in the company of Chicago’s blues greats, his style remained more fluid and melodic than that which typifies the Windy City’s native harp players.

Blue recalls other instrumentalists without duplicating anyone. He plays runs that suggest the chromatic work of Stevie Wonder and Toots Thieleman, as well as jazz trumpeters and saxophonists, and salutes James Cotton with “Cotton Tree.” His blues are contemporary in melody and arrangement, mixing standard progressions with reggae and funk rhythms, and on “Noel Christmas” he cooks up a New Orleans-style second-line shuffle. His original songs are contemporary in lyric, including “Stop the War,” a funky blues that deftly mixes snippets of famous speeches and news reports with its plea, and “Don’t Call Me” which refers to all manner of modern communication. The Latin-influenced “Average Guy” demonstrates that the daily grind of blue-collar workers can be as oppressive as the down-and-out blues.

The low, slow and pensive “Ramblin’” is a tasty instrumental that has Blue doubling himself on bass harmonica. A pair of covers include a funky version of Junior Wells’ “Messin’ with the Kid” and a hard-Chicago take on Leiber and Stoller’s “Trouble,” memorably performed by Elvis Presley on his 1968 comeback special. The album concludes with the blues-jazz fusion of “Don’t Call Me” and an engaging nineteen-minute interview. Blue’s vocals are strained in spots, but the backing musicians are so adept, and his harmonica playing sufficiently deft as to render this unimportant. Aficionados may find this insufficiently pure for their tastes – there are songs here only peripherally related to the blues – but the quality of Blue’s harp playing and musicality stand tall, whatever the label. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Nightmare
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The Rubinoos – Live! January 30, 2010

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Here’s your chance to catch the legendary pop/rock band The Rubinoos in a rare live appearance. Even more rare – it’s at 10:30 in the morning, and your children are not only welcome, they’re expected. The Rubes are launching their first “all ages” album, Biff-Boff-Boing!, featuring kid-friendly classics (“Witch Doctor,” “You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd,” “Sugar Sugar”) and newly written originals (“Dumb it Down,” “Earth Number One”).

Where: La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley, CA
When: Saturday, January 30, 10:30 am
What: $5 adults, $4 children

They’ll likely be singing this one:

B.J. Thomas: Most of All / Billy Joe Thomas

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Thomas parts ways with Chips Moman and Memphis

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

After out-of-the-gate success with Huey Meaux in Texas, four albums and a hit singles with Chips Moman in Memphis, and a Los Angeles-based chart-topper with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, by the start of the 1970s B.J. Thomas was once again on the move. His 1970 release Most of All includes a few finished tracks recorded with Moman at American Studios, but also includes a stop in Atlanta and finally settles in at Doraville, Alabama’s Studio One. Here Thomas connected with producer Buddy Buie and the studio players who would form the Atlanta Rhythm Section. This new setting produced two hits, “Most of All” and “No Love at All,” both Top 40 pop and Top 5 adult contemporary. The former was written by Buie, the latter reunited Thomas with songwriter Wayne Carson, suggesting the track might have been started in Memphis.

Buie’s instrumentation wasn’t terrifically different than Moman’s, featuring guitars, bass and drums augmented by strings and horns. But Buie’s productions are smoother and not as deep in the soul-funk pocket as had been laid down in Memphis. Thomas responded by modulating his vocals with longer notes that edge into crooning. The material follows the familiar course of a few originals and cover songs that fit Thomas snugly enough to leave little leaving room for musical reinvention; James Taylor’s early “Rainy Day Man,” The Carpenters’ “Close to You,” and Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia,” don’t add much to the originals. Neither does a cover of Mann & Weil’s controversial song of interracial romance, “Brown Eyed Woman,” which had scored on the coasts for Bill Medley.

The following year Thomas made another leap, recording in New York City, Los Angeles and Nashville, with Steve Tyrell and Al Gorgoni producing Billy Joe Thomas. Thomas continued to chart higher on the adult contemporary chart than the pop list, topping the former with the gorgeous “Rock ‘n’ Roll Lullaby.” The single’s Beach Boys-styled backing vocals lift Thomas as he stretches into falsetto and adds a new style to his catalog. Paul Williams’ “That’s What Friends Are For” (not to be confused with Burt Bacharach’s similarly titled song that was a hit for Dionne Warwick) revisits the Billy Joel inflections Thomas brought to 1968’s “Mr. Businessman,” and “Happier Than the Morning Sun” is given a sunnier, lighter arrangement than Stevie Wonder’s later recording.

For this last album on Scepter, Tyrell engaged the songs’ writers to perform, a plan that paralleled the emergence of singer-songwriters as a marketable quantity. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Jimmy Webb and Paul Williams played and sang on their tunes, and guests included Duane Eddy, Darlene Love and Dave Somerville of ‘50s vocal group, The Diamonds. Tyrell and Gorgoni created the most consistent album to that point in Thomas’ career, seamlessly knitting together pop, blues and soul, while picking up songs from favorite sources Wayne Carson and Mark James alongside the famous singer-songwriters. Thomas shows himself ready for serious lyrics, including the terrific call-to-action “We Have Got to Get Our Ship Together” and John Sebastian’s “The Stories We Can Tell.” Pete Drake’s pedal steel on the latter all but pointed the way to Thomas’ future on the country charts.

Collectors’ Choice adds three bonus tracks to the original albums: a single and two B-sides of which the gospel “Mighty Clouds of Joy” makes the most lasting impression. All tracks are stereo, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These albums find Thomas searching for direction after leaving Memphis and finding new confidence in New York City. He’d hook up with Paramount the following year, score an across-the-board success with “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” with ABC in 1975, and top the country charts in the mid-80s, leaving Billy Joe Thomas to stand as a fitting end to his run with Sceptor. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head / Everybody’s Out of Town

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Thomas tops the charts with Bacharach and David

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

By the time Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head was released in 1969 Thomas had already recorded two Top-10 hits (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Hooked on a Feeling”) and a handful of lower-charting sides. But one hit was a Hank Williams cover and the other subsequently rehomed as a #1 hit for Blue Swede, it was this album’s Bacharach-David title tune that became Thomas’ long-term calling card. The Bacharach-David produced “Raindrops” is a departure in sound from the records Thomas had been making with Chips Moman in Memphis. The ukulele that opens the arrangement immediately announces something different, and Thomas’ delivery is softened along with horns that are Los Angeles smooth rather than Memphis punchy. Two other Bacharach-David productions, “Little Green Apples” and “This Guy’s in Love With You” feature similarly sophisticated pop arrangements.

The album has three tracks produced by Chips Moman, including a cover of Mark James’ “Suspicious Minds.” Moman reused Elvis’ backing track, but remixed in a way that turns the King into a ghost; the arrangement’s extended vocal coda is a great addition. Also good is a soulful take on Jimmy Webb’s “Do What You Gotta Do,” and the Mark James original “Mr. Mailman.” Four tracks produced by Stan Green and Scepter’s A&R head Steve Tyrell fill out the song list, highlighted by a take on “The Greatest Love” that’s musical but too brash to capture the vulnerability of Joe South’s original or Aaron Neville’s cover. The patchwork of three production teams makes this album feel more constructed than Thomas’ two previous outings. There are terrific individual tracks here, but the different album sections feel stitched together and leave Thomas searching for a signature identity.

Following a greatest hits album in early 1970, Thomas returned with Everybody’s Out of Town. The commercial success of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” carried over, as he launched two more singles onto the Top 40 and found great success on the adult contemporary chart, topping it with “I Just Can’t Help Believing.” Bacharach and David returned to produce a pair of tracks, but their strings, horns and old-timey piano stick out like sore thumbs in sequence with Chip Moman’s Memphis sound. Mark James and Wayne Carson once again contributed songs, and Thomas picked covers that fit well, even if he didn’t find anything revelatory to say with “Everybody’s Talkin’” or “What Does it Take.” Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was a great pick for the American Studios sound and Thomas sings it with soul.

Collectors’ Choice adds five bonus tracks: two singles, a greatest hits album track and two previously unreleased sides. Best among these is the previously unissued country arrangement of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “There’s No Holding You” and a horn- and organ-filled take on Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It.” This album is a more consistent effort than the previous Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, but Thomas no longer seemed to be progressing under Moman’s direction. Like the preceding album the cover songs and some of the originals feel like album filler. All tracks are stereo, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These first-time-on-CD albums offer some of Thomas’ biggest hits, supplemented by fine album tracks and filler. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: On My Way / Young and in Love

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Texas pop hit-maker finds his soul in Memphis

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

After his 1966 breakthrough with a slow, pop-soul cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Thomas’ subsequent singles charted lower and lower, dropping him out of the Top 40 for the latter half of 1966 and all of 1967. He returned in 1968 with On My Way and climbed back to #28 with the mid-tempo love song “The Eyes of a New York Woman.” Thomas was singing in a lower register, sounding remarkably like the Box Tops’ Alex Chilton; the single’s electric sitar even recalls the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby.” That same sitar shines even more brightly opening the album’s breakout hit, “Hooked on a Feeling.” This Mark James penned number subsequently scored a European hit for Jonathan King and a U.S. #1 in 1974 for Blue Swede. King added (and Blue Swede copied) an “ooga chaka” chant and reggae rhythm that give the song a harder edge than Thomas original.

By the time Thomas recorded this pair of albums he’d relocated from Texas to Memphis where he landed at Chips Moman’s American Studio, meeting up with the studuio’s crack band and realizing crisper recordings and more commercially refined arrangements. More importantly, his previous source of original songs, Mark Charron, was replaced by a range of writers that included Ray Stevens, Wayne Carson (who wrote “Soul Deep” and “The Letter” for the Box Tops), Spooner Oldham, Ashford & Simpson, and Mark James (who wrote both singles, and would later write “Suspicious Minds” for Elvis to cut in the very same Memphis studio). Thomas continued to tread a line between pop, country, blues and soul, but the first and last resonated most deeply in his new Memphis setting.

As on his previous albums, Thomas turned a country classic to soul, this time with Ferlin Husky’s mid-50s hit, “Gone.” Since the original was already a ballad, Thomas and crew could only slow it so much and instead focused on a then-contemporary arrangement of reverb and fuzz guitar, strings, deep bass and soulful organ; it all ends up sounding a bit funereal. Better are horn-and-string covers of Jim Reeves’ “Four Walls” and the Platters’ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” each giving Thomas a chance to really emote. Thomas’ material was notably more mature than his earlier work and reaches to social commentary (and Billy Joel-like stridency) with “Mr. Businessman” and philosophical introspection on “I’ve Been Down This Road Before.” The singer, songs, studio and musicians really fit together nicely for these sessions, but the dependency on covers that fail to expand on the originals keeps this album from being a deeper artistic statement.

1969’s Young and in Love followed the template of its predecessor, combining tunes from Mark James with selections from songwriting legends (Paul Williams, Jimmy Webb, Neil Diamond), and a country hit turned to soul with a cover of Henson Cargill’s “Skip a Rope.” Unlike Thomas’ previous (and next) album, the original material here was good, but failed to burn up the charts: the pop-soul “Pass the Apple Eve” barely made the Top 100, and the ballad “It’s Only Love” only cracked the adult contemporary Top 40. The covers are professional, but again not always artistically definitive; the Carpenters wrenched much more out of “Hurting Each Other” a few years later, and “Solitary Man” didn’t improve on Neil Diamond’s original. Thomas’ connection with the Box Tops is renewed through a cover of Spooner Oldham & Dan Penn’s “I Pray for Rain,” which Chilton and company had recorded a few years earlier.

Chips Moman’s studio and players continue to provide superb accompaniment, furthering Thomas development as a soul singer. The electric sitar wears thin by album’s end, but for the arrangements mostly have a timeless Memphis sound. Collectors’ Choice adds six bonus tracks: a single, three B-sides and two previously unreleased sides. Top of the heap is a cover of Conway Twitty’s (and Wanda Jackson’s) “I May Never Get to Heaven” featuring superb guitar from Reggie Young. Also tasty is a cover of Luther Dixon’s blue “Human” and the airy Mark James waltz “Distant Carolina.” Creepiest is “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” ending with a frenetic vocal and a railroad train (complete with sound effects) bearing down on the dreaming protagonist. All tracks are stereo except 22, and “I Saw Pity in the Face of a Friend” features some odd panning and phasing. The set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. These first-time-on-CD albums offer a great picture of Thomas’ emergence as a soul singer. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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B.J. Thomas: I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry / Tomorrow Never Comes

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Future chart-topper warms up with country, soul and blues

B.J. Thomas is often remembered for his biggest pop hits, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hooked on a Feeling,” “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” But like many artists whose careers were longer than their pop chart success, there’s a lot more to Thomas’ catalog than these four songs. In addition to 1980s success on the country charts, Thomas recorded albums throughout the mid-60s and 70s that turned up lower-charting hit singles and terrific album sides. Collectors’ Choice has gathered Thomas’ first eight solo albums for Scepter as a series of four two-fers, starting with his 1966 label debut, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, and concluding with 1971’s Billy Joe Thomas.

1966’s I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry reprised the title song with which Thomas reached #8 on the charts as the lead singer of the Houston-based Triumphs. Thomas re-imagines Hank Williams’ country classic as pop-soul with slow, measured vocals underlined by a mournful organ, low bass and drums lightly counting out the waltz time. A falling horn line at the end of each verse adds some Stax flavor, and the song’s heartbreak is brought to a head in the anguished wails with which Thomas takes the song out. He takes Williams’ “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” similarly down-tempo, with a harpsichord in place of organ, a guitar carrying the blues and Jordanaires-styled backing vocals adding their moan.

Thomas proved himself a fetching blue-soul singer on the jukebox themed “The Titles Tell” and adds punch to a cover of “Midnight Hour” with horns, handclaps and female backing singers. The album spun off a minor hit in Mark Charron’s sentimental original “Mama,” and his other titles, though a bit maudlin in tearjerkers like “I Wonder” and “Bring Back the Time,” are good vehicles for Thomas. There’s frat-rock energy in “Wendy,” a pre-Beatles boy-singer pop melody in “Terri,” and a Texicali-tinge to “Maria.” Thomas also sang covers of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and Freddie Scott’s “Hey Girl,” mostly following the originals but adding a distinctive touch with his vocal tone.

Thomas followed up the same year with the album Tomorrow Never Comes. The track list once again includes a slow, soulful pass at a country legend’s song, this time building Ernest Tubb’s “Tomorrow Never Comes” to a show-stopping crescendo. Mark Charron once again supplies most of the originals, this time writing about the supercharged emotions of teenagers and young adults. The little known “Plain Jain” is the story of a lonely girl who kills herself after falling for a prank prom invitation; though only charting to #129, it’s a worthy entry in the death-song genre. Charron captures the end-of-the-world melodrama of found love, broken hearts, friendlessness, failure and occasional moments of self realization, youthful optimism and redemption.

Thomas’ style was all over the map at these early points in his career, crooning, rocking and emoting atop pop, soul, blues and country arrangements of guitar, bass, drums, strings and horns. Those horns come to the fore on a rousing cover of Timmy Shaw’s “Gonna Send You Back to Georgia,” and the album closes with the fine, bluesy frat-rocker, “Candy Baby.” Collectors’ Choice adds two bonus B-sides, the countrypolitan kiss-off “Your Tears Leave Me Cold” and a torchy cover of Robert Thibodeux’s “I’m Not a Fool Anymore.” All tracks are stereo except 1, 2, 8, 21 and 24, and the set’s 8-page booklet includes liner notes by Mike Ragogna and full-panel reproductions of the album covers. Making their first appearances on CD, these are two great places to start an appreciation of Thomas that extends deeper than his well-known hits. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Zane Williams: The Right Place

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Excitingly unaffected Texas honky-tonk voice

There are voices that immediately announce themselves as something you’ve never heard before, there are voices that are so anonymous as to blend into the background, and there are voices like Zane Williams’ that lay in between. His singing is not immediately recognizable as a new tone or style, but there’s an excitement in his delivery that jumps off this latest record. What’s especially intriguing is how he combines the humble and direct style of someone like Bruce Robison with the honky-tonk extroversion of Robison’s brother Charlie. The Abilene-born Williams relocated to Nashville for nine years and released a string of indie albums that started to find a bit of twang with 2000’s Fast Licks and Toothpicks.

A couple of years after releasing 2006’s acoustic country Hurry Home, Williams returned to Texas and discovered his roots still intact. Together with producer Radney Foster he’s retooled himself as an electric honky-tonker, freeing himself to indulge his native twang on the roadhouse circuit through which Jack Ingram and Pat Green each found huge regional followings. Though recorded in Nashville, Foster and Williams conjure the wooden floors and neon beer signs of Texas dance halls, not least of which through Williams’ songs. The opener, “The Right Place,” offers a warm welcome from the regulars at the bar, and his incredibly clever “99 Bottles” turns the round into a tongue-twisting, thirst-quenching recitation of beer brands.

Williams’ ten originals tread tried-and-true subjects, but even there he finds some original and clever twists. The kiss-off “Tired of Being Perfect” isn’t due to cheating but the result of an overly-demanding mate, the bluesy “I Am What I Am” allows Williams to imagine other occupations as he stands firm in his commitment as a musician, and “The Cowboy and the Clown” peels away self-prescribed illusions of diminished expectations. The album closes with an original Christmas song that wipes away years of bad times with the miracle of a new baby. It’s a heartfelt (if perhaps a tad treacly) ending to a fine album that otherwise avoids the softer style Williams had developed in Nashville. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | 99 Bottles
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Elk: Tamarack Mansion

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Insinuating pop with Americana undertones

Elk is a five-piece from Minneapolis (not to be confused with the like-named 4-piece from Philadelphia) fronted by former Bellwether vocalist Eric Luoma. Here he brings along his former band’s fetching melodies while leaving behind its overt Country and Americana influences, and he reverses the acoustic approach of their last album, Home Late. There are still fleeting moments of twang in Elk’s foundation, but they’re more of a psych- and soul-tinged pop band in the vein of mid-period Beatles, Zombies, Meddle-era Pink Floyd and Big Star’s first two albums. Luoma’s languid double-tracked vocals on “Storm of the Century” sound a bit like the Morning Benders’ Chris Chu, but the combination of crystalline guitars, banjo and moments of steel are late-60s California production rather than pop-punk.

There’s a bounciness in the bass and drums that suggests the optimism that early-70s AM pop provided after late-60s psych and heavy rock overdosed. It’s like waking up on a sunny day after a long night of partying – you can still feel the drugs hanging on with its fingertips, but the bright light pulls you forward as the fog recedes. Elk does a magnificent job of creating this feeling in slow tempos, not-quite-awake vocals, gentle layers of organ and piano, drifting guitars and keening steel, shuffling drums, touches of vibraphone and ringing oscillators. That semiconscious state is exemplified in the album’s opener “Daydreams” as Luoma wrestles with his physical and spiritual drowsiness. In “Storm of the Century” the song ends with a heavy string arrangement and sliding guitar notes lightened by banjo and brought to daylight with the subliminal chirping of a bird.

The band shifts textures throughout the album and in multipart songs ala Brian Wilson. “Palisades” opens as an old-timey music hall tune before transitioning into a David Gilmour-styled vocal against a Mellotron-like backing. The processed voice returns in contrast with the neo-psych background, alternating with lush vocals that bound across the stereo stage. In between several of the songs one can hear faint music and ocean sounds as if the listener is on some misty yesteryear boardwalk; “Over the Pines” doesn’t so much end as it recedes into the waves. The band’s upbeat songs include the instantly hummable “Galaxy 12,” a meditation on a Smith-Corona typewriter’s inability to provoke a response from a correspondent or romantic interest; the song’s hook will have you singing along by the second time around.

The bouncy “I Don’t Want the Lies” has a melody the Paley Brothers might have cooked up in thinking about ‘60s pop bands like the Five Americans or Cyrkle. Luoma’s vocals and the multipart production invoke the West Coast production of Curt Boettcher. Tamarack Mansion will remind you of many things, but leaving you feeling that it sounds exactly like none of them. The neo-psych instrumentation is brightened by melodies that are both pop and country, and the touches of steel and banjo would more directly suggest Americana if they weren’t so radically recontextualized. It’s a truly fetching combination of melodies, moods and motifs that evokes and intertwines earlier bands and eras without copying them. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Galaxie 12
MP3 | Palisades
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Bobby Vinton: The Best Of

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Excellent collection of ‘60s crooner’s top hits

A wave of attractive, talented male singers sprouted in the lull between Elvis’ induction into the army and the Beatles arrival on U.S. shores. Among them, Bobby Vinton had one of the prettiest voices, an instrument with which he carved out a niche of pop songs that didn’t even feint towards rock ‘n’ roll. While Bobby Vee, Fabian, Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon and others were non-threatening hit-makers who barely hinted at the darker side of ‘50s rockers, Vinton looked further back to earlier, pre-rock pop. His lushly orchestrated recordings were more apiece with the pre-rock ‘n’ roll hit parade than with the amalgam of blues, R&B, country and gospel that in 1963 might have seemed like a commercial fad that was then in repose or decline.

Vinton made no pretension to following in the footsteps of rock ‘n’ roll, as his ballads were winsome and filled with treacle and tears. What made the songs work, and surprisingly still keeps them emotionally effective, is the sweetness with which Vinton indulges the songs’ idealized heartaches. Romantic totems of roses, childhood sweethearts, high school romances, unrequited love and broken hearts are all magnified by vocals that sound as if they might break down at any moment – Roy Orbison minus the operatic distress. Vinton hit a weeping artistic peak with the teary-eyed soldier of “Mr. Lonely,” but even his occasional declarations of love, like “There! I’ve Said it Again” and “My Heart Belongs to Only You” are just as much wishful thinking as they are returned fulfillment.

These fourteen tracks cover most of Vinton’s Top 20 hits, including his four chart toppers, but given Vinton’s sustained success through the ‘60s and early ‘70s, this isn’t complete. In addition to a couple dozen lower charting singles, the top-20 “Clinging Vine” (#17) and seasonal “Dearest Santa” (#8) are missing. A more important omission is his Top-5 comeback “My Melody of Love,” waxed for ABC in 1975 after having departed from Epic. This marked a brief return to the Top 5 and garnered enough publicity to land Vinton a television show. You can find it on the much shorter Collections, but you’re best bet is this set (or Varese’s more complete All-Time Greatest Hits), plus a digital download of “My Melody of Love.” [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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