Having already been feted with exhaustiveboxsets, multidiscanthologies, vaultfinds, tributealbums, a posthumous autobiography, and dozens of original album reissues, one might ask: what’s left to say? As it turns out: plenty. Collecting Owens’ A’s and B’s from his most commercially fertile years, this generous two-disc set replays Owens’ emergence and dominance as both a country hit maker and a maverick artist. Recording in Hollywood, two thousand miles from Nashville, he added a new chapter to the country music playbook with the driving, electric Bakersfield sound, and established himself as an iconoclastic force on the both the singles and album charts. Among the fifty-six tracks collected here are twenty-two Top 40 hits, including an astonishing string of thirteen consecutive chart toppers.
While the hits will be familiar to most, and the B-sides to many, only the most ardent Owens fans will recognize the earliest Capitol singles. This quartet of originals, waxed in 1957, sounds more like Buddy Holly-styled rock ‘n’ roll than the Bakersfield sting Owens would later develop. The low twanging guitar, sweetly phrased lead vocal and backing chorus of “Come Back†is more doo-wop than country, and its waltz-time B-side “I Know What It Means†sounds like Nashville going pop. “Sweet Thing,†co-written with Harlan Howard, has rockabilly licks supplied by guitarists Gene Moles and Roy Nichols, and its ballad B-side, “I Only Know That I Love You†has a lovely guitar solo to accompany its double-crossed lyric.
Owens returned to Capitol’s studio in 1958 with a reconstructed backing unit that included fiddler J.R. “Jelly†Sanders and Ralph Mooney on steel. It was from this session that “Second Fiddle†launched Owens onto the country chart. The same group, which also included pianist George French, Jr., bassist Al Williams and drummer Pee Wee Adams, cut a 1959 session from which “Under Your Spell Again†climbed to #4. By year’s end, Sanders was out and Don Rich was in, Harlan Howard’s “Above and Beyond†carried Owens one notch higher, to #3, and Howard and Owens’ “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)†then reached #2. The B-sides include the charting “I’ve Got a Right to Know,†and the ironic “Tired of Livin’.†Ironic, because the song’s sad-sack complaint about a lack of success was fronted by a Top 5 hit!
1961 found Owens paired with Rose Maddox for the double-sided hit “Mental Cruelty†b/w “Loose Lips,†and he just missed the top slot twice more with “Foolin’ Around†and “Under the Influence of Love.†The success of his A-sides dipped slightly in 1962, though he was still charting regularly, minting staples like “You’re For Me,†and the B-side “I Can’t Stop (My Lovin’ You).†Owens turned out an incredible amount of high quality, original material throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, winningly vacillating between sunny elation and sorrowful heartbreak. He also had an ear for other songwriters, recording albums dedicated to Harlan Howard and Tommy Collins, and charting covers of Pomus & Shuman’s “Save the Last Dance for Me†and Wanda Jackson’s “Kickin’ Our Hearts Around.â€
Owens finally topped the charts in 1963 with Johnny Russell’s “Act Naturally,†kicking off a string of #1s that stretched into 1967. Incredibly, all of disc two’s singles topped the chart, except for a return duet with Rose Maddox that stalled at #15 and a 1965 Christmas single. The A-sides from this era are among the most iconic of Owens’ career, including “Love’s Gonna Live Here,†“My Heart Skips a Beat,†“I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail,†“Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line,†“Open Up Your Heart†and Don Rich’s “Think of Me†(which became a staple for the Mavericks). The B-sides include the chart-topping “Together Again,†the stalwart “Don’t Let Her Know†and the woeful “Heart of Glass.â€
The classic lineup of the Buckaroos had come together in 1964, with Owens and Rich joined by bassist Doyle Holly, drummer Willie Cantu and steel player Tom Brumley. Their chemistry was immortalized on Live at Carnegie Hall, and their instrumental skills carried “Buckaroo†to the top of the country chart. More importantly, it was this lineup that doubled down on Owens’ rejection of the Nashville Sound. The polite drum accents of 1961’s “Foolin’ Around†might have alarmed Music City’s gentry, but it was only a prelude to the more insistent tom-toms of “My Heart Skips a Beat,†Don Rich’s twangy fills and solo on “Act Naturally†and Willie Cantu’s full-kit drumming on “Before You Go.â€
While Nashville was busy courting pop fans with syrupy layers of strings and choruses, Owens was stripping his sound down to guitars, bass, fiddle and drums, and riding the beat. He also bucked another Nashville standard by recording with his band, rather than picking up session players. Red Simpson sat in for a few sessions in ‘65 and ‘66, and James Burton provided the sputtering electric lead on “Open Up Your Heart,†but what you hear on all the singles from ‘64 onward are the Buckaroos. The set ends with Owens’ last hit of 1966, “Where Does the Good Times Go,†two singles shy of the end of his continuous string of #1s, and well short of the success that ran up to Don Rich’s 1974 death. Owens moved on from Capitol to Warner Brothers, and returned again in the late ‘80s, but mostly retired from the studio to run his businesses and perform on the weekends at his legendary Bakersfield club.
The genre-bending Mavericks launch their own label with the release of a live album that complements the earlier It’s Now! It’s Live! and Live in Austin Texas. The new set shows how the band’s stage act has continued to grow in power, and by cherry-picking performances from their 2015 Mono Mundo tour, the set makes every song a highlight performance. Since reuniting four years ago, there have been lineup changes (including the dismissal of founding member Robert Reynolds) and new studio recordings, but it’s the stage show that has remained the group’s focal point. This generous 78-minute disc shows the core four-piece band, augmented by players on bass, sax, trumpet and accordion, to be as flexible as the Mavericks’ catalog. And rather than a nostalgic rehash of earlier glories, the band keeps their set fresh with material from 2013’s In Time and 2015’s Mono.
If you ever stopped to think about Swiss garages, you probably imagined super clean floors and tools neatly aligned on a pegboard. But The Royal Hangmen (who shouldn’t be confused with the plebeian UK and US Hangmen) have shoved all that aside and dialed up fuzzed-out guitars, thumping drums and VOX organ. Well, actually, they hightailed it to Hamburg where the atmosphere was no doubt more conducive to recording 60s-styled garage rock than Zurich. They’ve parlayed their beginnings as a cover band (which also spawned the fine EP Hell Yeah: An 80s Garage Tribute) into original material that recalls the Shadows of Knight, early Stones and the seemingly endless stream of one-off Pebbles bands.
Obscure 1958 Folkways blues album returned to vinyl
If Christopher Guest were to make a mockumentary about the blues, it might open with a crate digger’s breathless recitation of time-worn details such as, “Louisiana native Cat-Iron was born William Carradine in 1896 and mis-nicknamed by the folklorist Frederic Ramsey, Jr.. Having converted to Christianity, Carradine was initially hesitant to lay down secular songs, but relented with a mix of blues and sacred hymns on a borrowed guitar, recorded in the front room of his house. The resulting 1958 Folkways LP included an eight-page booklet, was pressed on yellow wax, and quickly fell into obscurity.†What would make this absurd is its absolute truth in demonstrating how scholarly producers refashioned themselves into musical anthropologists who used hunches and recorders in place of maps and shovels.
Recorded in 1957 and released the following year, it was to be Cat-Iron’s only album, as he passed away in November 1958. Since then, two tracks appeared on anthologies [12], the album was reissued in the UK as a vinyl album in 1969, and domestically as a digital download and custom CD in 2004. Exit Stencil now returns the album to print as a limited distribution vinyl LP, struck on yellow wax, just like the original, with blues on side one and hymns on side two. Also included is a reproduction of the original eight-page booklet, including lyrics and Ramsey’s original liner notes. The latter sketch Cat-Iron’s background, the circumstances of the recording session, and provide Ramsey’s view of the blues as organic, communal literature.
As Ramsey noted, Cat-Iron sang everything with the combined fervor of the gospel and the blues, lending the former the grit of the latter, and the latter the eternal gravity of the former. The session began with the hymns placed on side two, with Cat-Iron accompanying himself on fingerpicked guitar that’s fretted with a glass medicine bottle and supplemented by the faintest, rhythmic thump of what was likely to be his foot. He’s carried away by the messages of “When I Lay My Burden Down†and “Fix Me Right,†and surprisingly melancholy on the first song he played that day, “When the Saints Go Marching Home.â€
Of the blues numbers on side one, the most well-known (and regularly covered) is “Jimmy Bell.†It’s here that Cat-Iron’s regionalism is heard in the cultural themes he wrote and sang. As with most folk artists, Cat-Iron’s catalog is derived from lyrics he’d heard, borrowed, rearranged and augmented. The opening “Poor Boy a Long, Long Way From Home†is rooted in the oft-recorded “Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home,†with Cat-Iron changing the lyric from “Natchez,†where he resided and recorded, to “New Orleans.†He deftly weaves together lines from “Rambler Blues†and “Corinna, Corinna†for “Don’t Your House Look Lonely,†and sings “I’m Gonna Walk Your Log†with its similarity to “Baby Please Don’t Go†intact.
A Cajun fiddle prodigy unleashes his inner George Jones
It’s been seventeen years – more than half of Courtney Granger’s life – since this Louisiana fiddle prodigy debuted with 1999’s album of French-language and Cajun instrumental tunes, Un Bal Chez Balfa. Though he’s been busy playing sessions and touring with the Pine Leaf Boys, there was apparently a classic country vocalist itching to sing. He’d hinted at this ambition with a 2013 rendition of “You’re Still on My Mind,†but on this all-covers album his fiddle takes a backseat to vocals heavily influenced by George Jones. Granger hasn’t the pinpoint control of Jones, and his growl doesn’t go quite as low, but he’s a terrifically thoughtful and emotive vocalist, whose more open-throated singing adds an original flavor to the Jones-styled runs, bends and slides.
The king of juke joint swing swings the juke joint
Twenty years into his recording career, the most surprising thing about Wayne Hancock is the lack of surprise in his unwavering pursuit of hillbilly boogie. What might have looked like a faddish nod at the start of his career has evolved into the heart and soul of his artistry, transcending the nostalgia that connects him to Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson and others. His first album since 2013’s Ride is stocked with swinging original material, sublimely selected covers of Merle Travis’ “Divorce Me C.O.D.†and Pee Wee King’s (by way of Hank Williams) “Thy Burdens Are Greater Than Mine,†and steel player Rose Sinclair’s instrumental showcase “Over Easy.â€
Hancock is front and center, but he gives his band (Sinclair, electric guitarists Bart Weinberg and Greg Harkins, bassist Samuel “Huck†Johnson and producer Lloyd Maines on dobro) room to stretch out and solo. You probably won’t even notice the lack of a drummer until someone points it out. Hancock writes of a working musician’s fortitude, the toll it takes on off-stage life, and the rewards it pays. Messy homes give way to mistreating and long-gone mates, with “Divorce Me C.O.D.†taunting a soon-to-be ex and the original “Wear Out Your Welcome†kicking the problem to the curb. The few moments of respite include the apologetic “Two String Boogie†and the sweet invitation “Love You Always.â€
Expanded reissue of guest-filled 2003 Christmas album
Founded in 1939 and turned into a professional group six years later, it took more than fifty years for these gospel legends to record a Christmas album. Released in 2003, the album was third in a string of four Grammy-winning albums in four years, including Spirit of the Century, Higher Ground and There Will Be a Light. The album includes guests leading every track but the first and last, ranging from soul singer Solomon Burke, singer-songwriters Tom Waits and Shelby Lynne, to jazz vocalist Les McCann and funkmaster George Clinton. The wide range of guests lends the album a lot of variety, though in a few spots, such as Chrissie Hynde and Richard Thompson’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,†it mostly obscures title group.
There’s no losing sight of the group as they provide Aaron Neville an intricate a cappella backing for “Joy to the World,†provide harmony backing to Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,†and add lively interplay to Mavis Staples’ “Born in Bethlehem.†One might lament how the cavalcade of guest stars cuts into the Blind Boys’ opportunities to sing lead, but the selection of guests and their interaction with the group and house band (John Medeski on keyboards, Duke Robillard on guitar, Danny Thompson on bass and Michael Jerome on drums) yields some nice moments. If you’re expecting a Blind Boys gospel Christmas album, you’ll be disappointed, but if you take this album as part of the group’s Grammy era artistic expansion, there’s much to like.
Guitar-rich power pop echoes Teenage Fanclub and post-punk
