Category Archives: Five Stars

Elvis Presley: Elvis 75- Good Rockin’ Tonight

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4-CD anthology shines as brightly as a King’s crown

Elvis was not only the king of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Little Richard’s claim on the crown notwithstanding), but in his afterlife he has also become the undisputed king of reissues and anthologies. RCA’s four-CD set, spanning from his earliest self-funded acetates through late home recordings and live sides, his last major studio works and a post-mortem remix, offers no new tracks for Presley’s legions of collectors, but provides a superb introduction and deep overview for anyone who’s heard about, rather than heard, the King. Those who know a few hits or have sat through an Elvis movie or two will find the greatness of his musical catalog measures up to the hype and explains the dedication of his most ardent fans.

Collected here are one hundred tracks, beginning with Presley’s very first recording, “My Happiness,” waxed on his own dime as a gift for his mother. His earliest commercial sides show how he forged hillbilly, blues and country roots into his personal strand of rock ‘n’ roll, first for Sun with Scotty Moore and Bill Black, and then, with the addition of D.J. Fontana on drums and A-list guests like Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins, for RCA. These early works aren’t so much primitive as they are elemental – the lack of production pomp or circumstance presents Elvis as an unadorned and raw rock ‘n’ roll spirit. The addition of a backing vocal trio, as can first be heard on 1956’s “I Was the One,” showed a crooning side of Elvis that would continue to reappear even as he continued to explore rockabilly and blues.

From the 50s through the 70s Elvis moved through a variety of producer’s hands and a number of different studios, and got something different from each. His studio recordings took him from Memphis to Nashville, north to New York, west to Hollywood, back to Nashville where he worked in RCA’s legendary Studio B and back to Memphis for his legendary late-60s sessions at Chip Moman’s American Studios. By the early ‘70s, on the heels of his televised comeback special, Elvis once again became a live draw, and selected sides find him in Las Vegas, Honolulu and on the road in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Elvis waxed his share of clunkers, but with each new direction and in each new setting he seemed to record something worthwhile, and producer Ernst Mikael Jorgensen has done a masterful job of picking highlights.

More importantly, Jorgensen has intermixed iconic hits with lesser known singles and album tracks, showing the depth of Elvis’ artistry and the catalog he created. Elvis often overwhelmed the charts with hit singles, leaving terrific performances such as the energized “One-Sided Love Affair,” a bluesy cover of Lloyd Price’s “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” and the gospel “Thrill of Your Love” to languish as album tracks. Even more surprising is a 1962 version of “Suspicion” that pre-dates Terry Stafford’s hit by two years. Elvis’ soundtracks included their share of dregs, particularly as the ‘60s wore on, but they also included hits and great album tracks like a scorching version of “Trouble” from King Creole and bluesy covers of Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time” from Spinout and Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man” from Clambake.

While other artists reinvented themselves to fit the times, Elvis bent the times around himself (excepting “Yoga is as Yoga Does,” thankfully not included here), staying true to his voice as everything around him changed. His producers, songwriters, and musicians kept turning over, but in the center of it all Elvis sang a surprisingly straight line from ’53 to ‘77. Even as his voice matured and the productions were influenced by his Vegas stage show, the fire in his delivery remained. Whether singing rock, blues, country, soul, pop or gospel, his performances found a true line stretched from the Sun sessions through RCA studios in Nashville, New York and Hollywood, a stint in the army, a catalog of often mediocre films, his 1968 resurrection, a triumphant return to Memphis, and country sessions that brought him back to his roots.

For many listeners, disc four will be the least familiar. Covering 1970 through 1977, these selections find Elvis’ singles charting lower, but still delivering the goods. Only “Burning Love” made the top-5, and his other top-10 from that stretch, “The Wonder of You,” is not included. “An American Trilogy,” is at once bombastic and utterly show-stopping, his version of “Always on My Mind” made the country charts but should have found cross-over success before Willie Nelson ten years later, and his last single, “Way Down,” though given to ‘70s production sounds, finds his gospel fervor undimmed. The beat heavy remix of “A Little Less Conversation” that closes the set shows just how easily Elvis’ voice could slide into new contexts (the original film performance from Live a Little, Love a Little is worth searching out on DVD, by the way). These hundred tracks aren’t a complete run through every Elvis highlight, but they tell the entire arc of his musical career in a compelling and thorough way.

The box includes an 80-page booklet that features a biographical essay by Billy Altman, numerous photos, reproductions of original record labels, covers and picture sleeves, movie posters, master tape boxes, and detailed recording, chart and personnel data. RCA/Legacy is releasing a companion 26-track single disc that cherry-picks this box, and though it may prove useful as a guide to further Elvis purchases, it doesn’t provide the compelling, detailed portrait of this four-disc set. With more Elvis 75th-birthday anniversary reissues on the way (and a terrific 2-CD version of From Elvis in Memphis already out) you may be tempted to put together your own collection, but you’d have a hard time assembling a more compelling introduction than this box. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Lissie: Why You Runnin’

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Lissie_WhyYouRunninArresting, intense folk-rock Americana

Lissie Maurus is a folk-rock singer from the west Illinois border town of Rock Island. Although there’s a rustic Midwestern edge to her Americana, her transplantation to Los Angeles, and national and international gigs have elevated her music beyond coffee-house strumming. Her voice pulls you in close with confessional introductions and then attacks with arresting outbursts of emotion. The exclamation of “danger will follow me now everywhere I go, angels will fall on me and take me to my home” finds her bending back from the microphone to make room for a lungful of emotion. The empty spaces in the studio add presence and dimension as she steps back to keep the needles from pinning red with her fervor.

There’s a bluesy edge in her vocals, not unlike Joan Osborne, but with the earthier, more distracted air of Edie Brickell. The productions often arc from contemplative openings to emotional conclusions. “Little Lovin’” rolls through its first half with only a bass drum (and your toe-tapping) to keep the beat, but a deep bottom end rolls in, Lissie’s vocals rise and hand-clapping rhythms spur the vocals to soar into full-throated scatting. The abandon with which she vocalizes has the improvisational verve of a live jam, blowing past the artifice of studio recording. Her cover of Hank Williams’ “Wedding Bells” turns its despondency from hangdog to forlorn, and the original male-perspective lyrics (“you wanted me to see you change your name”) gain additional layers when sung in a woman’s voice.

An ode to Lissie’s native river, “Oh Mississippi,” is sung with a gospel piano and overdubbed choir, and though it may remind you of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” it turns into a fervent elegy for the failing industrial heart of America. Here too Lissie hits a second gear to bring the song to a tremendous emotional climax. Bill Reynolds’ production is spare but filled with touches – a tambourine or a tom-tom riff – that provide instrumental accents that complement the vocal dynamics. He leaves Lissie up-front, where listeners can hang on to both her emphatic notes and dramatic pauses. A full LP recorded in Nashville with a pickup band and producer Jacquire King is apparently sitting in the can, but it’s hard to imagine it captured Lissie in such disarmingly naked moments as this brilliant five-song EP. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Little Lovin’
MP3 | Everywhere I Go
Lissie’s MySpace Page

Big Star: Keep an Eye on the Sky

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BigStar_KeepAnEyeOnTheSkyThe essential second (or third) Big Star purchase

It’s hard to imagine anyone issuing a Big Star release that’s a more perfect introduction to the band than the two-fer of #1 Record and Radio City. You could include their third album, dig in the archives for alternate versions and live tracks, stretch through their reunion music, add pre- and post-Big Star releases, and solo work for context, and you could write lavish liner notes to explain and contextualize their ill-fated story. But as an introduction, every bit of it would simply distract from the perfection that is that first perfect couplet of albums. If you want to turn someone on to Big Star, the stepping stones are #1 Record and Radio City.

But once they’re hooked they’ll want to know more; they’ll want to know everything. Where did the players come from and what did they do before and after Big Star? What else did the band record? What’s Ardent Records and what else was the label doing at the time? How did Memphis influence the band’s sound? Are there alternate versions or unreleased tracks? What were they like as a live unit? And of course: why haven’t I heard of this band before? The latter question is less likely to be asked these days, since obsessive fans have dug up many of the other answers, and many well-known bands have cited Big Star as a seminal influence. But until this box set was released, the full picture of Big Star’s career had to be pieced together from a shelf-full of CDs [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9], a pair of books [1 2] and assorted fan web sites.

With this 4-CD set, Rhino has reduced all of the purchases that normally follow the two-fer into a rich and convenient box. This is not a substitute for the original albums, nor does it replace the full-length live albums, lead-ins and follow-ups, or the detailed written histories of the band; but for many, this consolidated view of Big Star will be the perfect follow-up to the initial infatuation. For those who’ve already collected everything that’s been legitimately released, the box still provides something extra in previously unreleased live and studio items from the archives. Some of the alternate material is subtle, but some, like “Country Morn” fronts the well-known backing track of “Sunrise” with entirely different lyrics. The B-side mix of “In the Street” has a noticeably different feel to the album track, and the alternate version of “The Ballad of El Goodo” sports a different lead vocal take.

There are early versions of “I Got Kinda Lost,” “There Was a Light” and Loudon Wainwright III’s “Motel Blues” that never made it to final form, and revealing demos for songs that made each of the group’s first three albums. Perhaps the biggest treat of all, however, is the live show featured on disc four. This disc is a distillation of three sets performed by the three-piece (Chris Bell-less) Big Star in Memphis in January 1973. Recorded from microphones set in front of the stage, it’s not the crisp line recording of the band’s previously released shows, but it’s a superb performance whose room sound offers a bit of you-are-there ambiance. It’s a shame the audience mostly ignore the greatness in front of them as they await the headliner, Archie Bell & the Drells.

The physical presentation, a folder containing the four discs and a hundred-page book housed in a slipcase, is superb. An introductory note from Ardent Records founder John Fry shows the emotional connection the insiders still carry with them. Robert Gordon’s historical notes are informative, but Bob Mehr’s essay brilliantly captures the slowly-built cult of Big Star, replaying the clandestine mystery and wonderful discovery the band’s fans felt in the years before the Internet and this  box set put the story at everyone’s fingertips. The book closes with song notes from Alec Palao that gather the scattered details that could be reassembled from tape box labels and participants memories. The 7.5-inch square book includes superb full-panel pictures, most of which have never been seen by even Big Star’s biggest fans.

Could the set include more? Yes. Would that make it better as a box set? Not really. The purpose of these four discs is to tell a story, to provide substance and dimension to a band whose story was revealed ever so slowly over the course of three decades. By intermixing standard and alternate versions of key recordings this set offers new angles on the well-known corpus. By including a full disc of live music the collection fleshes out Big Star from a studio incarnation into a band populated by flesh-and-blood musicians. Start with the band’s first two albums, but once you’ve been bitten, continue here. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Big Star’s Home Page
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Creedence Clearwater Revival: The Singles Collection

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CCR_TheSinglesCollectionCCR as first heard on Top-40 radio

As a band that had tremendous top-40 success during the hey-day of freeform radio, Creedence Clearwater Revival stood with one foot planted firmly in each world. Their LPs were recorded in well-produced stereo, offered extended jams, thoughtful cover songs and deep album cuts that found room on underground FM stations such as Bay Area legends KMPX and KSAN. But above ground, the band’s music was remixed into powerful mono, edited for length and unleashed via AM powerhouses. AM’s narrow frequency range added emphasis to the music’s midrange, focusing listeners on Fogerty’s vocals and stinging guitar leads, and further revealing the band’s rhythm section to be among the most rock-solid and potent of its era. Their driving rhythms are just that much more driving in mono, and the band’s pop tunes sprang easily from a single speaker in the middle of a car’s dashboard.

Fogerty wrote with the goal of placing his songs alongside the R&B hits the group had grown up loving on Oakland’s KWBR and Sacramento’s KRAK. His originals stood toe-to-toe on album, airwave and top-40 chart with covers of “Suzie Q,” “I Put a Spell on You” and “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Included here are the A- and B-sides of thirteen original singles, ranging from 1968’s “Porterville” (b/w “Call it Pretending”) through 1972’s “Someday Never Comes” (b/w “Tearin’ Up the Country”). Also included is the single-edit of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (b/w “Good Golly Miss Molly”) that was released in 1976, four years after the group disbanded, and both sides of the stereo promotion-only experiment “45 Revolutions Per Minute.” The latter, a montage of production ideas, sound effects, musical bridges and comedy bits previously appeared as bonus tracks on the 2008 reissue of Pendulum.

Most of these songs are well-known to even casual listeners, as Creedence often broke both sides of their singles. The few less familiar cuts are the group’s first B-side “Call It Pretending,” Stu Cook’s “Door to Door” (an album cut from Mardi Gras and the B-side of “Sweet Hitch-Hiker”), and Doug Clifford’s “Tearin’ Up the Country” (also from Mardi Gras, and the B-side of “Someday Never Comes”). Strung end-to-end, these singles provide the AM listener’s view of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s success. While FM listeners grooved to 8:37 of “Suzie Q,” AM listeners enjoyed a concise 4:33 edit, and while album buyers sat back to enjoy album jams like “Graveyard Train,” “Keep on Chooglin’” and “Ramble Tamble,” singles buyers got another gumdrop every three or four months. The singles form an intertwined, yet separate, artistic arc that the band carved out in parallel to their albums.

Concord delivers thirty tracks on two CDs, each screened with a vintage Fantasy record label. The CDs are housed in a standard jewel case, together with a 20-page booklet that includes new liner notes by Ben Fong-Torres. Torres’ essay provides a genial trip through Creedence’s success on the radio, with quotes from 1960’s boss jocks, but it’s light on the particulars of these mono mixes and edits. A separate cardboard sleeve houses a DVD of four Creedence promotional videos: “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Bootleg,” “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” Staged in studios and aboard a riverboat these are real treats, with the band looking youthful and happy. There are groovy dancers on “Bootleg” and psychedelic effects of “I Put a Spell On You,” and the black-and-white footage of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” looks like it was filmed in the band’s rehearsal space. A folded poster insert reproduces many original 7” picture sleeves and completes a cardboard slip-cased package that is, in its own way, as important as the band’s original albums. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Caroline Herring: Golden Apples of the Sun

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CarolineHerring_GoldenApplesOfTheSunSuperb folk album from Austin-based vocalist

Though Herring has come to prominence in Austin music circles, her music has veered away from the bluegrass with which she began, as well as the country with which she rose to prominence. Her voice has always harbored a singer-songwriter’s intimacy, but starting with last year’s Lantana, she stepped further in front of her band and dropped the drums and steel in favor of acoustic guitars and bass. This fourth album pushes even further in that stripped-down direction, with hard strummed and rolling finger-picked guitars providing the dominant backing, augmented by bass, piano and touches of banjo and ukulele. The minimized backings reveal additional depth in Herring’s voice, an instrument that mixes the vibrato of Buffy St. Marie, crystalline tone of Judy Collins, and several dashes of Lucinda Williams’ emotional poetics.

Herring’s latest album splits its twelve tracks between originals and covers. The latter includes a brilliant conversion of Cyndi Lauper’s 1986 hit “True Colors” into a dark spiritual. Lauper’s sung this song live with guitar, piano and zither, but it was still infused with the original single’s optimism. Herring pitches the vocal ambivalently between worry and reassurance, with a moody rhythm guitar that dispels Lauper’s upbeat mood. The oft-covered murder ballad “Long Black Veil” provides Herring another terrific opportunity for reinvention, stripping the instrumental to a drone, the song is more of a distraught first-person confession than the folksy story of Lefty Frizell or Johnny Cash. Even the Big Bill Broonzy standard “See See Rider” is reborn amidst the vocal trills Herring adds to edges of her performance. Similar high notes and tremolo decorate a tour de force cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Cactus Tree.”

The original songs, five solo compositions and a co-write with Wendell Berry and Pablo Neruda, are even more closely attuned to Herring’s vocal charms. The lyrics are filled with questions of uncertain relationships, longing for escape and understanding, distant destinations and brave faces. Singing to low acoustic strums, Herring jabs with the lyrics of “The Dozens,” demanding engagement in the guise of a game of insults. The assuredness with which she sings adds weight to every word, and the emotion-laden quality of her voice can bring tears to your eyes. Though she can conjure the ghostly images of earlier times, the clarity of her tone and the forthrightness of her style are more in the folk tradition of the 1960s than the 1860s. Herring is a critical darling whose work outstrips the plaudits of even her most ardent admirers. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Long Black Veil
Caroline Herring’s Home Page
Caroline Herring’s MySpace Page

Various Artists: A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector

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VAR_AChristmasGiftForYouFromPhilSpectorRe-mastered 2009 reissue of Christmas perennial

Phil Spector’s 1963 Christmas album was an immediate classic and radio favorite, but having been released on the day of John Kennedy’s assassination, it was quickly difficult to find. Radio play kept it alive, however, and it was made available again on the Beatles’ Apple label in 1972. The reissue renamed the album from “A Christmas Gift from Philles Records” to “The Phil Spector Christmas Album” and eventually to its current title; the original cover art was replaced by a photo of Spector dressed as Santa. A later reissue on Warner-Spector airbrushed away the “Back to Mono” button Spector wore in his beard and produced the tracks in stereo. The sacrilege was reversed and the AM-radio-ready mono mixes returned to print with the record’s first CD issue in 1987. Subsequent CD reissues on ABKCO restored elements of the original artwork, and the last reissue left print in 2007.

With ABKCO’s Allen Klein having passed away earlier this year, and Phil Spector in jail, a new day has dawned for the Philles label as Sony and EMI have gained the catalog’s distribution rights and are planning the archival reissues it deserves. That may be the best Christmas present music lovers will get for years to come. The first result is a fresh reissue of this Christmas classic with a 16-page booklet that includes original artwork and liner notes, contemporary notes by Billboard’s Jim Bessman, and superb photos of Spector with his musicians and singers. Most importantly, of course, is the pristine reproduction of Spector’s musical classics in all their mono glory, recorded as his Wall of Sound was reaching its greatest height. Featured are The Ronettes, Darlene Love, Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, and the Crystals, all recorded at Gold Star Studio with the cream of Los Angeles’ studio musicians.

Spector and his arranger Jack Nitzsche adorned the Wall of Sound with the holiday sounds of jingling bells, bells and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as they revitalized a dozen holiday classics. Several of these performances became icons that inspired covers of the performances rather than just the underlying songs. To top it off Spector minted his own classic Christmas song with the Spector-Greenwich-Barry composition “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” In an era dominated by singles, Spector created a holiday album that was stocked start to finish with superbly conceived and realized productions – no filler here. It wasn’t the first Christmas album, or even the first rock ‘n’ roll Christmas album, but it was (and remains) the best ever.

Technical note: EMI Legacy’s reissue duplicates the re-master that Bob Ludwig created for the second disc of last year’s UK-released The Phil Spector Collection. This is a complete re-master from the original tape using a full-track mono reproduce head and an Ampex tube-based machine. This replaces the Phil Spector-Larry Levine re-master that was the basis of the fourth disc of ABKCO’s Back to Mono box set and the standalone 1990 version. According to educated ears, the new re-master is less harsh and has smoother bass; it’s also louder, but without any detriment to the dynamics. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Dolly Parton: Dolly

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DollyParton_DollyThe 4-CD box set Dolly Parton (and her fans) deserve

Dolly Parton’s outsized personality has occasionally obscured the fact that she’s one of America’s all-time greatest songwriters and an exceptional vocalist who effortlessly crossed from country to pop and back again. Her early years as Porter Wagoner’s girl singer and duet partner, her television fame, her climb to solo country stardom, her painful split with Wagoner (brilliantly memorialized in her parting “I Will Always Love You,” a three-time hit for Parton and a worldwide chart-topper for Whitney Houston), her crossover to pop, Hollywood filmmaking and theme parks, and finally, her return to country and bluegrass roots have shown Parton to be an artist of unparalleled vision, depth and humanity.

Parton’s commercial success has stretched over four decades, including an incredible string of hit singles (including 25 U.S. #1s) and albums (including 42 U.S. top-10s and 6 chart-toppers), and multiple live recordings, soundtracks and collaborations. She’s won gold and platinum records, Grammys, AMAs, CMAs, ACMs, and has been nominated for Oscar, Tony and Golden Globe awards. She’s a member of the Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the recipient of numerous national awards and tributes. Yet, with all the fame and honors, Parton has remained true to her rural upbringing in the hills of Tennessee, frequently returning to the hard lessons of her youth for inspiration and guidance. The values instilled by her dirt-poor upbringing have informed both her life and her art, as she frequently put stories and lessons from her childhood to song.

Among the most surprising aspects of Parton’s recording career is how spottily her catalog has been kept in print or reissued. Numerous hits collections have found issue and reissue (including the excellent Essential set in 2005), and more recently a few original albums have been reissued on CD, but much of her RCA album catalog has remained in the vault, and until now, no major career-spanning (and more importantly, label-spanning) box set had been issued. RCA Legacy solves the latter problem with this superb 4-disc, 99-song set. The collection comes with a 60-page booklet that includes an introductory essay from singer-songwriter Laura Cantrell, a 5,000-word biography by Holly George-Warren, period photos and reproductions of many of Parton’s album covers.

More importantly, the 4 CDs cover a big helping Parton’s career, including rare late-50s pre-teen sides on Goldband, early work for Mercury and Monument, a generous helping from nearly two decades on RCA, and a smattering of  tracks from her years on Columbia, ending with 1993’s “Romeo.” Missing are sides from her 1998 back-to-basics album Hungry Again, the inventive releases she cut for Sugar Hill in the ‘90s and ‘00s, and last year’s Backwoods Barbie. So while it’s not a complete portrait, the ready availability of these later albums suggests their omission made room for the rare early works, deeper album cuts and seven previously unreleased recordings, while still maintaining the core hit material one would expect of a mainstream box set.

Those who’ve hung on to their original LPs or snapped up CD reissues will duplicate a good deal of Parton’s hits, but there are many new riches here. The eleven-year-old Parton’s voice is faintly recognizable on the 1957 Goldband single “Puppy Love” and its flip, “Girl Left Alone.”  The A-side is an original rockabilly tune, co-written with her uncle Bill Owens (with whom she’d also write her first charting song, Bill Phillips’ “Put it Off Until Tomorrow,” also included); the B-side is an original country ballad, again written with Owens. Parton’s voice is juvenilely high and thin, but she was already singing with tremendous feeling. The previously unreleased “Gonna Hurry (As Slow As I Can)” is a finished ’50s-styled ballad that sounds to be from a couple years later. The pre-teen edge to Parton’s voice was giving way to the trilled edge that would come to define her singing.

Skipping forward five years to 1962, Parton cut a single for Mercury while still in high school. The A-side “It’s Sure Gonna Hurt,” co-written again by Parton and Phillips, perfectly evokes the pain of a teenager’s broken heart with the mid-tempo countrypolitan-pop sound of Brenda Lee and Connie Francis. The B-side “The Love You Gave” continues the romantic turmoil, and the unreleased session side “Nobody But You” finds Parton adding a hint of rockabilly with her upper range. By 1965 Parton was signed to Monument, who groomed her as a teen pop star. Among the highlights here are the brilliant Shangri-Las styled “Don’t Drop Out,” complete with a dramatically spoken intro, and the obscure Goffin-King composition “I’ve Known You All My Life.” None of these made the charts, but Parton sounds so convincing and at-home, you can hear why they tried.

Having failed to break her as a pop star, Monument let Parton record country, releasing her first two charting singles “Dumb Blonde” and “Something Fishy,” as well as her debut album, Hello, I’m Dolly.  Parton’s songwriting emerged fully formed in songs of hurting and abandoned women, home-spun morals, and the colorful characters of rural life. She soon departed for RCA, but left enough tracks in the vault for Monument to issue a second album in 1970. Parton stayed at RCA for nearly two decades, her career initially shepherded closely by Porter Wagoner, with whom she recorded numerous duets. One listen to their chemistry on a 1967 cover of Tom Paxton’s “Last Thing on My Mind” makes it clear just how painful their separation must have been for Wagoner. The loss of her business may have stung, but the departure of such a feeling duet partner must have really hurt.

Parton’s solo sides, whether originals or pulled from Nashville songwriters, continued to make emotional strides to self-awareness (and eventually self-empowerment) as her downtrodden women took clear-eyed stock of their situations. Parton’s original, “The Bridge,” depicts a relationship’s pastoral beginnings and tragic, helpless ending, but the title track of Just Because I’m a Woman, calls out the hypocrisy with which women were treated. Her RCA catalog fills out disc one, all of discs two and three, and nearly half of disc four with hits, lower-charting singles and lesser-known but no less rewarding album tracks. This is easily the most expansive view you’ll find of her development as a songwriter and singer. The volume of quality original material and the imaginative range of her subjects are staggering, and the new fire she brings to chestnuts like Jimmie Rodgers’ “Muleskinner Blues” is just as impressive.

Even after splitting with Wagoner in 1976 the hits kept coming. Parton’s first self-produced album, New Harvest… First Gathering was recorded in Los Angeles and edged “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” onto Billboard’s Hot-100. Her next LP, Here You Come Again, sprung its title song to #2 on the adult contemporary chart and #3 on the Hot 100. Hollywood Dolly really hit her crossover peak in the early ‘80s with “9 to 5,” a cover of the First Edition’s “You Know I Love You,” “Islands in the Sun,” and a modernized remake of the Drifters’ “Save the Last Dance For Me.” In contrast to the box set’s first two discs, Parton’s crossover material is often taken from other songwriters’ pens, and doesn’t ring as heartfelt or close-to-the-bone as her earlier works. Still, even among the mainstream pop she dropped the home-spun “Applejack” and “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You,” the gospel-tinged “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind,” and the superb “Tennessee Homesick Blues” from the Rhinestone film soundtrack.

By the middle-80s Parton’s production had fallen into others’ hands, and they increasingly surrounded her with synthetic drums and synthesizers. Parton herself was still in fine voice, but the chill in the instrumental backings didn’t connect with or amplify her personal warmth, and the arrangements have aged poorly. A switch to Columbia in the late ‘80s returned Parton to country songwriting and more timeless pop productions. Disc four’s closing eight tracks, drawn from albums recorded between 1988 and 1993, restore Parton’s identity as a songwriter, and Ricky Skaggs’ production (which drew on some hot-picking bluegrass musicians) for White Limozeen was the most sympathetic she’d had in several years. Many of Parton’s fans will enjoy the entire tour through the first thirty-seven years of her career, but those mostly enchanted by the country sides will find themselves skipping her late-70s and early-80s pop material. Don’t miss the Columbia sides on disc four, though, as they’re superb.

Leaving off Parton’s resurgent sides for Sugar Hill keeps this box from being a complete portrait to date. Her work on Columbia shows the artistic well far from dry, and her return to basic productions and bluegrass backings in the ‘90s and ‘00s are an important chapter in her stll-lively career. Still, these four discs amply demonstrate that Parton is much more than a singer and songwriter: she’s a folklorist, cultural anthropologist, family historian, philosopher and memoirist. Her autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, is a good read, but can’t possibly offer the emotional richness of songs like “My Tennessee Mountain Home” or “Coat of Many Colors.” What’s really missing, and what Parton’s fans long for, are original album reissues of her entire RCA and Columbia catalogs. Bear Family, are you listening? [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Technical notes: All tracks stereo except 1-8, 10, and 13-14. Track 23, “Daddy,” has a mastering error at 1:06 that causes the volume to flair briefly.

Tiny Tim: I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana

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TinyTim_IveNeverSeenAStraightBananaAstonishing collection of early 20th century song

This is an astounding collection on a number of levels. First and foremost, it’s a brilliant anthology of early American song, sung with love and introduced with learned background by Tiny Tim. The set’s liner notes provide additional information on the songs and details of how they fit into Tiny Tim’s career. These recordings capture Tiny Tim singing songs of his own choice, with no record label breathing down his neck for a novelty release that would reignite memories of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Instead, Tiny Tim picked tunes that range from the dawn of the Edison cylinder (1878’s “Mr. Phonograph”), early twentieth century tunes in their original style, 1960s Tiny Tim originals, and a medley that sandwiches Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” between a pair of songs from the late 1920s. The latter includes an imitation of Rudy Vallee singing Dylan, and Dylan singing Vallee.

Equally incredible is the genesis of these tapes in 1976 sessions, recorded by a 16-year-old Richard Barone (of Bongos fame) in a Florida hotel room and a ramshackle studio. Having discovered Tiny Tim playing a gig at a local hotel, Barone made his acquaintance and was treated to a personal after-show performance. He quickly parlayed this into an opportunity to record Tiny Tim in his room, and then more formally in a local studio. The tapes sat on Barone’s self for 33 years awaiting release. There are a few artifacts of the informal recording circumstances (e.g., a bumped microphone here and there), but the sound quality is generally superb. More importantly, the performances are casual and heartfelt, without the artifice of a clock ticking away a label’s dollars.

Tiny Tim sang solo to the accompaniment of his ukulele, but for the title track Barone post-produced a magnificent backing arrangement that includes additional ukuleles, accordion, percussion, bass and a happy chorus of backing singers. Tim’s performance is so effervescent as to feel like it was feeding off the energy of the backing musicians and vocalists. What’s revealed in all of these performances is that while Tiny Tim and the songs he loved may have been novel, they were a lot deeper than novelties. His comedic persona often obscured the seriousness and deep respect with which he approached early American music and its performers, and though his falsetto vocals were played to the public as a gimmick, they were of a piece with the music. Tiny Tim was a greater musician than the public typically saw, and it took a wide-eyed 16-year-old to get it down on tape. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Tiny Tim Memorial Site

The Avett Brothers: I And Love And You

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AvettBrothers_IAndLoveAndYouRick Rubin captures country-rock brothers in their zone

The North Carolina-bred Avett Brothers, Scott and Seth, initially developed their rustic country-folk as a sideline to the rock band, Nemo. With the addition of bassist Bob Crawford, they embarked on a career as a trio with 2001’s Country Was. Subsequent albums and EPs have alternated between studio and live releases, with the albums gaining complexity and the EPs (particularly The Gleam II) providing a place for more sparsely arranged works. By 2007, with the release of Emotionalism, the trio had expanded greatly on their acoustic-folk roots, adding guests who laid drums, cello and electric guitars into the mix, and stretching themselves out to pop, rock, and blues.

What’s remained constant across all of the Avett’s records is the starkness and lack of artifice in their vocal performances. Working solo and in tandem they sing with the full-throated conviction of students pouring their hearts into a variety school performance. They strain to hit high notes and recede to delicate moments of lilt with absolutely no hint of self-consciousness. They emote in a speak-singing style that’s almost conversational. The vocal conviction fits particular well with the Avett’s new recordings as they transition from indie darlings to Rick Rubin-produced major label act.

The endorsement of Rubin and his American Recordings label hasn’t gone to the Avetts’ heads. Instead they’ve taken opportunity to question themselves, to parlay the slap on the back into an album full of songs about transition itself. They draw upon themes of physical relocation, emotional realignment, coupling and uncoupling, growing up and growing old. As Seth Avett writes in the tiny-typed liner notes, this is an album of dualities, “both a milestone and an arrival.” It’s an album filled with questions, and in its certitude of uncertainty, a big helping of self awareness. Its moods range through exhilaration, doubt, melancholy and depression; it’s both contemplative and expressive, underwritten by a dynamic musical palate of folk, pop, twang and even Violent Femmes-styled folk-punk.

Fans that worried the big city producer would recast the small-town singers as something they aren’t can rest easy. Rick Rubin has always staked his job as a producer as one of anticipating recording rather than hands-on knob twirling in the control room. His pre-production regimen focuses artists on preparing their material and themselves, leaving them free from decision making in the studio. The resulting performances are true to the music and its emotion rather than the studio and its artificial environment. Rubin captures musical acts in the zone, as he’s done here. The changes from their earlier albums are audible but unimposing – less banjo, more subtle use of strings and organ, and inventive touches of harmonium and tuba. It’s not the rustic acoustic sounds of their beginnings, but neither was Emotionalism.

Rather than pushing the Avett’s ten steps forward, Rubin has edged them into refining and consolidating their greatness to date. Their vocals are a shade more crisp and up-front, their songs a notch freer to explore wordiness, odd lyrical meters and chorus-less structures, and their musicality is opened to lush acoustic strumming, impassioned vocal wails, raggedy pop-punk and string-lined productions. As is Rubin’s way, however, none of this obscures the basic premise of the band’s music, as the brothers’ voices remain undressed, lyrically and sonically revealed to the world. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Stream “I and Love and You”
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Country Music Fun Time Activity Book

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CountryMusicFunTimeActivityBookHilarious collection of Country music-themed activities for all ages

No matter how hard you try, your children will spend their teens hating the music of your youth. But if you plant some seeds early on, they may just come around, ironically at first, and with their ears and heart by the time they reach their twenties. The Country Music Fun Time Activity Book is a great place to start, giving children a chance to become acquainted with country music legends new and old; this is the sort of activity book they’ll treasure as adults, wishing they had a clean copy for their own kids. Activities include connect-the-dots (Lyle Lovett’s hair, George Strait’s hat and David Allan Coe’s beard), picture coloring (Kenny Rogers, Clint Black, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Charley Pride, and more) navigating mazes (help Brooks find Dunn, return Buck Owens to Bakersfield, help Willie Nelson evade the taxman). There’s an alt.country crossword puzzle, Madlib-styled fill-in-the-blanks (Hank Williams’ “Move it On Over” and Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”), word searches, drawing grids (Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams), a Hocus Pocus-styled spot-the-differences puzzle, codes, anagrams, and a chance to decorate the back of Gram Parsons’ jumpsuit. This book is clever, informative and fun, and whether you set it on a coffee table, stuff it in the map pocket of your eighteen-wheeler, or let your 4-year-old have at it with crayons, it will spark many smiles. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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