What if, after cutting his musical teeth in Phoenix, Lee Hazlewood had turned East to Nashville, rather than West to Los Angeles? And what if he’d met Nancy Sinatra in MusicCity rather than the City of Angels? The answer might sound like a twist on the Western-tinged landscapes of “Summer Wine” and “Some Velvet Morning,” and it might have sounded something like the opening track of this Nashville band’s debut. Vocalist Jessica Maros’ sings a bit more ethereally than Nancy, but with the same confident sass that was catnip to Sinatra’s fans. Maros’ cohort Tyler James fills Hazlewood’s role as vocal straight man, but with a grittier rock ‘n’ roll kick and a haunting trumpet sound that evokes the sun-baked deserts of Sergio Leone and forlorn mood of Bobby Hackett.
Willie and Family stroll through the Great American Songbook
Willie Nelson sang from the Great American Songbook as early as 1976’s The Sound in Your Mind, and with 1978’s Stardust he demonstrated a unique affinity for pop standards. He continued to draw on this material for decades to come, including 1981’s Over the Rainbow, 1983’s Without a Song and 1988’s What a Wonderful World. His latest collection of pop and country standards is a low-key affair without backing vocals or orchestrations, leaving Nelson’s voice isolated out front of his Family band. His idiosyncratic phrasing continues to serve this type of material wonderfully, but unlike the statement of Stardust, this set is more of a Saturday night jam than a staged performance. With his sister Bobbie and longtime compadres Mickey Raphael and Paul English on board, the sessions feel as if Nelson’s calling out favorites for the group to pick up. The players slide easily into familiar songs, and though the solos can be tentative, the warmth these musicians share, Nelson’s deep feeling for the material and his inimitable singing are all worth hearing.
Motherlode of previously unreleased Big Star mixes
The slow catching flame of Big Star’s belated renown has recently been stoked by a feature-length documentary, and now by this Record Store Day double-LP of period demos and alternate mixes, and a few remixes made for the film. Depending on your viewpoint, the new mixes may be revelatory and revisionist, or both. The period material, however, will be welcomed by all of the band’s fans. For those who’ve been wearing out copies of #1 Record, Radio City and Third since their original appearances on vinyl, even the slightest variations in these tracks will prick your ear with something new. The quality of the original recordings and the condition of the tapes remains impressive, and the opportunity to hear these variations on much loved themes (decorated in a few spots with studio chatter) is a rare opportunity. What appeared to the public as highly polished diamonds turned out to be – perhaps unsurprisingly if you ever stopped to think about it – the results of a lot of intention and hard work. The seeds of the final tracks are here, even in the demo of “O My Soul,” but not in the balance that’s been etched into fans’ ears.
Bonus-laden reissue of Steve Forbert’s first two albums
Steve Forbert fell from recording star escape velocity with surprising quickness. His 1978 debut, Alive on Arrival, was a precociously well-formed introduction, recorded only two years after leaving his native Mississippi, and the 1979 follow-up, Jackrabbit Slim, was refined with a sufficiently light hand by producer John Simon to garner both critical plaudits and commercial success for the single “Romeo’s Tune.” But his next two albums failed to satisfy his label’s ambitions and a subsequent disagreement led to his being dropped and embargoed from recording for several years. Forbert continued to perform, and picked up his recording career in 1988, but the mainstream possibilities charted by these first two albums was never really re-established. The loss of commercial trajectory probably induced few tears from his fans, though, as he built a terrific catalog across thirty-five years of recording.
What still must have puzzled the faithful is the time delay in seeing these titles reissued on CD, with Jackrabbit Slim not having entered the digital market until 1996. Both albums have seen spotty availability over the years, with downloadable MP3s [12] finally turning up in 2011. Blue Corn’s 35th-anniversary reissue not only returns full-fidelity, hard CDs back to the market, but augments the original track lists with a dozen studio outtakes and live cuts. A few of the bonuses were cherry-picked from a reissue Forbert has available through his website, but this two-fer is a perfect introduction. From the start Forbert was witty and smart, but understandable and easily empathized with. There’s are flecks of Loudon Wainwright’s humor and Paul Simon’s poetic connection, but without the East Coast archness of either. Forbert was neither wide-eyed nor jaded, but instead showed off a measure of introspection and awareness unusually deep for a twenty-something.
Listening to the earnest folksiness of his debut, it’s hard to imagine Forbert tramping about the mean streets of New York City and dropping in to play at CBGB. Steve Burgh’s production adds welcome punch to the recordings, but Forbert’s guitar, harmonica and vocals retain a folk-singer’s intimacy in front of the guitar, bass, drums, piano and organ. Incredibly, both albums were recorded live-in-the-studio with no overdubs, an impressive feat for a road-seasoned band, but even more so for a young artist’s initial studio work. The recording method pays additional dividends in the completeness of the bonus tracks; as complete as the original albums have always felt, the bonus tracks assimilate easily and must have been tough to cut at the time.
And if you’ve never seen it, check out this live version of “Born Under a Bad Sign,” recorded with Stevie Ray Vaughan for the Canadian television program In Session:
After 45 years, Billy Gibbons and the Moving Sidewalks reunited to play a set in New York City on March 30, 2013. You can find several audience videos on YouTube, including this one of their best-known tune, “99th Floor”:
Nancy & Lee meet Hope & Ennio
