Bon Scott was so compelling as the howling front-man of AC/DC that it’s nearly impossible to imagine the more tender pop vocals of his earlier years. Compiled here are twenty-two tracks that Scott recorded with his earlier groups, The Valentines and Fraternity, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Highlights include an Everlys-ish take on Phil Spector’s “To Know Him is to Love Him,” a soulful version of Arthur Alexander’s “Every Day I Have to Cry,” covers of the Small Faces, Soft Machine and Steppenwolf, and songs from the Easybeats’ Vanda & Young.
Coming to grips with the experiences that define you
Acid-folk artist Tom Wilson and producer Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies) have conjured a dark electric sound for Wilson’s third album under the Lee Harvey Osmond name. Timmins’ production layers piano and guitar over a heavy bottom end, creating a musically cavernous space in which Wilson touches upon the poetic delivery of Leonard Cohen, the downtown sound of Tom Waits, and the more frightening regions of Captain Beefheart’s growl. Wilson is hypnotic as he stretches out over rhythm-rich tracks of drums and bass, pushed along by reeds and guitar, and punctuated by echos, reverb and stabs of backward guitar.
The acid and folk of acid-folk are heard back to back in “Oh the Gods†and “Dreams Come and Go,†as the spacey guitars and close-miked vocal of the former give way to the acoustic picking of the latter. The contrast is stark, no doubt purposely so, but with a blue mood that ties the songs together. The closing couplet of “Black Spruce†and “Bottom of Our Love†offers the same dynamic, the former expanding into a flute and blues jam, and the latter a weary acoustic lament. It’s the sort of contrast Led Zeppelin employed, though with vocals whose power is in their reserve rather than their ostentation.
“Loser Without Your Love†is both assured and distracted as it’s forced to admit “I’m just a loser without your love… I guess.†The vocal ellipsis doubts the statement’s sincerity, and the song’s instrumental playout leaves time for additional pondering. It’s a great opening to an album whose performance is comfortable with its confessions, if not always certain of their truth. Echo and distortion on the guitars and voices balance the supple rhythm grooves, and the acoustic bass and vibraphone of “Blue Moon Drive†soothe cool, whispered vocals that still manage to ring with passion.
Touring as a member of the dBs and the Big Star Thirdtribute cast, Harris had the opportunity to spend time making music with (and playing the music of) many of pop’s purest purveyors. His second full-length album is indebted to the Beatles, particularly on the Revolver-esque opener “End of the Rope†and the descending line of “Shadetree,†but you can also hear the influence of the dBs, Big Star, Badfinger and many others throughout the album. It’s not a period piece, but Harris makes no attempt to hide his musical lineage. The clarinet-led breakdown of “Lies†echoes the music hall influences that also struck Paul McCartney and Ray Davies, and the crooned vocal of “Out of the Blue†suggests Nilsson and Eric Carmen.
Harris’ southern connections surface in the soulful horns of side one’s closer (that’s right, the CD divides the song list into two five-song halves) “High Times,†sounding like something the Box Tops would have recorded for a B-side. The vibe continues in the organ lined “Rumor,†with sophisticated drumming and a lonely trumpet adding dramatic touches. You can continue to spot influences (early-70s Fleetwood Mac on the coincidentally named “Rumor,†and Todd Rundgren on the closing “Spanish Mossâ€), but Harris runs through his musical gears so smoothly as to turn his antecedents into jazz-like quotes rather than whole-cloth sources. The shadings have grown finer and more diverse in the six years since his debut, but the craft has been in place since Man of Few Words hit the racks in 2010.
Following Justin Townes Earle’s advice to “write what you knowâ€
Nashvillian Brian Ritchey has been something of a chameleon as he’s rambled through Americana (E.P.), garage pop and singer-songwriter crooning (If I Were a Painter), and even an ambitious concept album (No Way Out of This House). It’s a sophisticated. disparate catalog threaded with a Southern sensibility that links to this latest full-length release. His earlier notes of Americana, garage blues, soul and singer-songwriter are here, alongside twangier bits of country and hummable pop-rock, but the arrangements are more straightforward and more quickly ingratiating than his last outing.
By 1978, Sarah Vaughan was standing at the confluence of nearly a decade of renewal. Her rebirth began with a shift to the West Coast in 1970, and included new recording contracts, first with Mainstream and later with Pablo, the 1972 introduction of “Send in the Clowns†to her repertoire, orchestral performances of the Gershwin catalog that netted her both an Emmy and a Grammy, and a 1978 documentary, Listen to the Sun. That same year, NPR’s Jazz Alive! caught Vaughan in this New Orleans showcase with her stellar rhythm trio of pianist Carl Schroeder, drummer Jimmy Cobb and bassist Walter Booker.
At 54, Vaughan was at a peak of artistic vision, vocal quality and technical control, and is nearly telepathic is communicating with her well-seasoned band. Her extraordinary vocal range was completely intact, and age had only added new shadings to a voice that was born rich with character. The set list was stocked primarily with the standards that had long been her metier, but her improvisational skills made every rendition fresh and seem extemporaneous. The original multitrack masters of her show at Rosy’s Jazz Club, including previously unbroadcast performances, remained in the collection of the show’s original procuer, Tim Owens, until this first-ever commercial release.
Vaughan is heard here to be uncommonly at ease on stage, joking with the audience and even riffing on Ella Fitzgerald’s “A-Tisket A-Tasket†in response to a wayward request. But when she sings, she’s all business, whether revving up the ballad “I’ll Remember April†into a scat-singing showcase, or stretching out with the band on the side one closer, “Sarah’s Blues.†The dazzling energy of her fast numbers is often paired with ballads whose tempos provide opportunity for exquisitely manicured notes. The control she exerts over pitch and tone is incredible as she annotates the smooth, beautiful core of her voice with vibrato.
There’s never any doubt who’s starring on stage (despite Vaughan’s habit of jokingly introducing herself as Carmen McCrae), but she was generous with her band, offering them spotlights and weaving their musical ideas into her vocals. The trio setting provides a flexible and surprisingly rich setting for Vaughan, allowing her to improvise and have the band follow, instead of weaving herself into a larger ensemble’s charted arrangement. Her voice provides both a lead a a fourth instrument, and pairs beautifully with Booker’s bass for a duet of “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon).â€
The set list reaches back to Vaughan’s earliest days for Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne’s “Time After Time,†stretching into high notes that soar with operatic splendor. Disc one peaks with Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,†stripped of Paul Griffin’s 1974 pop arrangement, and expanded into a tour de force ballad. The song would eventually cap Vaughan’s live sets, but by 1978 it was already a deeply emotional moment for both the singer and her audience. The only thing missing from this recording is the ovation that must have followed. Disc one closes with the instrument jam “Sarah’s Blues,†showing off how high this band could fly.
Disc two includes two pieces from Vaughan’s Gershwin songbook, the signature “The Man I Love†and a take on “Fascinating Rhythm†that somehow manages to break into a minuet. A pair of Rodgers & Hart songs showcase two very different sides of the group: “I Could Write a Book†swings as the band vamps behind Vaughan’s improvised lyrics, while “My Funny Valentine†searches for new layers and shadings in a familiar melody. Continual renewal was key to Vaughan’s stage greatness, and it made her chestnuts tower ever higher, year after year.
The one then-new piece in the set was “If You Went Away,†from Vaughan’s album I Love Brazil!, and while it’s a nice addition, it’s almost as if Vaughan needed to sing it for a decade or two before she’d really start to plumb its depths. Vaughan picked material that stood up to reappraisal and reinterpretation, and it’s fascinating to hear how her own approach to songs changed over decades of exploration. But unlike the Groundhog Day chase of a single perfect day, Vaughan’s perfection was ephemeral and of-the-moment, and captured in uniquely colored performances like this.
This Philadelphia quartet’s first two tracks (“Dance (Get Off Your Ass)” and “Rollerdyke“) are now expanded with four additions into a eponymous EP, streamable below, downloadable from Bandcamp, and buyable as a vinyl 12″ from Third Uncle. The new songs are just as mesmerizing in their nods to 1960s girl groups and lush 1990s alternatives run through a dreamy DIY psych aesthetic. Great stuff!
And while you’re here, check out their live set for WXPN:
A 1990s Nashville artist finds his soul down a rough road
Singer-songwriter Bob Woodruff garnered good notices for his mid-90s major label country albums Dreams & Saturday Nights and Desire Road, and then fell largely out of sight. He finally resurfaced for an indie album in 2011, and recorded and released the original version of this album in Sweden in 2013. Luckily, Woodruff’s soul- and country-tinged rock is timeless, and a 2016 reintroduction to this release is as welcome as the less-widely circulated first blush three years ago. Returning to music after several years of hard living, Woodruff not only sounds seasoned, but full of life experience to funnel into both the words and melodic tone of his songs.
As good as Woodruff’s originals are – and we’ll get to those in a minute – his slow, country-soul crawl through the Supremes’ “Stop in the Name of Love†is revelatory. The song’s opening guitar figure gives no clue as to what’s coming, but as Woodruff launches into the lyric’s plea with a slight hitch in his voice, the guitar turns to chords whose familiarity will provoke the listener’s memory. The tempo is similar to Jonell Mosser’s cover from the film Hope Floats, but underlined by Clas Olofsson’s pedal steel, Woodruff’s vocal mourns a relationship that’s already finished, rather than one that might be saved through confrontation. Among the song’smanyvariedrenditions, this one’s a tour de force.
Woodruff sounds a bit like Bob Delevante, and a bit like Willie Nile, pulling in rock, country, soul and blues influences that range from the Byrdsian “I’m the Train†to the New Orleans funk “Bayou Girl†to the crooned southern soul “There’s Something There.†The opening “I Didn’t Know†strikes a tone of recovery, with happy memories reawakened by a second chance. The title song recounts rougher years, resolving to remember the past without getting stuck in its decaying trajectory. Woodruff longs for connection to others, to a better self, to a past whose fissures were of his own making, and most of all, to the salvation of hope.
Inspired fictionalized autobiography of Jimmie Rodgers
Paul Burch’s semi-fictional autobiography of Jimmie Rodgers isn’t nostalgic, it’s of a piece with the era it essays. His song cycle captures Rodgers’ times in a long form album that is, in today’s per-track streaming world, its own throwback. Burch knits together the sites, sounds, people and places that greeted Rodgers as he rode the rails and traversed the highways that led to tent shows, recording studios and international fame. The story follows Rodgers from his boyhood home of Meridian, Mississippi to his untimely death in New York City, creating an autobiography that Burch characterizes as “honest, but not necessarily true.â€
The songs weave a loose narrative arc, but the album is best experienced as an immersive kaleidoscope of sounds and images. The stories take the listener traveling with Rodgers as he gains experience and channels it into creating folk, country, ragtime, blues and early jazz. The album’s guitar, bass, fiddle and drums, are augmented by clarinet, saxophone, trombone, tuba, bouzouki and Hawaiian steel guitar, fleshing out the wide world of music with which Rodgers’ communed. The arrangements swell and narrow in instrumentation, further echoing the range of combos with which Rodgers himself recording.
The nostalgic memories of Meridian that open the album quickly disappear in the rearview mirror as Rodgers hits the road in his V16 Cadillac. Burch maps Rodgers’ path through travelling shows, backstage surprises, depression-era social politics, gambling misfortune and a child’s untimely death. “To Paris (With Regrets)†imagines Rodgers longing to visit the City of Light, while the latter third of the album finds Rodgers’ health and commercial fortunes spiraling to their end. The instrumental transition “Sign of Distress†signals the beginning of the end, but there’s one more day of life as Rodgers visits Coney Island in “Fast Fuse Mama,†and life after death in the apologetic letter home, “Sorry I Can’t Stay.â€
Stirring duets from two Baton Rouge singer-songwriters
Parker and James are Baton Rouge singer-songwriters whose separate careers have twined for this EP. Written together, and sung in tight harmony, the pair sounds as if they’ve been duetting since childhood. Though built mostly on folk-styled acoustic guitars, the melodies, mood and Paul Buller’s pedal steel give the album a country edge. The EP combines five originals with an arrangement of the traditional “Moonshiner.†The latter has been a staple of the folk scene since the early ‘60s, and Parker and James’ arrangement brings to mind Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album with both their harmonies and the fragility of James’ solo flights.
Hot 1963 R&B-styled surf and go-go
