Tag Archives: Blues

Brian Olive: Brian Olive

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BrianOlive_BrianOliveTuneful mix of rock, glam, psych, soul, jazz and exotica

Brian Olive (as Oliver Henry) explored British Invasion and American garage rock as a member of the Cincinnati-based Greenhornes and Detroit-based Soledad Brothers, playing sax, flute, guitar, piano and organ, as well as singing and writing songs. On his solo debut he expands beyond the gritty hard-rock and reworked blues of Blind Faith and mid-period Stones to include healthy doses of psych, glam, and most surprisingly, soul and exotica. Influences of the New York Dolls, T. Rex and Meddle-era Pink Floyd are easy to spot, but they’re mixed with touches of Stax-style punch, South American rhythms, breezy jet-set vocals and jazz saxophones. It’s intoxicating to hear droning saxophones transform from big band to glammy psychedelia on “High Low,” and the acoustic guitar and drowsy vocals of “Echoing Light” bring to mind the continental air of Pink Floyd’s “St. Tropez.”

This is a rock album steeped in the heavy sounds of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, mixed with the sort of experimental pairings Bill Graham pioneered on bills at the Fillmore. But rather than segueing the jazz, blues, soul and international influences across an evening, Olive invents ways to weave them together within a song, repurposing non-rock sounds in support of guitar, bass and drums. Olive’s voice stretches over his words, ranging from introspective and spent to emotionally propulsive, but the lyrics are difficult to understand, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’s actually singing about. Still, even without a simple storyline or easy sing-a-long, this is musically rich. Perhaps a lyric sheet could accompany the next album? [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | There is Love
Brian Olive’s MySpace Page

Ray Charles : A Message From the People

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RayCharles_MessageFromThePeopleBrother Ray takes stock of America in 1972

Originally released in 1972, A Message from the People, was one of Charles’ last albums for his own Tangerine imprint. The ten songs, arranged by Quincy Jones, Sid Feller and Mike Post, take stock of post-60s America, consolidating the progress of the civil rights movement, but not casting a blind eye to the continuing plight of a black man in America. The album opens with a rousing version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Based on a poem used to introduce Booker T. Washington at a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday in 1900, the song version was adopted by the NAACP as the Negro National Anthem, and became a favorite at black churches. The celebratory mood fades with Charles’ powerful cover of the Whisper’s “Seems Like I Gotta Do Wrong” and its contemplation of injustice and social invisibility.

Charles continues to alternate hope and concern as the gospel-soul “Heaven Help Us All” gives way to the questioning “There Will Be No Peace Without All Men as One.” The album’s second half finds Charles’ stretching into pop material with covers of Melanie (“What Have They Done to My Song, Ma”), Dion (“Abraham, Martin and John”), and John Denver (“Take Me Home, Country Roads”). None are revelations, though Charles mines a deep vein of soulful sorrow with Dion’s work. The album closes with a rendition of “America the Beautiful” that would eventually become one of Charles’ signature performance pieces; at the time, however, it failed to attract much attention. This is a good album, but doesn’t live up to the promise of its first three tracks. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Ray Charles: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Volumes 1 & 2

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RayCharles_ModernSounds12The genius of soul re-imagines the Nashville songbook

Originally released on ABC-Paramount in 1962, Modern Sounds in Country and Western, was a revelation, both for fans of country music and for fans of Ray Charles. The former had never heard their favorites orchestrated with the depth of soul brought to the table by Ray Charles, and fans of the genius singer had never before heard him indulging his love of country songwriting so deeply. Nashville had adapted to brass and strings in an attempt to create crossover hits, but their charts and players never swung with the sort of big band finesse and bravado of these arrangements, and their vocalists rarely found the grooves mined by Charles. The second volume, issued the same year, follows the same template, with Nashville standards rearranged and conducted by Gerald Wilson and Marty Paich, and recording split between New York and Hollywood.

Having been a country music fan since his youth, Charles evidently didn’t hear any line that would separate him from the Nashville songbook. His recording supervisor, Sid Feller, was tasked with gathering songs, and ABC, thinking the whole ideas was a lark, left the pair alone to follow Charles’ muse. The album spun off four hit singles, including a chart-topping remake of Don Gibson’s “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and a heartbreaking cover of Cindy Walker’s “You Don’t Know Me” that fell just one rung shy of the top. Marty Paich’s strings brilliantly underline and shadow Charles’ vocals, adding atmosphere without ever intruding or overwhelming the singer or the song. Track after track, Charles, his arrangers and his band find wholly new ways through these songs, turning “Half as Much” into mid-tempo jazz, layering string flourishes into “Born to Lose,” laying the blues on “It Makes No Difference Now” and punching up “Bye Bye Love” and “Hey Good Lookin’” with big band sizzle.

Volume two may not have been as much of a surprise, but neither was it a second helping. Gerald Wilson’s soul vision of “You Are My Sunshine,” expertly rendered by Charles and a swinging horn section, leaves few traces of the song’s mid-20th century origin. Charles, spurred by backing vocals from the Raeletts, sounds like he’s reeling off a personal tale of devotion rather than singing someone else’s lyric. The Raeletts provide an edge to side one’s New York sessions, with the Jack Halloran Singers sitting in on side two’s Hollywood takes. Both album sides yielded hit singles, including a pained reading of “Take These Chains From My Heart,” and a slow, mournful take on “Your Cheating Heart.” As with the first volume, Charles finds a directness in country songwriting that matches the expression he developed with the blues.

Country music and Charles’ career each received a boost from these albums. Nashville expanded its audience outside its core region, Nashville songwriters found new ears for their songs, and Charles gained an influx of fans who might otherwise have never bought R&B records. These were all lasting marks, as Charles’ fame continued to expand, and country music gained new flavors for its crossover dreams. Concord’s reissue includes the two volumes’ original twenty-four tracks, full-panel cover art (front and back!), original liner notes for each, and new liners by Bill Dahl. Volume one previously appeared as a standalone CD in the 1980s, but the complete volume two only appeared on the (out-of-print) box set The Complete Country & Western Recordings 1959-1986. This single disc is the perfect way to get Charles’ 1962 country sessions in one sweet package. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Creedence Clearwater Revival: The Concert

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CCR_TheConcertCreedence live on their home turf in 1970

After reissuing bonus-track laden CDs of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s first six albums, Fantasy’s new owner, the Concord Music Group, adds a straight (no bonus tracks) reissue of the group’s 1970 concert at the Oakland (California) Coliseum. While many bands’ live shows sound like their records, in Creedence’s case their studio albums had the muscle of their live shows. The difference may be lost on some, but it was never lost on the group’s audiences, who found themselves overwhelmed by the power of the rhythm battery and entranced by John Fogerty’s guitar playing.

With four albums under their belts and Cosmo’s Factory on the way (“Travellin’ Band” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” are included here), the live set list was essentially a greatest hits package. The two non-Fogerty compositions are the blues “The Night Time is the Right Time,” and the traditional “Midnight Special.” The latter may as well have been a Fogerty tune, given how well it fits with his original tunes. By 1970 Creedence had moved away from the Fillmore-styled jams of their earlier days, with only the nine-minute “Keep on Chooglin’” getting a lengthy exploration.

Given their prowess as a band, it’s a shame they didn’t continue to stretch out more on stage, but with their audience accumulating listeners from radio, the two- and three-minute hits became the public part of their catalog. The short clips of chatter and song introductions show Fogerty to be an engaging front-man, backed by a powerhouse band and fueled by a killer song catalog. This isn’t a revelatory live album, such as the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, but it is a true snapshot of the Great American Band at the height of their powers. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Covers the Classics

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CCR_CoversTheClassicsTwelve covers cherry-picked from Creedence’s albums

Early in their career as both a live band and a recording unit, Creedence was fond of covering material they loved. They rarely had hits this way, but they often managed to absorb even well known hits into the swampy Creedence universe. This new collection pulls together twelve covers that have been cherry-picked from Creedence’s studio albums. The only hits in the lot are single edits of Dale Hawkins’ “Suzie Q,” and the post-breakup release of Cosmos’ Factory’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine.” Both singles forgo the lengthy psychedelic jamming that made them such essential album tracks. The rest of the collection is a good look at the group’s influences, but only a few of the covers beyond the two singles, notably “The Midnight Special,” and “Cotton Fields” truly benefit from the Creedence treatment. When mixed in with Fogerty’s originals, the original album’s cover songs provided linkage to his songwriting and performing influences, but drawn onto a separate disc, they don’t always add up to anything as profound as the group’s originals. With only 12-tracks and a 40-minute running time this collection is no substitute for any of the group’s first five original albums. If you want hits, you’re better off with Creedence’s greatest original hits rather than Creedence’s covers of other people’s greatest hits. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

The Lonely H: Concrete Class

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lonelyh_concreteclassClassic-rock wonder kids find blues and country roots

Three albums into their career, the classic-rock wonder kids of Washington’s Olympic peninsula may finally be outrunning the novelty of their young years. The fealty with which their music reaches back to meaty 1970s guitar rock may still throw some for a loop, but those who’ve flattened the grooves on albums from Thin Lizzy, Free, Bad Company, and Bob Seger will appreciate this new helping of riff-rock. Those who’ve followed the band through their first two albums will find their predilection for multi-voice harmonies and Queen-like theatrics replaced here by rootiser influences that suggest The Band on vocal tunes like “The River.” Others, like “Singer” reflect the West Coast tempo and style of the Eagles, and the twangy “Girl From Jersey” recalls the Canadian one-hit wonders, The Stampeders. Vocalist Mark Fredson still sounds a bit like Savoy Brown’s Chris Youlden, but the group’s musical evolution retains the ’70s vibe of their earlier work while opening themselves to the blues and roots sides of guitar rock. The evocation of a 35-year-old musical ethos is so seamless as to suggest The Lonely H arrived in 2009 by time machine. Their expanded musical reach and guitarist Eric Whitman’s Allman-styled mustache are perfect additions to the group’s musical ethos, denim bellbottoms and post-hippie long hair. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Diggin’ a Hole
The Lonely H’s MySpace Page

The Belleville Outfit: Time to Stand

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belleville stand coverGypsy jazz, blue swing and country harmony

Though the Belleville Outfit makes their home in Austin, Texas, three of the members originally hail from South Carolina, and two more were drawn from school connections in New Orleans. Only violinist Phoebe Hunt is an Austin native (and a UT graduate to boot!), and the Southern roots help account for the original flavor in the band’s swing, particularly in Rob Teter’s pinched, Satchmo-style vocals. Along with the long-running Hot Club of Cowtown, this sextet has become one of Austin’s foremost proponents of gypsy jazz. The group hots things up with Reinhardt-influenced guitar runs and dramatic Grapelli-like violin flurries, but they also pick more ruminative mid-tempo blues, add keyboards (piano, B3 and Rhodes), vary their vocals from sly old-timey to fetching country harmonies, and make room for a few instrumental string jams.

As on last year’s debut, the group’s written most of the songs, adding covers of the Louis Prima/Keely Smith hit “Nothing’s Too Good for My Baby” and an up-tempo take on Walter Hyatt’s “Outside Looking Out.” The originals strike immediately with their melodic and instrumental complexity, but themes of falling, being in, running from, lamenting and losing love provide Teter and Hunt words over which to stretch their solo and harmony vocals. The jazzier tracks have a cool-cat hipness that’s balanced by earthier harmonies on the country tunes. The group’s hot-picking is impressive, but the mid-tempo twang of “Safe” and countrypolitan harmony of “Will This End in Tears” are equally fetching. The album closes with the uncharacteristically pop production of “Love Me Like I Love You,” suggesting the Belleville Outfit has a lot of musical range yet to explore. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Sunday Morning
The Belleville Outfit’s Home Page
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Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women: Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women

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davealvin_guiltywomenAlvin kicks up new sparks with guilty women

Having debuted this all-female backing lineup at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in 2008, Dave Alvin and his estrogen-packing band have waxed a gem. Christy McWilson and Amy Farris’ harmonies and duets prove compelling partners to Alvin’s baritone on an album of blues, rock, folk and a few surprises. Chief among the surprises is the Cajun fiddle and pedal steel arrangement of Alvin’s “Marie Marie,” rendered so convincingly that it will take you a second to remember the Blasters signature original. From there the group comes out blasting with the galloping electric folk-blues “California’s Burning,” an allegorical tale that provides a requiem for the Golden State’s cash-strapped coffers. Alvin and McWilson duet like Richard and Mimi Fariña here, and Cindy Cashdollar adds some fiery slide playing.

The passing of friend and bandmate Chris Gaffney was one of Alvin’s motivations for forming this alternative to his Guilty Men, and he’s obviously in a reflective, memorial mood. “Downey Girl” remembers fellow Downey high school student Karen Carpenter and in his middle age Alvin finds a sympathetic appraisal of her fame. Nostalgia for young-pup years has always threaded through Alvin’s work, and with “Boss of the Blues” he ties together a nostalgic memory of Joe Turner with Turner’s own nostalgic memories of the golden years of the blues. One of the album’s happiest and transformative memories, of being dropped off at a Jimi Hendrix concert, opens with the “Folsom Prison” rewrite, “My mother told me, be a good boy, and don’t do nothing wrong.”

Christy McWilson (Dynette Set, Pickets) sings lead on a pair of her own originals, “Weight of the World” and “Potter’s Field,” continuing the mood of struggle that pervaded her two Alvin-produced solo albums. A real standout is her up-tempo duet with Alvin on a cover of Tim Hardin’s oft-covered “Don’t Make Promises.” Alvin and McWilson have paired for ’60s covers before, notably Moby Grape’s “805” on 2002’s Bed of Roses, but this one’s extended acoustic guitar jam really hits the mark. The closing cover of “Que Sera, Sera” suggests Alvin may be ready to move past his grief, but the song’s fatalism is strangely at odds with the rocking country blues arrangement.

When he’s not fondly remembering happier times, Alvin sings low through much of the album, reaching a level of quiet introspection on “These Times We’re Living In” that brings to mind Leonard Cohen. The loss of Chris Gaffney has left a mark on Alvin, and for now at least, his music. His backing band is not just a terrifically talented quintet deeply steeped in the roots of their shared music, but a place for Alvin to rest his soul and rethink his relationship to the Guilty Men minus one. This is more than a temporary respite; it’s a revitalizing step towards artistic and personal rediscovery. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Nana and Jimi
Dave Alvin Home Page #1
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King Wilkie: King Wilkie Presents- The Wilkie Family Singers

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kingwilkie_singersAudacious pop concept by former bluegrass wunderkind

If you caught King Wilkie’s bluegrass debut Broke, and somehow managed to miss their break with orthodoxy on 2007’s Low Country Suite, you’re in for a really big surprise. With the original group disbanded, and founding member Reid Burgess relocated to New York City, the band’s name has been redeployed as the front for this stylistically zig-zagging concept album. The Wilkie Family Singers are an imagined co-habitating, musically-inclined family fathered by shipping magnate Jude Russell Wilkie, and filled out by a wife, six children, a cousin, two friends and two pets.

In reality the assembled group includes Burgess, longtime collaborator John McDonald, multi-instrumentalist Steve Lewis, and guest appearances by Peter Rowan, David Bromberg, John McEuen, Robyn Hitchcock, Abigail Washburn and Sam Parton. And rather than constructing a storyline or song-cycle, Burgess wrote songs that give expression to the family’s life and backstory. As he explains, “Jude Russell Wilkie, Sr. had success with a Great Lakes shipping business, and becomes the father to a great family, whose normal familial roles aren’t neatly defined as they grow older. Their insular lifestyle and wealth has them in a sort of time warp. They’re wedged in limbo between past and future. Too big to hold mom’s hand or ride on dad’s shoulders, but still somehow too small to leave their childhood house.”

Much as the Beatles used Sgt. Pepper as a backdrop to inform the mood of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Burgess works from his sketch to conjure a family photo album rather than a written history. There are snapshots of togetherness, isolation, and stolen moments of solitary time, there’s lovesick pining, unrequited longing for the larger world, lives stunted in adolescence, violent dreams and medicinal coping. The band ranges over an impressive variety of styles that include acoustic country, blues and folk, rustic Americana, Dixieland jazz, ’50s-tinged throwbacks and ’70s-styled production pop. There’s even some back-porch picking here, but this edition of King Wilkie has much grander ambitions than to embroider the bluegrass handed down by Bill Monroe. The festival circuit’s loss is pop music’s gain.

Burgess paints the family as lyrical motifs and musical colors rather than descriptive profiles. The latter might have been more immediately satisfying but would have quickly turned stagey. Instead, the family’s dynamic is spelled out in small pieces, fitting the broad range of musical styles to create an album that plays beautifully from beginning to end. The songs stand on their own, but the family’s presence is felt in the flow of the album’s tracks. Casa Nueva hits a homerun with their maiden release, and King Wilkie proves itself a daring band whose next step should be highly anticipated. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Hey Old Man
King Wilkie’s Home Page
King Wilkie’s MySpace Page

Tim Hardin: 2

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timhardin_2Folkier second effort by singer best known for songs

Hardin’s second album opens with his most famous composition, “If I Were a Carpenter,” which was subsequently taken into the top ten by Bobby Darin. Darin borrowed a great deal of his phrasing from Hardin’s original, as he did for much of the folk-rock he recorded in the mid-60s. Hardin’s version is more introspective and raw than Darin’s, and while apparently too sparse for top-40 radio, its powers as both a song and a performance are still quite evident. By 1967 Hardin had moved with the times from his earlier blues works into folk-rock, and here into a slightly more mystical sound. The jazz phrasings that made Hardin sound like a passive take on Mose Allison are mostly gone (the ragtime “See Where You Are and Get Out,” is one exception), giving way to a more pensive and introspective style that’s often accompanied only by acoustic guitar and light rhythm. Tim Hardin 2 has been packaged here as straight-up reissue, but it’s also been available as a two-fer with its followup, and as part of the complete Hang on to a Dream: The Verve Recordings. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]