Tag Archives: Cover Songs

Vince Guaraldi Trio: Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus

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Legendary jazz pianist’s artistic and commercial breakthrough

Concord Records initiated a new pass through their Original Jazz Classics catalog in March of 2010, and they now add five more titles to the program. Each reissue features a new 24-bit remaster by Joe Tarantino, extensive liner notes, and bonus tracks. Five additions grace this reissue of Vince Guaraldi’s 1962 artistic and commercial breakthrough. The San Francisco pianist has been making a name for himself since the mid-50s, backing Woody Herman, Nina Simone, and Stan Getz, and sitting in with the Cal Tjader Quartet, but his solo albums hadn’t turned their critical praise into commercial notoriety until the original piece “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” led this album up the charts. Guaraldi would find yet another level of acclaim with his compositions for the Peanuts television specials, but it was this album that established him as a popular jazz luminary.

The album opens with covers of the four main themes from Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luis Bonfa’s score for the film Black Orpheus. Despite the then-contemporary resurgence of bossa nova in American jazz, Guaraldi and his accompanists only feint towards the samba rhythms of the originals. Instead, the pianist takes the lead with his highly melodic version of bebop, both energetic, yet cosmopolitan cool. Nowhere is this balance more evident in Guaraldi’s Grammy-winning original “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” The song opens with the delicacy of a light summer fog before swinging into a bluesy middle that’s supported by Budwig’s walking bass line and Bailey’s ride cymbal and snare accents. The song communicates more about the special feeling of pre-hippie San Francisco in the early ‘60s than just about any other piece of music.

Guaraldi plays lush chords and sustained low notes to set the melancholy mood of Mancini and Mercer’s “Moon River,” and his mid-song solo again captures a unique ability to make modern jazz both melodic and compelling to pop listeners. The album finds its Latin feet with the stop-start original “Alma-Ville,” but even here Guaraldi only teases, as the combo switches to straight jazz by mid-song, and returns to the bossa nova style only to close things out. The reissues five bonus tracks include the single edit of “Samba de Orfeu,” and four previously unreleased alternate takes, including one of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” The fold-out booklet includes full-panel reproductions of the original covers (front and back), Ralph Gleason’s original album notes, and new liners by Derrick Bang. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Dixie Chicks: Essential

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6 chart-toppers, 14 top-tens, 30 tracks = 2 hours of bliss

After the June release of the twelve-track Playlist collection, fans were left wondering if a more complete Dixie Chicks anthology would be issued. That question is answered in the affirmative with this thirty-track 2-CD set that includes all six of the group’s Country chart toppers, and fourteen (of seventeen) top-ten hits spanning all four of their studio albums on Sony imprints. That’s nine years compressed into two hours over which the trio proves themselves consistently original interpreters of unerringly picked material, occasional contributors of original songs, and by the time of Taking the Long Way, writers with their own voice. The group’s sound has often been imitated, but none of their followers have balanced the vocal blend, material, instrumental chops and attitude that makes this group one-of-a-kind.

Earlier female acts like Shania Twain tilted the Nashville axis towards pop, but the Dixie Chicks re-energized the Country empowerment handed down by Kitty Wells and Loretta Lynn. The trio wasn’t shy of being feminine, but they always led with their music. They didn’t smooth out their twang, instead highlighting their fiddle and banjo, and arraying their voices in three-party harmonies. Better yet, the more famous they became, the more they indulged their Texas roots. Rather than taking every crossover opportunity, they let the quality of their music draw more people into the tent. Their songs were liberated, bawdy, touching, emotionally complex and down-to-Earth, paralleling the tumult in their marriages and the growth they experienced as they ascended, sometimes against resistance, to stardom.

Among the most gratifying aspects of the group’s success is their conquering of the mainstream while simultaneously promoting the works of superb, non-mainstream songwriters like Darrell Scott, Patti Griffin, Gary Louris and Bruce Robison. It’s no surprise that their records sounded different than their Nashville peers, as much of the material was created by outsiders whose thoughtful songs weren’t written by appointment. Sonically, the band also leaned on talent from beyond Music Row, with ace steel player (and Natalie Maines’ dad) Lloyd Maines and studio svengali Rick Rubin each taking a turn in the producer’s chair. Oddly, this double-CD set portrays the group in reverse chronological order, opening with eight tracks from the Rubin-produced Taking the Long Way, adding seven cuts from the stripped-down work of Home, eight tracks from Fly, six from the Sony debut Wide Open Spaces, and closing with “I Believe in Love” from Home.

It plays well, but for those just meeting the Dixie Chicks, it’s a strange choice to replay the group’s history backwards. Fans are likely to own the four original albums, and without any new or previously unreleased material (or tracks drawn from outside the four core albums), this collection is really targeted at those who didn’t take the ride the first time. Love it or hate it, summing up an artist’s core material is the Essential collection’s mission – they’re not bonus-laden box sets for fans. That said, the absence of three top-ten hits (“Cold Day in July,” “If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me,” and “Some Days You Gotta Dance” from 2000 and 2001) and several other fan-favorite chart singles leaves this as “most of the essential” rather than an authoritative rendering. Bang for the buck, though, it’s still a great introduction to the band; for the new initiates, a quick reprogramming of the track list is recommended. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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The Clientele: Minotaur

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Terrific spin on paisley, psych and sunshine pop

These leftovers from the sessions that produced 2009’s Bonfires on the Heath include several memorable mélanges. The title track brings to mind the baroque sounds of the Left Banke, the paisley patterns of the Rain Parade and the sunshine pop of Curt Boettecher. The second track, “Jerry” is even more beguiling, feinting towards progrock with its opening, but quickly giving way to vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Robbs and Three O’Clock, with drifiting piano and a melodic bass displaced by Television-like staccato guitar and an escalating rhythm whose tension is again broken by vocal pop. The EP’s lone cover, “As the World Rises and Falls” is an obscure album track from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band’s third release. The hypnotic production and crawling psychedelia are perfect complements to Alasdair MacLean’s hushed vocal – particularly his drawn-out reading of “rises” as “rye-zizzzz.” The tone turns jauntier for “Paul Verlaine,” bouncing along like a Paul Weller reverie, and the folk-rock “Strange Town” suggests Cat Stevens and Donovan (albeit with someone tuning a vintage oscillator for a mid-song solo). There’s a moody piano solo and a lengthy spoken word piece before the EP closes on a lovely pop-soul note. All in all, a brief bite, but a tasty one. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Jerry
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Lucky Peterson: You Can Always Turn Around

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Resurgence of a triple-threat bluesman

At the age of 46, Lucky Peterson has already had a forty-year long career. Discovered by Willie Dixon at three-years of age, Peterson was recording and appearing on television by the age of five. His apprenticeships with numerous blues legends led to solo albums on Alligator, Verve and Blue Thumb, culminating in 2003’s Black Midnight Sun for the Birdology label. It was at this point that Peterson’s drug problems began to affect his career, and the next several years were spent making releases on small European labels and, eventually, getting clean. Lucky for Lucky that the blues revere their elder statesman, and at middle-age he’s primed to reintroduce himself to American audiences.

This latest album was waxed with a number of Woodstock-area players, but it’s his triple-threat talents as vocalist, guitarist and organist that provide many of the highlights. The buzz of Peterson’s resonator guitar fills Blind Willie McTell’s “Statesboro Blues” and Robert Johnson’s “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” begging his way inside on the first and forcefully calling out a cheating mate on the second. He turns to his piano for a cover of Ray LaMontagne’s (and Travelers Insurance’s) “Trouble,” giving the song a deep gospel groove steeped in his personal recovery. Salvation is also the theme of Bill Calahan’s “I’m New Here,” a line of which provides the album’s title; Peterson finds room for a new interpretation between the plain folk styling of Smog’s original and the quick-paced cover recently released by Gil-Scott Heron. The music is more lush and Peterson’s connects with the lyrics’ portrayal of physical and spiritual rebirth.

Peterson stretches out on a pair of contemporary covers, matching Lucinda Williams’ fiery images in “Atonement” with scorching electric guitar, and finding beauty in Tom Waits’ “Trampled Rose” by expanding the melodic hook into an Arabian maqam. Blues and soul still remain the core of his musicality as he hard-strums his resonator guitar and expertly picks his acoustic against funky shuffle rhythms. His guitar sparks with outbursts of emotion on Reverend Gary Davis’ “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and his vocals (accompanied by wife Tamara) strike a hopeful tone on the civil rights anthem “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” Peterson never really disappeared from the blues scene, but his latest album has the feeling of a fresh start, with terrific players helping him realize music with deeply personal roots. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Four Little Boys
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Various Artists: Black Sabbath- The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations

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African-American performers sing Jewish songs

It’s not exactly a surprise that American musical history is filled with the combined efforts of African-American performers and Jewish songwriters. But this fifteen track collection shows that these collaborations often intertwined the two communities’ stories and struggles. Drawing together material across several decades, one hears tin pan alley, Jewish theater, and the borscht belt. Cab Calloway mixes Yiddish into his scat singing on “Utt-Da-Zy,” and the blues of “Baby Baby” prove a natural fit for Libby Holman and Josh White. The arrangements range from spare folk to fully-orchestrated productions like Eartha Kitt’s “Sholem,” the funky soul of Marlena Shaw’s “Where Can I Go” and the strut of Aretha Franklin’s “Swanee.” The set’s highlight is a nearly ten-minute live medley by the Temptations in which they work through the songs of Fiddler on the Roof (check here for video!). [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Marty Stuart: Ghost Train- The Studio B Sessions

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Stuart amazes with the honesty and heart of his country music

Like ex-presidents who turn the mantle of their former office into opportunities to improve the world, talented musicians can turn the freedom of their post-hit years into explorations of that which really moves them. And such is Marty Stuart, whose baptism in bluegrass led to a run on Nashville in the mid-80s and, more successfully, in the early 90s with a four year chart run that included Hillbilly Rock, Tempted and This One’s Gonna Hurt You. His subsequent releases kept his core fans, but provided only middling commercial returns. But as his chart success waned, his artistic vision expanded. 1999’s song cycle The Pilgrim was his most powerful and coherent album to that date, showing off both his musical range and his ability to write songs that are literary, but still communicate on an emotional level.

Throughout the current decade he’s explored gospel (Souls’ Chapel), Native American struggles (Badlands: Ballads of the Lakota), and country and folk standards (Cool Country Favorites). And this time out, Stuart salutes the classic country of his youth, but other than a couple of well selected covers, he uses all new originals to conjure the sounds that inspired him in the first place. What will really ring in listeners’ ears is how natural and heartfelt this is. Like a dancer floating through his steps, Stuart plays songs as an extension of his soul, rather than as a performance of words and music. Recording in the legendary RCA Studio B, Stuart amplifies the echoes of performances past, much as John Mellencamp has on his recent No Better Than This.

Stuart is a country classicist, and his new songs resound with the spirits of Waylon, Merle, Buck and Johnny. The instrumental “Hummingbyrd” recounts the playfulness of “Buckaroo” and the Johnny Cash co-write “The Hangman” retains the Man in Black’s gravitas and frankness. The opening “Branded” splits the difference between Haggard’s “Branded Man” and Owens’ “Streets of Bakersfield,” tipping a musical hat to the piercing guitar of Roy Nichols. Don Reno’s “Country Boy Rock & Roll” gives Stuart a chance to roll out his rockabilly roots, and show off the glory of his band, the Fabulous Superlatives. Stuart and guitarist Kenny Vaughan sing a duet and duel on their electric guitars as drummer Harry Stinson and bassist Paul Martin push them with a hot train rhythm – this one’s sure to leave jaws hanging slack when played live.

The album’s ballads are just as good, not least of which for the emotional steel playing of Ralph Mooney (whose own “Crazy Arms” is covered here as an instrumental). Co-writing with his wife, singer Connie Smith, Stuart sings tales of romantic dissolution and regret. Smith joins Stuart for the exceptional duet “I Run to You,” drawing together threads of Gram and Emmylou, the Everly Brothers and classic Nashville pairings of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The album’s saddest song, however, is “Hard Working Man,” which questions the soul of a nation whose work ethic is undermined by globalization. There’s personal salvation in “Porter Wagoner’s Grave,” but the questions raised in “Hard Working Man” is what will really haunt you.

The album ends with “Little Heartbreaker,” the best Dwight Yoakam song that Yoakam didn’t actually write lately, followed by a short mandolin solo that brings things back to Stuart’s bluegrass roots. The sounds of Stuart’s influences are immediate throughout, but as someone obsessed with country music from his teens, and a protégé of both Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, this is less a nostalgic interlude than a heeding of his mother’s words: “When you find yourself, if in the middle of nowhere, go back to Jerusalem and stand. Wait on divine guidance. It’s the only guidance worth having.” The recent neo-redneck movement may position themselves as modern-day hellraisers, but this rockabilly, Bakersfield twang and heartbroken balladry are the true sounds of rebellion, or as Stuart describes them, “sounds from the promised land.” [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Branded
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Richard Barone: Glow

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Eclectic collection of sounds from throughout Richard Barone’s career

Richard Barone was introduced to listeners as the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the legendary Bongos. Their recording career spanned a handful of singles, two EPs and two albums, but their impact on the Hoboken music scene – and on Hoboken itself – was much larger. Upon the band’s dissolution, Barone developed a solo career that garnered critical notice and fan support, but flew below the radar of the mainstream record buying public. He released an album every few years for a decade, bookended by the live recordings Cool Blue Halo in 1987 and Between Heaven and Cello in 1997, and continued on to produce other artists and collaborate on theater projects. Though he oversaw reissues and compilations of earlier material, this is his first collection of all new solo material since 1993’s Clouds Over Eden.

What makes this album particularly special is Barone’s collaborations with producer Tony Visconti. Barone’s a well-known Bolan-ista, having covered “Mambo Sun” with the Bongos and “The Visit” on his first solo album (and “Girl” here). Tony Visconti was the producer of those seminal T. Rex sides, and had Barone had his way, Visconti would have produced the Bongos 1983 RCA debut. But the label declined, and the pair had to wait another twenty-seven years to collaborate. Surprisingly, for all of Barone’s glam-rock influences and Visconti’s glam-rock bona fides, the cache of vintage instruments they tapped (including E-bow, stylophone, mellotron, moog bass, chamberlain) and sonic references they make (such as the opening of “Candied Babies” borrowed from the Bongos’ “Zebra Club”), the results sound neither nostalgic nor out of time. Instead, the productions combine elements Barone’s explored throughout his career, including slithering glam rock, power-pop chime, cello-lined chamber pop, and punchy dance floor beats.

The lyrics sway from weighty contemplation of middle age to the title track’s celebratory call for shucking off emotional limitations and living freely in the moment. Barone is neither morose in his backward glancing assessments nor blindly exuberant in his forward looking proscriptions, but seems to be discovering original emotional territory in new experience; even the fatalism of “Yet Another Midnight” is expectant rather than downcast. The notions of return and unspoken feelings are threaded through several songs, including a visit to old stomping grounds in “Radio Silence” and the uncertain romantic resurrection of a co-write with Paul Williams, “Silence is Our Song.” The latter production is shorn of Visconti’s ornamentation, pared to guitar, piano and cello for a live performance on Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight. A second co-write, with Jill Sobule, yields the terrific “Odd Girl Out” and its story of a pre-Stonewall lesbian.

Visconti’s rock productions are ornate and imaginative, though on “Sanctified” the volume interrupts the inviting, quiet groove established with the introduction’s combination of voice, strummed acoustic guitar and mellotron. The album closes with a lush instrumental version of the title track, finishing with a lovely coda of violin and cello. Barone was obviously quite excited to finally work with Visconti, and he sounds energized and vital throughout. His new songs retain the hooks and melodic innovations of his earlier work, and his lyrics have grown concrete in character and concept while remaining poetic in their words. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Glow
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Allan Sherman: Songs for Swingin’ Livers Only!

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Mid-60s song parodist returns to his Jewish roots

After gaining fame with his 1962 debut My Son the Folk Singer and launching a #2 hit with 1963’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!,” Allan Sherman embarked on a series of high-profile projects and guest spots. By the time he recorded this 1964 release, the mood of the nation had changed radically with the assassination of JFK; the light-hearted parody that felt so effervescent in 1963 seemed a shade more superfluous in the shadows of 1964. In an effort to reconnect with his original audience, Sherman reintroduced the Jewish-rooted humor he’d largely abandoned over the course of several albums. His clever writing and ear for a tune were still sharp, but the record buying public wasn’t as hungry for silliness as they’d been two years earlier. Stories of gluttony, in-laws, modern pharmaceuticals, subway conductors and Jewish Lotharios are still funny, but what was once party entertainment – Sherman having honed his act in impromptu performances at friends’ homes – was now performance laden with expectations. There are many nice moments here, including the memorably anti-consumerist “The Twelve Gifts of Christmas,” but five albums along, the change in national zeitgeist seems to have dimmed Sherman’s fire. Collectors’ Choice straight-up reissue includes new liner notes by Dr. Demento. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Allan Sherman: My Son, the Nut

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Early ‘60s song parodist hits his commercial peak

Sherman’s third album, released in 1963 and recorded less than a year after his debut, was his most solid collection of songs, and spun off his most famous composition, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!” As on the previous albums there’s a live studio audience, but with his humor now a known quanity, these feel more like staged performances than impromptu party appearances. The applause and laughs are genuine and well deserved, but they’re polite rather than the uncontrolled punctuations of his first album. Traces of his earlier Jewish humor can still be heard here, but the broader reach of My Son, the Celebrity is the real pay off. The opening treatise on the French crown, “You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie,” is both a funny history lesson and a rocking good time. Sherman’s musical director, Lou Busch, continued to write serious arrangements to contrast with Sherman’s hilarious lyrics, but he also managed to mock musical icons of the time, slipping Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme” into the opener and revving up a parody of “Rag Mop” for Sherman’s “Rat Fink.” Sherman unleashes his imagination on the complexities of early computerization, modern medicine, international cuisine, and suburban vexations. The album’s crown jewel, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp),” is like a musical version of a Bob Newhart phone call. Even here, among the numerous hazards that befall the summer campers, Sherman manages to work in an intellectual reference to James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” The single won a Grammy and peaked at #2 on the Billboard chart, and seemed to be everywhere in the summer of 1963. Collectors’ Choice straight-up reissue includes new liner notes by Dr. Demento. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Allan Sherman: My Son, the Celebrity

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Second-helping of early ‘60s musical parody

Recorded only a few months after his debut album brought a surprising burst of public acclaim, writer/producer Allan Sherman recorded his second album of song parodies. As on his first, Jewish-American characters and life are primary subjects of his humor, but he also branches out in multicultural parody on the album’s cleverly written and popular “Mexican Hat Dance,” and winningly recasts the Dixieland “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” as the intellectual “Won’t You Come Home, Disraeli?” As with his debut, this was recorded in front of a small, hand-picked studio audience in an intimate party-like setting. Sherman and his conductor Lou Busch play the live audience as much as the songs, leaving space for the uproarious laughs and hanging onto punch lines for maximum effect. Also similarly to the debut, Sherman’s everyman voice is backed by Busch’s serious arrangements, giving the humor of the lyrics an extra measure of silliness. This second helping isn’t as deeply clever as the debut (which, to be fair, was refined over several years in impromptu performances that Sherman made at parties), but it shows that Sherman wasn’t a one-hit wonder and set the stage for his third and greatest album later the same year. Collectors’ Choice straight-up reissue includes new liner notes by Dr. Demento. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]