Randy Kohrs: Quicksand

February 8th, 2010

Bluegrass basics salted with country, soul and gospel

Randy Kohrs is a multi-instrumentalist who’s backed some of country music’s brightest luminaries, including Patty Loveless, Hal Ketchum, Dolly Parton and Jim Lauderdale. He’s also crafted a solo career that’s brought together his talent as a picker with vocals that are quite compelling. His music is solid on bluegrass fundamentals, but his resonator guitar adds a unique voice to the acoustic arrangements, and his singing ranges from traditional baritone/tenor harmonies to country twang and gospel. Highlights on his latest solo outing include country songs from Webb Pierce (“It’s Been So Long”) and Del Reeves (“This Must Be the Bottom”), up-tempo picking on the original “Time and Time Again,” and the blue gospel “Down Around Clarksdale” and “If You Think it’s Hot Here.” The terrific backing vocals of Scat Springs heard on this latter track can also be found on a cover of Tom T. Hall’s “More About John Henry.” Kohrs’ acoustic country tunes may be too contemporary for bluegrass purists, but with the traditional form well-covered by so many outfits, there’s something to be said for adding new ideas to the original framework. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Bill Emerson and Sweet Dixie: Southern

February 8th, 2010

Banjo legend leads his bluegrass band on a second outing

Bill Emerson is a legendary banjo player with roots stretching back to the late ‘50s. He co-founded the Country Gentlemen with guitarist Charlie Waller, held a featured slot with Jimmy Martin, and provided direction to musicians such as Jerry Douglas and Ricky Skaggs. He spent 20 years in the military, most of it in the Navy’s bluegrass band, Country Current, began recording as a leader in the early 90s, and formed Sweet Dixie for their eponymous debut in 2007. Emerson’s always stretched the edges of the bluegrass canon, mixing traditional material with songs drawn from country, folk and rock. Most famously, he’s credited with adapting Manfred Mann’s “Fox on the Run” into a bluegrass staple.

Sweet Dixie’s new album includes a few traditional sources, such as Alton Delmore’s “The Midnight Train,” Hazel Dickins’ “I Can’t Find Your Love Anymore,” and Tompall Glaser’s “I Don’t Care Anymore” the latter drawn from the catalog of Flatt & Scruggs. The nostalgia of Lionel Cartwright’s “Old Coal Town” is also a good fit, and the English folk of “The Black Fox” is augmented with mandolin and banjo spotlights. More inventively, the group reworks Marty Stuart’s rolling country-rock “Sometimes the Pleasure’s Worth the Pain” (originally from 1999’s The Pilgrim) into an up-tempo acoustic arrangement, and Chris Hillman’s “Love Reunited” is shorn of its original ‘80s production sound, trading the Desert Rose Band’s crystalline guitars for a more timeless banjo.

Highlights of the group’s new material include Vince Gill’s grievous “Life in the Old Farm Town,” reflecting the dismantling of American life in the parting out of a foreclosed farm. Sweet Dixie plays with tremendous group chemistry, adding solos that are compelling without giving into the flashiness that plagues many bluegrassers. They can pick up a storm, as heard on “The Midnight Train,” but “Grandpa Emory’s Banjo” and the instrumental “Grandma’s Tattooss” celebrate the musicality of their instruments rather than the breakneck speed at which the players’ fingers can fly. The latter features Emerson doubling the song’s writer, banjo instructor and fellow-picker Janet Davis.

Guitarist Tom Adams handles most of the lead vocals, with bassist Teri Chism and mandolinist Wayne Lanham each taking turns up front; the group’s energetic harmonies seque smoothly with the instruments. Lyrics of lost love, suicide, and a child’s funeral are sung with the tenderness of hope rather than the bleakness of depression. As the group’s visionary, Emerson balances innovation and tradition, pulling new material into the bluegrass orbit without sacrificing the warmth and comfort of tradition. His band has the confidence to let their playing serve the material, and though Emerson’s not written any new songs for this album, his ear for other writers’ works is unerring. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Track Sampler for Southern
Bill Emerson and Sweet Dixie’s Home Page

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Raeburn Flerlage: Chicago Folk- Images of the Sixties Music Scene

February 3rd, 2010

Previously unseen photos of 1960s folk, blues and bluegrass scene

Raeburn Flerlage, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 86, was as much a record man as he was a photographer. His decades of work in writing about, promoting, distributing and selling records gave him both an insider’s collection of contacts and a fan’s undying love of musicians and their music. Moving to Chicago in the mid-1940s he placed himself at a well-traveled crossroads for touring artists and, later, ground-zero of the electric blues revolution. He began studying photography in the late-1950s and was given his first assignment (a session with Memphis Slim that found placement in a Folkways record booklet) in 1959.

Flerlage worked primarily as a freelancer, capturing musicians and their audiences at Chicago’s music festivals, concert halls, theaters, college auditoriums and clubs. He was welcomed into rehearsal halls, recording and radio studios, hotel rooms and even musicians’ homes. His photographs appeared in promotional materials, magazines (most notably, Down Beat), and illustrated books that included Charles Keil’s Urban Blues and Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues. In 1971 he started a record distributorship and mostly stopped taking photographs. When his company closed in 1984 he found the demand for his photos increasing, and spent his “retirement” fielding requests from all around the world.

In 2000 ECW elevated Flerlage from photo credits to photographer with the first book dedicated to his photos, Chicago Blues: As Seen From the Inside. His pictures evidenced the comfort and familiarity of someone who’d mingled with musicians on both a professional and personal level, and who’d developed a feel for their lives and their places of work. Fellow photographer Val Wilmer wrote him “No one else has taken the kind of moody action shots that you took in Chicago, so full of atmosphere and so full of the blues.” His photographs were more than just documentation, they were a part of the scene in which musicians created music. Studs Terkel (who’s included in four photos) pointed out that Flerlage was more than a photographer, he was a companion.

This second volume of photographs, despite its title, is not strictly limited to Chicago musicians or folk singers. “Chicago” covers natives, transplants and those touring through the Windy City, and “Folk” encompasses a variety of roots musicians, including guitar toting singer-songwriters, folk groups, blues and gospel singers, bluegrass bands and more. Even those who know Flerlage’s work – either by name or by sight – are unlikely to have seen this part of his catalog. Among the 200-plus photos here, most have never been published before and none duplicate entries in the earlier Chicago Blues.

There are many well-known musicians depicted here, including Odetta, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Furry Lewis, the Weavers, Mother Maybelle Carter, Mississippi John Hurt and Bob Dylan. They’re captured in the act of creation: playing or singing, entertaining an audience or conversing with fellow artists. Big Joe Williams is seated, staring off camera in concentration as his right hand blurs with motion. The Staple Singers are depicted with their mouths open in family harmony and their hands suspended between claps. Flerlage focused on a musician’s internal intimacy, but also expanded his frame to add the context of stage, auditorium, spotlight and audience.

Beyond the most easily recognized names, Flerlage made pictures of lesser-known musicians, as well as those instrumental in Chicago and folk’s music scenes. Highlights include rare shots of blues busker Blind Arvella Gray, radio legend Norman Pellegrini, Old Town School of Music co-founders Win Stracke and Frank Hamilton, Folkways label founder Moe Asch, Appalachian artists Roscoe Holcomb and Frank Proffitt, children’s folk singer Ella Jenkins, field recordist Sam Charters, Sing Out editor Irwin Silver, one-man band Dr. Ross, and dozens more. Flerlage also captures record stores such as Kroch and Brentano’s and Discount Records, blending his work as a photographer with his career in distribution.

The photos range from careful compositions that frame artists in stage light to spontaneous grabs in adverse conditions. Whatever the circumstance, Flerlage caught something about each subject that remains vital on the page fifty years later. The book is printed on heavy, semi-gloss stock, and it’s only real weakness is the lack of expositional text. The 12-page introduction by Ronald D. Cohen provides context on the photographer, but the photo captions provide little detail on the photographed. The pictures are worth seeing on their own, but they would come alive for more readers if the subjects, particularly the local heroes and lesser-known artists, were given a few sentences of explanation. Buy the book, enjoy the photos, and spend some quality time with Google to dig up the stories. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Chris Bell: I Am the Cosmos (Deluxe Edition)

February 1st, 2010

Expanded reissue of Big Star founder’s posthumous solo album

Big Star founder Chris Bell, like his band, is an enigma whose mystery has endured even as his details have been dispensed in retrospective bits and pieces. At the time of his greatest achievement, Big Star’s #1 Record, he and his band’s fame extended only to the rock literati. By the time the Big Star cult began to build, stoked by the reissued of their first two albums in the summer of 1978, Bell was only months away from death, at the age of 27, in a single vehicle car crash. At the time few had sought out his artistic details or inspirations, and musical archaeologists piecing together the strands of Big Star originally had to work from scant materials: the iconic Big Star album, a solo single of “I Am the Cosmos” b/w “You and Your Sister,” a few fanzine articles, and reminiscences of his friends and family.

Interest in Big Star continued to grow, but with Alex Chilton avoiding the press and Bell no longer living, details had to be divined from bits and pieces added retrospectively to the group’s legacy. Chilton released an EP, Singer Not the Song, in 1977, the long-delayed release of Big Star Third came in 1978, along with Bell’s single, and Chilton then released a string of solo albums that diverged further and further from his work with Big Star. It would be another eight years until the first two Big Star albums would appear on CD in 1986, and another six years until additional archival material was made available. In 1992 the floodgates opened with Ryko’s release of Big Star’s vintage radio performance, Live, and Chris Bell’s mid-70s solo album I Am the Cosmos.

The genesis of Bell’s solo recordings lay in the same aftermath from which Chilton bred Big Star Third. Bell had departed Big Star after the failure of #1 Record in 1972. From all reports, including Rob Jovanovic’s Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop, Bruce Eaton’s Radio City 33-1/3, and Bob Mehr’s lengthy essay in this deluxe reissue, Bell took the failure of #1 Record harder than anyone else, and by the sound of his solo recordings, he didn’t seem to have ever fully recovered. Recording in Memphis, France and England in 1974, and continuing to tinker with the recordings at Ardent for several more years, the results aren’t as anarchic as Chilton’s post-Big Star sessions, but they’re often as edgy. Most of the adolescence and winsomeness of Big Star had been rubbed out of both singer-songwriters by this point.

Several of Bell’s post-Big Star performances sound stressed, as if he’s striving to find meaning among ruined expectations for #1 Record and a mental state that wasn’t always sunny. The recordings can fatigue listeners’ ears with the high-end of Bell’s voice and the piercing splash of cymbals, but there are moments of musical art that match anything he’d achieved before. The album’s title track, presented in both its finished form and a slower version that extends over five minutes (two minutes longer than Ryko’s 1992 edit), can be read simply as a plea to a departed lover, a reassessment of the musician’s attachment to his former musical mates, or as a metaphysical song to Bell’s own youth. It’s a powerful song whose interpretations deepen with time.

Another of the album’s aces is the ballad “You and Your Sister,” featuring Alex Chilton on backing vocal. Here the yearning in Bell’s lyric and voice, framed by a pair of delicately fingerpicked acoustic guitars, underlined by deep bass and filigreed by a string quartet will stop you in your tracks. Two alternate versions, both present on Ryko’s 1992 edition, show how the song developed. An earlier take from 1974 is busier, with double-tracked vocals and a mellotron in place of the strings; a demo, also from 1974, lays out the song’s emotion in a stark acoustic performance that’s equally as effective as the final production. The inward searching and outward seeking heard here, along with a general restlessness and sense of despair echoes throughout the album.

“Speed of Sound” features lushly strummed acoustic guitars, accompanied by bass, volume-flanged electric guitar, and primitive moog behind a lyric of romantic defeat, disappointment and devastation. An alternate version recorded during the same sessions is sung deeper and more wounded than the master take, and without the moog the focus stays squarely on the vocalist’s pain. Bell reunited with his former Big Star rhythm section of Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens for “I Got Kinda Lost” and “There Was a Light,” the former a guitar-driven rocker, the latter a mid-tempo piano-and-guitar ballad. Bell’s growing relationship with Christianity is heard in “Better Save Yourself” and “Look Up,” and by 1976, his last known track “Though I Know She Lies” finds his voice is remarkably restrained; it’s hard to tell whether he’s comfortable or defeated.

Bell shopped the tapes around, but even with several top-notch singles and strong album material he was unable to get anyone to release his solo album. Chris Stamey issued “I am the Cosmos” b/w “You and Your Sister” as a single in 1978, but the rest of the material sat in the vault for another fourteen years. It wasn’t until Ryko issued a CD in 1992 that Bell’s post-Big Star voice was widely heard. Rhino Handmade’s 2-CD reissue includes all of the material on Ryko’s original CD and adds a dozen extras that include pre-Big Star tracks from Icewater (“Looking Forward” and “Sunshine”) and Rock City (“My Life is Right”), alternate recordings and mixes of album cuts, early demos, and Bell’s contribution to the Keith Sykes Band on “In My Darkest Hour.” The set closes with a moving acoustic instrumental, “Clacton Rag,” showing off the emotion of Bell’s guitar playing.

The discs are delivered in a six-panel digipack alongside a 32-page booklet featuring an extensive essay by Bob Mehr and track notes by Alec Palao. Casual fans will be satisfied with the original Ryko single disc, but anyone trying to build a more detailed picture of Chris Bell will want to listen to and study the extra tracks, historical notes and photos presented here. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Stream selected tracks from I Am the Cosmos

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I See Hawks in L.A.: Shoulda Been Gold 2001-2009

January 29th, 2010

Throwback California country-rock

This Los Angeles country-rock group’s anthology re-imagines Big Star’s hopeful album title #1 Record as a joshing (or perhaps wishful) look back through a catalog that wasn’t really likely to find broad commercial fortune. A decade in the making – the band formed in 2000 – the songs cherry-pick the group’s four previous releases, adding an early demo, two previously unreleased tracks, and three new recordings. The band’s combination of tight country harmonies, shuffling rhythms, road-inspired topics, and flights of fiction mark them as natural-born citizens of Gram Parson’s cosmic American music colony. Their music offers reverence for the twang upon which it’s built, but there’s also humor, tongue-in-cheek paranoia and a liberal hippie environmental ethos running through their songs.

Coming together at the tail end of the Clinton administration and flourishing artistically during eight years of Bush, the band’s songwriters found plenty of grist for the lyrical social mill. They sing the praises of “Byrd from West Virginia,”  note his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and highlight his anti-war stance with a guitar, bass and mandolin waltz the fiddle-playing senior senator [1 2] would surely appreciate. There are songs of flower-child philosophy being passed to a new generation, pot farmers living off the gifts of “Humboldt,” meditative appreciations of the America’s open road beauty, sun-burnt runs through the desert, tears cried for the planet’s desecration (or as they label it “one sad valentine to Earth”), and ire leveled at capitalistic icons such as salesmen and self-help charlatans.

The group seems to have picked from their catalog a group of tunes that are more about people than between them. They lean towards first person articulation, songs sung to an absent ‘you’ and songs sung at the listener. Even the separation of “Up the Grapevine” is more an interior monologue than a conversation. Their namesake tune calls to like thinkers, “if you see hawks / then maybe we should talk,” seeking to gather rather than having kindred souls on hand. The protagonists aren’t isolated, exactly, but neither do they seem as connected to others as the band is musically connected to one another. “Bossier City” provides a few minutes of explicit intercourse as Rob Waller trades verses and harmonizes with Carla Olson. Waller’s duet with Carla Olsen on the newly waxed “Bossier City” breaks through that wall. Fans of the Flying Burrito Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Crazy Horse, Dave Alvin and the Gosdin Brothers should check this out! [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Humboldt
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French Kissing: Oh Suzanne / The Lonely Streets of Cairo

January 26th, 2010

Guitar rock meets retro DIY in a UK garage by the beach

French Kissing is a London band that’s carving out retro garage and surf sounds echoing the twang and reverb of British Invasion instrumentalists like the Shadows, the DIY ethos of late ‘70s punk and new wave bands, the retro vibe of The Milkshakes and Barracudas, and the thick, pop noise of the Jesus and Mary Chain, et al. Their upcoming single rethinks the song “Oh Suzanne,” as originally released on their 2009 EP I Would Let You Know. The new version is more polished, with the bass and drums more evenly blended and the lead and harmony vocals more deftly balanced. The guitar solo that kicks in at 1’40 still suggests Dave Davies’ early work, though with modern tone in place of the raw studio sound of 1964. The new version is planned for a limited edition of 200 vinyl singles, and can be picked up from their label, or streamed below. The B-side, “Cairo,” remains vinyl-only. I’d also highly recommend picking up their previous EP for its evocation of garage punk (ala the Morlocks and Chesterfield Kings) on “I Would Let You Know” and “Please Please.”  [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Oh Suzanne
French Kissing’s MySpace Page

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Elvis Presley: Clambake

January 26th, 2010

Three great tracks and some all-time clunkers

There are a number of commonly held misconceptions about Elvis Presley’s film career: Elvis couldn’t act, his movies were all throwaways, and the soundtracks were populated entirely with substandard material. But key films in the King’s catalog show that he could indeed act, if called upon, there are several high-quality dramatic and musical films in Elvis’ oeuvre, alongside many good lightweight romantic musical comedies, and his soundtracks are laced with hits and terrific albums sides. To measure the highpoints of Elvis’ soundtrack catalog by virtue of the low points (of which there are admittedly many) is to miss out on a valuable dimension of Presley’s musical career.

1967’s Clambake was Elvis’ twenty-fifth film and the third to co-star Shelley Fabares. Unlike the bulk of Elvis’ Hollywood-recorded soundtracks, this one was waxed in Nashville with a host of Music City A-listers, including drummer Buddy Harman, guitarist Charlie McCoy, pianist Floyd Cramer and steel guitarist Pete Drake. Also on hand were Elvis long-time associates, Scotty Moore and the Jordanaires. By this point the soundtrack songwriters were etched in stone, with contributions from Sid Wayne, Ben Weisman, Sid Tepper, Roy C. Bennett and Joy Byers. The soundtrack’s best cuts come from the few outside writers: Jerry Reed, credited as Jerry “Reed” Hubbard, contributed the super fine “Guitar Man,” Elvis struts his stuff on a cover of Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” and Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold’s “You Don’t Know Me” blows the regular soundtrack writers’ material out of the water.

After the success of “Do the Clam” (from the soundtrack of Girl Happy), the RCA brain trust must have thought releasing “Clambake” as a single would typecast their star as a seafood singer. That’s too bad, as it’s a catchy tune even if Elvis does have to sing “mama’s little baby loves clambake clambake.” Elvis rarely sounded less than professional on his soundtracks, even as he was dodging or hurrying through sessions, but you can always hear him engage a second gear for the better material. He doesn’t quite sleepwalk through the worst material, though a few vocals sound like first takes for which Elvis refused to soil himself with a second pass. Clambake features some of the most embarrassing lyrics Elvis was ever asked to sing (key evidence: “Hey Hey Hey”), and adding children on “Confidence” didn’t help.

This may be the most schizophrenic of Elvis’ soundtrack albums, featuring several highpoints that match the quality and artistry or his non-soundtrack singles. but intermingled with awful songs that could only have been contractual obligations. Just when “The Singing Tree” has robbed you of hope, Elvis closes with a superb, stone-country cover of Rex Griffin’s “Just Call Me Lonesome” that has him intertwined in Pete Drake’s steel guitar. Sony’s reissue features a four-panel booklet and no liner notes discussing the music or its making. The 30-minute running time suggests that Follow That Dream’s collector’s edition might be more compelling to Elvis diehards. Still, the budget price and remastered sound make this reissue attractive, especially if you pick out the hot tracks and skip the rest. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Elvis Presley: Frankie and Johnny

January 26th, 2010

Elvis is taken for a ride on a riverboat

There are a number of commonly held misconceptions about Elvis Presley’s film career: Elvis couldn’t act, his movies were all throwaways, and the soundtracks were populated entirely with substandard material. But key films in the King’s catalog show that he could indeed act, if called upon, there are several high-quality dramatic and musical films in Elvis’ oeuvre, alongside many good lightweight romantic musical comedies, and his soundtracks are laced with hits and terrific albums sides. To measure the highpoints of Elvis’ soundtrack catalog by virtue of the low points (of which there are admittedly many) is to miss out on a valuable dimension of Presley’s musical career.

1966’s Frankie and Johnny was Elvis’ twentieth film, and co-starred Donna Douglas who was then starring on television’s Beverly Hillbillies. The soundtrack was recorded in Hollywood with the usual mix of West Coast studio players (including guitarist Tiny Timbrell), and longtime Elvis associate Scotty Moore. The Jordanaires are replaced here by the Mello Men on background vocals, and a brass section (trumpet, trombone and tuba) was brought in to give a New Orleans edge to several of the songs. The songwriters included many of the usual crew, such as Sid Tepper, Roy C. Bennett, Ben Weisman, Sid Wayne, Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, and the trio of Florence Kaye, Bernie Baum and Bill Giant.

Many of the album’s songs are meant to evoke the era of river boats and music calls, but they’re campy, faux-Dixieland theatricality doesn’t survive the transition from film to soundtrack album. Elvis sounds as if he’s being forced to march along to “Down by the Riverside,” though he loosens up for the second half of the medley with “Saints Go Marching In.” Pomus & Shuman’s “What Every Woman Lives For” would be a more appealing blues if the message wasn’t so retrospectively sexist (though, to be fair, it is Elvis singing, and it’s possible that every woman does live to give him their love). The revival “Shout it Out,” though lyrically light, gives Elvis a chance to rock it up, and the blues “Hard Luck” features Charlie McCoy on harmonica.

Several of the tracks feel under-arranged, as if producer Fred Karger was in a hurry to get these tracks finished. Perhaps when you have the film’s director Fred De Cordova (of Tonight Show fame) waiting on you and you’re asking Elvis to sing mediocre material, you get what you can get. Sony’s reissue features a four-panel booklet and no liner notes discussing the music or its making. The 27-minute running time suggests that the earlier import two-fer or Follow That Dream’s collector’s edition might be more compelling to Elvis diehards. Still, the budget price and remastered sound make this reissue attractive. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Elvis Presley: Girl Happy

January 26th, 2010

Elvis catches an ocean’s worth of memorable pop songs

There are a number of commonly held misconceptions about Elvis Presley’s film career: Elvis couldn’t act, his movies were all throwaways, and the soundtracks were populated entirely with substandard material. But key films in the King’s catalog show that he could indeed act, if called upon, there are several high-quality dramatic and musical films in Elvis’ oeuvre, alongside many good lightweight romantic musical comedies, and his soundtracks are laced with hits and terrific albums sides. To measure the highpoints of Elvis’ soundtrack catalog by virtue of the low points (of which there are admittedly many) is to miss out on a valuable dimension of Presley’s musical career.

1965’s Girl Happy was Elvis’ seventeenth film, the second of three with the word “Girls” in the title, and the first of three featuring co-star Shelley Fabares. Though the beach party plot was nothing new, Elvis generated some sweet chemistry with Fabares, and seemed more interested in the soundtrack than he had on the previous Roustabout. The soundtrack was recorded in Hollywood with the usual mix of West Coast studio players (including guitarists Tiny Timbrell and Tommy Tedesco), Nashville transplants Floyd Cramer and Boots Randolph, and longtime Elvis associates Scotty Moore and the Jordanaires. The songs were penned by the usual crew of Sid Tepper, Roy C. Bennett, Sid Wayne, Ben Weisman, and the trio of Florence Kaye, Bernie Baum and Bill Giant. Unlike Elvis’ previous outing nowever, the lightweight songs are quite surprisingly memorable.

The film opens with Doc Pomus and Norman Meade’s exuberant title theme, and even the throwaway lyrics of “Startin’ Tonight” can’t dim it’s rock ‘n’ roll energy. Elvis and the Jordanaires just about run out of breath on Joy Byers’ “The Meanest Girl in Town” with Boots Randolph adding a wailing sax solo. The calypso “Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce” is cleverly written, the ballad “Do Not Disturb” gives Elvis a chance to do some romancing, and “Puppet on a String” is sweet and tender. The film’s performance centerpiece, “Wolf Call,” is just as much fun on CD as it was in the fictional club scene, and makes you wish that Gary Crosby had really been in Elvis’ band!

“Do the Clam,” one of the album’s two hits (the other was “Puppet on a String”), will have you dancing the sensation that didn’t quite sweep the nation, and the CD includes the original soundtrack bonus, “You’ll Be Gone.” Recorded in 1961 the latter song is one of Elvis’ few co-writes, and was tacked onto the album despite not having been used in the film. Sony’s reissue features a four-panel booklet and no liner notes discussing the music or its making. The 24-minute running time suggests that the earlier import two-fer or Follow That Dream’s collector’s edition might be more compelling to Elvis diehards. Still, the budget price and remastered sound make this reissue very attractive. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Elvis Presley: Roustabout

January 26th, 2010

Mediocre soundtrack songs and a 21-minute running time

There are a number of commonly held misconceptions about Elvis Presley’s film career: Elvis couldn’t act, his movies were all throwaways, and the soundtracks were populated entirely with substandard material. But key films in the King’s catalog show that he could indeed act, if called upon, there are several high-quality dramatic and musical films in Elvis’ oeuvre, alongside many good lightweight romantic musical comedies, and his soundtracks are laced with hits and terrific albums sides. To measure the highpoints of Elvis’ soundtrack catalog by virtue of the low points (of which there are admittedly many) is to miss out on a valuable dimension of Presley’s musical career.

1964’s Roustabout was Elvis’ sixteenth film, and had the unenviable job of following the smash Viva Las Vegas. Though the plot was formulaic, Elvis spiced things up by performing his own stunts. The soundtrack was recorded in Hollywood with the usual mix of West Coast studio players (including guitarists Billy Strange, Barney Kessel and Tiny Timbrell, and wrecking crew drummer Hal Blaine), Nashville transplants Floyd Cramer and Boots Randolph, and longtime Elvis associates Scotty Moore and the Jordanaires. The songs are mostly penned by Elvis soundtrack stalwarts, including Sid Tepper, Roy C. Bennett, Ben Weisman, Sid Wayne, Joy Byers and the trio of Florence Kaye, Bernie Baum and Bill Giant. Unfortunately there’s little here befitting a King.

The film’s carnival-related songs, “Roustabout,” “It’s Carnival Time,” and “Carny Town” are novelties that fail to transcend their ties to the film. The rest of the album isn’t much better, with throwaways like “It’s a Wonderful World” leaving Elvis bored. The best of the lot are a cover of the Coasters’ “Little Egypt” and Joy Byers’ throw-back rock ‘n’ roller, “Hard Knocks.” Elvis seems to connect with Byers’ lyrics of growing up poor, and Hal Blaine really stokes the beat. This was Elvis’ last #1 album until 1973’s Aloha From Hawaii: Via Satellite, and Sony’s reissue features a four-panel booklet and no liner notes discussing the music or its making. The 21-minute running time suggests that the earlier import two-fer might be more compelling to Elvis diehards. Still, the budget price and remastered sound make this reissue attractive. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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