Posts Tagged ‘Cover Songs’

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Judy Collins: In My Life

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

One of folk music’s greatest voices expands her horizons in 1966

After five folk albums, culminating in the superb Fifth Album in 1965, Judy Collins sought personal growth as an artist and broader synergy with the musical scenes developing around her. She’d already branched out from the traditional material of 1961’s A Maid of Constant Sorrow and 1962’s Golden Apples of the Sun (available as a two-fer) to contemporary material penned by Dylan, Seeger, Paxton, Ochs and Farina, but she’d kept to a traditional acoustic guitar and string bass approach. With this 1966 release she stretched even further for new material, adding pop songs and show tunes, while still championing newly emerging talents that included Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and Donovan. She once again proved herself a unique interpreter of Dylan, singing the melody of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” with ease rather than haggard exhalation. Similarly, on “Suzanne” her voice adds delicacy and range that were beyond Cohen’s instrument, and gave the poet his break as a songwriter.

The arrangements push past the minimalism of her earlier albums with Joshua Rifkin-penned chamber-pop arrangements that add strings, woodwinds, percussion and harpsichord. This suits both the range of material as well as the moods Collins evokes as she extrapolates her interpretation into acting. Her readings of Brecht and Weill’s “Pirate Jenny” and Peaslee’s “Marat/Sade” are pitched to reach the last row and befit their stage origins, and Rifkin’s arrangement of guitar and violin provides dramatic backing for Jacques Brel’s dire “La Colombe.” Harp, bells and waltz time whirl Donovan’s “Sunny Goodge Street” nearly into carousel music, and now in retrospect, the closing cover of “In My Life” provides a bittersweet tribute to its author. Collectors’ Choice’s 2010 release is a straight-up reissue of the album’s original eleven tracks, with new liner notes by Richie Unterberger. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Jerry Lee Lewis: The Essential Sun Country Hits

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

The Killer’s original country sides for Sun

Few remember that Jerry Lee Lewis’ first recording for Sun was a 1956 cover of Ray Price’s classic, “Crazy Arms.” Lewis’ country roots were largely overshadowed by the string of incendiary rock ‘n’ roll sides he recorded in the late 50s, and all but buried by the scandal that derailed his career in 1958. It wasn’t until the mid-60s, at Smash Records, that Lewis once again found sustained commercial success, but this time on the country chart as a balladeer. His renewed popularity led then-Sun owner Shelby Singleton to dig up earlier unreleased country sides, including three from Lewis’ last Sun session in 1963, and release them as singles. Varese’s fourteen-track collection pulls together three sides released at the time of Lewis’ tenure with Sun, eight sides first released by Singleton between 1969 and 1972, and three sides that went unreleased as singles, but have turned up on various compilations over the years. Tht titles include several top-10s, 20s and 40s, but more interestingly, it shows that Sun had tried Lewis out on the country chart with a 1958 cover of Charlie Rich’s “I’ll Make it All Up to You” and used “It Hurt Me So” as a B-side. Lewis’ success at Smash comes as no surprise once you’ve heard these tracks he waxed at Sun in the late 50s and early 60s. He’s a talented and nuanced country singer and honky-tonk pianist whose love of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams is born out in covers of the former’s “Waiting for a Train” and the latter’s “I Could Never Be Ashamed of You.” What does remain surprising is how easily he dropped his outsized rock ‘n’ roll persona to sing these more intimate songs of woe.  To complete the picture of Lewis’ country career you’ll need to pick up a collection of his Smash hits, such as Killer Country, but the roots were clearly planted with these efforts at Sun. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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The Clefs of Lavender Hill: Stop! Get a Ticket

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Long-lost stereo LP from obscure Florida ‘60s rock/folk-rock band

The Clefs of Lavender Hill are an obscure mid-60s Florida four-piece built around the brother and sister guitar/vocal team of Travis and Coventry Fairchild (born Joseph and Lorraine Ximenes) and the rhythm section of Bill (bass) and Fred (drums) Moss. The B-side of their first single, “Stop! Get a Ticket,” has long been a favorite of the garage-folk crowd, having appeared on the box set reissue of Nuggets, as well as Rock Artifacts 3. Little was known about the band, though singles collectors managed to document four singles released on Date records between 1965 and 1967. Rumors persisted about a full album that had been shelved after recording in 1966, and now forty-four years later, Wounded Bird has unearthed the eleven album tracks in terrific full-fidelity stereo, as well as a non-LP single and two additional mixes (one stereo, one mono) of “Stop! Get a Ticket.” Whew!

The band’s rock ‘n’ roll roots were stoked by the British Invasion, evident not only in covers of the Beatles (“It Won’t Be Long”), Rolling Stones (“Play With Fire”), Donovan (“Sunshine Superman”), but also in the Zombies-styled original “One More Time.” The group conjured a folk-rock sound on “You Don’t Notice” and “First Tell Me Why” that nodded to the harmonies of San Francisco’s Autumn Records and Jefferson Airplane. The Fairchild’s originals are excellent, and their dramatic take on “Play with Fire,” with Coventry Fairchild singing lead, is even more seething than the Stones’ original; their cover of “New Orleans” amplifies the party vibe of Gary U.S. Bonds’ hit with dynamic bass and drums and a hot guitar substituting for the original’s sax.

This is a terrific find that greatly expands on the band’s one well-anthologized track and four difficult-to-find 45s. The four-panel booklet includes vintage photos but – incredibly – no liner notes. Given the band’s obscurity, Wounded Bird should have stepped up and hired someone to write at least a cursory band biography, if not track down the members for contemporary interviews. The original mono mixes of the band’s four singles would have been a nice addition to the stereo album tracks, but it’s hard to complain too loudly given the quality of the album masters. What’s here is truly great, but what could have been here would have (and should have) been definitive. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Judy Collins: Fifth Album

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Judy Collins peaks as a folk singer

By the time Judy Collins recorded this album in 1965, the traditional strains of the folk revival were losing steam. That same year Dylan released a side of electric tunes on Bringing it All Back Home and plugged in for his set at Newport. The Byrds released their debut album in June, and Simon and Garfunkel’s 1964 acoustic debut album begat the electric augmentation of Sounds of Silence two years later. Collins herself rethought her own music on 1966’s In My Life, but before doing so, pulled together the elements made her a great folk singer, and invested her ears and interpretive powers in selecting and rendering these twelve songs. She combined traditional tunes with contemporary compositions by Dylan, Ochs, and Farina, and gave each the benefit of her magnificently clear and moving voice. Collins’ talent for discovering material led her to Eric Anderson’s “Thirsty Boots” (with John Sebastian adding harmonica) and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” long before either became folk standards.

The album opens on a high note with a terrific interpretation of Richard Farina’s “Pack Up Your Sorrows.” Farina’s dulcimer is more upbeat than on the original duet with his wife Mimi, and together with second guitarist Eric Weissberg, Collins frees the song of its overt sorrow by leaning on the lyrics’ magnanimity. She proves her talent for interpretation by taking Dylan’s “Tomorrow is a Long Time” slowly, holding onto the notes with desire and longing, and she sings all four verses of “Mr. Tambourine Man” to an arrangement that replaces the electric guitar of Dylan’s original with Bill Lee’s acoustic bass. Her vocal captures both the overnight weariness of Dylan and the early morning wonder of McGuinn, creating a unique interpretation that stands tall among the many versions cut in 1965. Similarly, she brings a powerful feeling of solemnity and desolation to Billy Edd Wheeler’s “The Coming of the Roads,” giving voice to the emotional and environmental devastation of the song’s lyrics.

The baroque sounds Collins would explore on the following year’s In My Life are foreshadowed by a cello backing on the traditional “Lord Gregory,” and guitars and acoustic bass are joined by Jerry Dodgion’s flute for a live recording of Malvina Reynolds’ rousing “It Isn’t Nice.” Richard Farina’s dulcimer provides quiet accompaniment for Gil Turner’s civil rights anthem “Carry it On,” and his original poem from the album cover is reproduced in full on the booklet’s back (bring your magnifying glass!). Collectors’ Choice’s reissue brings the original dozen tracks back into domestic print, and includes new liner notes by Richie Unterberger. This is a terrific artifact of the folk revival and a high point in Collins’ career. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Eilen Jewell: Butcher Holler- A Tribute to Loretta Lynn

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Cool tribute to Loretta Lynn

On last year’s Sea of Tears [review], Eilen Jewell stepped up from folk and country sounds to electric twang. She dropped the fiddle and harmonica of her earlier releases and sang solo with a rockabilly-styled trio of guitar, bass and drums. That same trio format, with the thoroughly stellar Jerry Miller on guitar and pedal steel, is employed for this terrific salute to Loretta Lynn. The band plays blue and lightly rocking across a dozen covers, melding Jewell’s jazz-tipped vocals with twang-heavy guitars and tempos that turn the ballads into sorrowful two-steppers and the rest into perfectly restrained rockers. You can hear Lynn in every track, but what you won’t hear is Jewell copying the subject of her tribute.

Jewell isn’t as feisty a singer as Lynn, which keeps “Fist City” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” from delivering the originals’ heat. To be fair, Lynn wrote and sang these songs when such outspokenness, at least from a female country singer, delivered a shock and element of liberation that’s not available to a contemporary vocalist. Jewell’s cool approach works perfectly on the sly “You Wanna Give Me a Lift” as she brushes off an overly amorous suitor with the lyric “I’m a little bit warm, but that don’t mean I’m on fire.” For “Don’t Come Home A- Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” Jewell offers a promise of forgiveness in place of a half-cocked frying pan, and it works very nicely.

Lynn’s originals are filtered through Jewell’s influences, so while these new recordings pay homage to the hits, they’re distinct interpretations influenced by the blue emotions of Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Connie Francis, and the torchy styles of Big Sandy and Julie London.  Jewell sings most everything solo, doubling herself on the superbly forlorn “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” and leaving Miller’s guitar to provide the second voice elsewhere. Miller’s steel playing on “A Man I Hardly Know” is superb, and the bouncy “You’re Looking at Country” closes the album on a convincing note: Jewell’s a bit jazz, a bit blues, a bit rockabilly and a whole lot country. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Flynnville Train: Redemption

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Rock-solid southern rock

This Indiana-bred country-rock band is a real throwback to the southern rock of the 1970s. The quartet is looser, wilder, harder and seemingly less-calculated than redneck-rock acts like Big & Rich and Gretchen Wilson, but they play to the same blue collar crowd. Their songs will strike a deep chord in a nation where political and business institutions seem to be at odds with the populace. The lead single, “Preachin’ to the Choir,” effectively expresses Joe Sixpack’s pent-up frustration without resorting to the divisive tropes of talking-head politics. It doesn’t pose any big solutions, but the opportunity to vent one’s frustration in a like-minded crowd, and in this case, an anthem-singing country-rock crowd, is quite cathartic.

There’s a nostalgic streak in the band’s songs, including the comforts of their childhood “Home,” and a satisfied recounting of their career in the optimistic “On Our Way.” They take you inside the legendary Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in “33 Steps” (the title cleverly measuring the walk from the Grand Ol’ Opry) and to the track for the NASCAR-themed “Turn Left.” There’s hard-charging electric guitar twang on the upbeat tracks, but even when the band slows down for banjo, steel and mandolin additions, the bass, guitar and drums remain solid. There are songs of rowdy Saturdays (“Alright” and “Tip a Can”) and guilt-wracked Sundays (“Friend of Sinners”), love and sex. The latter, “Scratch Me Where I’m Itchin’,” opens with a great Johnny Winter-styled riff.

In addition to the original material, the band covers the Kentucky Headhunters “The One You Love” and closes the album with a strong cover of America’s “Sandman.” The latter, originally released in 1971, is repurposed to address America’s current military crises and conflicts. The song is played more heavily than the original, including a period-invoking electric sitar solo and a stinging guitar duel. The harmonies are sung with the power and stridency of CSN&Y’s anti-war songs, putting a serious end to an album that’s often lighter in topic. It’s a great way to end the album, and really shows off the group’s heartland grit, heart and soul. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Domestic reissue of 1980 UK synthpop landmark

OMD is one of the transitional entities that bridged early electronic music pioneers like Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and Wendy Carlos, with the synthpop bands that populated the New Wave and dominated the early years of MTV. The band’s 1979 single, “Electricity,” pushed its synthetic instruments and machine rhythms up front, but warmed them with Andy McCluskey’s bass, a catchy electric pianotron riff and a duet vocal from McCluskey and Paul Humphries that celebrated the power source of their music. The flip, “Almost,” is an equal combination of synthetics and warmth, but the keyboards are less angular and more expansive, with a soaring lead line and steam-like backing for the lush, Bryan Ferry-esque vocal of longing and indecision.

For this first full-length album, issued in 1980, McCluskey and Humphries followed the same template, using their primitive electronic instruments to create pulsating and jabbing backings for vocals that borrow the strident tone of mod and punk. Their lyrics are often impressionistic sketches of emotions and concepts, including a soldier’s life (a theme they’d revisit to even greater effect on “Enola Gay”), the illusions of time, and fatalism. The new-wave “Red Frame/White Light” unspools a series of telephone box snapshots, and the album’s most conventional lyric in “Messages” finds the singer recoiling from the unwanted contact of a departed lover. The boozy near-instrumental “Dancing” sounds like a record caught off spindle, and the atmospheric “The Messerschmitt Twins” brings to mind the Human League’s first full-length, Reproduction.

Microwerks’ CD reissue is delivered in a tri-fold cardboard slipcase that reproduces the original LPs die-cut front cover and adds excellent liner notes by Jim Allen. The original ten tracks are augmented by four bonuses (though not the band-disliked Martin Hannett productions of “Electricity” and “Almost,” which were included on EMI’s 2003 import reissue). There is a longer single of “Messages” whose bassier, fuller mix greatly improves upon the album version, and three B-sides: the dark “I Betray My Friends,” an instrumental remix/dub of “Messages” titled “Taking Sides Again,” and a pop-staccato cover of Lou Reed’s “Waiting for the Man.” Though critics more highly laud the band’s follow-ups, Organisation and Architecture & Morality, this debut laid out the template and still sounds innovative today. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Various Artists: Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to the Songs of Shel Silverstein

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Sweet tribute to Shel Silverstein and his songs

A surprising number of people know Shel Silverstein only as an author, cartoonist, poet or the writer of Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue.” But when you start to reel off the songs that were hits for other singers, such as the Irish Rovers’ “The Unicorn,” or Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show’s “Sylvia’s Mother” and “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” most will see they’re more familiar with Silverstein’s music than they previously realized. Mention Marianne Faithful’s comeback cover of “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” and his work gains a layer of indie cred, and spin them Bobby Bare’s Lullabyes, Legends and Lies, and the books and hit singles start to look like commercial peaks atop a vast catalog of artful and endearing music.

This fifteen-song tribute was produced by Bobby Bare Jr. and Sr., whose shared professional acquaintance with Silverstein dates back to a 1974 father-son duet of the Silverstein-penned “Daddy, What If.” That song transcends to a new generation as Bare Jr. revisit its heart-tugging lyric of parental love with his daughter Isabelle. Unlike tributes to recording artists, tributes to songwriters can mine the part of their canon that hasn’t yet been turned into icons. Better yet, Silverstein’s songs are sufficiently rich to merit additional shades when re-interpreted in new contexts. Dr. Dog’s Beach Boys-styled production and Four Freshman harmonies, for example, provide an interesting, fresh spin to “The Unicorn.”

Bluegrass phenomenon Sarah Jarosz sings “Queen of the Silver Dollar” with a thread-bare sadness that would otherwise seem beyond her eighteen years, and her resigned desolation is deeper than earlier interpretations by Dr. Hook, Emmylou Harris and the Kendalls. Of course, the song’s lyrics are so perfectly crafted as to even stand up to Micky Modelle’s earlier disco remake. Lucinda Williams sings “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” with the heartbreak, disillusion and wear that few vocalists can hold to a melody. John Prine, Ray Price, Bobby Bare Sr. and Kris Kristofferson each use the age in their voices to texture to their selections, with the latter one-upping Bobby Bare’s original take on “The Winner” by adding grizzled old-guy, spit-eyed gumption.

Even “A Boy Named Sue,” a song whose clever ending most listeners already know, and whose Johnny Cash performance is a country music classic, is worth another visit. Todd Snider doesn’t add anything revolutionary, but he hits the song’s tough, sly, wise tone perfectly. Less impressive is Black Francis’ take on “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” which hasn’t the jug band goofiness of Dr. Hook’s original, and the Boxmasters drop the melodrama (and rush the tempo) of “Sylvie’s Mother.” The album’s title track, originally a poem from A Light in the Attic is brought to song with a wonderful melody, vocal and string arrangement by Andrew Bird. This is a fine collection that thoughtfully pairs singers and songs, and a nice way to hear these lovable (and beloved) Shel Silverstein songs. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Mark Chesnutt: Outlaw

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Heartfelt covers of ‘70s outlaw classics

Like many fine artists discarded by the mainstream Country music machine, Mark Chesnutt’s artistry has grown even as his commercial fame has waned. Having parted with his last major label (Columbia) after an eponymous release in 2002, Chesnutt released a series of indie albums that returned to his hard-country roots. Starting with 2004’s Savin’ the Honky Tonk, Chesnutt developed a sound that favored the twang of the roadhouse over the processed sound of the studio. On this latest, Chesnutt returns to the inspiring songs of his youth, covering titles written or made famous by friends and heroes that include Billy Joe Shaver, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe, and Hank Williams Jr.

Producer Pete Anderson’s reigned in the production touches with which he pushed Dwight Yoakam, delivering Chesnutt classic arrangements of guitar, fiddle and steel that focus on the songs and singing. The album is a tribute, but settles even more easily into the sort of dancehall Saturday night that leaves you smiling on Sunday morning… once the hangover’s gone. The vocals generally follow the originals’ templates, but the productions shed the studio sounds of the 1970s and 80s. Anderson’s guitar is meatier than the original on “Are You Ready for the Country,” the string arrangement of Kristofferson’s “Lovin’ Her Was Easier” is changed into a mournful fiddle, and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” is played without the dramatic climbs of the original. The song list is a combination of tunes Chesnutt’s been singing live for years, including “Black Rose,” “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” and “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” treasured album cuts like Waylon Jennings’ “Freedom to Stay,” and tunes suggested by his label, including “Desperados Waiting for a Train.”

Many of these are songs that Chesnutt’s long loved, but for various reasons (often, the difficulty of learning the wordy lyrics) he’d never sung. In a couple of cases, such as with “Black Rose,” he dug back past the version he knew, by Waylon Jennings, to the original approach of the song’s writer, Billy Joe Shaver. In other cases, such as with “A Couple More Years,” he stuck with his memories of the hit, by Dr. Hook. The album was cut in Los Angeles, and Chesnutt and Anderson took only two nights to get masters for all thirteen vocals – a mark of their preparation and the synergy the pair found in the vocal booth. Anderson adds plenty of hard guitar twang throughout the album, and the backing band includes Gary Morse (pedal steel), Donny Reed (fiddle) and Mickey Raphael (harmonica). While this doesn’t push Chesnutt forward, it’s a great opportunity to hear a terrific country vocalist sing some great country songs. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Clint Eastwood: Cowboy Favorites

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Clint Eastwood sings western songs on pleasant television tie-in

With so much incredible material in the Cameo-Parkway vault, most of which hasn’t seen  reissue in fifty years, one has to wonder why Collectors’ Choice decided to make this 1963 television tie-in one of the first C-P original album reissues. When originally issued, Eastwood had been starring in Rawhide since 1959, and though he’d become one of the most famous actors and directors of his generation, his singing career (which also included the 1969 film version of Paint Your Wagon and hit duets with Merle Haggard and T.G. Sheppard) remained mostly a sidelight. This album was the joint product of Eastwood’s background as a pianist and the early-60s penchant for cashing in on television popularity. Unlike the pop and rock records of Ricky Nelson, Shelley Fabares and others of the era, the 33-year-old Eastwood and his producers put together a set of western songs that played well to the actor’s voice. It was a good fit for the times, with Bonanza climbing to its mid-60s peak, and Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” and Gene Pitney’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” having dented the pop charts. Eastwood proves himself a passable crooner (rather than simply a television actor stepping out), and the unnamed New York band (which seems unlikely to have been the hard-charging Philadelphia-based Cameo-Parkway house combo) is sharp but bland – even Eastwood’s jazz background can’t move the band to swing Bob Wills’ “San Antonio Rose.” Collectors’ Choice’s CD reissue includes the album’s original dozen tracks, with Eastwood backed by an all-male chorus, and both sides of his pre-LP single, “Rowdy” and “Cowboy Wedding Song.” [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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