Today we’re kicking off the week with an instrumental cover of, what some refer to as, the first existential country song.Originally made popular by Glen Campbell in 1968, “Wichita Lineman” describes the lonely daydreams of a man working amongst the telephone wires of Wichita, Kansas.The version you’re hearing today, performed by Friends of Dean Martinez, captures the yearning sentiment of the original via Bill Elm’s steel guitar.
Back in the mid-1940s, Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, and his incomparable band of city slickers, the Texas Playboys, stood at their creative apex, and were searching for new worlds to conquer. Packing their unprecedented musical gumbo of country, pop, blues, jazz, mariachi and Dixieland into their saddle bags, they rode into Oakland, California’s Tiffany Music Corporation and recorded 150 transcriptions intended to be marketed as syndicated radio programs to stations across the Southwest. The shows never sold, but they left an inspired legacy of some of the hardest-swinging Texas tunes this side of ZZ Top. “Fat Boy Rag” roared to life as the band jammed in the studio on May 20, 1946. Powered by a choogling jump-blues rhythm, barrelhouse piano runs, white-hot fiddling and Lester “Junior” Barnard’s ferocious, near-manic guitar picking (”Ugly! Yeah!,” Wills exclaims in the background), “Fat Boy Rag,” even 60 years after it was recorded, could make a deacon turn to drinking.
That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine The Everly Brothers
Label: Barnaby Records
Released: 1958
In 1958 I was torn between the rebellious teenage energy of rock and the rootsy authenticity of folk music. The Everlys bridged that gap with their classic album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. I didn’t know that the harmonies of The Everly Brothers were the bedrock of country music; I didn’t even know what country music was, but their vocals sent chills down my spine. When they sang Gene Autry’s old hit “That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine,” I was surprised to find tears running down my cheeks. The Everly Brothers made a lot of great music in their day, but the close harmonies on Songs Our Daddy Taught Us are their finest hour, pure country with just a hint of rock attitude.
Two years before their all-bluegrass LP The Mountain, Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band parked in a Nashville studio, tightened up their strings, rosined up their bows, and cut “I Still Carry You Around,” an Earle-penned breakdown that sounds as if it could have fallen out of the chest pocket of Bill Monroe’s Nudie suit back in 1935. Bluegrass is deceptively simple music; the best of the genre manages to sound both as loose as a coal miner on payday and as tight as a preacher’s Sunday collar. Earle and band nail it to the floor in exactly two minutes and 45 seconds. Of course, being a Steve Earle original, the lyrics bemoan a love lost, never to return, and never to be forgotten. But with a performance this joyous, you gotta believe the heart will endure.
I loved all kinds of music growing up in the 50s and 60s, but the sound that really got me was a seemingly odd mix of rural southern fiddle and steel guitars playing jazz that became known as Western Swing. This is the music that Willie Nelson grew up on. People think of Willie as a country singer but he had jazz in his background, such as this cut (”Columbus Stockade Blues”), which features him in the early 1960s with his ex-wife Shirley Collie. She was a fine singer and slappin’ bass player and her duets with Willie are really great - this one especially! Such recordings inspired bands like Asleep at the Wheel to get into this music…and now all these years later, we’re the ones getting to make records with Willie (as with the 2009 release “Willie and the Wheel”). How lucky are we?
Robyn Hitchcock closed out the 20th century with the often-overlooked Jewels For Sophia album. He’s always been sparing with overtly linear lyrics, so when a song like “I Feel Beautiful” comes along, its relatively straightforward presentation is a real head turner. The song is so lovely that it takes a few listens to realize that Hitchcock’s surrealistic wordplay is as present as ever. Here are a few lines: “I water the tomatoes, and I think of you.” “I feel like a creature that is sleekly groomed.” “I’ve been hanging round Covent Garden for you for centuries.” All seek to explain the beautiful feeling of being loved. The instrumental track is sympathetically matched. An acoustic guitar sets up the main architecture, but the subtle embellishments (Jon Brion on Marxophone, which sounds rather like a hammered dulcimer) underscore the timeless nature of the sentiments in the words.
With apologies to Ricky Skaggs and George Strait, this has to be the definitive cover of Guy Clark’s Texas-swing genius. For one, Rodney sounds a tad more battle-tested. Then you’ve got Emory Gordy’s bass and Hank DeVito’s steel guitar guiding and flavoring just right. And besides, neither George nor Ricky could bring themselves to sing the original phrase, “Pride is a bitch and a bore when you’re lonely,” which, of course, it is. Maybe that’s what caused Rodney to leave Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band and begin such a fruitful solo career. Given that the heart is a most resilient organ, it’s no surprise how sturdy Rodney’s version holds up after a mere 29 years.
You might not recognize this road saga unless you’re familiar with Nelson’s impressive but brief two-album stint for Atlantic Records. (Rhino collected these complete recordings for a three-disc set in 2006.) The “devil” is Nelson’s longtime drummer Paul English, who’s been providing a steady backbeat for the Willie Nelson Family Band since 1966 and who’s also quite the prankster. (Nelson has sung of their many misadventures before. After listening to this track, check out his classic “Me And Paul.”) This song details some of the bad stuff that happens while traveling in a tour bus, including coming down with pneumonia. Nelson also tries to take bids on his famous tour bus—nicknamed “The Time Tube”—which was previously owned by country star Porter Wagoner. I doubt he’s really interested in selling; it really should be in the Smithsonian someday anyway.
Aptly titled, Braver Newer World found Jimmie Dale Gilmore and producer T-Bone Burnett heading into edgier and more atmospheric sonic territories. It was an experiment that yielded stunning results, with Gilmore’s familiar Texas warble sounding perfectly comfortable amidst the studio and arrangement sensibilities of late-twentieth-century rule breakers. The set’s most chilling number is “Where Is Love Now” by Sam Phillips. At once windswept and enveloping, the combined force of the song and performance give potent character to heart-rending mysteries of life. It’s not possible to hear the bending note when he sings the word “dark” in the phrase “out here in the dark” without being swept far away from all of life’s mundane matters. The very quality of Gilmore’s voice calls into question how bad the dark might be.
“Hearts On Fire” is one of the most beautiful songs Gram Parsons ever recorded. It’s really shocking to think that by the time this duet with Emmylou Harris appeared on the Grievous Angel album in 1974, the 26-year-old singer had already been dead for months. Parsons was in the middle of an incredibly rough year when the album was recorded. He had just lost his home in a fire and was still mourning the death of his friend Clarence White, who played with Parsons on The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo sessions. He was also in the middle of divorcing his wife. It’s easy to imagine Gram as the unfaithful lover described in the lyrics and Emmylou as the heartbroken wife.
What would you expect to find inside the pocket of a clown—noisemakers, paper flowers, a hand-buzzer, a clandestine, to-go squirt bottle of seltzer? Dwight Yoakam reached in there, and, true to form, discovered nothing but heartache. “Pocket Of A Clown” finds our hero betrayed and hurting, as the woman he loves cheats, lies, and makes a face-painted fool out of him. Built around the loping Bakersfield shuffle that Yoakam virtually owns, the song is augmented by a 1950s girl-group chorus, sweetly crooning “oo-wah” while Dwight squirms, the knife having found its mark. Add to the mix a taunting, Western swing-style fiddle solo and Pete Anderson’s growling honky-tonk electric guitar, and it’s all too evident that this clown’s story is no laughing matter.
