VARIOUS ARTISTS
Nashville Stars On Tour
(Bear Family, 5-disc set)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Blame it on the Cold War. With America's extensive European military presence, Armed Forces Radio playing country discs, and country acts touring those bases, it was inevitable European civilians would embrace the music. RCA Victor's expert promotion machine in Europe stood ready to exploit that new audience in April 1964. With Beatlemania seemingly ruling the world, RCA sponsored "Nashville Stars On Tour", two weeks of shows for military and civilian fans. The headliner was Jim Reeves, already wildly popular there, his band the Blue Boys, Chet Atkins, Bobby Bare, and the Anita Kerr Singers.

Among those attending: Bear Family's Richard Weize, which explains this lovingly assembled four-CD, one-DVD package of live recordings from Hamburg and Berlin, the troupe's Oslo, Norway concert on video and a disc of later German language recordings by Bare and other RCA Nashville acts.

The performing schedule frazzled everyone, yet the performances captured here reflect none of that. While the Blue Boys prove a capable backup unit, the Kerrs, so effective when Atkins used them as session accompanists, come off bland and soulless during their onstage solo spots. Bare radiated fire and youth as he sang "Shame On Me" and his signature hits "Detroit City" and "500 Miles Away From Home". Atkins's shyness didn't detract from his stunning instrumental virtuosity on crowd-pleasing "Yankee Doodle/Dixie", "Windy And Warm", Jerry Reed's complex instrumental "Yes Ma'am", a rousing, intense "Tiger Rag" and the jazz instrumental "Gravy Waltz".

Reeves's performances are powerful whether he reprised pre-Nashville Sound hits "Mexican Joe" and "Yonder Comes A Sucker" or his greatest moments: "He'll Have To Go" and "Four Walls", "Danny Boy" and "Adios Amigo", undiluted even by the Kerr harmonies. There's nothing soft or mellow about anything he does, reiterated by his prickly onstage temperament (a truth still hotly denied by some Reeves idolators). Three other live Reeves albums exist from earlier periods, yet these performances carry special poignancy since in slightly over three months, Reeves and Blue Boys pianist Dean Manuel would be dead.

As with all Bear Family collections, this one includes a photo-laden book. A hardcover affair, its text is mostly in German, some in English. Certainly, the photos, clips and memorabilia all convey the excitement these shows generated. For most, however, hearing (and seeing) Atkins at his best, marveling at Reeves and Bare performing in the classic, austere Nashville Sound style that began in the late '50s will be the true reward.

-- RICH KIENZLE
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Rich Kienzle

Posted on May 12, 2008 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Stax Does The Beatles
(Stax/Concord)

(NO DEPRESSION.NET) -- Of course it makes sense. The Beatles, and most of their fellow British Invaders, swiped liberally from American blues and R&B figures, some of whom remain better known today in the U.K. than ever they were here in the States.

And, of course, there was a long tradition of covering popular songs.

The problem is that the early Beatles source material swung, and if the Beatles themselves didn't always manage to swing, they made up for it with a kind of feral intensity. When they became songwriters, they became pop songwriters (and then psychedelic songwriters, and then Wings), and most of those songs don't swing at all unless one beats them into shape.

Despite its simple and clever cover art, Stax Does The Beatles does not revive an old and clever cover album; it is a modern repackaging of stray tracks, and does listeners few favors. Unless you own a skating rink.

If everything here were as muscular as Otis Redding's alternate take of "Day Tripper," this would be a spectacular assemblage. But it's not. Most of this is instrumental music from Booker T & The MGs, or the Mar-Kays, or Isaac Hayes ("Something"), and mostly it serves to remind how banal the Beatles could be. Steve Cropper's "With A Little Help From My Friends" is, at least, vigorous enough to sound like the backing track for a singer who didn't make the session.

But with all due respect to the venerated Booker T and friends, their instrumentals sound far too much like an exercise in demonstrating how many easy songs could be recorded in a three-hour session to fill out an album. Too many.

The vocals tracks are scarcely better. Young Carla Thomas' "Yesterday" (taken from Live At The Bohemian Caverns, a sketchy 1967 live in LA album reissued last year) serves principally to remind us how much a singer must bring to a simple pop song to make it sing. And how vapid that particular piece of the canon is, a precursor to Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again." (Ray Price, at least, managed to wring something out of the song, but he was in his 70s when he cut it.) That "Yesterday" is repeated as a Bar-Kays' instrumental only amplifies the insult.

The obscure John Gary Williams' take on "My Sweet Lord" is, at least, curious up until he skips the "hari kari" interlude for a sermon. It's almost something.

But mostly these Memphis legends treat the Beatles' music as so much white bread, and forget to place a heavy layer of barbeque atop it so it can soak up that greasy goodness.

-- GRANT ALDEN
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Grant Alden

Posted on May 9, 2008 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NICK LOWE
Jesus Of Cool: 30th Anniversary Edition
(Yep Roc)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- To paraphrase a vintage David Bowie promo campaign, in 1978 there was old wave, there was new wave, and there was Nick Lowe -- smack in the middle. Still a year shy of 30, Lowe had already been through the ringer; his pub rock outfit, Brinsley Schwartz, spent five years drumming up boffo press and slim sales. Yet when he tried to provoke his label to drop him with the 1975 glam parody "Bay City Rollers, We Love You", it backfired when the song became a smash...in Japan. Once freed, he co-founded Stiff Records, producing key releases for the Damned, Elvis Costello, and Wreckless Eric. But as a recording artist, he had yet to establish where, if at all, he fit in the landscape apres punk.

Rather than pick sides, Lowe courted both on his solo debut, Jesus Of Cool. (In America, that cheeky title didn't fly; the disc was issued, with an overhauled track listing, as Pure Pop For Now People.) Accompanied by Rockpile, Lowe served up originals that showed facility in various classic genres. "Little Hitler" framed gum-chewing girl-group swagger with Beatles-worthy backing vocals, while the rapturous "Tonight" could've sprung from the Goffin/King team. He toyed with loping ska rhythms ("No Reason"), and, in the ever-circling "So It Goes", offered a scruffy blueprint for what would be his biggest U.S. hit, "Cruel To Be Kind".

Yet Lowe also boasted a cynical streak to rival Johnny Rotten's. Several cuts attacked the music industry; some worked (the ragged "Shake And Pop"), others fell flat ("Music For Money"). One of the album's highlights, "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass", with its jagged piano lines, seemed to poke fun at Bowie's somber Low (issued the same year), yet its author claimed the inspiration actually sprang from dressing-room shenanigans he'd witnessed while touring with Bad Company. Either way, it still sounds great.

This Yep Roc repackaging amends all Lowe's related cuts circa '77-'78, including a peppy remake of Sandy Posey's politically incorrect 1966 country hit "Born A Woman" (from Lowe's Bowi EP), cuts substituted on the U.S. edition, compilation tracks ("I Love My Label"), and the one-sided Rockpile single packaged with initial British pressings. The result is a comprehensive appraisal of the cornerstone -- cracks and all -- of Lowe's long, remarkable career. Even tarted up with so many accessories, Jesus Of Cool runs little risk of looking like the doggie's dinner.

-- KURT B. REIGHLEY

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Kurt B. Reighley

Posted on May 2, 2008 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CHARLIE MONROE
I'm Old Kentucky Bound: 1938-1956
(Bear Family)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- While Bill Monroe stood as the Father of Bluegrass in the '60s (though often eclipsed during that time by Flatt & Scruggs), older brother Charlie -- half of the legendary pre-bluegrass duo the Monroe Brothers -- worked two jobs, one as a fry cook at a Howard Johnson's in Martinsville, Indiana.

It was a profound reversal of fortune. Eight years Bill's senior, Charlie originally had the edge. After the duo's strained 1938 split, Charlie recovered with a new band that did well on radio and records and planned to audition for the Opry in 1939. When Bill and his original Blue Grass Boys got there two weeks sooner, the die was cast. Charlie and his band, the Kentucky Pardners, worked in Bill's shadow thereafter, the brothers' relationship uneasy. In the '50s, semi-retired in comfort to his Kentucky farm, failed business deals and his wife's terminal cancer diagnosis left Charlie virtually destitute.

This definitive four-disc collection assembles all Charlie's primary material for the first time. His 1938-39 Bluebird sessions, 1946-1951 RCA material and 1950's Decca sessions cover three discs. A fourth showcases Monroe and the Pardners onstage at Maryland's legendary New River Ranch in the mid-'50s, recorded by folklorist Mike Seeger. High-quality remastering restores the vitality of the prewar material, and even the live disc sounds clear and crisp. The booklet features a fine anecdote-rich Dick Spottswood biographical essay including comments excerpted from Doug Green's 1972 interview with Charlie.

"Bluegrass," Spottswood rightly concludes, "remained foreign to Charlie's style." Indeed it did. While Bill emphasized dignity, complex vocal harmonies, fiery instrumental breaks and a propulsive backbeat, Charlie's vocals were warmer, his sound looser and more flexible. He was solidly traditional on his '30s material and early postwar fare such as 1946's "Bringing In The Georgia Mail". Since he tilted toward the mainstream by adding amplified lead and steel guitar, it's no shock hearing his 1950 session with Hank Williams' Drifting Cowboys.

It would be Jimmy Martin, not Bill Monroe, who in 1972 brought Charlie back to the stage. Three years before, after Charlie's remarriage -- to a woman Bill had dated -- the brothers had a final, irrevocable split. Still living hand-to-mouth and despite suffering from leukemia, Charlie returned to performing in 1974 and died a year later. Given the quality of the music, it all seems unfair.

-- RICH KIENZLE
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Rich Kienzle

Posted on April 30, 2008 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

JOHN ANDERSON
Just Came Home To Count The Memories
All The People Are Talkin'
Eye Of A Hurricane
Tokyo, Oklahoma
Countrified
(Collectors' Choice)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- First charting in 1977 and coming on strong by 1980, John Anderson was a harbinger of the New Traditionalist movement that hit Nashville in the mid-'80s, a young man with an old man's voice -- his unfettered, adenoidal baritone tore like Lefty and Haggard and swooped like Jones. These, his third and fifth through eighth Warner Bros. albums (the previously reissued Wild And Blue was his fourth), cover 1981 through 1987 and balance no-apologies honky-tonk with textbook country-boy rock that could only have seemed radical in those Urban Cowboy years.

Anderson sounds like nobody else, before or since; not only is he instantly recognizable, but when he rips into a lyric full-bore, he leaves most other singers sounding limp and inhibited. Yet he also has a mawkish streak that could let the air out of even his strongest albums, and he sometimes allowed strings and backup singers to undercut his best performances. He can also be distractingly self-conscious and erratic in selecting material; for all his career high points, he never cut a truly essential album.

I Just Came Home features the newly-arrived star bemoaning a country burnout on "Can You Catch A Falling Star" and flirting with bluegrass on "Stop In The Road" and Dylan's "Don't Think Twice It's All Right", before closing with a version of the Delmore Brothers' "Trail Of Time" that sounds like Hank Williams cutting the follow-up to "Lost Highway". (Lionel Delmore, Alton's son, was Anderson's favorite writing partner.)

All The People, probably the best of these five reissues, is dominated by rocking songs with country themes, including "Black Sheep" (co-written by filmmaker Robert Altman) and "Let Somebody Else Drive", but "Look What Followed Me Home" is a ghostly weeper. Hurricane, Anderson's first album of all new material (by a variety of writers), was well received and yielded three hits, but sounds in retrospect like a bit of a time-marker, part apex and part beginning of the end. "She Sure Got Away With My Heart" (a dead ringer for Van Morrison, of all people) is the most engaging single, while the rambling-man album track "Lonely Is Another State" is an understated sleeper.

By Tokyo, Anderson's whole approach is beginning to seem formulaic, more rutted than rooted, despite the devastating "Down In Tennessee". Countrified smells like a contract-fulfilling throwaway that only a books-balancing major-label accountant could truly love. Anderson subsequently switched labels and went into a career swoon that lasted about five years before he temporarily righted himself with the likes of "Straight Tequila Night" and "Seminole Wind".

It's unfortunate that Wild And Blue couldn't be part of this batch, because it's his best effort. Anderson die-hards will greet these long-unavailable albums enthusiastically, but others are better served by the two volumes of Greatest Hits condensing this era. Regardless, you do need to hear Anderson, who's proof that worthy music can happen in Nashville even amidst its worst phases.

-- JOHN MORTHLAND

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or John Morthland

Posted on April 25, 2008 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

BO DIDDLEY
I'm A Man: The Chess Masters 1955-1958
(Hip-O Select)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- If Chuck Berry molded his music from his love of jazz, country, pop and blues, Bo Diddley, who moved from McComb, Mississippi, to Chicago in 1934, retained a gutbucket earthiness blending overtones of the rawest Delta blues with sounds of the primitive Chicago street bands he played with as a kid. Half a century after his debut single, "I'm A Man"/"Bo Diddley", and decades after Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, George Thorogood and others built on his foundations, it's worth examining Bo's first four years in greater depth.

This limited-edition two-CD package assembles 48 tracks, encompassing released and unreleased masters, twelve alternate takes, and eight unissued masters, one an edgy rendition of Mickey & Sylvia's 1958 hit "Love Is Strange".

Bo's primal nature embraced the conventional blues structure of "I'm A Man" and drove his trademark sound, manifested on "Bo Diddley"; the song's "hambone" rhythm and raw, tremolo-drenched guitar defined him. Such raw, relentlessness begat "Mona", "Bring It To Jerome", "Say Man", "Diddy Wah Diddy", the tongue-in-cheek voodoo of "Who Do You Love" and the fiery "Down Home Special".

The alternate takes, combined with dramatically improved remastering, allow the listener to hear the creative process unfold as Bo and the band work out ideas. It's easy to hear how editing created certain released masters, thanks to the inclusion of both edited and unedited masters, along with Chris Morris's concise notes and George White's discographical data.

Last November, McComb honored Bo (a.k.a. Ellas McDaniel) with a plaque on the Mississippi Blues Trail, noting his influence and citing him as, to use a hackneyed but correct cliche, "a founder of rock and roll." Still recovering from the crippling stroke suffered in May, he attended the ceremony and sang a bit. That indefatigable spirit comes through on this extraordinary collection, which easily merits a sequel.

-- RICH KIENZLE

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Rich Kienzle

Posted on April 23, 2008 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

LYNYRD SKYNYRD
Street Survivors (Deluxe Edition)
(Geffen)

by GRANT ALDEN

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- But for the passionate arguments of Patterson Hood, Lynyrd Skynyrd would probably be remembered here only as the music blaring from the bondo camaros the rough smoking guys stood around with their high school girls, who probably did put out. Or as the flames LP, recalled and redesigned after the plane went down, a lower case butcher album on the collector market.

Or, and this is the most inexact fate, for its principal single: "What's Your Name," a cavalier -- wonderful word, that, for both meanings fit: its archaic sense as a gentleman, and its present connotation of disrespect -- ode to the rock star life of the 1970s. It is the kind of song which would have kept me from listening to the band, much less the album, for that kind of hedonism has always seemed both below and beyond me.

And yet.

And yet it is a finely drawn, carefully rendered song, or so it plays today. (So it played then, but I couldn't hear it, too much a fan of Peter Green and Keith Emerson.) Effortless in its simplicity, and deceptive for all that. It's a nasty guitar riff, a nasty, predatory song. And it's not. In 1977 that opening line about a limo driver smelled of debauchery, but now it seems quite self-evident that musicians should not drive themselves around strange towns, particularly when they're achieved a certain iconic status. And "little girl"; man, that plays differently now than I think it was meant when written. "I've done made some plans" and "I've found a little queen/and I know I can treat her right" roots the singer's class, there's been a fight in the hotel bar, and yet the closing line for the one night stand is this: "shouldn't you stay/little girl/though there ain't no shame." Shame. In the end, of course, the singer offers cab fare home, same time next year. A gentleman, despite himself. In addition to himself.

The temptation, then, is to let that song frame Street Survivors as an album celebrating the wretched excess of '70s rockstardom, only this simple eight-song LP is far more complex than that. Remember that it was built during the era of rock operas and concept albums, and remember that albums were conceived of as comprehensive statements, as suites. That sequencing was important.

Except the second track is "That Smell," Ronnie Van Zant's voyage through the same territory Neil Young explored with "The Needle And The Damage Done," with more preaching and less fury, if that makes any sense. The juxtaposition here cannot have been accidental. And, in passing, I wonder if some of the street jargon -- "'ludes", in particular -- is as impenetrable to most of today's listeners as Billy Joe Shaver's dominecker hen was until I realized it was a specific kind of barnyard animal, and nothing less...nor more).

Point being, the balance of the album seems like a meditation on the singer's transition from roving hotel cavalier to family man ("One More Time," "I Never Dreamed," etc.). The second side, of course, opens with "You Got That Right," another one of those feral, fighting songs for which the band was justly famous. But it closes with "Ain't No Good Life," which almost certainly has to be a nod to Willie Nelson's "Night Life," doesn't it? Only it feels more like Haggard: "I want to know/Tell me why is it so?/Well, just 'cause I don't pray/Lord that don't mean I ain't forgiven/Just because I'm alive/that don't mean I'm making a living." (There's a song begging to be recast as southern gospel, should, say, Mike Farris happen by needing material.)

And on those terms, as a self-conceived work of art, not simply as an ode to the sybaritic excesses of the road, this is one hell of an album. And, of course, it rocks.

This deluxe edition reissue appends the original eight tracks with a second disc, which you will listen to once. It includes the first version of the album, produced by the legendary Tom Dowd, known (apparently) as the Criteria Studios Album. The same eight songs, only they sound as if they were played by a really competent cover band who had learned them note by note from careful tablature. Dowd has a great reputation, though I confess to not really knowing his work. This, too, is a fascinating reminder (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is another) that musicians aren't simply being petulant artists when they reject all that work because it comes off wrong. Somehow Dowd neutered a band, neutered these songs. It's bizarre to listen to, but no fun at all.

And then there are five live tracks from August, 1977, just before the crash. But the sound quality's not much, and I can't make it through them. So you're on your own there.

Some of us will always wonder what Jimi Hendrix might have become had he struck up a working relationship with Miles Davis. What Buddy Holly might have made of Sgt. Peppers and Phil Spector, or whether he'd have gotten their first, somehow. (But not, somehow, what Kurdt Cobain might have come up with; he wasn't going to pull through, not that burning ember, though I wasn't clever enough to see that.) I don't often put Ronnie Van Zant and Skynyrd in that same dream world, the one in which he steals Brian Henneman from the Bottle Rockets about 1998 and...oh, that's just silly.

And this is a serious album, conflicted, complex, and a whole lot of fun. And sad, for there was no next year.

Posted on April 16, 2008 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MERLE HAGGARD
The Studio Recordings 1969-1976
BONNIE OWENS
Queen Of The Coast
(Bear Family)

by BARRY MAZOR

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- By 1969, as this second completist six-disc box of his Capitol recordings begins, Merle Haggard was well-established as a smooth purveyor of working man's blues, from "Mama Tried" to "Sing Me Back Home". During the span of this extraordinary collection, Merle steps into history, digging and observing and reporting back in a singular conversation that has not stopped since. He would also test himself against his own heroes -- Lefty and Jimmie and Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan -- even as he saluted them by reviving their material.

The Strangers were now a great, tight bar and studio band, capable, as these tracks remind us, of following Haggard across musical boundaries. Yet he'd still augment the sound with horns -- which had for some time been near-anathema in much of roots music, and country in particular. Many of the tracks on the vast Hag collection exploit the brassy, jazzy sounds that made Merle the first Country Hall of Famer on the cover of Downbeat.

(Album-long salutes to Rodgers and Wills, and the Strangers instrumental albums of this same period, will appear on a separate concept albums box; Haggard's unissued studio explorations of the music of Georgia minstrel Emmett Miller and the Love Affair With Trains material are here.)

This was also the time when Haggard stepped into controversy, with the culturally pointed, right-veering "Okie From Muskogee" and "Fightin' Side Of Me" singles. Extensive interviews with Deke Dickerson in the excellent book that comes with this set clear up the matter of Merle's intentions in those songs for good; he meant every belligerent, received, semi-thought-through line at the time. They were no joke -- and he considers them ridiculously naive and wrong-headed today, which is why he's lampooned them since. It will surprise some that by 1976 his campaign-year topical songs include a reference to "the Brothers Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson...and Martin Luther King" in his definition of freedom fighters.

For all of the exploration, Merle had as many hits and self-penned classics in this period as at any time of his career -- from "If We Make It Through December" to "It's Not Love (But It's Not Bad)" to "It's All In The Movies" to "Tulare Dust" to "Living With The Shades Pulled Down".

Merle's muse for all those love songs in this period was mainly Bonnie Owens, his longtime singing partner and, for quite a while there, his wife. Her recorded works have been notably under-represented until the appearance of this second four-disc retrospective set, Queen Of The Coast. It covers all of Owens' output from small west coast indies through Capitol Records, from 1953 to 1971 -- including (and this is going to be the key attraction for many listeners) all of the often gorgeous duets with Merle. These two are probably the least-revisited of the great male-female duos of the '60s; this is your chance, and you should take it. Like Dolly and Porter, the sheer vocal perfection is as key to their power as the chemistry.

Bonnie tended to put her own career to the side during their married years, and there weren't, consequentially, an unending string of great new songs coming her way during that time. As a vocalist, she tended toward the lighter, thinner Kitty Wells approach -- and the songs often match that tone with docile, long-suffering lily sorts of lyrics. And then Bonnie surprises you with the in-your-face lies of "Number One Heel", and you see the power she often brought to country classics in during these years, and even more so, arguably, in the years beyond.

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Barry Mazor.
Illustration by Shocko Grafix

Posted on April 10, 2008 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CHUCK BERRY
The Complete '50s Chess Recordings
(Hip-O Select)

by RICH KIENZLE

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- Ernest Tubb's son Justin was a 20-year-old country singer in 1955, and unimpressed by the nascent sounds of rock 'n' roll. Even so, as a songwriter he had an ear for a great lyric no matter the style. Hearing one current rock song that seemed perfect, he brought it to his father. It took time to work it into his own distinctive style but in late 1955 and early 1956, Ernest Tubb, the "Texas Troubadour" and pillar of the honky tonk style, had a Top Ten country single with Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days", the first hit cover of a Berry song in another genre.

Berry's work has been assembled on LP and CD collections for decades, and a long-ago MCA CD box set, some compilations well done, others woefully scattershot. Finally, Hip-O Select has produced a limited edition four-disc, 103-song package comprehensively surveying Berry's first four years (1955-59) at Chess Records, beginning in 1955 with "Maybelline" and ending with his July, 1959 session with the vocal group The Ecuadors. Arranged chronologically, rarities abound in the form of alternate takes, false starts, unreleased tunes and a couple rare live recordings. It's an embarrassment of riches, providing insights into his creativity and breadth of influences, and revealing his range and depth as both lyricist and instrumentalist.

The signature tunes -- "Maybelline", "Roll Over Beethoven", "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", "Too Much Monkey Business" and "Rock And Roll Music" -- still feel fresh and invigorating, enhanced by superb remastering. The collection also ratifies the well-known and pivotal role played by Johnnie Johnson, whose masterful boogie-woogie piano made him a major component of Berry's sound, his swirling flurries of notes a free-floating foil to Berry's solid, relentless rhythm.

In several cases, demos and alternate takes allow a fly on the wall glimpse into Berry's in-studio creative process as he refines "Sweet Little Sixteen", "Reelin' And Rockin'", "Johnny B. Goode", and "Almost Grown". Aware of Berry's maturity (he turned 29 in 1955), Chess occasionally sped up the tapes while mastering his singles, altering them to make him sound younger. Here, one hears both the doctored versions and original untouched masters side by side. Other alternates are spirited despite obvious tuning problems or, in one case, a brief burst of feedback.

The songs themselves remain transcendent. Some are raw and elemental, others rocking hard but awash in stylish sophistication and wit, echoing Berry's lifelong love of both poetry (his memory for verse is remarkable) and comedy. While the lyrics of Carl Perkins mainly went for the gut, Berry could do that and amuse, satirize and make one think, as he did while spoofing life's everyday travails "Too Much Monkey Business".

Sharing with Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael a flair for flowing, conversational lyrics Berry's songs like "School Days", that timeless narrative about the utter banality of secondary education, and "No Money Down", spoofing Americans' ongoing desire for flashy cars, ring as true today as in 1955. Only the gadgetry has changed.

The collection illuminates Berry's diverse musical roots, proving beyond question that, like Bill Monroe or Bob Wills, Berry was a master synthesizer with influences and inspirations far more complex than many realize.

"Everything I did came from somewhere else," he told Robbie Robertson in a surprisingly candid interview included on the deluxe DVD edition of Taylor Hackford's 1986 Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock And Roll. Obviously he was conversant with both blues and country. "Maybelline", after all, reworked the hillbilly and western swing tune "Ida Red". At his 1955 Chess Records audition, his goal was clearly a blues career like his hero Muddy Waters, skills apparent on "Low Feeling" and "You've Changed".

That's not the end of it. A rough, heartfelt cover of Frankie Laine's 1940s pop hit "That's My Desire" takes him well into lounge territory. His reach even extended to folk tunes. In his autobiography, Berry explained that his deeply religious father inspired "Down Bound Train", a surrealistic tale of a nightmare rail trip to Hell. It's actually his take on the traditional folk song "Hell Bound Train". The Latin-flavored rocker "Broken Arrow" adds bits of "Old McDonald".

Blues and country are rock's main ingredients, but it's easy to ignore the impact of the Big Band Era of 1935-45. In Berry's case, it can't be overlooked. He told Robertson how Nat "King" Cole's flawless diction inspired the striking vocal clarity that remains a constant on his records. His affinity for Kansas City swing comes forth in a scintillating outtake of Count Basie's "One O'Clock Jump". Basie's "Lester Leaps In" undeniably inspired Berry's "Rockin' At The Philharmonic". "Blues For Hawaiians", a pedal steel workout, has roots in "Floyd's Guitar Blues", a 1939 steel instrumental Floyd Smith recorded with another legendary K.C. big band, Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy. Two tracks from a 1956 Alan Freed stage show even feature him performing "Maybelline" (with noticeably different lyrics) and "Roll Over Beethoven" with Basie band members.

Guitarists, of course, owe Berry an immeasurable debt since his chugging rhythms, inspired by boogie-woogie piano, and double-stop licks remain keystones of the genre. Keith Richards couldn't have played a lick without Berry, just as the Rolling Stones have never quit dipping into or invoking his work. Jeff Beck's Yardbirds-era favorite "Jeff's Boogie", created from Berry's "Guitar Boogie", is part of that same continuum. Berry, after all, grabbed ideas from the guitar heroes of his day, among them T-Bone Walker (whose style dominates Berry's instrumental "Ingo"), Charlie Christian and Louis Jordan sideman Carl Hogan, whose playing had a profound influence on Berry.

It's a given that Chuck Berry merits his place in the same heady company with Hank Williams, Carmichael, Mercer, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Smokey Robinson, Bob Dylan, Cindy Walker and Lennon-McCartney. The transcendent music of rock's first great poet still slices through time like a Ginsu through rice pudding, its ability to amuse and energize undiminished. Hopefully, a Volume 2 will materialize and explain the rest.

Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Rich Kienzle
PhotoIllustration by Shocko Grafix

Posted on March 17, 2008 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

PETER HOLSAPPLE & CHRIS STAMEY
Mavericks
(Collectors' Choice)

(NODEPRESSION.NET) -- When dB's founders Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple reunited to record again eight years after Stamey had left the band, fans got excited to hear the cult outfit's jangly, jagged college rock again. Their 1991-released record, however, delivered something slightly different: acoustic-based, harmony-heavy folk-pop, more Everly Brothers than Big Star.

But what initially seemed overly subdued now sounds quite exquisite. Both Holsapple and Stamey, then in their mid-30s, convey a sense of worldly experience in these songs, which predominantly deal with love. Holsapple contributes some of his most starkly heartfelt songs (notably "Taken" and "She Was The One"), while Stamey takes a more sardonic look at relationships on "Lovers' Rock" and "I Want To Break Your Heart".

This crisply remastered reissue boosts several bonus tracks (including the previously unreleased "Hollywood Waltz"), but most importantly it functions as a reminder of Holsapple and Stamey's sublime songwriting skills -- perhaps serving, too, as a harbinger for the duo's long-rumored follow-up disc.

-- MICHAEL BERICK
Copyright c. 2008 No Depression Inc. and/or Michael Berick

Posted on March 10, 2008 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)