6 posts tagged “country”
Brenda Lee, "Little Miss Dynamite". Wow. Hank Williams the Eldest wrote the song, of course. I used to have a Loretta Lynn version from around 1965 that stomps even this, but I can't find it now, damn it.
I'll tell you who wrote this song, it was Helen Carter, Anita Carter, June Carter, and Maybelle Carter.
The Carters -- or at least those four -- had a higher tolerance for That Old Time Religion than some of my readers do, and this one, by God, has got That Old Time Religion in horse-doctor's doses. So some may find this stuff merely annoying. But I think it's pretty good music anyhow.
The Louvin Brothers recorded it in 1959 on their Satan Is Real album; Johnny Cash got around to it on Unchained, in 1996. I prefer the latter. The Louvins' version isn't the strongest track on that album. Maybe next I'll give you "The Angels Rejoiced Last Night", which if you don't hear it, you may doubt there's anything much more lachrymose than this thing.
On the reality-of-Satan front, two or three years ago some loon wandered around Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville stenciling "Santa Is Real" on sidewalks and mailboxes. I enjoyed the heck out of that.
Another cover by some heavy songwriters. I think maybe I'll make that a theme, but sort of a, like, sporadic one: A theme only on the days when I'm doing that, but otherwise not.
Google tells me that Buck Owens recorded this on his Tall Dark Stranger album in 1969 (outta print, seemingly). He wrote it with somebody named "Price"; Ray Price, maybe? Dunno. Too lazy to find out.
The Velvet Crush aren't just power-popsters; they're country fans, too, and they usually toss in couple country songs on their albums. This is the standout track from their otherwise ill-conceived Heavy Changes (1998). That was the second and last one they did with Mitch Easter producing. I admire Easter somewhere on the slightly creepy side of idolatry, but on Heavy Changes, every track but this one screws the pooch. Worse, the lads wrote sub-par songs. So go buy their and Easter's masterwork, Teenage Symphonies to God, or basically just fuck off and listen to, you know, crap, or... whatever. Ass, that's it. Go listen to ass, if you don't buy that one.
But this one track, holy crap, holy crapping crapola, I really like this one. Never for a single instant have I regretted buying this album. Dig that Telecaster crackle in the leads. And it's funn-kaay. Heaven.
1967. This is the International Submarine Band, Gram Parsons' first band that halfway succeeded. Just as the ISB started to get attention, Parsons was invited to join the Byrds. There was more money in that, so off he went, hence Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Which is grossly overrated, except for "Hickory Wind". But if Parsons hadn't been in the Byrds, he wouldn't've gone on to form the grossly overrated Flying Burrito Brothers with grossly underrated ex-Byrd Chris Hillman. I'm really not sure where I'm going with this, honestly. Parsons did ultimately make a pair of real good records with Elvis Presley's backing band and Emmylou Harris. He "discovered" her, it seems.
The ISB album is called Safe at Home, and it's not half bad. People claim it's the first country-rock record ever made! Awe-inspiring, isn't it? To think that J. D. Souther might not have existed without these guys. Kinda makes you almost wish you had a time machine and a rifle. But then you'd lose Parsons, who did some good work.
Yo La Tengo covered this song. What a tragic waste of tape that was.
Here's another cover that doesn't, on paper, add too much to the original. Aubry Gass and Tex Ritter wrote it, and Hank Williams had a hit with it in 1951. I just happen to like this version better because I don't like Hank's voice. Now, John Prine, he can sing. There wasn't anything wrong with the original that a decent singer and a cleaner recording wouldn't fix, and that's all Prine gave it. Don't you love the guys singing in the background? It sounds to me like there's three of them, standing around one mic, and they're wearing suits with string ties and cowboy hats. I can hear the hats quite clearly. Do you know Leon Redbone's recording of "Shine on, Harvest Moon"? No? I'll fix that soon enough. You can hear the hats in that one too, but they're different hats, of course. Boaters. And if that's not true, I don't want to hear about it.
Pedal steel and banjo player to the hipster-country stars, Jon Rauhouse (pron. "Raw-house") played on Neko Case's monumental Blacklisted, and elsewhere with, you know, whoever, I guess. He's not quite Ben Keith, but he brung it there, and he brings it still. Bringing it at the mic today, we present the incomparably empyrean tonsils of Miss Case herself.
Les Paul and Mary Ford rang the bell with this song in the '50s. J.R. and N.K. start with that version and don't stray too far, merely adapting the arrangement to a quite different guitar and recording it a bit more deliciously. And they've got a better singer. When Miss Case sings "calling you", does it not stop your heart? If it doesn't, you have the perceptivity of a water buffalo and you can just fuck right off.
The album is called Jon Rauhouse's Steel Guitar Air Show (2002), and it's a fair candidate for album of the decade. There's not a bum track on it. Case appears on this track only; Sally Timms sings on another, and Kelly Hogan sings on two. Those two gals smolder like a hot tomato on an asphalt road. The rest are instrumentals, really, though there's a "haole choir" on "Hula Blues". Oh, yes, it's very much that kind of a record, in the best possible way. The rhythm section is Calexicans Joey Burns and John Convertino on about 60% of the tracks, and Kevin O'Donnell and Tom V. Ray on the rest (incl. this one). You'll recognize most of those names from the credits on Blacklisted, which just by chance happens to be another strong album-of-the-decade pick from the same year, on the same label. There's a follow-up, Steel Guitar Rodeo, which leaves me utterly cold. But maybe it'll grow on me.
