Break down the deceptively simple recordings of the Meters, and you will find the essential DNA of hypnotic groove music. On the New Orleans quartet's own titles and the many pop records the group played on (including the LaBelle smash "Lady Marmalade"), the key characteristic is restraint. Nobody works too hard on Meters records. The rhythm is built on a loosetight axis, with some elements (usually Zigaboo Modeliste's snappish drumming) pushing forward and other forces (the carefully articulated guitar lines of Leo Nocentelli or spare jabs from Art Neville's B3 organ) pulling back.
The result is James Brown–style funk with a little Bourbon Street shuffle in its step. Most of the songs on this satisfyingly greasy second album are just riffs, simple recurring phrases that expose the inner workings of the pulse—a marvel built on precisely interlinked parts. Bassist George Porter recalled that the title track was inspired by a problematic piston in the band van: "It kept going 'ooka-she-uh, ooka-she-uh,' over and over." The musicians began pounding and singing along, and wrote the song on the spot.
The Meters did this and two other albums for the small Josie label before moving to Reprise. Their later works are slick productions that helped connect this important band to a wider audience. While powerful, that music feels slight compared with the sizzle of the early Meters, works that gather funk, Mardi Gras Indian chants, and the sauntering swing of New Orleans backbeats of the highest order.
Genre: R&B
Released: 1970, Josie (Reissued 1999, Sundazed)
Key Tracks: "Look-Ka Py Py," "Oh, Calcutta!," "Funky Miracle," "Dry Spell," "Yeah, You're Right."
Catalog Choice: Funkify Your Life; The Original Funkmasters (UK)
Next Stop: The JBs: A Funky Good Time
After That: Little Feat: Waiting for Columbus
Book Page: 500
Classical music lovers consider this set of forty-eight preludes and fugues as the "Old Testament" of piano literature, and Beethoven's Piano Sonatas as the New. Just as the biblical document marks the beginning of a civilization, Bach began work on these during the codification of equal temperament, which standardized intervals between pitches to make a uniform scale. This was one of those upgrades that had to happen: It enabled music written in one key to be transposed to another, while retaining the same basic harmonic relationships.
Bach wrote the two books of Well-Tempered Clavier over two decades, from 1722 to 1744, as material for his students to play. Both books encompass polar-opposite characteristics of his work: The preludes, which have no set form, situate gregarious themes over interesting harmonic progressions. If they're the "art," the fugues represent the "craft": They're exercises in counterpoint in which two distinct musical "cells," or ideas, go running off in different directions and then reflect back on each other in parroted echoes and staggered rejoinders. Fugues have fixed rules, and Bach both upholds and bends them as he goes, exhausting possibilities with characteristic German thoroughness.
Bach understood that different keys projected different tones and colors, and he wrote to exploit those. His C Major Prelude, for example, is a totally open book, with a recurring figure that occasionally dips, via chromatic lines, into the relative minor. Later, working in "stormier" keys like E-flat or D-flat, his fugue subjects become more reflective, at times almost lyrical. That one set of pieces designed for utilitarian purposes could accommodate so many majestic, musically substantial ideas is a testament to the peerless Bach.
Pianist Till Fellner, who was born in Vienna in 1972 and studied with concert pianist Alfred Brendel, uses featherweight touches to bring this incredibly rich, detailed music to life. There's a great openness to his approach, and a sense that each note is getting special attention—the muted passage in the C-Sharp Minor fugue is extreme in this regard, a slight, yet stunning recasting of Bach's gesture that gives the music a modern timbre. Fellner gets help from the ambience of the recording: Like many ECM discs, it has a generous amount of sonic "warmth." Recommended for those who are seeking to broaden their classical music horizons, this contemplative reading of a masterwork has the power to inspire.
Genre: Classical
Released: 2004, ECM
Key Tracks: C-Sharp Minor; E Major; G Minor.
Another Interpretation: The Glenn Gould Edition
Catalog Choice: Violin Concertos, Andrew Manze, Academy of Ancient Music (Rachel Podger, cond.)
Next Stop: Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas, Opp. 109, 110, 111, Mitsuko Uchida
After That: Glenn Gould: The Art of the Fugue
Book Page: 35
Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Carl Perkins made just this one record for Sun during the early days of rock and roll. But he was on the scene at label headquarters in Memphis, a sly catalyst whose fingerprints are all over the music of the label's giant-sized stars. Perkins's crisply articulated guitar lines formed the cool strut that came to be called "rockabilly," and the attitude he put into them made every track he played on explode.
Perkins liked to tell people his first guitar was made from a cigar box and a broom handle, with baling wire for strings. His song sense wasn't quite so primitive: He's best known as the author of "Blue Suede Shoes," one of rock's all-time-great jumps. His 1956 version of the song, included here, became a smash hit, one of the few rock-era songs to reach the Top 10 of the pop, R&B, and country charts simultaneously. (It was also Sun's first million-seller.) Just as Perkins's star was rising, bad luck descended. On the way to an appearance on TV's Perry Como Show, he was injured (and his brother was killed) in a car crash. Unable to perform, Perkins lost the face time on TV (other bookings had included the Ed Sullivan Show), and shortly after that, momentum around his record dried up. Then Presley did a rollicking version of "Blue Suede Shoes" that ballooned into an even bigger hit. Recalling the twist of fate, Perkins said he didn't resent Presley: "Elvis was not to be denied the top spot. He had . . . the looks and the moves and everything that the world was waiting on."
Still, Perkins's agile, spiderwebbed runs continued to define rock guitar; in the early days only Chuck Berry and Presley guitarist Scotty Moore had commensurate influence on six-string-wielding kids. And his songs—"Honey Don't," "Movie Magg," and "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," all on this album—endure, still, as rock standards.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1958, Sun
Key Tracks: "Honey Don't," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Only You."
Next Stop: Elvis Presley: Sun Sessions
After That: Rockpile: Seconds of Pleasure
Book Pages: 592–593
Here's yet another woeful example of how the barons of the record industry haven't always been the best caretakers of music. When Creed Taylor, the producer and executive then working at Verve Records, heard these recordings made by Wes Montgomery and the Wynton Kelly trio at New York's Half Note in June of 1965, he told the musicians that only two tracks were worthy of release—"No Blues" and "If You Could See Me Now." Taylor booked studio time for September, and captured several more songs, which were added to the live cuts and released as the (misnamed) original Smokin' at the Half Note.
At the time, Montgomery was an established star, responsible for several snapping records that revolutionized jazz guitar, among them Boss Guitar and Full House. And though the Half Note sessions caught him in peak form, playing with one of the most accomplished rhythm sections of the day—his friend and pianist Kelly, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and bassist Paul Chambers—Montgomery didn't fight Taylor. Not long after this date Montgomery and Taylor embarked on a series of successful, if largely saccharine, instrumental pop records. Then in 1968 the guitarist suffered a heart attack and died suddenly.
That's when the original misjudgment about the Half Note material was compounded: In the rush to offer the public anything by the late Montgomery, the label went back to the Half Note session, and added brass and woodwinds to several tracks, releasing it on an album called Willow Weep for Me. Talk about a clunker: The sizzling, never-before-heard live Montgomery was muddled up with excessive, utterly pointless arrangements. Not until 2004 were these recordings available without the appended orchestra.
They're essential listening—for the knifing clarity of Montgomery's lines and the rapid rejoinders of his accompanists, for the way he plucks ideas out of thin air, for the palpable texture of his blocky trademark octaves and elegant whiplash chords, for the flash of invention that is "Impressions" and the dolorous, questioning spirit that propels "What's New?" No matter what any executive says, this is one no-nonsense, never-to-be-improved-upon document of live jazz.
Genre: Jazz
Released: 1965, Verve (Reissued 2004)
Key Tracks: "Impressions," "No Blues," "If You Could See Me Now."
Catalog Choice: Full House; Boss Guitar
Next Stop: Wynton Kelly: Kelly Blue
After That: Jim Hall: Concierto
Book Pages: 516–517
This is the first of five (!) records that the guitarists Henry Kaiser and David Lindley recorded on a two-week trip to Madagascar in 1991. Both musicians have a healthy sense of adventure—Kaiser has recorded free jazz and tributes to the Grateful Dead, and Lindley made key contributions to Jackson Browne's best records—but for this project, they behaved more like culturally sensitive treasure hunters. Rather than snatching elements of the island nation's exotic music for their own purposes, they sought collaboration and discovered what happens when worlds collide. First they learned native songs and musical customs, which are drawn from both Indonesian and African sources. Then they turned the tape recorder on, capturing spirited traditional folk songs and extended jam sessions.
This approach opens a window into the rich musical world of Madagascar, the island which lies off the southeast coast of Africa. Kaiser and Lindley regarded the artists they collaborated with as teachers and guides, and as this record shows, became "fluent" enough in the musical details to make contributions without derailing the grooves. On "Ambilanao zaho," the high-energy electric band led by Rossy (Paul Bert Rahasimanana) seems to come alive when Lindley's searing slide guitar appears; later comes a solo by Kaiser in which he (unintentionally, apparently) imitates the cry of a native lemur. Key to the enterprise are the fluttering, defiantly ethereal voices: On the rivetingly dejected "Kobata," Dama Mahaleo, one of the country's most popular singer-songwriters, gathers elements of music from South Africa, the Middle East, and India into a swirl of emotion that nearly overwhelms the visiting Westerners. Another Mahaleo track, "Dihy," begins with a caprice by Rakoto Frah, the master of the sodina flute, and then evolves into a spry dance, with lyrics about a very old woman dancing with a young woman symbolizing the circle of life.
Other highlights include "Vavarano," which finds young guitarist D'Gary translating the motifs of traditional Malagasy instruments to fingerpicked acoustic guitar. This first volume, the best of the five, triggered a wave of international interest in music from Madagascar. Several of the featured musicians wound up with their own record contracts, and have continued to explore the cross-cultural possibilities they chased with such spirit here.
Genre: World, Madagascar
Released: 1992, Shanachie
Key Tracks: Ramilison: "Kabary." Mahaleo: "Dihy," "Kobata." Tarika Sammy: "Hana." Sylvestre Randafison: "Izahay sy i malala."
Catalog Choice: A World Out of Time, Vol. 3
Next Stop: Tarika Sammy: Balance
After That: Rossy: Island of Ghosts
Book Page: 416
"If I am gone and with no trace," Will Oldham advises in the first stanza of this earthy and creakily sung record, "I will be in a minor place." This, it turns out, is his musical comfort zone. All eleven odes in this set are brooders—loaded with images that suggest hidden internal turmoil and lachrymose melodies he might have overheard while walking on winding mountain roads.
"Minor" though it may be, this place is not slight: Like Nick Drake and a few others, Oldham, working here as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, explores conflicted emotional states with great clarity and, when necessary, a withering self-awareness. Hearing his idle, stargazing songs, it's easy to imagine the Louisville, Kentucky, singer and guitarist scrawling in a journal in some remote locale, methodically sorting out his troubled relationships. On the title track, which is addressed to a longtime friend and drinking companion, he wonders whether this person detects the darkness that "comes blacking in my mind." The song moves at a glacial, inevitable pace, an audio representation of encroaching darkness.
Oldham is one of the most prolific songwriters to emerge in the 1990s. He's also among the most gifted. Working in a variety of contexts and guises—first he recorded as Palace Songs, then Palace Brothers, then under his own name or Bonnie "Prince" Billy—he's written credible alt-country as well as enduring modern folk songs that have a timeless feel. In some ways, I See a Darkness, which is his most consistently engrossing work, can be seen as a precursor to the "new folk" movement that spawned Sufjan Stevens and many others. Yet Oldham follows his own quirky path. The roots elements keep him grounded and give his often mystical images surprising resonance. Get close enough, and you may see and, even more important, feel that darkness.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1999, Palace
Key Tracks: "Minor Place," "Another Day Full of Dread," "Knockturne."
Catalog Choice: The Letting Go
Next Stop: Sufjan Stevens: Illinoise
After That: Jim O'Rourke: Eureka
Book Pages: 102–103
One of seven albums pianist Sonny Clark recorded under his own name between 1957 and '58, Cool Struttin' is a master class in the (nearly lost) art of jazz accompaniment. Clark's piano solos are cogent and calm, a thoughtful amalgam of Bud Powell blitheness and Red Garland poise cut with a touch of Thelonious Monk's harmonic impulsiveness. But the late-night looseness of this session springs from what Clark and the rhythm section play in the background, behind saxophonist Jackie McLean and trumpeter Art Farmer. Concentrating on providing apt rejoinders (as opposed to conjuring brand-new horizons), Clark frames the solos using tidy chordal jabs. His accompaniment nicks the fine edges of the beat, syncopations caught (and deftly rein-forced) by master drummer Philly Joe Jones. At times during McLean's enthusiastic romp through "Sippin' at Bells," the solo lines are the direct outgrowth of this rhythm section's active teasing and prompting.
The knack for goading soloists made Clark (1931–1963) a favorite of musicians and one of the first-call pianists of the Blue Note roster, despite the fact that his own recordings were rarely big sellers. In the original liner notes, Farmer, an astute jazz appreciator, tells critic Nat Hentoff that Clark's approach has "no strain in it." That's key. Like Philly Joe Jones and all the great jazz support players, Clark knew that his cohorts would sound good if everything around them felt good. And this certainly does.
Genre: Jazz
Released: 1958, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Cool Struttin'," "Blue Minor," "Sippin' at Bells."
Catalog Choice: Sonny's Crib
Next Stop: Wynton Kelly: Kelly Blue
After That: Red Garland: At the Prelude
Book Page: 172
There are lots of prerequisites for being a jazz diva; playing an instrument isn't one of them. Spend an hour listening to the magnificent singer and pianist Shirley Horn, however, and you'll understand why it helps. When she sings, the husky-voiced Horn is all about understatement—her little brushed-off phrases and breathy undertones bring an almost otherworldly luster to standards. Her voice seems to float along, an illusion she creates by the way she accompanies herself on the piano, with economical chords and carefully measured phrases. She carves out a cozy space where her voice goes, and makes sure that space remains completely uncluttered. Where most singers (and, for that matter, pianists) rush to fill every second, her genius happens inside vast openness.
Horn (1934–2005) had the most unusual career path of any great jazz singer. A native of Washington, D.C., she made a few records with Quincy Jones for Mercury, beginning in 1963. Among those enchanted by her delivery was Miles Davis, who heard some of his own austere tactics in her work and became a loud champion. But at the very moment she seemed poised for stardom, Horn dropped out of sight to raise a family, continuing to perform, occasionally, in D.C. clubs.
Horn never lost her knack for spinning miniature dramas from the standard repertoire. Amazingly, when she was rediscovered in the mid-'80s, her gift had deepened. This album is the most entrancing of a series of solid records she made for Verve, and it's got all the hallmarks of her style—ballads that move at a transfixing crawl and polite mid-tempo swingers dotted with brilliant ad-libs. The spotlight always finds Horn's calm, affect-free voice, which is plenty intoxicating all by itself. But it's her behind-the-scenes work at the piano—the thick moods she draws from simple, almost still chords—that lifts Close Enough for Love to the realm of the sublime.
Genre: Jazz, Vocals
Released: 1988, Verve
Key Tracks: "Once I Loved," "I Got Lost in His Arms," "It Could Happen to You," "But Beautiful."
Catalog Choice: You Won't Forget Me
Next Stop: Abbey Lincoln: Abbey Sings Billie, Vol. 1
After That: Norah Jones: Feels like Home
Book Pages: 367–368
Arguably one of the smartest songwriters of the rock era, Randy Newman has several different, and seemingly contradictory, areas of expertise and claims to fame. The singer and pianist first attracted attention through hooky, dramatic pop songs that were picked up by a variety of artists. (He wrote "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore," one of the riveting moments on Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis, see p. 732.)
When he began making his own records, a different Newman emerged—that of a skeptical raconteur with a rapier wit. His songs of the early '70s skewer self-absorbed urban sophisticates, trailer park vixens, backwoods bigots, and short people, among many others; in each case, the withering insights come wrapped in a sound that's inviting and deceptively warm, almost affectionate. Then, in the 1980s, Newman followed three of his paternal uncles into the film music business, shelving satire in favor of squishy feel-good tunes. These were featured prominently in such blockbusters as Toy Story and A Bug's Life.
This, Newman's second album, is his most rocking, musically focused affair. Where his self-titled debut and a later concept album about life in the South, Good Old Boys, rely on elaborate orchestration, these tunes depend on rock-band chemistry and that mysterious elixir known as boogie. Running things from his piano, Newman turns out Tin Pan Alley melodies and easygoing New Orleans barrelhouse piano riffs, collapsing several generations of music into one sound. The guitarists (including Ry Cooder) respond with tangy blues asides that lead to the wrong side of the tracks, which, it turns out, is where Newman is most comfortable singing. (Or growling, as some have described it; Newman grew up in New Orleans, and can affect the sauntering demeanor of Louis Armstrong.) His delivery makes even potentially preposterous characterizations believable: Few pop songs have described loneliness with more precision than "If You Need Oil," the rambling thoughts of a bored gas station attendant.
Newman's songwriting strategies crystallize on Twelve Songs. If you only know his film music, don't miss these at once greasy and entertaining rambles, which are loaded with blunt portrayals of human nature and some of the most acidic satire ever tucked into three-minute pop songs.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1970, Reprise
Key Tracks: "Have You Seen My Baby?," "Mama Told Me Not to Come," "Lover's Prayer," "If You Need Oil."
Catalog Choice: Sail Away; Good Old Boys
Next Stop: Mose Allison: Allison Wonderland
After That: Warren Zevon: Excitable Boy
Book Pages: 549–550
Made for $6,000 by a group of misfit kids from Queens who could barely play their instruments, Ramones is the first, best, and most unlikely manifesto of punk rock. It's also a kind of antistandard, the record that decimates all the academic theorizing that gathered around punk as cultural watershed. Later punk became a "movement," a study in stance and calculation that could be endlessly reappropriated. But in 1976, when the four leather-jacket-wearing Ramones regularly terrorized New York's CBGBs with twenty-minute shows, punk was Joey Ramone (1951–2001) uttering the immortal words "Now I wanna sniff some glue" in a dire monotone.
Ramones is cheap thrills sped up to breakneck speed and played as though the four musicians (who, in a marketing ploy, each took the last name Ramone even though they were not related) were racing to see who could finish first. Most of the songs depend on three chords, and last less than two minutes—the basic Ramones strategy is run, gun, and done. In an interview in Please Kill Me, an oral history of punk, bassist Dee Dee Ramone (1952–2002) recalls that when the band began, the musicians "didn't know how or what to play. We'd try some Bay City Rollers and we absolutely couldn't do that. We didn't know how. So we just started writing our own stuff and put it together the best we could."
The songs the Ramones concocted for this album (and subsequent ones) work because they're so simple. Anyone could play them—even though the Ramones had a relentless energy that was hard to duplicate. The Everyman quality proved critical to the spread of punk: Two of the significant U.K. punk bands, the Clash and the Damned, began performing within days after seeing the Ramones' London debut, which happened on July 4, 1976.
The Ramones' punk was a spastic lurch, a homemade contraption that seemed at any minute on the verge of spinning out of control. Yet unlike many who followed in their footsteps, the Ramones were inclined to embrace (and, in their own skronky way, celebrate) the joyous touchstones of early rock—running through "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," "Judy Is a Punk," and (later) "Rockaway Beach" is an echo of the crazed-surfer-kid abandon of the 1950s. But it's just an echo: By the time the Ramones are finished, they've mangled the optimism of early rock into jaundiced, diffident, maniacal rallying cries of the disaffected that could only have risen from the post-Watergate 1970s.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1976, Sire (Reissued 2008, Rhino)
Key Tracks: "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," "53rd and 3rd," "Blitzkrieg Bop."
Catalog Choice: Rocket to Russia
Next Stop: Gang of Four: Entertainment!
After That: Patti Smith: Horses
Book Page: 631
Take all the gazillions of well-intentioned rock anthems written since this came out in 1971. Load them into boom boxes and press Play at the same time. The mass of sound won't get anywhere near the earth-rattling righteousness of Roger Daltrey singing "Won't Get Fooled Again" with guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon clanging mightily behind him.
One of the great rock albums, Who's Next almost didn't happen. Attempting to follow up the band's massive 1969 hit Tommy, Townshend wrote a sprawling suite of somewhat futuristic songs he called Lifehouse, which he intended as another opera. It fell apart. Townshend suffered a nervous breakdown. When he returned, he revisited a few of the Lifehouse pieces, writing new songs from them. Who's Next is what emerged. It's the moment when Townshend arrived at a balance of brute power and oppositional provocation that was unlike anything in rock before. It was loud and at the same time learned. Its feistiness made it an inspiration for much that followed: Without this, there would be no U2. No Clash. No Pearl Jam.
Every track on Who's Next is its own universe. Starting with the synthesizer-studded "Baba O'Riley," a lament about the "teenage wasteland" that is arguably the greatest album-opener in rock history, the Who charges through a series of amazingly disciplined and totally visceral songs. One, "Love Ain't for Keeping," wrestles with the meaning of commitment. Another, "Behind Blue Eyes," complains about being forever misunderstood. Townshend's focused writing keeps the rhythm section perpetually on the verge of volcanic eruption, while Daltrey, CEO of Indignation Incorporated, stands like a sentry on the precipice, warning the members of his tribe about the perils ahead. No matter how many times you've heard these songs on the radio, it's impossible to listen casually: By the time the final blitzkrieg, "Won't Get Fooled Again," hits, you're part of the army, ready to battle duplicity wherever it festers.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1971, MCA
Key Tracks: "Baba O'Riley," "Behind Blue Eyes," "Bargain," "Won't Get Fooled Again."
Catalog Choice: The Who Sell Out; Live at Leeds (original version)
Next Stop: U2: War
After That: Pearl Jam: Vs
Book Pages: 859–860
When he wrote "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the scathing media critique that leads off this record, the poet and hip-hop progenitor Gil Scott-Heron envisioned a cataclysm so great it would disrupt even America's primetime viewing habits. "Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow, because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. . .. The Revolution will not be televised."
Electrifying when it first appeared on Scott-Heron's modest, voice-and-drums debut Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, "Revolution" got the full band treatment a year later on this follow-up album; it's this version that is most remembered now. Backed by a group of jazz luminaries—in addition to pianist Brian Jackson, who accompanied the vocalist throughout this era, the band includes bassist Ron Carter, drummer Bernard Purdie, and flutist Hubert Laws—Scott-Heron rolls through verse after caustic verse. He riffs on race, politics, American escapism, and intolerance, leaving just enough room for the musicians to slip tasty responses into the margins. The result is a profound sound: Mind-expanding ideas set against simmering rhythms.
The son of a Jamaican soccer player, Scott-Heron was one of three young black students involved in the court-ordered integration of a public school in Jackson, Tennessee. The experience eventually led him to the creative life. First he wrote poetry, then added hip rhythmic support—throughout this record and his other works from the same period (including the addiction rant "The Bottle"), Scott-Heron's lyrics question the status quo and mock the happy talk of politicians, encouraging listeners to think for themselves. That, of course, is a timeless notion: More than a generation later, when rap started to bubble up, old-timers hauled out this record to show kids how effective spoken-word delivery could really be. Plenty of hip-hop stars have acknowledged the debt—Chuck D of Public Enemy said in a 1994 interview that in his view, "everybody in rap has to know about Gil Scott-Heron, because in a sense, this rhythmic message music started with him."
Genre: R&B
Released: 1971, Flying Dutchman
Key Tracks: "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," "Home Is Where the Hatred Is," "Lady Day and John Coltrane."
Catalog Choice: Winter in America
Next Stop: Last Poets: The Last Poets
After That: Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet
Book Pages: 684–685
Johnny Hartman's baritone calls from the bar Billy Strayhorn was writing about in "Lush Life," the once-glamorous place offering "jazz and cocktails" to a clientele of slightly frayed regulars. His voice is slippery and warm, as inviting as the leather banquette where couples sit for hours, gazing in a love trance. Its warm timbre evokes other pleasures, too—the breeze on a seaside veranda, butter melting on a homemade biscuit.
In terms of sheer smooth sound, no jazz singer ever got in the same ballpark. Hartman's voice transports you inside the songs almost involuntarily, and keeps you transfixed with an almost magical shorthand—he sings jazz with no shooby-doo whatsoever. On this, the most important record he ever made, Hartman's tone is complemented by another, equally elemental sound: the glinting metallic cry of John Coltrane's tenor saxophone.
Recorded in a single day in 1963, this six-song collection finds the unlikely tandem working over some tender saloon songs—in addition to "Lush Life," there's a definitive "My One and Only Love," and a melancholy treatment of "They Say It's Wonderful." Hartman (1923–1983), a balladeer in the Billy Eckstine mold, hadn't made a record of his own since 1956, but there's no evidence of rust: His edge-free voice glides regally along, not asserting authority but being authoritative nonetheless. The same goes for Coltrane. Here and on the equally rhapsodic Ballads—arguably the most beautiful set of torch songs ever recorded by a jazz instrumentalist—he tugs at the edges of music, gliding through the contours of the melodies until he arrives at the most telling and poignant notes. Lots of jazz musician-singer collaborations offer more tunes than the six featured here; few, though, contain more music.
Genre: Jazz, Vocals
Released: 1963, Impulse
Key Tracks: "Lush Life," "They Say It's Wonderful," "My One and Only Love."
Catalog Choice: Hartman: I Just Dropped By to Say Hello. Coltrane: Ballads.
Next Stop: Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington: Francis A. and Edward K
After That: Bill Evans and Tony Bennett: The Tony Bennett–Bill Evans Album
Book Pages: 183–184
Gillian Welch begins this journey with a song about identity, how it is shaped and transformed, and how only time can reveal who's genuine and who's "queen of the fakes and imitators." It's helpful to keep those cautionary words in mind as the rest of Time unfolds. They serve as a preamble, of sorts, for Welch's delicate inquiry—sketches and portraits of people caught in the middle of various deceptions, haunted by memories they can't shake and otherwise messed with by Papa Time. The weary-voiced singer and songwriter's two previous albums brought postmodern lyrical ideas to old-timey Appalachian balladry. With this work, she goes beyond being an imitator. She pours the forthright tone associated with the legendary Carter Family into songs shot through with modern ambivalence, poetic accounts of cell phone–tethered life. These range from meditations on faulty memory ("My First Lover," whom she describes as "tall and breezy with his long hair down, but he gets a little hazy when I think of him now") to a fable about rock and roll heroism ("Elvis Presleys Blues") to an expression of near biblical wanderlust ("I Dream a Highway," which lasts over fourteen minutes and invokes Lazarus, Gram Parsons, and Emmylou Harris).
Welch was born in Manhattan. She calls her style "American Primitive," though critics consider her a catalyst of the alternativecountry "Americana" style. Her songs are rustic and at the same time gimlet-eyed, wise about the world. Both Welch and her musical partner David Rawlings sing and play guitar; she strums placidly while he scatters terse jabs and gingham-print chords all over the place. Their voices intertwine beautifully, with Rawlings sometimes supplying high, hollowed-out harmonies that provide an extra shot of lonesomeness.
After being hailed and scorned for the scholarly appropriations of her first two records, Welch made other changes this time around—she told one interviewer that she conceived this as a set of rock songs, to be played on acoustic instruments. Even when the mood is front-porch plaintive, Welch's songs speak to a moment being lived right now, not some quaint olden-days curio. Changing lanes between pensive balladry and wrenching blues, Welch and Rawlings create hazy out-of-time dream sequences that belong to no one genre. But speak the truths of many.
Genre: Country
Released: 2001, Almo Sounds
Key Tracks: "Dear Someone," "Ruination Day, Part 2," "Revelator," "I Dream a Highway."
Catalog Choice: Hell Among the Yearlings
Next Stop: Iris DeMent: Infamous Angel
After That: Victoria Williams: Loose
Book Page: 852
Janis Joplin had recorded most of the vocals for this album before she died, from a heroin overdose in a Hollywood hotel, on October 4, 1970. But it wasn't finished: She was scheduled to return to the studio the day after she died, to do the vocals on at least one more song. The song appears on Pearl as an instrumental. It's called "Buried Alive in the Blues."
The sentiment of "Buried Alive" is typical blues woe—one verse goes, "All caught up in a landslide, bad luck pressing in from all sides, just got knocked off my easy ride, buried alive in the blues." It's tempting to hear the tune as an eerie epitaph. But that overlooks one key Joplin trait: Though she poured everything into the blues, she never let herself get swallowed up by it.
By her last year, the belter from Port Arthur, Texas, had grown into a devastatingly original voice, the rare white interpreter of African American music who resisted the ready cliché. She treated old Delta songs and '50s R&B ballads as theatrical platforms, ripe for largescale rethinking. Her blues woe was never typical blues woe. Matching paint-peeling power with an uncanny sense of dramatic timing, she could turn out a plea that made listeners feel like they were part of a fateful make-or-break moment happening right then.
This album contains her only chart-topping single (the posthumously released "Me and Bobbie McGee") and several of her most compelling covers ("Get It While You Can," "Cry Baby"). More significantly, it captures the astounding repertoire of vocal mannerisms Joplin discovered singing with her old band Big Brother and the Holding Company and perfected with this ensemble, which she called the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The 1999 reissue contains four previously unreleased live bonus tracks, recorded in the summer of 1970 on a Canadian tour, all showcasing the mighty Joplin at the peak of her powers.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1971, Columbia
Key Tracks: "Cry Baby," "Move Over," "Me and Bobby McGee," "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)."
Catalog Choice: Cheap Thrills (with Big Brother and the Holding Company)
Next Stop: Bonnie Raitt: Green Light
After That: Ronee Blakley: Welcome
Book Pages: 410–411