Everything You Wanted to Know About Visiting Austin, TX, But Were Afraid to Ask

Contents

Music--Cajun Aces, Diane Coffey, The New Pornographers, James McMurtry, Bill Kirchen, The Marmalakes, Lissa Hattersley, Dale Watson

Also--Eatin' and sleepin' and drivin' in Austin, and other stuff to do besides he music scene in Austin

A Week in Austin

My wife and I escaped the snow and cold in Minnesota for “a week” in Austin, TX—actually nine days from February 9 to February 17, 2020. It was meant to be an outdoor trip and a music trip, full of hiking and birding and Texas tunes. Well, it rained the first four days we were there so it turned out to be mostly a music trip, well, and a foodie trip, and I’m OK with that.

Sunday February 9—The Cajun Aces at The Continental Club

We arrived on Sunday and immediately got conflicting information about James McMurtry playing at the Continental Club. Tuesday, we heard, but, no, we also heard, Wednesday. So, we headed down to the Continental, described in a particularly good example of truth in advertising on the Web as a “dive bar,” to ask them ourselves. Which was it? 

Well, while we were there we saw the Cajun Aces, who were terrific, a four piece band with accordion, fiddle, guitar and drums, playing Cajun dance tunes—jjgs, jitterbugs and two-steps—with lots of energy and enthusiasm. We hadn’t paid the cover charge, however. We said we just wanted to know about James McMurtry and they let us stand around while they figured out when McMurtry was playing. So we didn’t feel right about hanging around for too long. We needed dinner right then, anyway, so we left. Still, if I had had another opportunity to see them this week, I would have grabbed it. Grade: B+.

Monday February 10—The New Pornographers and Diane Coffey at Emo’s

We had bought tickets to see the New Pornographers before flying down. They played at Emo’s, a big, modern concert hall, a hanger, with no reserved seating. Well, no seating. It was standing room only.

Diane Coffey, from Indianapolis, we heard, opened. Diane is “Diane” in the way that Alice Cooper is “Alice.” Diane is in fact a female impersonator with a really strong, expressive voice, a glam rock look and a batch of hard rock songs. His/her band was solid, the songs were very dynamic with lots of changes in volume and mood. Diane was a lot better than the New Pornagraphers. Grade: C+.

The New Pornographers are described as indie rock, which is accurate enough. To me, they were always Neko Case’s band, but now I see that they’re not. They’re Carl Newman’s band. He’s written almost every song on eight albums now. Case was always a member of the band, but over the years Newman has added Kathryn Calder and Simi Stone on backing vocals as well, and their trademark has become dense four-part harmony singing of Newman’s rising, anthemic melodies, creating a wall of sound.

But, you know, the songs aren’t that interesting and the musical accompaniment is rudimentary. They’re all about the singing, yet they bury the vocals under a pounding rock rhythm. There are no leads to speak of and the singing isn’t even that great, certainly not Newman’s. We didn’t stay till the end. Grade: D.

Tuesday February 11—James McMurtry at the Continental Gallery

This, we were told, is a quintessential Austin experience--McMurtry at the Continental. We are long-time fans of McMurtry, whom we’ve seen twice in Minneapolis, and he was first on our list of local artists we wanted to see. Normally, he plays at midnight on Wednesday with his band. This week, for whatever reason, it was just James and his acoustic guitars in the upstairs Gallery above the Continental, which was fine with us. 

The Gallery seats maybe 30 with room for another 20 or 30 standees. We were maybe 15 feet back in the second row of seating. The cover was $10, so I figure the take was $500 or $600, plus liquor, of course. Sales were brisk.

McMurtry sang some familiar songs—“St. Mary of the Woods,” “Red Dress” and “Choctaw Bingo”—and many that weren’t familiar. “The State of the Union” was a highlight: The state of the union being division and contempt, even within families. He sings about his fascist brother and his sister and his mom, etc., but whether the family McMurtry describes is his or whether it’s fictional, I don’t know. But, it’s dark and it’s sad, and McMurtry sings it with his familiar sneer. It was great. 

Steve Goodman once described country music as songs about “farms, mother, prison, trucks, trains, getting drunk, dead dogs like Old Shep, and a big holiday like Christmas.” With McMurtry, there’s moms and fascist brothers; there’s trucks, there’s lots of getting drunk; there’s an occasional birthday. Oh, and lots of sex, almost all of it illicit, and lots and lots of guns. So, no, he’s not really country. Wikipedia says he’s rock, folk-rock and Americana. No, not country at all. His politics would be anathema to country music radio and country music fans, which is of course what makes him a quintessential Austin experience. Grade: A.

Wednesday, February 12—Bill Kirchen at the Saxon Pub

The Saxon Pub, we were also told, was one of the quintessential Austin music venues. It’s a medium sized club, bigger than the Continental, but not that big. I suppose it seats 75 people and there were another 40 or so standing around the bar. James McMurtry had made a point the night before of saying that Austin doesn’t pay wait staff the minimum wage, so "they depend on tips to be able to afford to serve you." Bill Kirchen made the further point that his band was being paid out of the tip jar, too. (There was no cover charge.)

Kirchen’s claim to fame is as the guitarist with Commander Cody and His Lost Plant Airmen. He is described as “the master of the Telecaster,” and plays folk-rock and rockabilly more than country-rock. He played a couple of Bob Dylan tunes, a nice, understated version of “It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry” and then one of the best versions of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” that I’ve ever heard. Both of them were filled with tasty Telecaster filigree. On the latter, he ad libbed that one day “our now 45 would later be last,” which brought a huge hoot of approval from (most of) the crowd.

On one tune, he brought up a buddy, Dave Chappell (sp?), to play guitar. He just handed the guy his guitar and then he pulled a red trombone out of a bag and proceeded to charge out into the audience to play a trombone solo. And, while James McMurtry specializes in songs about guns, Kirchen’s speciality is truck songs. After one such song, he noted that along with the truck driver song genre, there is also a sub-genre of truck songs and that this particular song was from the sub-genre of ghost truck driver songs.

It also turns out that he wrote Commander Cody’s second-biggest hit, “Down to Seeds and Stems Again Blues,” which he of course sang for us. But, his big climax was Commander Cody’s biggest hit, “Hot Rod Lincoln.” If you remember the song, he’s passing other cars on the highway. About two-thirds of the way through, he goes into a thing where he passes a series of famous guitarists and inserts their most famous licks—B.B. and all the other Kings, including Elvis; Duane Eddy and Link Wray and the Ventures; the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, and so on. It’s a crowd-pleaser as was the whole show. Grade: B.

Eatin’ and Sleepin’ in Austin

OK, here’s the deal. Austin is really expnsive. Yes, you can hear some really, really good music for free or for $5 or $10. But, if you want to eat or sleep afterward, well, that’s a different deal. 

A friend who lived down here for many years, but many years ago, told us, “Oh, you’ve got to stay at the Driskill Hotel.” So I looked it up. $350 a night. And, most of the other name hotels downtown were $250 to $350. Now, I’m accustomed to spending $100 to maybe $150 for a bed, so I kept on looking. All the hotels and motels in my price range were 30 and 40 miles away or more. So we looked at AirBnB. In our price range, we found a one bedroom unit in an apartment complex that was set aside for AirBnB. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it was nice, or clean. But, it was, well, it wasn’t cheap. I guess it was affordable because I booked it, didn’t I? 

Eating out meant at least $30 for 2 people even at chains (above the fast food category). Anything nice meant $50. “Fine dining” meant the sky’s the limit. So, now you know. But, hey, a person’s gotta eat, so….

I don’t claim to be much of an expert on eatin,’ though I know what I like. And, while we sampled maybe one-half of one percent of Austin’s live music scene, we probably sampled less than one-tenth of one percent of its eating establishments. Still, I can say this. Eatin’ in Austin is a pretty easy thing to do. There are food trucks and trailers everywhere. The only problem is that most of the listings on the internet don’t say whether a particular establishment is a sit-down or a trailer. Compared to Minnesota, of course, there’s lots of Tex-Mex and any and all varieties thereof but of course you can find any kind of food you desire.

We were lucky enough to stumble on to a little bakery and deli north of the UT campus called the Sour Duck. It turns out that it is a farm-to-table establishment and, as such, they cater to people who are really picky about what’s in their food and how it’s prepared and all of that. As it happens, I was on a special diet at the time. No red meat. No cheese or dairy. No fried. The folks at the Sour Duck were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable about what I could or couldn’t eat off their menu. What I did eat was wonderful. Grade: A.

The Sour Duck is one of three restaurants owned and operated by Bryce and Dylan Gilmore. Bryce is the chef. So, the next day we sought out the Odd Duck. It was the first of the three properties and in fact it started out as, you guessed it, a food truck. Now, it’s a fancy, modern, sit-down bistro and the food was every bit as good as at the Sour Duck. In fact, based on my wacky requirements, the waiter brought back an annotated menu highlighting everything in each dish that I couldn’t eat. There were a couple of things that I could eat, but in the end, the chef threw together something that wasn’t even on the menu. It was a mushroom/vegie taco with a zesty orange sauce with just the right amount of verve. Grade: A-.

Both of these properties are highly recommended. Their third property, for the record, is their “fine dining” venue, Barley Swine, and we couldn’t get in. It was Valentine’s weekend and they were sold out pretty much as far as the eye could see. I can see why.

We also discovered a place called Kerbey Lane Cafe and by total happenstance, I think we discovered their original location, which is a nice out-of-the-way one-off type of space with real personality, and it’s located on a little one-block street called Kerbey Lane. Little did we realize that people liked the place so much that there are now 30 of them. We tried to return but our map app took us to a different Kerbey Lane, with an ambience more like Denny’s. Oh, well. Grade: B- and D for the two different locations.

But, we also picked up a $15 coupon at Kerbey Lane for the property from “the Kerbey Lane team.” It’s a breakfast/brunch place called the High Note. It was similar to Kerbey Lane and in fact it was somewhat similar to the Odd Duck. Farm-to-table, lots of exotic vegies, at least, exotic to us folks from Minnesota, a bit of a bite to almost every sauce. It was good, but the Ducks were better. Grade: C.

Other Stuff to Do in Austin

We had decided to come to Austin because of the music and the potential for some hiking. We decided where to stay based on hiking the Barton Creek Greenbelt. So we stayed south of the river, and there was an entrance to the Greenbelt about a third of a mile from our place. Luckily, South Lamar and Congress, where all the dive bars we visited are located, were five or ten minutes away, too.

Along the Greenbelt, you can also find the Zilker Botanical Garden and the Umlauf Sculpture Park. Paul Umlauf was a sculptor and a professor art at UT from 1941 to 1981. He specialized in classical bronzes—Madonna and child, Icarus, and all of that. Some of them are huge, twelve-15 feet tall. It’s cool to see them outdoors. We saw everything in about 45 minutes, but of course we don’t stand over a piece of art for very long. 

Grade: B.

The Zilker Botanical Garden is only about 26 acres. The Minnesota Arboretum is more than 150. So, we saw pretty much everything in an hour-and-a-half. And, it was out of season for most plants. Still, it’s a very nice little garden We especially liked the so-called Prehistoric Garden with its dinosaurs sculpture. Grade: C.

We didn’t do as much of the museum scene as we usually do. The music was too good. But, we did make our way up to the Harry Ransom Center at UT. They mostly collect literary stuff and they do exhibits. It’s not paintings or anything, what you see is written documents and of course information about the manuscripts and their authors. It was fascinating, especially the exhibit about David Foster Wallace, author of The Infinite Jest and other books. He never had a damn thing to do with Texas, but UT bought all of his stuff after he took his own life in 2008. It was really, really terrific, and I would trust the Ransom Center to do right by any subject it might choose to exhibit.

Thursday, February 13—The Marmalakes and Daphne Tunes at the Cactus Café

OK, so today we made our way over to the Cactus Café in the student union at UT. There were posters everywhere showing artists who had played previously at the venerable venue—Lyle Lovett, Townes Van Zandt, Joe Ely, Iris DeMent, Jorma Kaukonen, you name it. Well, the Marmalakes are not any of them. In fact, they have nothing whatsoever to do with anything you would think of when you think of Austin music. Nothing to do with cactus.

Then again, the Cactus Café has no food. So, what the hell.

Now, that’s just me, of course. Obviously, there’s an indie rock scene here. But, seriously, the Marmalakes could be from anywhere. Their whole reason for existing is the songs/lyrics and vocals of Chase Weinacht. Everything else is superfluous. He reminds one of Paul Simon, well, a little tiny bit. Also, maybe James Mercer of the Shins, a little tiny bit. But, he mumbles his lyrics, you can’t understand a thing. So, what’s the point? Grade: F.

And, the really weird thing is that the opening act, Daphne Tunes, was a clone of the Marmalakes. (There was nobody named Daphne.) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess. Actually, the two bands had the same drummer. They also had the same bright, trebly, dreamy guitar sound. Think Santo and Johnny. And, each band played approximately one song that could be described as up-tempo. It was a big night for insomniacs. Grade: F-.

Friday, February 14—Lissa Hattersley with the Trip Trio at the Elephant Room

Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. We went down to the Elephant Room to hear jazz saxophonist Elias Haslanger at 4 p.m. Well, Haslanger wasn’t playing until 9, and nobody was playing until 6. So, we went across the street for dinner, then came back at 6 to hear Lissa Hattersley and the Trip Trio, subtitled The Trio That’s A Quartet: Lissa on vocals, Mike Barnes on guitar, bassist Brad Taylor and percussionist James Fenner.

Now, I don’t know who picks the songs and makes the arrangements and all of that. Nominally, this is Lissa Hattersley’s band, and she’s been singing around Austin for 40 years, so surely she can do what she wants. Her old band, Greasy Wheels, once opened for Bruce Springsteen. But, on stage, this is Barnes’ band. He was a founding member of Steam Heat, a funk and soul band that goes back to 1975. 

Now, they’re playing and singing light jazz and I mean that in a good way. Barnes’ plays exquisitely though the style is familiar enough. It’s what jazz guitarists do when they’re called on to accompany a vocalist. But, here you’re hearing a real master of the genre of jazz and jazzy pop. The only songs I recognized, frankly, were by Steely Dan, which gives you some idea of what they were up to. Grade: B.

Driving Around Austin

I have to mention that the traffic in Austin really sucks. Part of the problem is the Colorado River, which cuts through town, west to east, separating the southern one-third of town from the northern two-thirds. There are precious few streets that cross the river, so those streets a terribly congested anywhere near the river. Actually getting across on Congress or Lamar is torture at least 10 hours a day.

But, the other part of the problem has nothing to do with the river. If you never, ever cross the river and live your life entirely on the north side, well, for one thing you’re never going to see James McMurtry play. But, more than that, the traffic anywhere and everywhere north of the river is terrible. Downtown is located centrally on the north side of the river. The UT campus is immediately north of that, and the state capitol is stuck in there somewhere, too. All roads leading toward campus and the capitol and downtown, whether from the north, south, east or west, doesn't matter, they’re all congested as hell, almost all day long.

So plan your outings accordingly. Spend your days north or south, but not both. Grade: D.

Sunday, February 16—Dale Watson and His Lone Stars, and Chicken Shit Sunday at C-Boys

A fellow at C-Boys told me that everyone in Austin is and has been flabbergasted that Dale Watson never became a country music superstar. He’s got a wonderful singing voice, a bit of Johnny Cash, a little bit of Roger Miller, a dash of Merle Haggard. But, of course, he persists in playing “classic country” like in the ’50s and ‘60s with a dash of rockabilly even. Not the highly polished “gems” they do in Nashville these days. 

So here is Dale Watson, playing at C-Boys every Sunday for 100, maybe 150 people, and some of them aren’t even there for Dale Watson, they’ve come for chicken-shit bingo. It’s not really bingo, of course, it’s more of a raffle. You buy a ticket and whatever number the chicken shits on…. Well, maybe I should mention that there’s a chicken—yep, a real live chicken—in a cage over in the corner being watched very carefully by the chicken lady. Oh, and the floor of her cage is divided into two-inch squares, each one with a number in it. And, when they close the ticket sale in each round of the raffle, the next time the chicken shits, whatever number the chicken shits on wins. 

Every winner has to go up on stage, then, to be interviewed and badgered by Dale Watson. Actually, Watson does his impression of Monte Hall on Let’s Make A Deal. If you win, you win $108. Now, do you want to keep the $108 or do you want to trade it for the money that Dale Watson has in his pocket—and which pocket? Left front, right front, left back, right back? The first winner traded his $108 and got $110 back. The second winner kept the $108, whereupon Dale showed her that he had $156 in his back left pocket. And, so forth.

Still, the main attraction was Dale Watson and his band, the Lone Stars, playing country hits from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Check him out.

What Else?

Oh, yeah, everybody in Austin has a dawg, and there’s a veterinarian or a dawg-park or a dawg-wash on every street corner. Come for the music, stay for the dawgs.

Ken Burns' Country Music: Don't Know Much About History

Ken Burn’s epic love letter to country music, even at 8 parts and 16-plus hours, has left country music fans wanting more. Some at SavingCountryMusic.com are irate, in fact, that Glen Campbell, the Dixie Chicks, Alan Jackson, Johnny Paycheck, Ray Price, John Prine, Gentleman Jim Reeves, the Statler Brothers, Conway Twitty, Don Williams and a hundred more didn’t get enough screen time. And, a bit of frustration with the amount of screen time that Johnny Cash and his daughter Rosanne got.

You may know that Cash married into the first family of country music. His second wife, June Carter Cash, is the daughter of Mother Maybelle Carter and the niece of A.P. Carter and Sara Carter, the three of whom made up the original Carter Family. Later, the second iteration of the Carter Family consisted of Mother Maybelle and her three daughters. The Carter-Cash nexus was explored in literally every single one of the 8 parts of the series. Now, I admire Johnny Cash and I like his music. But, it was all a bit too much, and little less of Johnny and Rosanne might have meant a little more of Campbell or Twitty or some other worthy.

In any event, country music is a big subject and, thankfully, Country Music is not just a cavalcade of stars. It’s that, but it’s also a serious, if not altogether successful, attempt to explain the social and cultural history of country music and the culture that sustains it.

Still, undoubtedly, many viewers simply saw Country Music as terrifically entertaining, which it is in precisely the way that most of Burns documentaries are terrifically entertaining. The historical film and video clips of artists from Fiddlin’ John Carson and Uncle Dave Macon in the 1920s to Bob Wills in the 1940s; from Hank Williams in the 1950s to Willie Nelson in the 1960s; and from George Jones and Tammy Wynette in the 1970s to Dwight Yoakum in the 1980s are all big fun. Watching Bob Wills bouncing around on stage like the speed freak that apparently he was brings back memories of Burns’ earlier documentaries featuring films of baseball greats Honus Wagner (1900s), Ty Cobb (1910s) and Babe Ruth (1920s) and jazzmen Louis Armstrong (1920s) and Benny Goodman (1930s). No wonder many viewers wanted more.

Bottom line, Country Music earns an A+ as entertainment, and even as history and sociology it gets a C because, as everybody knows, Americans “don’t know much about history” and, so, anything they picked up here would have to be counted as progress. But, seriously, what have we really learned about the history of country music from Burns’ series? And, why just a C? There are four major takeaways from the series that I could see.

Authenticity and Innovation

Burns fashioned his biggest frame around country music in his very first episode. The first two stars of country music, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, are taken to represent two sides of an ongoing dialectic between authenticity to a tradition (the Carters) and innovation around that tradition (Rodgers). And, while Rodgers and other innovators are mostly presented in a positive light, the Carters and the traditionalists clearly are the good guys. We are told again and again that it’s crucial for country music and country musicians to “remember where they came from.” Or, according to the Lester Flagg/Earl Scruggs composition that serves as the title of the 8^th and final episode, “Don't Get Above Your Raisin.” “Be true to your roots.” “Be who you are.”

Corollary to the authenticity theme is the idea that country music is just one big family, as we are told over and over again. Country musicians are loyal to their roots like they are to family, and the country music industry was and is inclusive of blacks and women, as we also hear over and over again. We also see again and again that the big stars all turn out for one another’s funerals.

So, country music is presented as a push/pull between that tradition—English, Irish and Scottish folk songs and songs that sound like them; that high, lonesome wailing vocal style; string bands; and loyalty to roots and family—and all of the innovations of the following 80 years—new and different instruments from electric guitars to symphony orchestras, a pop vocal style, a rock & roll beat, urban lifestyles, and so on. Sometimes the innovations are reported favorably. Sometimes not. The once-per-generation return to the roots of country music—bluegrass, the folk revival, the “new traditionalists,” etc.—is always seen as a good thing, and rootsy musicians get most of the screen time, which is only fair and understandable, since the overriding theme, again, is “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin.”

The Nashville Sound

Burns does an especially good job of covering the Nashville Sound. And, make no mistake, Country Music may be a love letter to country music, but it is no love letter to Nashville. And, with the big public relations apparatus of country music, the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Association (CMA), the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, et al, the easiest thing in the world would have been for Burns to simply cast country music as a creature of that mythic town, Nashville, TN. But, he decided not to do that, and his history is vastly richer (and more true) for that decision.

Right from the beginning, Burns noted the existence of country music in places like Texas and southern California—well, OK, not places like Texas and southern California but, specifically, Texas and southern California. Early on, in the 1930s, we see Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys playing Western swing around Fort Worth and in Oklahoma, and the Maddox Brothers and Rose doing something similar in L.A. Later, when Buck Owens and Merle Haggard emerge with the Bakersfield Sound, we realize that it didn’t come out nowhere (though there were complaints that Buck Owens influencer Wynn Stewart was not mentioned). 

Later still, Burns gives the so-called Outlaw Country of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, and Texas songwriters from Kris Kristofferson to Townes Van Zandt their due, and places them within what is by then a well-cultivated tradition of Texas country that retains the rough edges that Nashville has gone to such pains to smooth over. (Of course, there are complaints concerning the absence of David Allen Coe, Billy Joe Shaver and other “outlaws.”)

The key episodes cover the 1950s through the 1970s, when the hoary Nashville clichés begin to fall flat. Specifically, the younger generation of southern boys, like white boys across America, were captivated and captured by the more boisterous sounds of rhythm & blues. Honky-tonk (Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson, et al) moved country in that direction with drums and electric guitars, but did not satiate the desire for something new, something more vigorous. So, the next generation of country singers—Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, even Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins—declined (or were unable) to fit into Nashville’s mold and moved off in a different direction. 

Presley is of course a unique case. His manager, Col. Tom Parker, thought that rock & roll was just a fad and that Presley’s long-term success would come by singing sentimental pop ballads. He as good as destroyed Presley with such ideas, and Elvis had too little ego strength to push back. His decline into sentimentality was completely analogous to Nashville’s.

Producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley were already intent on crafting a smoother, a more pop sound, replacing fiddles and steel guitars with symphony orchestras and vocal choruses consisting of ethereal “oohs” and “aahs.” It worked for Patsy Cline! So, they spent the next 20 years trying to shoe-horn everybody, even Willie Nelson, into it. It didn’t work. 

What Burns shows beyond any dispute is that the greatest music of the era was not the product of Nashville, it was the product of originals and iconoclasts like Presley, Cash, Roger Miller, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Dolly Parton. Faced with a variety of talents almost equally as great as Presley, Nashville chose the one sound and the one style that was least appropriate to the kind and caliber of talent that came knocking on its door after 1955. Some of them recorded big hits in Nashville but Nashville, it turns out, stymied and stifled some of the era’s greatest musicians for 20 years. From the late 1950s to the late 1970s, Nashville succeeded largely in spite of itself. 

Black and White

It is harder to credit Burns’ storytelling on the subject of race. Burns whitewashes the obvious historical racism of the country music establishment and of its fans. This is, of course, the music of the rural south where, during the early days of country music from the turn of the century to 1950, more than 2,000 black men were lynched by white vigilante mobs, often dressed in white Ku Klux Klan hoods and garb. 

Yet, Burns goes to great pains to show country music as a mixing of the white and black cultures of the south. We are told five or six times in the first couple of episodes that the banjo came from Africa. Burns gives three of the very precious few successful black country singers, Charley Pride, Rhiannon Giddens and Darius Rucker, a fair amount of time as talking heads; and he notes that Ray Charles’ greatest album was a collection of country songs. What he doesn’t mention is that country radio stations refused to play it.

Now, it’s true that Burns reports that country’s first star, Fiddlin’ John Carson, routinely played at Ku Klux Klan rallies in the 1910s and ‘20s, and one black musician notes that white folk “loved our music but they hated us.” 

Early in the show Burns defines country as “the music of people who felt that they were looked down upon” and, certainly, rural southern whites were looked down upon by middle- and upper-class whites everywhere. Burns goes on to show that they endured their second-class citizenship stoically, with songs that emphasized their own sinful character rather than showing any awareness of their exploitation by the economic or political forces that largely controlled their lives. But, they compensated very powerfully for their own lack of status by looking down upon the Negroes they found in their midst and by demanding that they (African-Americans) would be treated as third-class citizens. This is all glossed over.

Strong Women

Burns amplifies his theme of inclusiveness not only by overselling the role of African-American culture in the history of country music, but he also focuses throughout the series on a variety of strong women of country music. Now, in this case, the emphasis is about right, because there have been a lot of great women singers in country music. Of course, the same can be said of folk and jazz and pop and soul music (though not so much concerning rock & roll). 

Mother Maybelle and her niece Sara Carter were there at the very birth of country music, and they were followed by artists from Rose Maddox to Kitty Wells, and from Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn to Dolly Parton, and from Tammy Wynette to Shania Twain. So, the story here is not so much that Burns oversold the importance of women singers, but that he gives the country music establishment something of a pass concerning their trials and tribulations. Again, what Burns shows but doesn’t say is that the country music industry also has succeeded with women singers in spite of itself. 

Kitty Wells was the most popular woman singer of the 1950s thanks to her smash hit “Honky Tonk Angels.” It was an answer to Thompson’s “The Wild Side of Life,” in which he sang that (paraphrasing) “the world was going to hell and faithless women”—that is, “Honky Tonk Angels” who hung around in bars and seduced married men and broke up marriages—“deserved a good deal of the blame.” Wells responded in her song that, to the contrary, “married men who (act like) they’re still single (have) caused many a good girl to go wrong.”

Country radio stations found “Honky Tonk Angels,” sung from the woman’s point of view, to be too provocative and refused to play it. It climbed up the charts, however, through millions of jukebox plays until the radio stations could no longer ignore it. The irony is that “The Wild Side of Life,” sung from the man’s point of view, had also been a big hit and no country music station had ever raised the slightest concern about its content.

Later, Burns shows how Parton rose to country music stardom. Again, he doesn’t overstate (or understate) her importance or her prominence. But, he is ambivalent as to the lesson that we might draw from her story. Is it that a strong woman can, indeed, find fame and fortune in country music? Or, is it that a powerful man—in this case, Porter Wagoner—was able to control and stifle her for seven years?

The Folk Revival

The strange relationship of country and folk music over the years, which one might characterize as an estrangement, also calls into question the alleged inclusiveness of country music. Burns shows that country music and folk music were precisely the same thing until the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s. That’s when Woody Guthrie and other hillbilly singers began to write and sing songs that didn’t reflect the accepted stoic philosophy, that didn’t necessarily place blame for these twin catastrophes on the victims themselves. Instead, they found and sang about explanations with a political bent, that placed blame on economic practices and government policies, on bankers and lawyers and politicians. Marty Stuart describes Guthrie as an authentic country singer, a hillbilly singer “through and through,” and yet the country music establishment as good as disowned him for singing about those kinds of ideas.

Pete Seeger and others kept those songs alive through the red scare of the 1950s—the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, the blacklists, and all of that. Finally, in 1959, a folk group called the Kingston Trio broke through with the smash hit “Tom Dooley,” a murder ballad written in North Carolina in 1866. It went to #1 on the pop charts but the Grammy Awards gave “Tom Dooley” the award for Best Country and Western Performance. Country music and folk music remained virtually indistinguishable.

The following year the Grammies initiated a Folk category. The Kingstons won for Best Folk Performance, while Johnny Horton won for Best Country Performance for “The Battle of New Orleans.” Burns credits the Kingstons with kicking off a historical “story song” craze on the country charts, with Cash’s “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town;” Horton’s “Springtime in Alaska,” “The Battle of New Orleans” and “North to Alaska;” Stonewall Jackson’s “Waterloo;” and Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” all going to #1 over the following 18 months.

In 1963 Bobby Bare enjoyed two hits with “Detroit City” and “500 Miles.” Both have early 1960s copyrights but both are reminiscent of earlier folk tunes such as “Sloop John B.” and “900 Miles.” Coming at the peak of the folk revival, their folky sound was no accident. But, the Kingstons were from San Francisco, while Bare recorded with producer Chet Atkins at Nashville’s RCA Records studio. So the Kingstons were folk, while Bare was country. But, the two styles still sounded very much alike.

Burns goes on to report that bluegrass music, Bill Monroe’s invention from the 1940s that recreated country music as he wished it had been played in some mythical “good old days,” also came to be shunned by Nashville, and specifically by country radio. Bluegrass managed to find a home among folk music fans, mostly on college campuses, during the folk revival as it continued on from the Kingstons to Peter Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Had it not been for the folk revival and its fans on America’s college campuses—had it been left up to Nashville and the country music establishment—bluegrass may well have been dead and gone by the time the 1960s had ended.

Nashville vigorously pats itself on the back for all the folk and rock artists who came to Nashville to record, principally Bob Dylan and the Byrds, though neither the country charts nor country radio ever paid the slightest attention to either, and lots of country fans apparently objected to Dylan’s presence in Burns’ series. It’s true that the Byrds were invited to play at the Grand Ole Opry, but it’s also true that they were hooted off the stage.

Still, Nashville hit it big with at least a couple of artists associated with the counter-culture in Kris Kristofferson and Emmy Lou Harris, though Nashville execs initially were skeptical of Harris. She had sung folk songs and looked like a “hippie.” They were the exceptions to the rule, however. John Prine was never embraced in Nashville until he had been recording for some 40 years. Of course, Prine was from Chicago but his people had come from the hills of Kentucky and, well, you can take the boy out of the hills, but you can’t take the hills out of the boy. His song “Paradise,” about coal mining in his ancestral home in Muhlenburg County, Kentucky, is as country as it gets. But, his debut album album also contained hippie tunes like “Illegal Smile” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” so Nashville demurred. 

The folk or “alternative” music scene—encompassing all the styles that had been shunned by Nashville, from Woody Guthrie to John Prine—always remained so vital that around the year 2000 it spawned a new category or genre called Americana. It was all really country music at heart. It was music that was true to is roots, that didn’t get above its raisin. Country music and folk music or Americana remain joined at the hip. Yet, the country music industry hasn’t had any idea what to do with it and has mostly kept it at arm’s length for more than 80 years. 

Inclusive?

So, in the final analysis, Burns says that country music is inclusive—inclusive, he says or implies, of African-Americans, of women, of city slickers as well as country bumpkins, of folkies and hippies and iconoclasts of all kinds. Yet, his own reporting shows something different. The country music establishment has more of the character of a jealous, fearful, narrow-minded parent. Burns shows that the country music establishment was keenly aware of its image as purveyors of “hillbilly” music. Encouraged by Nashville’s upper-crust, it tried hard to change that image. Thus, the smooth, poppy Nashville Sound. Eventually, respectability came to be regarded as almost as important as success. And, so, hillbillies, hippies, lefties and long-hairs were shunned. Like Kris Kristofferson, who was disowned by his own parents, those who were unafraid to speak their mind were shunned. Drinkers and druggies were shunned, unless they were superstars like Johnny Cash and George Jones. Topical folk-singers were shunned. Non-conformists of all kinds were shunned. 

All of the country music industry’s quirks are there in Burns’ stories, but he’s too nice to connect the dots and say what it all means. Another of the frequent criticisms of Burns’ series was its ending in 1996, which seems arbitrary. As a result, Burns avoided having to talk about the shunning, the boycotting of the Dixie Chicks after they announced their opposition to the Iraq War from a stage in 2003. The Dixie Chicks’ controversy would have undermined Burns’ theme of family and inclusivity in country music. So he ignored it. 

Bottom line: Burns' series showed country music for the fearful, narrow-minded phenomenon that it is, all the while claiming, most unconvincingly, otherwise.

Will the Real Vince Gill Please Stand Up?

I discovered Vince Gill--well, I had been aware of him as a pop or country-pop singer, so I guess l rediscovered Vince Gill, a new Vince Gill--through videos from Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Fest, especially his scorching performance of "Sweet Thing" in (I think) 2007, the one with Bill Murray as MC. Since then I've managed to find other "killer guitar" tunes, including one of his early hits, "Oklahoma Border Line," on You Tube, along with some terrific blues, bluegrass and traditional country songs featuring Vince Gill with the Time Jumpers.

And I've read that Vince Gill has become one of many--but, perhaps, one of the most prominent, most influential--cheerleaders for the history of country music and for country music traditions.

So, anyway, I had never seen Vince Gill live, so my wife and I packed up a suitcase and drove for 5 hours to see him at the beautiful Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, IA. And, well, I suddenly remembered my first impression of Vince Gill as a pop/country pop singer. I could close my eyes and easily imagine that that was Celine Dion down there singing his big hits. Let's put it this way. For the first half of the show, the greatest pedal steel guitar player in country music today, Paul Franklin, had almost nothing to do.

But I gotta be honest. When he played "When I Call Your Name," his first really big hit from 1990, and "Take Your Memory with You" and "I Still Believe in You" and "One More Last Chance," well, the place went wild. So, of course, he's got to play 'em.

But he did play some killer guitar--he closed the almost 3-hour show with "Oklahoma Border Line,"  finished up with "Liza Jane" for his encore, and he showed why he's one of the great guitar players in the world.

Still, I thought the highlight of the show came when he sang real, intimate country songs like "A World Without Haggard," dedicated of course to the memory of his friend Merle Haggard, who passed away earlier this year. It was a heartfelt, passionate vocal performance. Even better was "A Sad One Comin' On (A Tribute to George Jones)" from his latest LP, Down to My Last Bad Habit.
Also in that softer, more intimate and more heartfelt mood and more countrified style were the title track from that new LP and "The Old Lucky Diamond Motel" from 2011's Guitar Slinger.

But not only was the show more pop than country, it also dragged a couple other times as well. Like I said, Gill played for 3 hours without a break, and that's a good thing. But his band got a break as Gill played solo for 40-minutes. But he only played 4 songs, spending most of the 40 minutes on stand-up comedy. He told some hilarious stories about his relationship with his dad. One night his dad called him up with an idea for a song. "If you finish (writing) this song," daddy said, "and if you record this song, you'll be bigger than Elvis." Vince replied, "Daddy, if I finish this plate of food I've got here, I'll be bigger than Elvis." So, OK, it was pretty funny, but it wasn't what I drove 5 hours to see.

And, then, near the end of the show, he brought out his daughter, Jenny, now 34, who has decided she wants to be a singer. She sang 4 songs that I would describe as blue-eyed, or in her case, brown-eyed soul. The fourth song was Alex Chilton's "The Letter," and the band surely rocked out on it. Jenny has a strong, pretty, but pretty much untrained voice. It has a naturally pleasing timbre to it, but there's not much style or art to the delivery. Again, not what I drove 5 hours to see.

Still, there's plenty to admire about Vince Gill and his band. The 3-part vocal harmonies were very nicely done (I didn't get the names of the 2 backup singers). The second electric guitarist was damn good and Vince gave him plenty of solos on the more rock and roll types of songs. Paul Franklin was, well, Paul Franklin on the pedal steel, eventually getting a chance to shine on the more traditional-sounding numbers like "A Sad One Coming On"and "A World Without Haggard." Willie Weeks was terrific on the bass guitar. I had no idea he was playing with Gill--he comes from here in Minnesota, where I first saw him in the 1960s in a cover band called Michael's Mystics.

Gill played for 3 hours non-stop, without a break, and it seemed heartfelt enough when he said, more than once, how much he and his band just love to play music and how blessed he is that people want to come out and hear it. All the more reason why it was so jarring when his daughter cheerfully introduced herself by saying she was here to "promote my EP."

I guess Vince is stuck with his pop songs and his pop fans. But if you asked the real Vince Gill to please stand up, I do believe it would be the Haggard/George Jones-lovin,' guitar-slingin' Vince Gill that I've come to admire. The mix was a little bit unsatisfying. Overall grade: B.

Benny Golson. Bonnie Raitt. Booker T. Charlie Haden. Marty Stuart. Richard Thompson.

I’ve written once or twice in the past about FREE OUTDOOR SUMMER MUSIC. For the past several years, I’ve published a list of free outdoor summer music—OK, including a few indoor and/or not-free events as well. Long about tax day, my friends start emailing to say, Where’s your list? This year I published my list as always but a whole series of scheduling conflicts generally prevented us from attending many of the events. The highlight until recently had been seeing Booker T. Jones and the MGs as headliners of the Twin Cities Blues Festival at Mears Park in St. Paul.

Well, we made up for lost time over the past week or so. First we saw Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives at the (free) Leinie Lodge at the Minnesota State Fair, and they were indeed superlative. Then came a trip to Chicago where we saw Benny Golson and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra at the (free) Chicago Jazz Fest at Millenium Park, and then Richard Thompson and Bonnie Raitt at Ravinia (not free).

Let’s review in order of quality. That would be Charlie Haden, Marty Stuart, Richard  Thompson, Bonnie Raitt, Benny Golson and Booker T.

Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra

The only thing that could have made this a better experience is if Charlie was still with us. But bassist and composer Charlie Haden passed away 2 years ago at the age of 76. His band, thank goodness, continues to create and perform the most awesome jazz you can hear under the continuing leadership of his long-time collaborator—arranger, pianist and bandleader Carla Bley, now 80.

The Liberation Music Orchestra is a 12-piece band and while the bass, even in Charlie’s absence, continues to come forward with numerous solos, it comes across as mostly a brass band. The interplay of the 3 saxophones, 2 trumpets, trombone, French horn and tuba in terms of harmony and timbre is what really makes the Orchestra tick and cook and soar.

For example, I always thought that “Amazing Grace” was way overplayed. After hearing the Orchestra play Bley’s arrangement thereof, I realize it is rather vastly underplayed. It is played with too little passion, too little innovation, too little care, too little skill. When it is played with passion and innovation and skill, it is a gorgeous piece of music. Not only does Bley bring out the beauty of the song, the song too brings out the beauty of these brass instruments melding and clashing and infiltrating one another. What a beautiful performance.

Haden and Bley and the Liberation Orchestra go all the way back to the late ‘60s, and it has always had a leftist political bent. Early on it also had a strong Latino influence, as on my personal favorite, Charlie’s “Song for Che”—Che Guevara, that is. Regardless of your politics, the song soars and cries and screams and shouts, and also whispers on Charlie’s incredibly beautiful statement of the base melody on the bass. No, they didn’t play it the other night. But the idea of seeing Charlie’s Orchestra, even without Charlie, 40 years after discovering “Song for Che,” well, that was a bucket lister that I never imagined I would experience. Coming on the heels of 40 years of waiting, surely the concert would fail to meet my hopes and expectations. No. It met them with room to spare. A+.

Marty Stuart and His Incredible Superlatives

A week earlier I had seen Marty Stuart and he too more than met my expectations. He mostly played the rockabilly that he is mostly known for, but he is also a walking, talking, breathing repository of the history and soul of country music. And, so, frankly, the highlights were his trips down memory lane for Marty Robbins’ classic “El Paso” and the chestnut “Orange Blossom Special.”

On “El Paso” His Superlatives bassist Paul Martin and drummer Harry Stinson provided a gorgeous 3-part vocal harmony while guitarist Kenny Vaughan mimicked but also improvised and expanded on Grady Martin’s classic acoustic guitar accompaniment. On “Orange Blossom Special” Stuart improbably played it solo on the mandolin and made it almost as interesting as the usual fiddle arrangements. It was a total tour de force of stringed wizardry.

Very, very highly recommended. Stuart is a consummate professional and showman and not only knows how but is totally committed to providing solid entertainment and a great experience for the audience. A.

Richard Thompson Trio

Being honest, I rated Richard ahead of Bonnie (Raitt) largely because I had never seen Thompson whereas this was, oh, the 6^th or 7^th time (?) that I’ve seen Bonnie. I love Bonnie. But Richard was really terrific, and anybody who knows anything about Richard Thompson knows that means sizzling guitar work and powerful vocals on some mix of an expansive catalog of rocking (and/or folk-rock) tunes with incisive socially-aware lyrics. Meanwhile, his rhythm section of (I think) Michael Jerome, drums and vocals, and Taras Prodaniuk, bass and vocals, was just about as powerful as it gets.

He closed, just for instance, with the classic “Tear-Stained Letter” from maybe his best record, 1983’s Hand of Kindness, played at a break-neck pace with a totally pounding rhythm. “Cry and cry if it makes you feel better,” he sang, “Set it all down in a tear-stained letter.” I always assumed the song to be, well, sarcastic. In other words, “Cry and cry if it makes you feel better”…loser.

B+.

Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie is well into elder-stateswoman status. She can do no wrong. Well, except maybe fail to play enough of her hits. And so, she did. Play her hits. Love Me Like A Man. No Business. I Can’t Make You Love Me. Dimming of the Day. Something to Talk About. Angel from Montgomery.

Her voice is in surprisingly wonderful shape compared to many of a similar age. She is a great slide guitar player. Her repertoire is as approachable as anybody’s. She is a likable persona on stage. And she delivered all of those things at Ravinia. I guess the only complaint is just that it’s the same old schtick. Except, yeah, I said already that that’s also her strong suit. Still, she’s not a revival band, not a caricature of her primetime self. She’s still the real deal. 

Meanwhile, I gotta mention...Ravinia. There's a covered amphitheater that seats, well, I'm not sure, 3,000 maybe? And then there's the "lawn" seating. Bring your blanket, bring your chairs, bring your candles and your wine and your wind-chimes and your favorite incense and your favorite friends and show everybody what an elaborate scene you can create on the lawn at Rivinia!!! OMG! And, by the way, you can't see the stage! Now, in fairness, the sound is great. They've gone to great lengths to get a good quality of sound out on the lawn. But it's 75 percent fashionistas and 25 percent music fans. Weird. 

Still, if you are there for the music, well, you can enjoy that after you've gotten over your total sense of amazement at the upwardly mobile social scene out front.

Still, I have to say: B+.

Benny Golson Quartet

Golson is an 87-year old saxophonist who played with Diz, Bird, you name it. And like Bonnie Raitt, his music still sounds fresh and new, he’s not some old guy going through the motions. To some degree, that’s thanks to a kick-ass band led by pianist Mike LeDonne, with Buster Williams on bass and Carl Allen on drums.

Still, the spotlight is on the incredibly lush tone that Golson still gets out of his saxophone. There are few or no histrionics, nothing fast and furious, just that beautiful tone, and that’s plenty good for me.

I have to add, as Golson did, by the way, that, like him, I have never seen an outdoor amphitheater as beautifully choreographed for music lovers--and lots of them--as this. The Pritzker Pavilion, that is, at Millennium Park. Super highly appreciated and recommended.

He closed with a jazz standard and the story of seeing Lawrence Welk play it on TV once upon a time. “The music,” Golson said, “was horrible!” but kind of like a train wreck (pardon the expression). A person couldn’t look away. Welk introduced the song saying, “Here’s a song by Duke Ellington, his theme song, ‘Take a Train.’” Could not stop laughing.

B+.

Booker T. and the MGs

Okay, this was way back in the heart of summer though what’s really different about it was that, frankly, it was a let-down. Booker T. still plays an admirable Hammond B3 at the age of 72. He’s not particularly dazzling technically, he doesn’t play anything fast, but he is a musician of immense taste. And when he closed with one of the great grooves in rock history, “Time Is Tight,” well, people were groovin.’

His band was pretty so-so, however. The guitarist, it turns out, is his son, and who’s gonna say that Booker T. Jones shouldn’t go out on tour with his kid? “Father and Son Blues” was, in fact, about the only non-classic that he played, and it was pleasing enough. Otherwise he and the MGs played his classics including songs on which he performed as a sideman, such as Otis Redding’s “Respect,” which Booker T., surprisingly, sang. He sang a bunch of tunes, in fact--"Hey Joe." "Purple Rain" and more--and surprisingly Muddy Waters “I’m A Man” was probably his best vocal. The guy’s got a nice blues voice, you know, surprisingly.

He also played some guitar, surprisingly. He’s an admirable musician, both in terms of his catalog and career and the way he still plays today. But it was a pretty understated show with not a lot of energy.

C.

Top Songs

1. Amazing Grace--Liberation Music Orchestra

2. El Paso--Marty Stuart

3. Time Is Tight--Booker T.

4. Song for the Whales--LMO

5. I Can't Make You Love Me--Bonnie Raitt

6. Tear-Stained Letter--Richard Thompson

7. Take the A Train--Benny Golson

8. No Business--Bonnie Raitt

9. America the Beautiful--LMO

10. Angel from Montgomery--Bonnie Raitt

So that was my summer. And a good summer it was, mainly because of Charlie Haden, Carla Bley and their Liberation Music Orchestra. God bless!

The Music of Ry Cooder

To my mind, Ry Cooder is one of the most under-rated artists of the rock era. OK, he’s #31 on Rolling Stone’s list of the top 100 greatest guitarists in rock, which ain’t exactly chopped liver. And their write-up is nothing if not adulatory.

“Cooder's life on guitar,” Rolling Stone reports, “has been distinguished by a rare mix of archaic fundamentals and exploratory passion, from his emergence as a teenage blues phenomenon with Taj Mahal and Captain Beefheart in the mid-Sixties to his roots-and-noir film soundtracks and central role in the birth and success of the 1996 Havana supersession Buena Vista Social Club. As a sideman, Cooder has brought true grit and emotional nuance to classic albums by Randy Newman, the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. Cooder is also a soulful preservationist, keeping vital pasts alive and dynamic in the modern world.”

Wikipedia says, “(Ry Cooder) is a multi-instrumentalist, but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries. His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing many genres including Americana, folk, blues, Tex-Mex, soul, gospel, rock, and much more.”

Yeah, much more. Or, maybe much less. I mean, I don’t care how you slice and dice it. Sure, this is a folk song. That’s a blues. That’s gospel., and that’s rock ‘n’ roll. But, no, it’s not a little bit of this and a little bit of that. At it’s heart, Ry Cooder’s music is just one thing, and that is, well, it’s Ry Cooder’s music. It comes from a heart and a voice and a soul that over almost 50 years, now, has proven that it runs hot and it runs deep.

And of course, he is not just a guitarist. Yes, that's his calling card. Nobody would call him a great singer. But he sings, he plays guitar, he composes and arranges complete musical experiences. He is a true auteur of rock music, broadly defined. It is in that category that he is so sorely underrated.

The Slide Area

Still Wikipedia has it mostly right. The essence of Ry Cooder’s heart and soul is his guitar, and especially his slide guitar. His is the brightest, most phosphorescent, delicate and expressive tonality in rock music. It doesn’t matter what he’s playing. That’s Ry Cooder on the guitar. You can hear it. You can feel it.

And, yes, there’s his rootsy-ness. But what, exactly, does that mean? From 1970 to 1987 he released 11 albums, almost entirely made up of covers. Ry didn’t really write in those days. And more than anything, he was covering songs from his youth, the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.

“Money Honey” by Jesse Stone (1953), “The Dark End of the Street” by Dan Penn and Chips Moman (1967), “It’s All Over Now” by Bobby and Shirley Womack (1964), “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King (1961), “I Can’t Win” by Lester Johnson, Clifford Knight and Dave Richardson, “Little Sister” by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman (1961), “Go Home, Girl,” Arthur Alexander (1962), “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine” by Rose Marie McCoy and Sylvia McKinney (1961), “634-5789” by Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd (1966), “Get Rhythm” by Johnny Cash (1956), and many, many more.

Yes, there’s Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and Alfred Reed (“How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live” from 1929) and Blind Willie McTell. But this isn’t just roots music. This is protest music, a genre that is virtually dead today but for Cooder. He’s not singing them because they’re old. He’s singing them because they’re not old, or antiquated. They’re as alive and relevant today as they were in the old Dust Bowl. And more than Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger or anybody else working today, he is channeling the voice of Woody Guthrie. He sees the exploitation and greed in today’s world—the same exploitation and greed that Woody saw in his day—and he is willing to call it by its rightful name.

It all comes together in his own recent (21^st century) composition, “El Corrida de Jesse James,” in which the outlaw Jesse James is up in heaven. He sees the greed and corruption on Wall Street today, and he begs God to give him his .44 back and to let him go back to earth to make things right. But once here, he finds that the corruption runs so wide and so deep that, as Cooder says in his introduction, “one man with a gun can’t do much about it.”

Ry Cooder’s Blues

And, then, there’s this. Like they say of Eric Clapton, Cooder’s not black, but he’s had the blues. He has a right to sing the blues, because he’s had them. Nobody could sing so many incredibly sad and heart-broken ballads over the year who hasn’t felt it.

So there’s “The Dark End of the Street” (1972), “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” (1980), “That’s the Way Love Turned Out for Me” (1982), “5000 Country Songs” (2008), and lots more. Cooder’s vocals have always been looked at as a throw-away element in his music—you know, passable; acceptable only because he’s also a world-class guitarist. But the pain that he captures and conveys on songs like these is palpable, and evidence of a real vocal talent and a real genuine feeling for, well, that feeling of the blues.

Here it all comes together, ironically, in an instrumental. The title, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” (Cooder titled it “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine”) speaks for itself, right? Things are gonna work out. Well, not to hear Cooder play a mournful slide guitar version at a dirge-like pace. In his hands—with his voice and heart and soul—it’s one of the most beautiful and saddest songs ever recorded in rock music.

So there’s the slide guitar, and there’s that down-and-out attitude, whether it’s expressed in social or personal terms. And finally, there’s the whole world music, Tex-Mex and Cuban eclecticism. Some people remember that it was he who rediscovered the Cuban music sound and brought it one last gasp of fame and popularity through the recording of The Buena Vista Social Club in 1997. He followed that up with a Cuban record of his own, with guitarist Manuel Galban, called Mambo Sinuendo, in 2003.

But most importantly here, he has incorporated Tex-Mex into his own sound. It’s not an excursion, it’s not an exploration, it’s there in the heart and soul of Ry Cooder. His long history of collaboration with Flaco Jimenez is the most tangible evidence. But, then, on his 2013 live album, Live in San Francisco, there’s a Tex-Mex horn section that absolutely rips things up in a mariachi style.

Timeline

1. As noted above, from 1970 to 1987 three were 11 LPs consisting almost entirely of covers. The slide guitar, the roots (including the old roots, the Dust Bowl ballads and the like, and the new roots, the ‘50s and ‘60s R& B), the down-and-out, underdog attitude (whether politically or romantically motivated) were all there in equal parts, and Tex-Mex became more and more of the sound as time went by.

The last of these, 1987’s Have a Ball, was more electric, more rock ‘n’ roll, but only in hindsight does it suggest any changes in direction for Cooder. And, yet, it would be 18 years before he would release another solo record.

His following seems to have been pretty consistent throughout this period. His first record, Ry Cooder, charted at #216, but created some positive word of mouth and, as a result, his second record, Into the Purple Valley, charted at #113. Two other records charted at #167 and #177 (we don’t have numbers for some of the others), but his biggest hit was appropriately enough his best record, Bop Til You Drop (1979) at #62. This was certainly in part because it was supported by his first-ever single release, “Little Sister.”

2. From 1988 through 2004, Cooder abandoned solo recordings of rock ‘n’ roll music. Instead, he wrote and performed for a number of movie soundtracks. Actually, he’d been doing them quite regularly since 1980, and Primary Colors in 1998 was #15. That, along with Paris, Texas (1985), Crossroads (1986) and Trespass (1993) are probably the best known.

Then there was the Cuban thing. Cuban music had had a run of popularity as a novelty on the American pop charts in the 1950s. It was flashy, syncopated, big band dance music. Perez Prado and his band were the most popular of them. A cha-cha version of Prado’s “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White” was a #1 hit in 1955, and his “Patricia” also got to #1 in 1958.

Cooder produced Buena Vista Social Club in 1995 featuring several of the leading Cuban artists still living, then recorded his own Cuban record, a collaboration with guitarist Manuel Galban in 2003. Mambo Sinuendo, which included a cover of “Patricia,” became Cooder’s biggest hit ever, charting at #52. It was also #1 on the World and on the Latin charts. (Buena Vista Social Club, on which he did not play, topped out at #80.)

He also recorded Little Village with John Hiatt, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner (it charted at #66), as well as collaborations with Ali Farka Toure and the Chieftans.

This was his most successful period in terms of charting and also industry recognition, as he received a total of 6 Grammies, mostly in the world and Latin categories. His more conventional folk-blues has never been so honored.

3. Then in 2005 came his first solo recording in 18 years, and the 1^st recording in a so-called “California Trilogy” that came to include Chavez Ravine, My Name Is Buddy and I, Flathead. Now Cooder was not just a performer but a songwriter as well. Most of the tunes on these 3 records are Cooder originals, some of them co-written with his son and drummer, Joaquin Cooder, and some co-written with others.

My Name Is Buddy charted at #168 (#40 in Switzerland, #41 in the U.K.). We don’t have numbers for the other two.

The musical style is all over the board. Chavez Ravine, the story of a lost Hispanic neighborhood in L.A. and the baseball stadium that supplanted it, is mostly Tex-Mex. My Name Is Buddy is acoustic folk, very much reminiscent of his Leadbelly and Woody repertoire. And I, Flathead, well, it’s rootsy, too, but recalling more those days of Cooder’s youth in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. The Flathead of the title, a play on Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, is a Ford Flathead engine, by the way.

In 2013 he released a live album that had to have been a conscious effort to recap his entire career—more specifically, the entire core of his entire career. The Cuban music of his middle period, his most popular recording ever, is not represented. But otherwise, you’ve got 3 really rootsy tunes, meaning compositions of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. You’re got the ‘60s roots in “Why Don’t You Try Me” and “The Dark End of the Street.”

But mostly you’ve got the Tex-Mex sound of Flaco Jimenez and a mariachi-style horn section that rips it up on “El Corrida de Jesse James” and others.

This was his 1^st live album since Show Time in 1977.

What's Next

Currently Cooder is touring with Ricky Skaggs and Mrs. Skaggs, Sharon White. What will come out of the collaboration remains to be seen, as is what Cooder does after that.

What here for a follow-up which will be a ranking of Cooder’s best LPs and best songs.