A Column on the Rescued and Reissued

This column (with apologies to Dr. Seuss for the subtitle, below), the first of a two-part dip into the strange end of the pool, starting with some homegrown weirdness, and going abroad for some exotic amalgams next installment.

From There to Here, and Here to There, Funny Things Are Everywhere

Australian musician and score composer David Thrussell seems dedicated, via his Omni Recording Corporation label, to rummaging around in some of the odder corners of Nashville country music. Besides the more obvious — a Porter Wagoner collection entitled The Rubber Room — the label has put out comps on Jimmy Driftwood, Henson Cargill, and The Stonemans. And with Nashville Sputnik - The Deep South/Outer Space Productions Of Jack Blanchard And Misty Morgan 1956-2004, it’s on its third--yes, third--issue on the oddball pair Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan. Think Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, throw in a dash of Roger Miller, and add healthy amount of the totally whacked on some of their creations and the totally lame on others, and you get an idea of what Jack and Misty were all about.

The first two Omni comps collected the pair’s recordings during their late ‘60s-mid ‘70s heyday (if a heyday is what they actually enjoyed). This one is batting cleanup, as the “productions” in the subtitle indicates. It collects pre-Nashville work, including early recordings by Blanchard as a member of the Dawn Breakers and the Rockin’ Impalas and by Morgan under various curious pseudonyms (“Jacqueline Hyde and the Moonfolk,” “Maryanne Mail”), as well as sundry oddities (among them, a disco version of their hit, “Somewhere in Virginia in the Rain,” the strangely unreleased “Dance of the Living Dead Chickens,” and “A Weird Little Christmas,” a yuletide narration that lives up to its name). There are also several tracks that Blanchard produced on a string of minor and mostly-forgotten artists that range from the goofy (“I’m Hung Up on You,” by Rusty Diamond, the Country Nut) to fine country soul (Donel Austin’s “Don’t It Look Like Georgia”). Like the Jack and Misty stuff, those tracks are of varying interest, but some of them are well worth recovery, which might be this comp’s greatest service.

Chet Flippo’s liner notes to the Water Records reissue of Shel Silverstein’s 1968 release, Boy Named Sue and His Other Country Songs, begin by pointing in the same direction as the title of the Jack and Misty comp: “Shel Silverstein landed in Nashville like an alien from outer space.” No doubt, especially consider the general tenor of things in Music City at the time. The multi-talented multi-tasker didn’t take long to make his mark there with his songs, though, most famously thanks to Cash with “Boy Named Sue.”

But Shel wanted to sing ‘em as well as write ‘em, even though he was far from being the world’s greatest singer — not that he was trying to be, with his talking, howling, screaming, wailing manner of doing so. That just adds to the effect here, whether he’s engaging in a hilarious celebration of wickedness (“Dirty Ol’ Me), ruminating on, and wondering at, getting old (“Time”), wallowing in classic denial (“Pathetic Way of Getting Over Me”), singing a truckin’ song, complete with telecaster twang, about not being able to drive a truck (“Somebody Stole My Rig”), singing a gunfighter song with a twist (“Comin’ After Jimmy”) or telling the tale of that boy named Sue.

One of the most enduring results of Silverstein’s Nashville tenure turned out to be his long-running collaboration with Bobby Bare, which began with Bare’s understated 1972 epic, Sings Lullabies, Legends, and Lies (recently given the arche deluxe reissue treatment by Legacy, for those keeping score at home). The collaboration continued in 1974 with Singin’ in the Kitchen, credited to “Bobby Bare and the family,” also just reissued by Omni. It’s kind of a children’s album, with treatments of such Silverstein classics as “The Giving Tree” and “The Unicorn,” and kind of more than that, “Lovin’ You Anyway” and others not exactly being kids’ fare. But it really is a family album, with contributions from wife Jeannie and all of the Bare kids, including future alt-country rocker Bobby Bare Jr., whose toothy grin is front and center in the cover shot. Omni, as usual, adds a bunch of bonus stuff, notably most (but sadly, not all) of Bare’s 1967 RCA gospel album, This I Believe.

Back before Muhammad Ali became Muhammad Ali, when he was just beginning to set the standard for styling, profiling, and trash talking for all who came after him, six months before he shocked the world in February, 1964 by winning the heavyweight boxing title from Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay decided or agreed to make I Am the Greatest!, a hilarious comedic oratorical performance crossed up with a boxing match, complete with ring introduction, a bell starting each track, and an after-bout interview with the victor. And quick as one of Clay’s left hooks, it was gone, Columbia yanking it from the shelves in response to Clay’s announcement of his membership in the Nation of Islam and his accompanying name change.

The record predicts Liston’s demise, of course, and relentlessly mocks and insults him — for four-and-a half straight minutes worth on one track, “Will the Real Sonny Liston Please Fall Down.” But the main subject, naturally, is Clay, and his seemingly endless variety of raps and outsized boasts on his greatness, beauty, and abilities, with, every once in a while, some sly, self-aware self-deprecation. He recites poetry, does set pieces, trades off with his own Greek chorus, riffs off Shakespeare--“Much Ado About Cassius” finds him in Olde England, slaying a dragon and winning the king’s “heavy weight crown” —  and extends his predictive powers from merely predicting the round in which he would win his fights to the future, finding that he will become president, live to be 175 years old, sire 94 children (all named Cassius Clay — so that’s where Foreman got the idea!), and finally, leave his mouth to science.

All in all, it’s a remarkable display of vintage Cassius Clay. The Rev-Ola reissue adds one more curiosity, Clay’s serviceable but unremarkable rendition of “Stand By Me,” which was released as the b-side of the album’s lone single.

Stuart Munro moved to Massachusetts from the Great White North over 20 years ago. He still likes living in America, where people continue to tell him that he seems familiar, yet somehow strange. A tip of the hat to the fine folks at Miles of Music (www.milesofmusic.com) for allowing him to resurrect the title of this column.

A Column on the Rescued and Reissued

To kick things off we start at the top, with recent reissues on four legends from the worlds of soul and country: Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, James Brown, and Otis Redding.

Icons of Soul and Country

One Hell of a Ride, a four-disc set just issued by Columbia/Legacy (www.legacyrecordings.com), is the first compilation that aims to span the entirety of Willie Nelson’s now five-decade-plus body of recordings. It could probably only have come about as a result of the relentless consolidation that’s been a feature of the major label world of late; whatever the uses and disadvantages of that state of affairs, the result here is the ability to compile an overview that dips into and plucks from Nelson’s work on nearly all of the labels he’s spent time with, from Liberty to RCA to Atlantic to Columbia to Island to Lost Highway. The set starts at the beginning with the first song Nelson ever recorded, “When I’ve Sung My Last Hillbilly Song,” and then bookends to a close with a 2007 re-recording of the song, issued here for the first time (the comp is otherwise devoid of previously unreleased material). In between, it largely succeeds in representing the multifold aspects of Nelson’s long and restlessly prodigious career. There’s a nice sampling of his early recordings for Liberty (many in the Ray Price style but, even then, always with Willie’s own distinctive stamp), of his wilderness years with RCA followed by his breakout and outlaw success at Columbia, of his duet recordings with Waylon and with a seemingly unending stream of country (and other) legends, of his tax-debt record and his left turns with Island during the 1990s. Even Willie’s misbegotten reggae record gets a nod with the inclusion of his version of “The Harder They Come.”

Buck Owens put out a ton of live records: six in the U.S., and three more in overseas markets, including “Live” In Scandinavia, which came out in Norway in 1970. It was his fifth live release in as many years; all but one of those have been reissued by the Sundazed (www.sundazed.com) label’s comprehensive Buck Owens preservation project. For all their frequency, Owens wasn’t simply churning out carbon copies; each of his live discs has its own distinct character. And ”Live” in Scandinavia is different than all of the counterparts that preceded it in offering a snapshot of what a Buck Owens show had become circa 1970, rather than just documenting Owens and his Buckaroos in concert. Buck doesn’t even take the stage on the record until it’s half over; the first half is given over to the “Capital Caravan Show,” that is, Buck’s version of the classic country package show. So we hear right-hand man Don Rich and the Buckaroos warming up the crowd with several tunes (including not one, but two of the Band’s songs), followed by Buck’s son Buddy Alan, still wet behind the ears in the music business (and it shows) and then the Hagar twins, who inject some goofing into their Bakersfield twang. The star of the show arrives and basically does a selection of hits that are compressed into medleys before being joined by son Buddy and the Hagars for a couple of tunes. The upshot is less Buck, but more of a sense of what it was like to see a Buck Owens show.

Hip-O Select (www.hip-oselect.com) is now up to its fifth double-disc volume in its James Brown complete singles project, and by the end of this installment (The Singles Volume Five: 1967-1969), it’s still only 1969. Now the series is really getting to the prime stuff, to singles with which the Godfather would delineate the meaning of funk — “I Got the Feelin’,” “Goodbye My Love,” “Say It Out Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),” “Licking Stick - Licking Stick,” “Give It Up or Turn It a Loose,” to name a few — along with classic R&B throwbacks like “You’ve Got to Change Your Mind” and scads of funky, bluesy, and soul-jazz instrumentals. There was room for all of it, because Brown was putting singles out at a prodigious rate — 20 or so 45s, sometimes two a month, in the 16 months covered by this set. The singles are arranged in chronological order of issue, rather than recording date (although that information is also provided for those who wish to program), which may not serve to illustrate Brown’s musical development per se but has the virtue of mirroring the way his audience heard Brown’s music develop. It can also remind us of the context in which that audience heard songs such as “America Is My Home” and “Say It Out Loud,” the former of which, recorded a full year earlier, Brown chose to issue as his first single following his famous appearance at the Boston Garden the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King; three months later, he answered the criticism that “America” had stirred up by putting out “Say It Out Loud.”

A Georgia product like James Brown, Otis Redding followed Brown’s footsteps out of the Macon chitlin circuit to wider success. The reissue mavens at Rhino (www.rhino.com) have given the arche deluxe treatment to Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul, arguably the finest album (if only because his premature death precluded further opportunities) from one of the greatest of soul singers (a status secured in spite of that premature death). The record with which Redding hit his stride and came into his own, it gave the world soul standards (“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”), re-defining covers (Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come,” B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby” and, especially, Redding’s turnabout-is-fair play co-optation of the Stones’ “Satisfaction”), and one song from which even greater things would come (with ’Retha’s reworking of “Respect”). This double-disc version comes billed as a “collector’s edition,” and that’s truth in advertising. What you get is a thematic expansion of the original. The bulk of the set is taken up by the mono and stereo versions of the LP. It’s filled out with related singles and B-sides, a couple of alternate versions or mixes (including a pounding, sped-up 1967 studio version of “Respect” that is simply mindblowing) and live versions of album material plucked from the In Person at the Whiskey A Go Go and Live in Europe albums. It’s a fitting treatment of a monumental soul record, but likely one that only collectors and serious genre devotees will find sufficiently attractive to shell out for.

Stuart Munro moved to Massachusetts from the Great White North over 20 years ago. He still likes living in America, where people continue to tell him that he seems familiar, yet somehow strange. A tip of the hat to the fine folks at Miles of Music (www.milesofmusic.com) for allowing him to resurrect the title of this column.

[Pictured: Willie Nelson, by Don Hunstein/courtesy Sony BMG Legacy]