Contemporary Rootsy Americana-y Type Stuff

[AllenLowe]

Moore was the king, in my opinion. Somewhere I have a box of cassette tapes of his stuff. Had to hide it to keep off the sex-offender list.

[JSngry]

...that thing was sold mostly in adult bookstores (and deep in the hood) back in 1969...a few years before Rudy Ray Moore (who was not shy about crediting the "folkloric" sources of much of his material, btw) started recording, so a big part of the legend is being "the first" of its kind. ...

Ehhh .... Rudy Ray Moore's recording career started waaay back deep in the 50s.

See here ...

http://www.cdunivers...Gully+Fever.htm

Yes, of course. I should have specified the type of recordings he began making...

You got the same career trajectory with Clarence Reid/Blowfly.

[AllenLowe]

didn't realize that this had changed into a tribute to the deceased - dead roots, I guess.

[six string]

You might like to try out this one if you can find it on one of the streaming sites:

My favourite of her 'mainstream' records - includes a wonderful duet with George Jones on 'You Don't Seem To Miss Me' (a Jim Lauderdale song, it so happens!). The sort of 'star' guest appearance that can be the curse of records like this - but the performance here is thrilling.

Thanks for the recomendation. Some how I'm not surprised that it's a Lauderdale song. He really gets around as far as his songs go. His songs are a lot more famous than he is.

Another Jim Lauderdale album I like a lot which I was just listening to is on Atlantic from 1995 titled Every Second Counts.

[WorldB3]

I read through most of the pages here so far and this is the one that came closest to some of the music I would have recomended. So having said that I'll recomend a few others that I don't think I've seen.

Jim Lauderdale I have many of his albums and it's going to be hard to narrow down the pick. He's done a few bluegrass albums but most are more in the country/americana vein.

Honey Songs is from 2008 so should be pretty easy to find. It's got most of Elvis' last band playing with him and the songs are really great.

The Bluegrass Diaries is just that, songs he has written or co-written and played in a bluegrass style

Yes, I forgot about Jim Lauderdale. The album he wrote with Robert Hunter that has Emmylou Harris, Tim OBrian, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and Donna the Buffalo titled Headed for the Hills is fantastic. Lost in the Lonesome Pines with Ralph Stanley is also really nice.

Don't know if its been mentioned yet but the Mountain with Steve Earle and Del McCorey is another good one, it finally came back into print last year with a good re-issue.

Edited April 5, 2010 by WorldB3

[seeline]

Not a "new" album by any means, but Emmylou Harris' Roses in the Snow fits the bill in every other way. I'm not a bluegrass fan, but this disc is (almost) enough to make me one.

Edited April 5, 2010 by seeline

[A Lark Ascending]

Don't know if its been mentioned yet but the Mountain with Steve Earle and Del McCorey is another good one, it finally came back into print last year with a good re-issue.

That's a marvellous record. I saw one of the concerts they did over here to promote that album. Great fun. Though I think they fell out not long after - recall reading that McCoury was not too fond of some of Earl's language. Or maybe it was his political comments? Or both?

Not a "new" album by any means, but Emmylou Harris' Roses in the Snow fits the bill in every other way. I'm not a bluegrass fan, but this disc is (almost) enough to make me one.

An old favourite - but I owe it to Emmylou for acclimitising me to much in the country/bluegrass area.

Done well (and with a little imagination) bluegrass can be thrilling. It can also sound highly formulaic to a casual listener like me.

Another Jim Lauderdale album I like a lot which I was just listening to is on Atlantic from 1995 titled Every Second Counts.

Thanks for the recommendation. Someone I think I need to follow up.

[Quincy]

Don't know if its been mentioned yet but the Mountain with Steve Earle and Del McCorey is another good one, it finally came back into print last year with a good re-issue.

That's a marvellous record. I saw one of the concerts they did over here to promote that album. Great fun. Though I think they fell out not long after - recall reading that McCoury was not too fond of some of Earl's language. Or maybe it was his political comments? Or both?

I thought it was language, but an interview from Thirsty Ear says otherwise.

You were on tour with Del McCoury last year and it came to a bad end. That must have hurt.

Steve - Well, I got to play with and make an album [The Mountain] with the greatest bluegrass band working today. But it came to an end over money and billing.

So it wasn't over vulgarity in bluegrass?

Steve - No, that was bullshit, absolute bullshit. That's what Del said in some interview, that he left because of the language I use onstage. But that's just bullshit. He didn't want to go on the European tour, then I offered him more money and he agreed to. Then he wanted to share my spot on the David Letterman show. So it was money and billing.

Have you talked to Del since then?

Steve - No, I haven't talked to Del. I talk with Ronnie [McCoury, Del's son and mandolin player].

The May 11, 1999 show of Earle w/ the Del McCoury Band in Malmö, Sweden is spectacular btw. One of my favorite recordings by any band ever.

Edited April 5, 2010 by Quincy

[A Lark Ascending]

Ah! So it was 'musical differences'.

Thanks, Quincy.

[kenny weir]

Regarding the "finessed" sub-title for his thread ...

...mutating into 'Why you should only listen to dead people'

Huh? Did anyone say that? Really? I must have missed it!

Edited April 5, 2010 by kenny weir

[A Lark Ascending]

Regarding the "finessed" sub-title for his thread ...

...mutating into 'Why you should only listen to dead people'

Huh? Did anyone say that? Really? I must have missed it!

I'm exaggerating 224, 225 with their 'things ain't what they used to be' vibe (which, I know, are in themselves exaggerations to make a point).

[seeline]

Done well (and with a little imagination) bluegrass can be thrilling. It can also sound highly formulaic to a casual listener like me.

I think many people play in a formulaic manner.

[A Lark Ascending]

Done well (and with a little imagination) bluegrass can be thrilling. It can also sound highly formulaic to a casual listener like me.

I think many people play in a formulaic manner.

I'm sure you're right.

And if you are outside a style of music or an approach to music all you can often hear is the formula; which doesn't mean that something genuine is not going on there.

[kenny weir]

And if you are outside a style of music or an approach to music all you can often hear is the formula; which doesn't mean that something genuine is not going on there.

Yes, all true. But as a bluegrass fan - not obsessive, and not big on modern stuff (surprise, surprise), but happy to listen bluegrass any time - it strikes me that bluegrass has these sorts of comments tossed its way more often than, say, ECM (which I generally let pass me by), be bop or Condon-style dixieland.

Moreover, while most bluegrass players - past and present - may fall into the journeyman category, at their very best I've no doubt they stack up as equals to the jazz giants.

And then there's the singing - Jimmy Martin and Monroe are giants in this regard, as are the Stanleys. Formulaic, for sure, but sometimes nothing else works.

[AllenLowe]

I love Monroe, but my favorites are still the original recordings (Muleskinner Blues, etc 1940) - also the duets with his brother, 1930s -

Edited April 5, 2010 by AllenLowe

[A Lark Ascending]

Yes, all true. But as a bluegrass fan - not obsessive, and not big on modern stuff (surprise, surprise), but happy to listen bluegrass any time - it strikes me that bluegrass has these sorts of comments tossed its way more often than, say, ECM (which I generally let pass me by), be bop or Condon-style dixieland.

Fair point that bluegrass gets probably more brickbats over this than many other genres. I'm not sure that, proportionate to the number of people who bump into it, it gets any more hostility than ECM.

[A Lark Ascending]

Here's a different spin on the subject, which might explain why the earlier music might not have the popularity (currently) of the more recent performers.

Since the '50s the craft of putting an album together has been well honed. So a contemporary bluegrass or blues or whatever album will have songs and arrangements chosen for difference of pace, mood, key, texture etc to make it a varied experience for the listener.

The original performances were designed for a single side of a 78, not to be heard in the batches of 24 as you hear them collected on CD today.

Now if you are approaching such a CD in a spirit of investigation, research or simply as someone who has got the bug, then that isn't a problem. But to a casual listener (and there is no derogatory intent in the use of the term casual) it can get a bit wearing. I'm much happier listening to Billy Monroe suddenly appearing amidst a compilation or mix-CD I've made than listening right through the collection CDs I have.

[kenny weir]

Fair point that bluegrass gets probably more brickbats over this than many other genres. I'm not sure that, proportionate to the number of people who bump into it, it gets any more hostility than ECM.

Sure, but maybe for different reasons.

Putting aside any distinctions of artistry or merit, bluegrass is something I've been listening to since a very early age so I can automatically click into it. Not so with ECM.

Also I suspect there'd be a bigger proportion of bluegrass nuts who'd have no problem conceding there is a strong element of the formulaic about their music, as opposed to ECM devotees. Just guesswork, mind you ...

Edited April 5, 2010 by kenny weir

[kenny weir]

I love Monroe, but my favorites are still the original recordings (Muleskinner Blues, etc 1940) - also the duets with his brother, 1930s -

Oh yeah, playing the Monroe Bros right now - but for the duets I actually prefer the Blue Sky Boys.

I, too, dig the pre-Scruggs/Flatt stuff (including Muleskinner Blues).

But what I really dig is the Decca stuff from the '50s with Jimmy Martin - that's as good as bluegrass gets IMHO. I actually owned the 4CD Bear Family box of that stuff a long time ago; can't remember quite why it got offloaded - maybe something to do with getting enough money together to attend my old man's funeral! Anyway, it's high on my current wish list.

Is anyone doing the sibling duet stuff these days? I saw a young couple from Virginia - the Whitetop Mountaineers - at the Apollo Bay Music Festival a few weeks back. Pretty good, just two voices, mandolin or fiddle, guitar or banjo. Modern but real old-time, too.

Edited April 5, 2010 by kenny weir

[kenny weir]

Here's a different spin on the subject, which might explain why the earlier music might not have the popularity (currently) of the more recent performers.

Since the '50s the craft of putting an album together has been well honed. So a contemporary bluegrass or blues or whatever album will have songs and arrangements chosen for difference of pace, mood, key, texture etc to make it a varied experience for the listener.

The original performances were designed for a single side of a 78, not to be heard in the batches of 24 as you hear them collected on CD today.

Now if you are approaching such a CD in a spirit of investigation, research or simply as someone who has got the bug, then that isn't a problem. But to a casual listener (and there is no derogatory intent in the use of the term casual) it can get a bit wearing. I'm much happier listening to Billy Monroe suddenly appearing amidst a compilation or mix-CD I've made than listening right through the collection CDs I have.

Interesting and valid - even if I'm not sure I agree totally!

Those issues were addressed on the Bear Family thread I started. And as someone who owns a whole stack of BF boxes, not to mentions Mosaics, JSP/Proper boxes and much more ... well, all I can say is, as someone who almost always approaches these things in a "spirit of investigation, research or simply as someone who has got the bug" then, for sure, I have no problem with this sort of format. But then again, I've been listening to the music this way as long as I've listened to anything, and I'm sure the same applies to most here.

But OTOH, I also admitted there to a preference for various artists comps - the "mix tape" of box sets!

On that thread, also, there was a distinction made, to some degree, of a difference between country/blues/old-time reissues of 78s in longer formats, on the one hand, and reissues by Mosaic and others of both vintage and modern jazz.

Having thought about it since, I've decided that for me there is no difference between them, either in the level of talent and/or artistry of the musicians or the suitability of the music for such repeated, intense listening. Thus for me, no difference between an hour Charley Patton or Bill Monroe - or Bix or Pops. Or Trane or Duke, for that matter.

Bev, no blame/fault with those who simply want an album, a "varied experience for the listener", whatever - except to lament how many people are missing out on music that would thrill them if they'd only give it a chance.

Then again, with this sort of debate, we're nearing the whole new ball game of what purpose, for generations younger than most of us, music is. What is its role? iTunes, iPods, downloading of single tracks, music as a background soundtrack to a life (often, presumably with no knowledge or interest in who created it) blah blah and so on. It seems a sure thing that a lot of 'em aren't after the same holy grails and/or shiver factors that are such a BFD for us all!

Edited April 5, 2010 by kenny weir

[A Lark Ascending]

Bev, no blame/fault with those who simply want an album, a "varied experience for the listener", whatever - except to lament how many people are missing out on music that would thrill them if they'd only give it a chance.

True...except that the amount of music available now from so many eras in so many different genres makes it impossible for even the most obsessed to hear but a fraction. So why should anyone feel compelled to explores the gems that we stumbled on? I'm sure that somewhere in the world a Renaissance polyphony fan is bewailing the fact that people today listen to pop, rock, jazz, folk etc, unaware of the sublime 16thC music they could be hearing.

We've discovered something, it excites us, we want to talk about it share it. Even that can wind people up ('there he goes again, on about his precious jazz'). Start telling them that what they are missing is what they ought to ne listening to and, at best, you might just get politely ignored.

Then again, with this sort of debate, we're nearing the whole new ball game of what purpose, for generations younger than most of us, music is. What is its role? iTunes, iPods, downloading of single tracks, music as a background soundtrack to a life (often, presumably with no knowledge or interest in who created it) blah blah and so on. It seems a sure thing that a lot of 'em aren't after the same holy grails and/or shiver factors that are such a BFD for us all!

When I was in my teens I started veering into odd places I pretty soon found myself on my own. I'm not sure chasing the 'shiver factor' in music has ever been much more than a minority sport. For most people music becomes of little more than background use once the days of courtship and teenage rebellion are past. Most of the kids I teach have no interest in anything beyond standard pop - but there are some who have a passion I recognise, for music I don't. I think that will always be.

As the music catalogues grows longer and deeper, will there always be this need to go back to the origins? Perhaps. Or perhaps we grew up in an era just one or two steps away from the origins, where the influences still showed and were celebrated. The number of 'tribute' albums and 'Roots of Led Zeppelin'-type compilations would suggest the curiosity is still there. But I'm also aware that for some bands roots means The Beatles, Queen or Abba.

It's hard to predict - with so many other possibilities for providing entertainment now available. But I find it hard to imagine that the riches of music will not continue to attract the curious.

[seeline]

Radio has been providing "background music" and "soundtrack"-type listening for how many decades now? I'm not sure that listening to music on an iPod or on a computer is that much different, shuffle feature excepted.

I was in grad school when the Sony Walkman 1st became popular in the US, and can remember seeing the streets crowded at rush hour - everyone (or nearly everyone) walking to or from a subway stop close to campus - wearing headphones. And by "everyone," I mean people well past their undergrad days. It was like seeing the pod people (from Invasion of the Body Snatchers) taking to the streets en masse - and also a bit scary because there were cars barreling through the intersections that people were crossing. I doubt any of them could hear the traffic... not a good thing if you want to stay alive! (fwiw, the Walkman craze began in the early 1980s...)

Edited April 5, 2010 by seeline

[kenny weir]

I'm not sure chasing the 'shiver factor' in music has ever been much more than a minority sport.

Ahhh, I'm sure you're right.

Start telling them that what they are missing is what they ought to be listening to and, at best, you might just get politely ignored.

But still, when I recall specifically several of my former workmates and some of the Melbourne GD family that gathers for a chinwag occasionally ... these people are not what you could call casual music fans, yet sometimes display outright hostility to any mention or discussions of what went before. I understand it on some level, so I know it pays to tread lightly.

I guess I took it as taken that folks for whom music is just a casual thing were outside the parameters of this rambling debate or, indeed, this forum in general. I have no interest in them - and for damn sure they have no interest in me!

All hail, then, my GD buddy Tony. After saying a year or so ago something along the lines of "There's not much around these days to get excited about, so I may as well go backwards!", in recent times he's bought and heard for the first time Moon Mullican, Merle Travis, The Five Royales, The Delmore Brothers, Little' Willie Littlefield, Wynonie Harris, Jimmy Yancey, Little Willie John and much more. He's also been lurking here a bit.

Also at my new workplace there's a reporter with whom I have struck an instant rapport - for the past few weeks he's been digging on the entire That Devilin' Tune series I lent him.

It's nowhere near as solid these days, but the revolving cast of loonies that has congregated around Melbourne's Hound Dog's Bop Shop for several decades is about as anorak-central as you can get. Not that disagreements didn't occur - between the doo woppers and the rockabillies and the soul freaks and the '60s garage types and so on and so on. But devoted to The Cause in a Huge Way? You bet ...

Which makes me think Bev is playing the devil's advocate at least a little here in speaking up for the common music fan. Coz I know damn well he, too, is a train spotter!

But I'm also aware that for some bands roots means The Beatles, Queen or Abba.

Throw in Neil Young, The Stones and a few others and I agree completely. How about The Eagles as paramount influence on contemporary (mainstream) country? As some wit sed a few years back: Modern country is '70s west coast rock with hats!

As for the walkman and what has since replaced it: There are perils, indeed. There have been road fatalities here from people lost in their doof doof/whatever and then casually strolling in front of a tram or truck. As well, there's whole generations doing damage to their hearing that makes all our "head-banging" of the (name your decade) '60s, '70s '80s '90s seem pretty tame.

Edited April 5, 2010 by kenny weir

[A Lark Ascending]

Which makes me think Bev is playing the devil's advocate at least a little here in speaking up for the common music fan. Coz I know damn well he, too, is a train spotter!

I put my hands up to being a musical train spotter. But I'm quite genuine in believing that many of the new trains are just as worth spotting as the old. When it comes to the country/bluegrass area I'm more drawn to the new trains than the old. Though that might change.

As for speaking up for the common music fan, well, I think we trainspotters are terribly guilty of patronising those who haven't listened to as much or in as off-the-wall places. We might be good at intellectualising it but it rarely boils down to more than 'Zepp rule, Sabbath are crap.'

Edited April 6, 2010 by Bev Stapleton

[kenny weir]

it rarely boils down to more than 'Zepp rule, Sabbath are crap.'

Rarely? Really? I beg to differ, although of course it all depends on context.

Again, I don't have any probs with such as yourself, or even those who prefer only the newer goodies. But I do get cranky when those newer goodies are loudly promoted as brand new, and any evidence to the contrary is dismissed with varying degrees of brusqueness and even spite. It happens ... the wheel was invented a long time ago. I don't claim superiority of old or new or anything in between, but I reckon those who do - on both teams - should know WTF they're talking bout.

I think we trainspotters are terribly guilty of patronising those who haven't listened to as much or in as off-the-wall places.

Based on my experience, there are also plenty of music train spotters totally into the new - and who triumphantly brandish their heroes based on often very little foundation.

Train spotting and loving current day sounds are NOT musically exclusive. IMHO

Did you check out the CW Stoneking stuff? Pretty good, I reckon! AND he's still alive and kicking!

Edited April 6, 2010 by kenny weir