#62 - Ray Price's "Night Life" (1962)

Beware of introductions (including this one).  Sure, they fill an organizational need, easing the reader into the reading.  But, they are also a framing device, gently herding the audience into the head space where the writer wants them, to see things in a certain light.  Ray Price's Night Life begins with an introduction and immediately my guard is up.  I don't mind a well-scripted skit or other relevant atmosphere-building, but a direct monologue?  That is suspicious.  Price tells us that the set of songs was selected to reflect the emotions of those who do much of their living after hours.  But do they?  Some, like "The Twenty-Fourth Hour," fit this mold.  Most of the others, however, are composed of the same, homogeneous heartbreak you'll find populating country songs around the clock.  In the introduction, he specifically mentions "happiness" as one of the feelings he'll explore, but save the bouncing bass-lines on songs like "The Wild Side of Life" and "Sittin' and Thinkin'" (the latter's title being a euphemism for the type of introspection one does overnight in the county lockup), I'm hard pressed to remember hearing any "happy" moments.  In fact, I'm hard pressed to remember any moments at all.  This is a well-produced, well-performed collection of fairly bland music (with the possible exception of the Willie Nelson-penned title track), but as far as Price's claim that it "reflects" any aspect of real life, ante- or post-meridian, I'm afraid I have to call "bullshit" on that.  I'm left with the impression that his introduction was a post-production patch job meant to help an ad hoc theme coalesce around these otherwise generic tunes.  Personally, I think it backfired.  Now the album seems to be more promise than payoff.  Grade: C

#55 - Hank Williams' "Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter" (1955)

The alter-ego is a mainstay of pop music.  Some performers adopt them for a single album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Chris Gaines, Sasha Fierce).  Others use them in concert to articulate a skewed perspective, (the Night Tripper), more closely resemble the subjects of their songs (Boxcar Willie), or to

assume a different frame of mind (the Man in Black, the Fly/MacPhisto).  Occasionally, the arrival of a novel persona can signify a foray into new musical territory (Ziggy Stardust) or the exorcism of the baser elements in one's soul (Slim Shady, T.I.P., Roman Zolansky).  With "Luke the Drifter," Hank Williams sought to cultivate a space in which he could touch upon some of the more devoutly Christian strains in his thought.  Already a superstar by the mid-1950s, it was important for him to insulate the success he'd had with his winning formula of secular songs about honky-tonkin' and heartbreak.  And musically this album is as much a departure for Williams as its thematic content.  The vast majority of these tracks feature the Drifter waxing philosophic about all manner of vice in a salt-of-the-earth spoken word, with only the occasional singing.  His cowboy cadence mostly follows a simple A-B-A-B scheme, but some of the rhymes are downright amazing.  Williams scores major points, for instance, in "The Funeral," when he says "rose a sad, old colored preacher / from his little wooden desk / with a manner sort of awkward / and a countenance grotesque."  Unfortunately, he loses all of these points elsewhere in the song when he refers to the minister's "Ethiopian face" and the "curly hair" and "protruding lips" of the child he's eulogizing.  There are several moments like these that might make the modern ear recoil, but some would be shaky in any age.  Consider "Be Careful of the Stones That You Throw," Williams' rebuke of hypocrisy.  A woman comes to gossip about a young female neighbor and her hard-partying ways (which our dear departed singer certainly knew something about).  But, lo and behold, when that same woman's child is later saved from an oncoming car, guess who it was came to the rescue?  Unfortunately, the muddled moral doesn't quite fit with the rest of the story.  The chorus would have us guard against finding fault in others, but the conclusion seems to suggest there is both good and bad in everyone.  "Please Make Up Your Mind" is a song sung by a man dealing with his fickle woman.  Somehow it seems unfair to lump her faults in with the others.  And I'm really not sure what's going on with "Everything's Okay," where a farmer, condemned to Job-level misfortune, keeps insisting that just being alive makes everything hunky-dory.  Of all the songs, "Just Waitin'" is the best, boasting a trove of wry observations about how life works, but even it's not enough to right the rest of this album's wrongs.  Moralizing like this would be a little hard to take in the best of circumstances, but from an unrepentant scoundrel like Hank Williams it'd be downright intolerable.  Good thing Luke the Drifter does the talking.  Grade: D

#47 - Emmylou Harris' "Elite Hotel" (1975)

Those well-versed in epistemology probably have a name for the phenomenon, but surely you've experienced it yourself.  That funny blind spot that obscures a word or a concept prior to your learning what it means.  But, because you can't miss something you've never had, you really only become cognizant of having missed it after you've been formally introduced.  Suddenly, it's everywhere, hiding in plain sight, and you wonder how you never noticed it before.  A funny (and similar) thing happened to me on the way to getting to know Emmylou Harris.  There I was, listening to Desire, hearing Bob Dylan sing "One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below)" and "Oh, Sister" with some mysterious, silver-throated chantreusse and loving every minute of it.  A year later I heard Gram Parsons sing "We'll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning" and only then made the connection that the two women were the same woman and that woman was Harris.  It began to seem as if you couldn't turn on the music of any red-blooded, country-loving boy without hearing him duet with Emmylou (or someone who was trying powerful hard to sound like her).  The Band had her stand in for "Evangeline," a studio-cut add-on to The Last Waltz, while Bright Eyes put her gifts to good use I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.  More recently, Mark Knopfler employed her help to produce the unconscionably gorgeous All the Roadrunning, a collaboration seven years in the making.  Naturally, as a cursory glance at her guest appearance credits will tell you, these examples are a handful of sand on the beach of her accomplishments.  But what about her and her alone?  Is she a glorified sideman?  A supporting actress?  An anonymous and faceless hired gun called in to save the poor, beset-upon Mexican village, requiring no payment for the chivalrous deed?  Maybe.  But just because she's a generous spirit doesn't mean she lacks the chops to strike out on her own, as she does here on her debut.  First off, she's got personality to spare.  Listen as she torches her way through "Feelin' Single - Seein' Double" and "Ooh Las Vegas."  You show me a female country singer who flashes more raw talent or honky-tonkin' confidence than her and I'll show you Waylon Jennings in drag.  Of course, faster numbers like these were the biggest revelation for me because God knows she can sing a ballad.  The only strange moment comes during her cover of The Flying Burrito Brothers' "Sin City."  On the original, Parsons & Chris Hillman lend their voices to an ethereal two-part harmony, but here Harris - backed up by Rodney Crowell & Linda Ronstadt - adopts a weird, third-way melody that, while beautiful, gestures toward the absence of the original Grievous Angel.  In terms of arrangements, it's analogous to setting a place at the table for someone who's passed on, as Harris pays tribute to her fallen mentor and friend, Parsons, who died of an overdose in '73.  It's a moving version of the song, but it also underscores that she will likely always be better known for the ways in which she enhanced other people's music than her own.  But, before you're tempted to offer any bullshit, "behind-every-man" platitudes, know that if Harris is pop music's ultimate team player, then it's by design.  One listen to Elite Hotel and you'll be convinced that the only person standing in the way of her becoming a superstar in her own right is herself.  To be or to be collectively, that is the question.  Either way, Emmylou Harris - as a solo artist and as a collaborator - is her own fiercest competition.  Grade: A-

#43 - Buck Owens & His Buckaroos' "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" (1965)

Like many others for whom Creedence Clearwater Revival provided the first introduction to the name "Buck Owens," I wasn't sure what to expect from the man himself.  Given that John Fogerty's shout-out to his fellow Golden Stater came during "Lookin' Out My Back Door," one of CCR's happiest, hokiest, hillbilly-est hymns, I should've known.  Both that song and the Buckaroos' Bakersfield batch are cut from the same cloth:  short, sunny, and spry.  Oddly enough that mood persists throughout I've Got a Tiger by the Tail, despite variation in subject matter.  Even when Owens is getting his ass kicked by love ("Trouble and Me," "Cryin' Time"), the only thing that really seems to change is the tempo.  It's telling that even though the third track is titled "Let the Sad Times Roll On" and the seventh is called "We're Gonna Let the Good Times Roll," there is no appreciable difference in his voice.  Take a good look at that album cover (he sort of looks like a clueless Mel Brooks, doesn't he?).  Maybe he's just an upbeat guy.  You can't exactly fault him for that.  And you wouldn't want him to manufacture the pathos you hear on so many other country albums.  It's just that when it comes down to it, as a vocalist, he's not all that versatile.  He comes close to that "high lonesome sound" on a couple of occasions, but ends up more high than lonesome.  For the most part, when a song needs an injection of some feeling other than optimism, Owens relies on the dependably mournful pedal steel to do the heavy lifting.  Likewise, some much-needed variation is supplied by "The Streets of Laredo" - a highlight - when bass player Doyle Holly takes over singing duty.  You know, they say you can't keep a good man down.  Perhaps you can't make an up man good.  Grade: C+

#40 - Gillian Welch's "Revival" (1996)

One of the great moments in Malcolm Gladwell's less-than-great Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking involves the elaborate forgery of an ancient Greek statue, the authenticity of which was confirmed by several scientific tests and denied outright and immediately by three art historians.  The point Gladwell uses the anecdote to make is that oftentimes an expert's human hunch can trump the analyst's cold calculus.  The point I'd like to make with the story is that the reason the statue befuddled those who studied it was that the form was right, but not the essence.  Early Christian theologians made use of a similar distinction when they repurposed the Aristotelian taxonomy of matter to explain the mystery of transubstantiation.  They argued that the characteristics of a thing (looking, feeling, tasting like bread) are quite separate from that essential quality that makes it what it is (the body of Jesus).  All of this is my admittedly circuitous way of saying that Gillian Welch nearly had me fooled with the songs she wrote and performed on Revival.  They sound in so many ways just like the old-timey material of the 1920s and 30s with which she is so thoroughly engrossed.  The close harmonies, the mono recordings, the hard-luck tales of orphans, factory girls, moonshiners - if you didn't know better, you'd swear she had uncovered some dusty trunk of songs in Joe Bussard's basement.  It seemed like Welch had figured out a way to contact the spirits of another time and place.  And, to crib a line from Scooby-Doo, "she would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for this meddling listener."  Everything seemed first-rate and pitch perfect until the sixth track, "By the Mark."  I had been anticipating this song as it approached, hoping the title might be an allusion to Samuel Clemens.  In it she sings, "When I cross over / I will shout and sing / I will know my savior / by the mark where the nails have been."  Now, on the surface, this is the type of rustic gospel tune you might expect to hear from a Carter Family acolyte.  It's got that reward-in-heaven theme, that humble evocation of Jesus' bodily suffering on the cross.  You know, that good, ol'-fashioned blood of the lamb stuff.  The only problem is the concept.  As any holy-rollin', God-fearin', Bible-thumpin' Christian (or, in my case, 20-year veteran of Catholic schools) can tell you, it's highly unlikely that someone very familiar with the New Testament would say, "I will know my savior by the mark where the nails have been."  To do so is a little too like calling oneself a "doubting Thomas," the pejorative term that refers to the apostle who insisted on confirming the identity of the risen Christ by feeling his wounds.  This is also why you don't hear a lot of gospel songs that talk about "kissing Jesus," for fear of being associated with that most notorious of kiss-and-tellers:  Judas, the betrayer.  Am I being too picky?  Probably.  But I also think it's likely that Welch, who grew up in a secular household in New York and L.A., is more inspired by gospel music than she is by the religious feelings that produce it.  Of course, none of this is to suggest she meant to perpetrate fraud or pass off her songs as anything other than a sincere homage to the Appalachian folk that so moves her.  At Boston University I had the pleasure of working for, taking classes with, and attending lectures by the incandescently brilliant literary critic Christoper Ricks.  In a lecture on "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," much of which appears in his labor of love, Dylan's Vision of Sin, Ricks said there was a big difference between writing a political song and writing a song politically.  The former requires little skill or imagination.  Mention George W. Bush and you're halfway there.  The latter, however, implies an ability to effect a particular response in your audience by the manner in which you write the song itself.  I think the same goes for religious music, which is why "By the Mark" misses its mark.  Welch has mastered the form.  Now all she needs is the essence.  Grade: B+

#27 - Willie Nelson's "Phases & Stages" (1974)

A theme album is an inherently venturesome exercise.  Those who attempt them are kindred spirits with those authors who wonder, "why stop at a short story when I could write a whole novel"?  Yes, the payoff might be greater, but likewise the heartache should the enterprise come up short of its mark.  Given the ambitious temperaments from which these albums arise, it should come as no shock that - as artistic endeavors - their concepts or executions (or both) often get muddled somewhere along the way.  On paper, a country music theme album about a broken relationship begs the question, "Isn't that what all country music albums are about?"  In practice, however, Willie Nelson's Phases & Stages is so much more than the sum of its parts.  For one, he provides a rich context for his songs.  Think of all those great LPs with their honky-tonk hymns to horseplay and lover's laments sitting side by side.  The same man crying into his whiskey breakfast this morning was bird-dogging through his beer goggles last night, without the dimmest understanding of how the two situations are related.  Phases starts out with a tableau of sad domesticity:  the woman scorned is washing the dishes and doing the laundry.  But all of it, all those little chores that go into making a house a home feel hollow in the calm before that home is broken.  Nelson's voice is tender on these tracks - the soft and sensitive croon he would use to great effect years later when interpreting American pop standards on his 1978 album Stardust.  As he recounts the story of the woman finally fed up enough to leave, something subtle happens as the track sequencing unfolds.  Each song is just a little bit faster than the one that preceded it.  The color is returning to her cheeks as she heads on home to her mother and little sister, who wryly notes, "Mama's gonna let her sleep the whole day long / The mirror's gonna tell her how long she's been gone."  This rejuvenation picks up more speed still as she heads on down to the "corner beer joint" to dance, even though "her jeans fit a little bit tighter than they did before."  Then, presumably after meeting a fella out on the town, things slow back down as she contemplates falling in love again.  It's not that she's jaded and afraid to trust another man so much as she's upside-down, distrustful of her own feelings, like the workings of her own heart have become a mystery to her.  Then, "Bloody Mary Morning" comes crashing through the gates of dawn and the album switches gears.  It leads with a rollicking banjo that - like the French horns announcing the arrival of the lupine threat in Sergey Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" - can only mean we're about to hear from the man she left behind.  This is followed by the rapid-fire 1-2 combo of a pedal steel guitar and rowdy roadhouse piano.  Not only is it the best song on the album, but it serves as a much-needed PR boost for the cheating husband, the tune's roguish, outlaw charm helping the listener to understand what she saw in him in the first place.  Just as her suite is characterized by a steady increase in tempo, his progressively slows to a crawl, as the reality of his situation sobers him up.  Again, context is everything.  His denials of the situation ("I Still Can't Believe You're Gone," "It's Not Supposed To Be That Way") are all the more affective when the listener knows the back story.  In this way, ordinary songs are anchored by an emotional heft that might have otherwise gotten lost in translation.  If you haven't heard it yet, I won't spoil the ending except to say that the pedal steel and piano show up again on "Heaven and Hell," perhaps signifying that our male protagonist's attempt at reform has met with something rather less than success.  In the end, I'm not sure if he ever gets it.  But, thanks to Willie's masterful storytelling, I do.  Grade: A