Letters From Little Rock

This has turned out to be a very good month for finding new talent. Trapper the Rapper, from right here in Little Rock has released an impressive debut album; Man of the House. The more rap has crossed over to mainstream success the more closely it has resembled prepackaged pop like Britney Spears; poorly written and overproduced. Those are two things that can’t be said about this album. Trapper has a real feel for the words people actually use when speaking. In particular The Only One in which the protagonist pleads his case to his woman sounds like something Marvin Gaye might have done thirty years ago. He has that same ability to use words that make so much sense and paint such a natural picture that you barely even notice the rhymes until the second or third listen. That knack for putting real life in a song is something that most rap hasn’t got. I hate picking up an album only to find that every song sounds the same and basically repeats the mantra “I’m great and everybody else sucks.” Trapper has a way of maintaining a sense of humor and proportion that never allows even his most over the top song to descend into parody or narcissism. The album isn’t perfect, all songwriters have to get certain beginner’s songs out of the way before they move on to more individual efforts. There are a couple of songs on here that may seem like rap 101 to listeners of a certain age, but only a couple, and even the weakest effort on Man of the House exudes professionalism in its overall production. The vast majority of the album does not simply repeat the shibboleths of rap. I’d hesitate to call it concept album, but there is a wonderful dramatic arc from beginning to end that makes me think Trapper would be well suited to write soundtracks for movies and has a lot of potential for musical theater as well. The album is framed by a handful of brief but wonderfully realized skits that pit Trapper and his girl against Dank and Drank playing a couple of ne’er-do-wells. Judging from these brief pieces, Trapper has a flair for the telling detail and knows how to reveal a character in very few strokes. The mix of songs on the album does a pretty good job of presenting a slice of urban life here in the Deep South with Summer Time Jam, Finer Things and Mama’s Song being the strongest overall performances on the album. I keep going back to Marvin Gaye or Al Green as the most obvious influences but it’s not just the overall sound that reminds me of them, but the quality of the lyrics. There is a nice blend of Motown, and R&B behind his raps and the background singing is absolutely top notch, but it’s Trapper’s willingness to speak honestly that most reminds me of them. Marvin Gaye in particular was always on display in even his most commercial recordings. Trapper the Rapper has made an album that is a worthy successor to those efforts. Inasmuch as most artists hate to labeled, I hesitate to call him the thinking man’s rapper, but if he keeps writing lyrics as good as these it’s a label he will be hard pressed to refuse.

You can pick up Man of the House for a little bit of nothing at CDBaby. And you should.

Trapper also has a very nice looking website. It’s a little lean on content, but it hasn’t been up long either.

Krista Detor’s Mudshow is now available at CDBaby. As I said in this post I believe Krista Detor is one of the finest singer/songwriters to come along in years. Mudshow is her second album and although her first album A Dream in a Cornfield is also good, Mudshow shows considerable advancement in her skills and performance. I think that is the biggest difference between the two albums. Looking at her website she appears to tour a lot and two years worth of live performances in between albums seems to have paid off.

Seriously folks, it doesn’t get much better than this.

A friend of mine picked up a copy of Krista Detor’s second album, Mudshow, while he was on vacation in Indiana. Apparently that was an early local release so you won’t be able to buy this CD immediately, but as soon as it is available nationally you should. Krista Detor is one of my favorite new artists of the last ten years. I have absolutely no doubt that there will be some unfair comparisons made to Norah Jones, but aside from a shared knack for a less is more delivery there really is no similarity. For one thing her song lyrics are denser in imagery and richer in context. There is a lot less in the way of catchy pop hooks, but a little more in the way of perfectly turned phrases. There is a talent for writing lyrics that can be sung along to the very first time you hear them. Krista Detor has that talent in spades. In a way she reminds me of a songwriter like Gordon Lightfoot where the strength of the lyrics is almost masked by the strength of the melodies. Those melodies are mostly lead by her piano playing, but they are amply supported by all players on this album. I don’t know if this is a tour band or musicians hired for the recording, but they sound like people who have played together for a while. Her piano is mostly of the steady and flowing variety, just wave after wave of melody. it’s hard to pin down her influences as sometimes her playing reminds me of pop stars like Billy Joel and Elton John and at others it doesn’t remind me of anybody as much as Jimmy Webb. On Tell Me a Story her playing effortlessly slides between a lullaby vamp and a slick Stephen Sondheim style bridge. I keep finding myself being reminded of a lot of artists that she doesn’t really sound that much like, in part because she is so good you react to her music as if it were already long familiar. There’s something about these songs that sounds lived in and neighborly. I think that may be the most appealing aspect of the whole thing. Mudshow is about the things you’d talk to your neighbors about if people still talked to their neighbors; small town gossip, love affairs, the desire to make it in the big city—you know, stuff.

My personal favorites on this album are Abigayle’s Song and Steal Me a Car. Abigayle’s Song is bound to become a staple of the singer/songwriter circuit for years to come. It’s a kind of list song that is fairly standard in the progress of most songwriter’s, but since it is sincere without that touch of collegiate over-earnestness that trips up so many young writers, it works. Steal Me a Car is the most likely single on the album. It is a bouncy kind of song with that touch of beer hall panache that makes it sound like something Leon Redbone might have recorded.

I keep butting my head against comparisons that don’t quite sound right to me. Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton; she doesn’t really sound like any of them. The one thing they have in common is the fact that you know them and recognize them from the very first notes of a song and they can all write songs that sound like they they’ve been around forever. I think this album is a good bet to be a huge hit if it just gets a little word of mouth. I bought Norah Jones Come Away With Me about a year before I ever saw a review for it. I usually distrust anything too popular, but in that case I enjoyed her success because I got in on it before it became big. If you’re an anti cool snob like me, you might want to get in on Mudshow now, because it should be huge. Normally I link my reviews to Amazon but this CD is not available there yet and I’m not sure if it will be anytime soon. In the near future it should be available at CD Baby. For more information try her home page.

Willie Nelson’s Teatro is easily the best of his recent albums. Produced by Daniel Lanois who also produced Bob Dylan’s best recent work, Time Out Of Mind, Teatro is mostly comprised of new recordings of some of Willie’s earliest compositions. There are a couple of new tunes, but they are perfectly matched with his earlier style so that they blend in with out any feeling of misplacement. My personal favorites from the album are Darkness on the Face of the Earth, These Lonely Nights, I’ve just Destroyed the World I’m Living In, and Three Days. The most recent copyright of those songs is 1962, which just goes to show how well crafted a country song could be in the heyday of the Nashville sound. The songs vary between an infectious Latin influenced beat as on Darkness on the Face of the Earth to a slow but with a swing ballad tempo as on Home Motel. I don’t know how I missed this in 1998, but it is easily one of my favorite Willie Nelson Recordings. I’d rank it right next to Red Headed Stranger, Stardust and the Troublemaker. I’m a little less interested in the Shotgun Willie phase he went through, but basically he has always been fantastic no matter what he ventured into. I think one of the things that has kept him in the forefront is not only his remarkable sense of time and his ability to choose interesting material, but simply the fact that his vocal style is very low impact and his voice is remarkably strong for a man of his age. As much as I love Johnny Cash’s last albums, it would be hard not to notice that he was fading. Of course, like Willie, he was always more of a storyteller and a dramatist than a singer. Willie is on fine form throughout Teatro. This is a slightly more Texican album than some of his other recent efforts, with a sultry sophistication suffusing even its simplest country licks. In particular, the guitar work on the album is fantastic from start to finish. His reedy baitone is perfectly complimented by the Les Paul licks scattered through out the album. I’m a Willie Nelson fan, but sometimes I forget just how high he has set his standard. Looking back at his career, sure, I could do without the Julio Iglesias debacle or some of his movie music, but basically its been one triumph of art over commerce after another. It’s hard to believe I almost let this little gem slip past without notice.

As a treat last week I bought a collection of Willie Nelson’s earlier recordings, The Ghost. There are several such collections out there now and I’m not sure that this is the best one, but it does have a demo like intimacy about it. Some of the source tapes are scratchy and there is at least one bobble that sounds like somebody thumbed the spool during the original recording. I’m a sucker for that kind of homemade sort of sound. Despite the fact that many of the songs have ample production for the time in which they were recorded (for the most part in the 60’s) they have a warmth and directness that is similar to the stark effect of Johnny Cash’s late recordings that kind of fools you into thinking that you’re listening to something that’s been stripped down. Later you realize it’s not stripped down, it’s just simple and honest. My favorite song on this album is December Days, which is Willie in full Sinatra mode. In fact it sounds very much like the kind of thing Sinatra might have put on Everything Happens to Me or In the Wee Small Hours. The influence of Frank Sinatra is one of the few that Willie Nelson readily admits to. The ability to weld the Texas shuffle of Ray Price to the sophistication of Sinatra is the key to a song like Night Life. Swing has always been a part of Texas music at least since Bob Wills and the slow beat behind Nelson on these songs might camouflage that a bit but it can’t hide it altogether. Rainy Day Blues in particular is the kind of song that might have been sung by Billie Holiday with a few more horns or by Buck Owens if you doubled it up.

I have a soft spot for sloppy romantic loser songs that goes back a long way. I can’t figure out how the juxtaposition of romantic loser and manly stoic works, but in the context of popular music it does. There is a heroic quality to the brokenhearted schmucks Nelson sings about in these songs. I can almost see the lonely old motel rooms and smell the stale air-conditioned air when I listen to this album. In a lot of ways Nelson in his pre-outlaw days was a singer in who would have been more at home with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra than with the string and horn Nashville sound. He didn’t really return to this type of sound or song until Stardust, which is widely regarded as one of his masterpieces.

All in all, it’s good music to turn the lights off and listen to as you get slightly bleary. Which I will.

I’m not sure how it happened, but I actually like something popular. In Between Dreams by Jack Johnson is one of my favorite albums of the last ten years or so. It’s kind of light and jazzy, but despite its deceptively easy pop hooks, the music has intellectual and emotional depth. I can’t say that it’s the only contemporary music that I enjoy, but it does stand out as the only wildly popular contemporary music that seems destined to last at all. I keep hearing different influences in his songs every time I listen to this album. People as different as Santana, Bobby McFerrin, Jesse Winchester, and the Atlanta Rhythm Section (maybe even the occasional hint of Lou Reed) are reflected in many of his songs. The infectious beat masks some pretty serious topics at times, at others it helps draw you into a landscape of his devising. It’s rare to come across an artist that can create a world and let you inhabit it without being showy about it. There’s something warm and humble in this music, something like a touch of grace. It’s been so long since I could get into something that was remotely popular that I am kind of surprised, and almost dismayed to find myself liking something that’s the least bit trendy.

The musicianship on these songs is absolutely flawless. The impression of easiness reminds me in some ways of songwriters like Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer who were capable of making even the most convoluted flight of fancy seem natural and more important, intelligible. Everything he writes seems to be something I can relate to. Genuine tenderness is a hard thing to come by in a modern love song. Songs like Do You Remember and Banana Pancakes are so true to their stories that you almost feel like you’ve seen a movie after you’ve heard them.

This is one of those albums that makes me want to rush right out and buy every album he’s ever put out. I don’t recall the last time something new struck me that way. I enjoy Terrence Martin and Chuck Brodsky in a similar way, but they are sort of fringe performers while jack Johnson is on the verge of being huge. If you’re anything like me, a little cynical about pop culture, distrustful of the corporate machine, drop your silly prejudices against what’s popular and invest in this artist. Jack Johnson may be the most interesting guitarist I’ve heard in twenty years, his songs vary from warm to bittersweet without a single false note between, and I think it will outlast everything else on the radio at the moment.

I picked up John Lennon Acoustic last weekend. It takes me a little while to absorb a new album. I’ve been known to keep albums in my player for a couple of weeks of steady rotation before deciding that I really don’t like them. I have found this to be an album whose first impression is substantially true. I like it. A lot. I know most of these songs as the poorly produced recordings that were originally released in the seventies. To hear these acoustic versions which were demos for the most part although there are a couple that were recorded live in concert, is to be reminded just how much of a musician Lennon really was. The only downside is that you will also be reminded how little he cared for production values and how eccentric his vocalizations could be at times. I expected to be enthused by this version of Cold Turkey only to be bothered by some of his vocal tics in this recording. On the other hand a song he sings as plain and as vanilla as he can like Watching the Wheels is very nearly transcendent.

Most of these songs are stronger in their acoustic version and hearing these recordings even with their imperfect recording quality makes me wonder why he never recorded an album with just his guitar as accompaniment. It’s well documented that he was self-conscious about his voice, reportedly encouraging George Martin to process it more and more heavily. Certainly it is easy to see some of the flaws of the sound quality of these recordings as being in line with his later recordings with the Beatles. I’m thinking particularly of the fuzzy engineering of Across the Universe (which, by the way, sounds vastly improved on Let It Be Naked). It is hard to believe a man that lived his life so publicly and was so famous as a singer could conceivably had doubts about his voice, but apparently fame and success aren’t necessarily enough to counteract whatever insecurities he grew up with.

One of my favorites on this album is also one with the worst recording quality, Dear Yoko. I know it isn’t often thought of as among his strongest songs, but his ability to strike off a love song that is deeply felt and fully realized with a catchy tune and an easy bridge is part of what catapulted the Beatles to fame in the first place. More than any of his other solo recordings Dear Yokocould pass for early period Beatles with very little effort. Aside from that there isn’t much to say about the album. I doubt that this is going to convert anybody that actively dislikes his studio recordings, but it may very well be the first introduction many younger fans have to his work and it does sound closer in style and spirit to a lot of the grunge influenced music that is still around than the studio albums ever could. In that respect at least I think this is a very intelligently determined release.

Red Clay is an excellent album. I was browsing through the jazz section at the local B&N, not looking for anything in particular, when I saw this album. I’m not familiar with Freddie Hubbard’s work and I really didn’t have any particular motivation to buy the album until I noticed two things; Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter are part of the group and it features a recording of John Lennon’s Cold Turkey. First recorded by Lennon during his primal scream days, Cold Turkey was a raw rock and roll song about suffering from heroin withdrawal. As a jazz tune it isn’t improved but it is highly successful. After a mercifully brief free jazz intro that doesn’t fit the song at all, it rapidly develops into something much more. I’ve heard a lot of Beatles tunes covered as jazz and a certain number of Lennon’s solo work as well, but almost all of those seem to focus on poppy takes of the more mainstream songs like Imagine or In My Life. There are very few that match Hubbard’s penetration of the original. The song is one of my favorites in its original form and now it’s one of my favorite cover tunes as well. Strangely it wasn’t on the original 1970 release of the album. The title track is also reprised in a bonus track that completely blows away the original. Recorded live in 1971 at a concert in Los Angeles it has different personnel than the rest of the album, retaining only Freddie Hubbard and Ron Carter, but the addition of George Benson adds a dimension to the song that the original lacked. The presence of drummer Billy Cobham gives the song a harder funkier beat that lends itself well to Hubbard’s bop influenced lines.

The other four songs, all Hubbard originals, Red Clay, Delphia, Suite Sioux, and The Intrepid fox, are good, solid, early seventies jazz. Red Clay is breezy, blues inflected, cool and unselfconsciously introspective album in a way that jazz rarely has managed again. I love this type of early seventies jazz. Not quite fusion, not quite funk, definite R&B chops (especially on Delphia). Almost all of the songs on this album seem like they came from a soundtrack to some lost Marlon Brando movie. The storytelling ability of a great jazz instrumentalist is one of life’s rare and mysterious talents. No one knows why Miles Davis’s rendition of Dear Old Stockholm is theater, while another musician playing the same song only produces melody. Hubbard isn’t quite in the same league as Davis, although he is probably a technically more sound musician, but he is a cut above the rank and file of standard jazz cats. On this album he is clearly putting across something real and human. There are bittersweet traces of whimsy in certain of the solos but the basic dynamic of the album is the dialogue between Hancock’s smooth blue mood on electric piano and the warmth Hubbard’s bop influenced runs and solos. Ron Carter’s unobtrusive perfection on this album is not so much in the pocket as behind the pocket. More than anyone else he’s responsible for preserving the old fashioned virtues of a swinging bass in modern jazz. It’s amazing when you stop to think how many classic albums he played bass on. Which points to Hubbard’s one real similarity to Miles Davis; he doesn’t mind letting the other musicians play their guts out. Particularly on the live version of Red Clay, but on the rest of the album as well, the sound is clearly that of an ensemble and not that of a star and his accompanists. Folks, that’s pretty much the definition of jazz.

I’ve enjoyed Robert Cray’s music ever since Take Your Shoes Off came out in 1999. Take Your Shoes Off and his subsequent Rykodisc recordings were all more Memphis soul than blues. I love both but I especially love the blend of the two that Robert Cray manages without apparent effort. Time Will Tell is Cray’s first album on Sanctuary and it seems that true to form the change of label has given him afresh energy. Just like the Take your Shoes Off, his first album on Rykodisc signaled a shift in emphasis to a soul oriented sound that hinted at things Marvin Gaye might have done had he lived longer, this album shifts gears to a slightly more blues oriented sound but with world beat overtones. The blues edge is back, but the funky rolling backbeat even has a hint of an up-tempo reggae beat behind it at timers. It also has a bit more topicality than is typical in Cray’s work. It is pretty obvious that Survivor and Distant Shore are Cray’s stand against the Iraqi war. The subject is a little jarring in Survivor since it is so easy in the early part of the song to assume that it is going to be another lament of love lost. All the same it is one of the best examples of musicianship on the album. As always the band is tight and the groove is narrow. The sly humor is still present as well. Most of his albums have at least one song that is slightly over the top and tongue in cheek; on this album Back Door Slam seems to fit the bill. Lines like:

I am what I am
I am the back door slam.
people say I’m charming
people say I’m alarming
people can feel the disturbance around me
I don’t care what they say they see.
I’m the dust in your room,
one hundred proof Everclear.

have a sly wit to them that can’t quite be taken seriously. The large element that humour plays in the history of the blues is largely overlooked, but it can’t be denied that Cray’s humour is in keeping with the roots of the music. There are a few slower numbers as is usual on a good Robert Cray Band album. My favorite of the bunch on this one is Up In The Sky, because it is one of the rare chances to hear Cray play Electric Bluesitar, an instrument that gives the song a hint of sixties psychedelia without being sappy or cute.

Actually, the fact of the matter is that Robert Cray sounds more and more like Robert Cray every time I hear him. His individuality seems more and more evident with every album. As well known as he is within certain circles, it’s shocking that he’s never had broader popular success. Time Will Tell is certainly superior to anything I’ve heard on the radio lately.

Recently I had the great good fortune to discover that Tom T. Hall’s classic bluegrass album, Magnificent Music Machine, has been reissued on CD. I think most people undervalue his talents. Most people seem to be content to think of him as something of a novelty songwriter. Songs like A week in a Country Jail and I like Beer are light-hearted and are deservedly regarded as children’s songs for adults, but they are hardly typical of his output. It might be a stretch to call him a folksinger, at least in the sense that Woody Guthrie or Pete Seegar were, but all the same he wrote very personal songs about topical subjects in a way that merits the comparison. On the Magnificent Music Machine he covered more tunes than was normal for a Tom T. Hall album, and he wrote bluegrass tunes that are so authentic and home spun you would swear that they were traditional songs. For me the highlights of this album are his rendition of John Prine’s Paradise, and Bill Monroe’s Molly and Tenbrooks with his own Mama’s got the Catfish Blues running a close third. If you have any love for bluegrass at all you’ll enjoy this undeservedly overlooked gem.