The Qobuz Ideal Discography

For this album that brings drugged-up folk to gospel soul, Alela Diane collaborated with her father. The simplicity and restraint of their approach are more than anything carried by the voice of the Californian singer. A voice that sets itself way beyond the dividing line traced by the acoustic guitar. Alela Diane doesn’t whisper. Doesn’t whine. She sings high and loud, placing her impeccable diction above everything else. Her candour is spectacular. One can only hear her, her and her again! There’s much more than Karen Dalton’s DNA in the eleven compositions of this Pirate’s Gospel. This folk essence, this juice of almost bare country blues, is unique in its own right. © Marc Zisman

Reissued by HackTone after its original CD issue in 1995, Heartworn Highways is the sonic companion to the classic 1981 documentary of the same name. David Gorman goes out of his way to tell listeners/purchasers that this disc is not the soundtrack to the film because there never was one. HackTone "had to go back to the original film elements and Nagra tapes with the film's editor and producer to create one," according to Gorman. They "spent months working between them and an audio restoration engineer in New York to make a stand-alone album out of audio that works perfectly well while watching the film but would sound horribly disjointed otherwise. In fact, most of the performances in the film are edited down to about 1/4 their original length." This is key because it must have been a very painful process at time--especially during the 'round table' recordings on Christmas Eve at the end of the album. The microphone was literally in motion during the entire evening, trying to capture whoever was singing lead; but you'd never know it by listening to the CD. The breathtaking sound quality is a credit to restoration engineer Alan Silverman. A number of performances were left off in order to make this fit onto a single disc. What is here is a vintage treasure trove of the then-emerging singer/songwriter movement from the (mostly) American South. What is most important to note is that these performances were recorded for the documentary; they are not licensed recordings from a catalog. Some of the artists included here are no longer with us, but their performances (e.g., Townes Van Zandt's "Waitin' 'Round to Die" and "Pancho and Lefty," Gamble Rogers' "Charlie's Place" and "The Black Label Blues") are chilling and top-notch. Yet, they are in context because these infromal performances are stunning throughout. Some of the truly notable ones are by songwriters who are not well known even now among the general populus -- for example, the great Steve Young, who decided on deeply moving covers of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" along with his own "Alabama Highway". Youngis the guy who wrote "Seven Bridges Road," "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean" (the anthem of Waylon's outlaw movement that didn't include him--though, who was an outlaw long before it became a marketing concept)--and his "Montgomery in the Rain." is also here. Larry Jon Wilson makes an appearance with his deep backwoods "Ohoopee River Bottomland," which is equal parts Tony Joe White and Lightnin' Hopkins, all of it wrapped in Young's swampy Georgia voice and guitar playing. Guy Clark is heard on five cuts, three of them well known, but "Ballad of Laverne and Captain Flint" makes it too. Other writers here include David Allan Coe and John Hiatt, both of whom originally hailed from the Midwest. Hearing Coe in this setting is especially rewarding, almost separated from his bullshit image, just playing and singing his utterly moving songs, especially "I Still Sing the Old Songs," done with only an acoustic guitar. The glimpses listeners get of Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle apart from the slick Nashville production on their own records is especially refreshing. This is a timeless collection that truly stands on its own whether or not you saw the film in 1981 (it is available on DVD thank goodness). It's a no-jive set of songwriters doing what they do best away from the hype, the myth-making, and the self-destructive impulses that have plagued many of them. ~ Thom Jurek

This is the second perfect album Van Zandt cut in 1972, a complement to High, Low and in Between. Together they contain the highest points of his brilliant but erratic career. The Late Great may be a bit stronger, with classics like "Pancho & Lefty," "No Lonesome Tune," and "If I Needed You," but there's not a weak track here. Van Zandt's voice is in top shape, the song selection is superb, and Jack Clement's understated production gives the tunes a timeless quality. He eschews the hokey touches that make parts of Our Mother the Mountain sound corny, opting for a subdued sound that uses light touches of folk, pop, and country music in their arrangements. The set opens with "No Lonesome Tune," one of Van Zandt's more hopeful songs, delivered with mandolin, quiet pedal steel, and piano complementing Van Zandt's poignant vocal. "Sad Cinderella" and the epic "Silver Ships of Andilar" are mysterious ballads with oblique lyrics, open to many interpretations. In the Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me the singer says that his goal is to write songs so peculiar that "nobody knows what they mean, not even me." He succeeds with these two numbers. "Sad Cinderella" could be a song of recrimination to a woman at the end of an affair, or a disillusioned letter to an America caught in the contradictions of the Vietnam War, or perhaps just an exercise in poetic language. Whatever its meaning, Van Zandt's pained vocal and sparse piano fill it with longing and tenderness. "Andilar" is one of the most atypical tunes in Van Zandt's catalog, a five-minute epic of war and betrayal filled with images of sinking ships, icebergs, battle, and death. Acoustic guitar, a wailing female background chorus, and a sweeping orchestral arrangement give it a cinematic feel, and again it could be about Vietnam, some long forgotten European war, or his own inner turmoil. Whatever the meaning, its scope is cinematic and full of Van Zandt's singular poetry. "Pancho & Lefty," Van Zandt's greatest commercial success, has a folk/pop arrangement with mariachi horns coming in on the coda to give it a Mexican flavor. It's the best rendition of the tune Van Zandt ever cut. "If I Needed You" is purely romantic, one of Van Zandt's most understated love songs, simply sung over a bouncy country rhythm. The album's three covers get made over into Van Zandt's own image. Guy Clarke's "Don't Let the Sunshine Fool Ya" uses pedal steel, female backing vocals, and bluesy guitar to deliver a message that's full of ironic humor. Hank Williams' "Honky Tonkin'" is pure country, with Van Zandt's vocals siding up the scale to crack on the high notes just like Hank Sr used to do. "Fraulein" uses a fiddle to add poignancy to Van Zandt's vocals on this post-WWII tune about a GI's impossible love for a German girl. The album closes with the goofy spiritual "Heavenly Houseboat Blues," that sees Van Zandt sailing down the river Jordan in a slowly sinking silver houseboat. He gargles the last verse with a mouth full of water, ending the set on an odd, giddy note. ~ j. poet

Given Hooker's unpredictable timing and piss-poor track record recording with bands, this 1965 one-off session for the jazz label Impulse! would be a recipe for disaster. But with Panama Francis on drums, Milt Hinton on bass, and Barry Galbraith on second guitar, the result is some of the best John Lee Hooker material with a band that you're likely to come across. The other musicians stay in the pocket, never overplaying or trying to get Hooker to make chord changes he has no intention of making. This record should be played for every artist who records with Hooker nowadays, as it's a textbook example of how exactly to back the old master. The most surreal moment occurs when William Wells blows some totally cool trombone on Hooker's version of Berry Gordy's "Money." If you run across this one in a pile of 500 other John Lee Hooker CDs, grab it; it's one of the good ones. ~ Cub Koda

The set that made Cray a pop star, despite its enduring blues base. Cray's smoldering stance on "Smoking Gun" and "Right Next Door" rendered him the first sex symbol to emerge from the blues field in decades, but it was his innovative expansion of the genre itself that makes this album a genuine 1980s classic. "Nothing but a Woman" boasts an irresistible groove pushed by the Memphis Horns and some metaphorically inspired lyrics, while "I Wonder" and "Guess I Showed Her" sizzle with sensuality. ~ Bill Dahl

Born in 1888, Huddie Ledbetter was the son of a sharecropper; he was born on a Louisiana plantation and learned to play guitar after long days working on his father's farm. After he struck out on his own at the age of 16, Ledbetter's life was full of adventures, both good and bad and including a murder conviction, but while in prison he picked up the nickname Lead Belly, and after writing a handful of great songs (and learning a hundred more) that he made his own with his passionate vocal style that melded blues and folk styles and his distinctive 12-string guitar work, he was freed and became one of the most influential folk artists in American music. Lead Belly recorded literally hundreds of songs over the course of his career (including a number of archival sessions recorded for the Library of Congress), and his music would influence a striking array of artists, from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Odetta to Van Morrison, John Fogerty, and Kurt Cobain. The Smithsonian Folkways Collection is a five-disc box set that represents the first attempt to offer a career-spanning overview of the career of a giant of American music, including 108 tracks, 16 of which see their first release on this collection. ~ Mark Deming

Hank Williams' body of work is so large and has been repackaged so many times in so many forms that the notion of creating a definitive compilation almost seems like an impossible goal. However, as a one-stop shopping place for Hank's basic repertoire, 40 Greatest Hits is as good as it gets. While it doesn't include everything, practically every memorable hit is here, and thankfully every cut appears in its original form (that means in mono, with no string overdubs or artificial duets with his family members). The track sequence subtly reflects the arc of Williams' short but vitally important career, and there's enough good music and great songs here to make a fan of anyone with even a passing interest in American music. If you care about country music, you need some Hank Williams in your collection, and there isn't a better introduction to his rich body of work on the market than 40 Greatest Hits; begin here, then start exploring. ~ Mark Deming

The title track was one of those defining songs for Loretta Lynn, not only one of the best but one of the most likeable country & western artists. She bats one home run after another in these vocals, singing her brains out and coming across as totally convincing in each role she takes on. The cynical "I Got Caught" is one of her finer originals, while she also has the knack of picking covers that suit her perfectly, such as "The Shoe Goes on the Other Foot Tonight" by the underrated Buddy Mize. No country fan will mind that she covers a number by her old sidekick, Ernest Tubb. Then there's the pickers who came along for the ride, totally tearing it up. The series of lead guitar/pedal steel interchanges that run through this album are certainly more attractive than the Nashville freeway system, and definitely contributed more to 20th century civilization. Lynn would later record the song "You're Lookin' at Country," and that pretty much sums up the view of this mighty lady. This here is stone-cold country, and it doesn't get much better. ~ Eugene Chadbourne