My Top 10,000 Songs

I read an article recently from a dude who advocated ignoring whatever is current and on the charts, and simply coming up with your own Top Ten songs du jour. It’s not all that far from what I do minus putting a number on it. Why limit yourself to just ten when there are millions to choose from? But it did make me think of my own consumption and collecting, albeit digitally, and I began to realize I am absolutely overloaded with too much music and not nearly enough time.

Yes, I’m part of the problem, since I enjoy writing about new releases, and artists who aren’t famous but nevertheless fabulous, and those lost or forgotten recordings. For me the biggest thorn in my side is the algorithms used by the streaming sites to make suggestions. And the more you use them, the more they are able to include what they think you’ll like and exclude what you might not.

Although it’s an imperfect system, it’s also very good at getting me stuck in a rabbit hole the size of the Grand Canyon. You find a song by one musician that you like, and add their album to your playlist. You also see they have five previous releases, so you add them too. One song of interest becomes fifty in a flash. And because you like them, there are now a dozen other things recommended. Endless.

I have a playlist where I place things – new or old – that I haven’t yet heard. It used to hover between 250-500 songs and not it’s over 3000. There in no way I can get into checking out each and every one, and no time to listen to the older music in my library that I’ve loved over the decades.

I’m drowning in a sea of music and it’s becoming work versus pleasure. There could be a sense of urgency here…advanced expiration date…and I’m fearful I won’t get to listen to all the things I’ve collected over the years along with the new things I’ve yet to discover.

Some might say it’s a first world problem, having too much access. And it’s true that after re-reading this section it’s pretty insensitive to even think about “my music problem” considering all the other gruesome things happening around the world.

So if you got this far – just disregard it please.

 

 

On Meeting Bob Marley

Millie Small 45 RPM Cover /Island Records

The daughter of an overseer of a Jamaican sugar plantation, teenager Millie Small was discovered by Chris Blackwell in 1963 and taken to London, where she recorded a number of singles before breaking through a year later with “My Boy Lollipop,” considered by many to be the first international “blue beat/ska” hit.

Prior to going to England, she had recorded in Jamaica at Sir Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label with Roy Panton (as Roy & Millie), scoring one local hit called “We’ll Meet.” She only charted once more in America, and performed through the ’70s until settling in the United Kingdom, where she passed away in 2020.

“My Boy Lollipop” was originally written by Robert Spencer from the doo-wop band The Cadillacs for a singer named Barbie Gaye who was promoted by disc jockey Alan Freed. Notorious gangster-record exec Morris Levy, who was sort of like a Jewish version of Suge Knight, also received credit. When Small’s version took off, Levy took full credit and stripped Spencer’s name off the song.

As ska music began to evolve during that time period, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Livingstone came together and began recording in the studio initially with Leslie Kong in 1962, and then producer Coxsone Dodd. They were first called The Teenagers, followed by the Wailing Wailers.

The aforementioned Chris Blackwell began releasing the band’s albums worldwide in 1969 on his Island Records label that he founded back in 1958. Tosh and Livingstone left in 1974 for reasons having to do with their religion and the clubs they were playing in, but each went on to have their own successful careers.

Sometime in the mid-’70s I got a chance to meet Bob Marley at a hotel in Philadelphia. I was doing sales for Island’s local distributor and was invited to a dinner in his honor with local radio and record store folks. Several of us got there early, finding Marley sitting and talking to a couple of old friends. In 1966 he had lived with his mom for a short time in nearby Wilmington, Delaware, working briefly at both DuPont and on the Chrysler assembly line.

With a big fat spliff in his hand, he stood up in bare feet, walked over to greet us, and extended his hand. He was soft spoken and very gracious; we spoke for several minutes and I was disappointed he didn’t offer to share his spliff. Could have made for a better story, but this is all I’ve got. A memory.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is therealeasyed@gmail.com

The Jackson Browne Tribute Album

This album was released on April Fool’s Day back in 2014 and it’s one I’ve kept close at hand. It sort of came and went without making much of a splash, another tribute that gets lost like dust in the wind.

For a couple of decades I pretty much forgot about how much I like the music of Jackson Browne. During the ’70s I bought and listened to all his albums, but I think he became oversaturated with too much airplay on FM radio which made him part of that giant generational soundtrack rather than a singular artist. After time I just moved away from his work, but thatnks to this one I rediscovered the songs..

Browne’s name is Clyde. He was born in Germany and raised in Orange County, California. For a couple of months in 1966 he played in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when they were doing jugband music. He moved to Manhattan, where his friend Tim Buckley got him a gig accompanying Nico after she left the Velvet Underground. He plays guitar on several tracks of Chelsea Girl and she covered “These Days.” For a short time they were a thing.

 When signed as staff writer for Elektra Record’s publishing company in 1967, his songs were recorded by the Dirt Band, Tom Rush, Gregg Allman, Joan Baez, The Eagles, Linda Rondstadt, and The Byrds. He didn’t release his own album until 1972.

 Here’s the track list and although it was panned by Rolling Stone for not having a younger generation lineup, but I think it’s pretty good.

1 Don Henley Feat. Blind Pilot- These Days

2 Bonnie Raitt and David Lindley- Everywhere I Go

3 Bob Schneider- Running on Empty

4 Indigo Girls- Fountain of Sorrow

5 Paul Thorn- Doctor My Eyes

6 Jimmy Lafave- for Everyman

7 Griffin House- Barricades of Heaven

8 Lyle Lovett- Our Lady of the Well

9 Ben Harper- Jamaica Say You Will

10 Eliza Gilkyson- Before the Deluge

11 Venice- for a Dancer

12 Kevin Welch- Looking Into You

13 Keb Mo- Rock Me on the Water

14 Lucinda Williams- the Pretender

15 Lyle Lovett- Rosie

16 Karla Bonoff- Something Fine

17 Marc Cohn Feat. Joan As Police Woman- Too Many Angels

18 Sean and Sara Watkins- Your Bright Baby Blues

19 Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa- Linda Paloma

20 Shawn Colvin- Call It a Loan

21 Bruce Hornsby- I’m Alive

22 Joan Osborne- Late for the Sky

23 J.D. Souther- My Opening Farewell

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – Spring 2022

Colorful Comments and Music From A Common Man

As you may have noticed, The Broadside was broadsided in April, so I’ve combined it with the month of May to give you two-thirds of a season. I won’t trouble you with my troubles, but there are some glitches on the website that are beyond my skill set, and since we’ve last connected I have moved from one place to another which took a lot of time and energy. It felt quite liberating making trip after trip to the local recycling center and the Goodwill drop-off, as I said goodbye to a mountain of possessions I no longer need, as if I needed them in the first place. The albums and CDs, not played in a dozen years, survived. Most books did not. Clothes and shoes older than my twenty-something kids were discarded, and I kept only a few gold records out of the two dozen or so that once adorned my walls. Only two have been hung up, and the rest are resting in the closet.

Here’s the thing about gold or platinum records: they’re handed out like candy to every Tom, Dick, Sally and Carol. They aren’t earned, they are a stroke of ego given mostly to those who had little to do with their success. The first round rightously goes to the musicians, composers, band members, producer and manager, and other people on the creative team.  And then the second batch go to us weasels: label people, distributors wholesalers, retailers, radio stations and a whole boatload of freeloaders. Anyway, most of mine hit the trash can because I wasn’t about to go through the trouble of posting them on eBay, like many of my former music biz friends have done.

Meanwhile, since I last posted there’s been a war, the Supreme Court is probably going to take away fifty-years of women’s rights, supermarkets are now considered soft targets for the radical right racists, and we’ve learned that the pandemic isn’t quite over as many musicians are having to interrupt their tours or go out solo while leaving the band behind. This week here in NY, we were told to start wearing the masks again while indoors, as cases are rising rapidly. Other states are following. And as music festival season is kicking off, some returning for the first time since 2019, we’ll likely need to be flexible in our expectations as performers on the bill will likely shift often.

Can We Please Get To The Music Now?

Anybody else notice that there’s been more new music coming out this year than the last two years combined? Likely an overstatement, but there does seem to be a growing list, week after week, and I’m struggling to keep up. I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to listen more while  discarding the things I’ve tried hard to like but just couldn’t. Yes, Spring cleaning.

Pharis and Jason Romero 

Here’s the first song from their forthcoming album, Tell ’Em You Were Gold, out on 17th June 2022 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Their seventh album was written and recorded at the couple’s homestead in Horsefly British Columbia in an old barn that they restored  themselves, milling their own spruce, hoisting beams, and rebuilding a roof originally covered in tin printing plates, all done between building banjos, adventuring outdoors, and loving up their two kids. I love these folks.

The Hanging Stars

Wearing their cosmic country and late 60s West Coast folk-rock influences on their sleeve, embroidered with seams of Crosby Stills and Nash and The Byrds, recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Helmdale studios in Scotland, The Hanging Star’s fourth album Hollow Heart is their best yet. (folk radio.co.uk) The band is based in London and they cite a long list of reference points from Fairport to the Byrds, but they bring on their own unique sound that borders on psych-folk-cosmic-power pop, without the pop.

Erin Rae

Erin Rae makes gentle music that’s easy to listen to over and over again, and yet it is never boring. The Nashville songwriter’s 2018 album Putting on Airs established this strength with 12 impeccable, minimalist recordings that showcased her subtle vocal style and acoustic guitar playing: It also demonstrated a consistent gift for writing earworms. With her latest album, Lighten Up, Rae keeps the songwriting focused and tight while broadening her stylistic palette, landing on a sound that’s less acutely folksy and more classic, unpretentious pop music. (Pitchfork)

Eddie Berman

His fourth album Broken English (released in January) is a modern folk commentary on our tenuous American life–written before the pandemic. Though performed on guitar, the songs were written on the banjo. “With the fingerpicking, flat-picking style I play there’s sort of the bones of the melody baked into whatever I’m playing. When I come up with a progression I like, I turn on a recorder and just start singing to it off the top of my head — sometimes gibberish, sometimes fully formed thoughts, usually a combination of the two. And then at some indeterminate, later point, I’ll take all that subconscious/left brain shit and try to turn it into something more coherent.” (Spin)

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

For her recent album, Crooked Tree, Molly put together a list of supporting bluegrass and Americana musicians that would catch anyone’s eye: Gillian Welch, Billy Strings, Sierra Hull, Dan Tyminski, Margo Price, Jason Carter, Tina Adair, Old Crow’s Ketch Secor, and Jerry Douglas, who produced the album. With all the songs co-written by Tuttle, the album serves as a reflection of her past in many ways; her love of music as a child, her home town of San Francisco, her challenges and her maturation. (musicfestnews.com)

Billy Strings (and Post Malone)

Hard to connect Billy with Molly, as they represent a new tradition of kids raised on bluegrass festivals with parents who are exceptional players, and have morphed into something new and different. Not surprising that they were room mates when they moved to Nashville, and that their increased popularity seems in synch. Billy has turned out to be more of a live concert creature, constantly on the road and tapping into the work ethic as well as joining the extended family of the Grateful Dead. This video features the unlikely rapper/country-lovin’ Post Malone, and I’m telling you….I sing this song all day, every day since I first saw it.

Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert

(Wait! Didn’t you post this in March? Yes. What’s your point?)

Kieran Kane’s a folk-music lifer, known for his work in the all-star trio Kane Welch Kaplin and his killer songs, which have been recorded by big names like John Prine and Emmylou Harris. Rayna Gellert’s a world-class fiddler who grew up playing old-time music before finding success in the 2000s with her string band Uncle Earl. Together, they’re not an odd couple, but a finely tuned folk duo whose parts fit together perfectly. The songs on their third album The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring are built from memorable melodies, homespun harmonies, hard times, heartbreak, and the clarion sound of strings plucked, strummed, and bowed. (Bandcamp)

Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage

Making the best of a bad situation, when the pandemic struck, Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage revised plans for their third album Ink of the Rosy Morning and recorded the album while holed up in an old seaside schoolhouse in Hastings. They stripped arrangements back to basics with just two guitars and emerged with a collection of mostly traditional numbers subtitled A Sampling of Folk Songs from Britain and North America. The album opens with their voices mingling on gorgeous harmony for the twin fingerpicking of A Winter’s Night, more strictly A-Roving On A Winter’s Night, an Appalachian folk tune learnt from the repertoire of Doc Watson, followed by some nimble fretwork with Hannah singing lead for the equally traditional Appalachian murder ballad Polly O Polly. (folk radio.co.uk)

Hannah and Ben have released three albums together since 2016, and they each are from the UK but seem to have travelled extensively. They’ve toured throughout North America, Europe and of course the UK, playing a hybrid of American roots and traditional folk music. Spiral Earth wrote ” This is folk music for everyone – a master-class in proficiency, an exercise in individuality and a declaration of love of the folk tradition from both sides of the Atlantic’. This last clip is the song that led me to them, appearing on a playlist built on an algorithm of my taste in music. It worked.

R. Crumb….just because.

 

 

Ten Years Older Than Bob Dylan’s First Album, But I Still Have The Verve

 

 

Neither the age progression photographs of myself nor the bold title above have anything to do with what’s on my mind this month. I did have a birthday, but that was last month. Old new. I mean, really old. Originally I was going to use a Frank Zappa shot holding an electric fan, but I had used it years ago for another column. So you’ve got me in triplicate, but there is still a Zappa thread to pull.

The topic is Verve Records, which came to mind during a walk I took this afternoon. It has a long history that in some ways almost parallels my life. It was founded in 1956 – I was four by then – by Norman Granz, and became home to the world’s largest jazz catalogue. A producer and concert promoter, Granz was acknowledged as “the most successful impresario in the history of jazz” and he was also a champion of racial equality, insisting, for example, on integrating audiences at concerts he promoted. And he spearheaded the fight to desegregate the hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, arguing that it was unfair that black artists could perform on the stages, but could not stay or gamble at the hotels, or even enter through the front doors.

In 1965 Frank Zappa joined a band called Soul Giants and they changed their name to The Mothers. In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing “Trouble Every Day”, a song about the Watts riots. Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and was one of the few African-Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time. Wilson signed the Mothers to Verve, a division of MGM, which had built up a strong reputation for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences.

Verve insisted that the band officially rename themselves the Mothers of Invention as Mother was short for motherfucker—a term that, apart from its profane meanings, can denote a skilled musician.They released their first five albums (if you count Lumpy Gravy, which really wasn’t the Mothers) on Verve, and Zappa, his wife, and all of the Mothers of Invention moved from LA to New York where they got an extended booking at the old Garrick Theater on Bleeker. They moved back to California in 1968, formed a deal with his own Bizarre label and that was the end of Frank and Verve.

Let’s backtrack to 1964, and Jerry Schoenbaum of Verve and Moe Asch of Folkways created Verve Folkways to take advantage of the popularity of folk music and get it on the shelves of the record stores, something Folkways by itself wasn’t able to do. They were distributed by MGM Records which also owned Big 3 Publishing. The president of that entity was Arnold Maxin, who was a huge believer in roots music.  In an article in Billboard Magazine from 1965 he said “The most important music developments of our generation have come from the “roots”. I welcome all the material I can get from these sources for it is from these sources that we will obtain the standards of tomorrow”. With that he announced the signing of John Lee Hooker’s publishing.  (Arnold is my cousin and and we share the same last name, which helped open doors for me throughout my own music career.)

To broaden the label’s appeal, in 1967 the name was changed from Verve Folkways to Verve Forecast. They first signed The Blues Project and then quickly added Tim Hardin, Jim and Jean, Janis Ian, Richie Havens, Odessa and Dave Van Ronk. There was also The Paupers from Toronto, and Velvet Underground, who had little sales but would end up casting a long shadow.

Over the years MGM had acquired both Verve’s jazz label and Verve Forecast catalogs, and in 1968 Arnold oversaw all three. They were riding high until they weren’t. The following year MGM shut down Verve Forecast and the entire company was soon swallowed up themselves in a purchase by PolyGram, the huge German music company. The product from all three labels was sliced, diced and shifted to various divisions and labels. The party was over.

In May 1998, PolyGram was sold to Seagram which owned Universal Music Group. They  too split the catalog up like an apple pie. In 2004 they decided to reactivate the name Verve Forecast, and began signing new artists, Blues Traveller and Teddy Thompson among them. In 2016 Universal created the Verve Label Group to place all of it’s jazz and classical labels, as well as the flotsam and jetsam collected from over the decades. A few years later they made more changes and today the Verve Label Group reports up to the hip-hop/rap division. 

And that’s what I was thinking about today. Verve….it was a helluva label.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – February 2022

Photo by Easy Ed

A local and respected concert series has been going strong for years, and while they’ve maintained their home base at the local Unitarian congregation which was sadly unused for most of the pandemic, the building was severely damaged this past year in a storm.Now there’s a new home to hear music at a nearby church, albeit with a pandemic-era slimmed down roster of events. I’ve been both a patron and volunteer over the past ten years, and I admit that I much prefer being a paying audience member as opposed to selling at the merch table, seating guests or working the door.

The photo above was obviously taken from the stage a few minutes before a show was about to begin, probably sometime in 2015. Can’t recall who was playing, nor why I hopped onstage to take a snap of the waiting audience, because a photographer I am not. I actually enjoy taking pictures, but I just forget to do it most of the time. But this one has been sitting around in my library for too long not to share, so here it is for better or worse

A few years ago I submitted this image to No Depression to use for my then-weekly Broadside column and my editor rejected it. I think the main issue was that there was a child at the center, but there was a larger question of did I have permission of the other people in the frame to use it. Of course I didn’t, and it was not a huge issue for me to just pick something else. But II’ve always wanted to share it beyond the fleeting Instagram post, so here it is. I’m sorry that almost everyone in that one moment looks sad, but life isn’t all about smiling selfies.

For this concert, a one-off  venue was utilized. It was a once grand old building at the edge of the Hudson River, mostly abandoned and not in very good shape, The electricity and plumbing worked, and I’m sure there was an elevator, but the facilities were rather rough. We were using a room on the second or third floor, with maybe a hundred seats. With raw cement walls and an open ceiling exposing pipes, it seemed better suited for a hardcore show from the 70s or 80s instead of whatever folk or blues musician was headlining that night.

If not mistaken, it was a very successful evening. While I can’t recall who or what was presented, I have a vivid memory of the intermission where coffee and tea were sold, along with these really delicious brownies. There was quite a bit of conversation taking place, as this was a community event, and many people knew each other. It strikes me of something that we once had but has disappeared over the past two years. Small concerts, traveling musicians, a time for people to get out of their homes and into a crowd to interact in whatever way they choose, and an escape for a couple hours of the pressures of life that we endure.

I know that all around the world there are small to mid-size community venues that have brought so much joy to people in showcasing art, films and music, and it’s gotten away from us. The impact shows up in the latest conversations about the inability of earning an income in a digital world which pays a pittance for artistic creation. And for most musicians, they aren’t complaining much because they only got a check for $1.79 from Spotify last month, but that they aren’t able to safely put together a tour from town to town where they can earn money by selling tickets and merchandise. They can’t see the audience’s faces from the stage, or feel the energy. That’s the real loss.

So, that brings me back to the picture. I think it is a pretty good representation of life in early 2022. It feels to me that we are simply waiting, which as the man once sang, “is the hardest part”.

All The News You Already Know, Might Have Missed or Even Forgotten If You’re As Old As Me

American Songwriter reported that Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder have announced their new collaborative album, Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. The new LP, which is set for release on April 22, is the duo’s first collaboration in more than a half-century.

The two musicians have released a new live video for the song, “Hooray Hooray,” which y’all can watch below. “They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did … here’s two guys, a guitar player, and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra,” Mahal said in a statement about his connection with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Added Cooder, “It was perfect. What else can you say?”

Don Wilson, the last remaining original member of The Ventures, passed away in January of 88. Along with guitarist/bassist Bob Bogle, they formed the Ventures in 1958 when they were both Seattle-area construction workers moonlighting as musicians; just two years later, their electric guitar-led rendition of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” rose to Number Two on the Hot 100. A quartet for most of its existence, they helped to popularize the electric guitar in the United States and across the world during the 1960s.

They were among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker “The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands”. And one could argue that surf music was not a product of Southern California as much as it originated in the Pacific Northwest.

While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains especially revered in Japan, where a reconstitued band tour regularly to this day. The classic lineup of the band consisted of Wilson on rhythm guitar,  Bogle (initially lead guitar but he switched to bass), Nokie Edwards (initially bass, switched to lead guitar), and drummer Mel Taylor.

From Getty Images/The Ventures, 1960. Don is second from the left.

Singer-guitarist Molly Tuttle has moved to Nonesuch Records, and will be releasing her new album “Crooked Tree” on April 1. No fooling. Rolling Stone reports that “The new album explores Tuttle’s bluegrass roots, which stretch back to her banjo-playing grandfather and music-teacher father.

Helping Tuttle craft those sounds are her new band Golden Highway (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Dominick Leslie, Shelby Means, and Kyle Tuttle) and an all-star group of guests. In addition to Price, Strings, and Hull, contributors to Crooked Tree include Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Gillian Welch, along with co-producer Jerry Douglas.”

Here’s a video of the title track. This woman can shred.

That’s it for this month. Remember, I post multiple times every day at Facebook on The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily page.

And for even more stories, I am constantly updating my e-magazine on Flipboard, Americana and Roots Music Daily

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – January 2022

Sort of. Maybe. Possible. Wishful thinking. We’ll see.

The fact is, to those of you who followed my dozen or so years of writing a weekly column for No Depression’s website, I just burned out about six months deep into the pandemic in 2020 and quit. Recently I saw a quote that summed it up well: there was no more toothpaste left in the tube. I tried to switch over to here, the website, whenever I got the urge to write but as you probably can tell, that hasn’t worked out too well.

Where my efforts have been largely focused are on the The Real Easy Ed American and Roots Music Daily page over on Facebook, now exceeding 3,400 followers in what I had anticipated to be only a few hundred when I began it. I aggregate music news, videos, reviews, history and humor, with occasionally breaking off for a whirlwind of words on topics excluding those mentioned. Call it political or cultural, social or whatever is on my mind, simply for laziness I title these A Daily Broadside. A more apt description might be therapy, or a release of the thoughts and ideas from a troubled mind.

I’d ask how y’all have been, but there’s no place to reply because the comment section here was deactivated long ago when I first started the site. Instead, you can share over on the FB page until your heart’s content, often receiving an acknowledgement or dialog from me or fellow followers. It’s become a nice little community of music fans which needs little water and feeding. The garden is mostly self-tended, although I tend to sometimes toss out any cult members who might offend me with their 45-isms. And emails are welcome as well, but stop asking me to write reviews for your music at No Depression….that’ll get you nowhere.

Here’s A Daily Broadside you may have missed from January 1, 2020:

 

So here’s a bit of family history I’ll share with y’all.

This album on the left was released in 1972, and included actual test sheets that you’d fill out after listening, to see what your score was. It was co-written by my cousin Arnold Maxin, who served as president of MGM Records throughout much of the 60s, and previously did A&R for Okeh in the 50s. His production credits include Screaming Jay Hawkins’ ‘I Put A Spell On You’, about half of everything Connie Francis ever recorded, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

He got the parent company MGM Studios in California to let him prove to them there was a market for soundtracks, and he also turned several films into Broadway shows. He was there signing deals for groups like the Animals, Cowsills and Ultimate Spinach, and was featured in a piece for Billboard that stated Dylan had created a new genre for singer-songwriters that would be the future, and one of his final acts as prez was picking up distribution for a label called Poppy Records in 1966. Soon after he left MGM, Poppy released the first Townes Van Zandt album.

Between then and the release of this first and only album on his own label, I guess he may have been busy doing the research. After that he was involved in a number of projects, both in and out of music. And that’s pretty much the end of the story, as he passed on a few decades ago. On the right he’s with Hank Williams Jr. In defense of Arnold on how MGM milked Hank Sr.’s catalog after his death with endless schlock releases of albums with added strings and duets with Jr., that all came out of the Nashville office which wielded their own power and decisions. Our family legacy remains intact.

Spencer Williams, Jr.was an actor and director who entered the film business at a time when “race movies” were being made alongside the Hollywood versions. Race movies were low-budgeted and mostly aimed at black audiences in segregated movie-houses of the South and where large city black populations lived in the North.

What might make this interesting to American roots music fans is his continual juxtaposition between the gospel of Sunday mornings versus the blues and jazz of Saturday nights in many of his storylines. I got a chance to watch a montage of film scenes last night, and discovered today that many of his films are available on YouTube.

Most film historians consider The Blood of Jesus to be Williams’ crowning achievement as a filmmaker. Dave Kehr of The New York Times called the film “magnificent” and Time magazine counted it among its “25 Most Important Films on Race.” In 1991, The Blood of Jesus became the first race film to be added to the U.S. National Film Registry.

I should also mention that many of his films have also been the subject of criticism. Richard Corliss for Time wrote:

“Aesthetically, much of Williams’ work vacillates between inert and abysmal. The rural comedy of Juke Joint is logy, as if the heat had gotten to the movie; even the musical scenes, featuring North Texas jazzman Red Calhoun, move at the turtle tempo of Hollywood’s favorite black of the period, Stepin Fetchit.” 

He had a long career as an actor, writer, director, and producer in motion pictures before becoming known to general audiences for his role as Andy in the television version of The Amos ‘n Andy Show (1951).

Let’s take a moment or two and talk about albums that were released in 2021. As those who’ve followed me know, I absolutely abhor those ridiculous end of the year lists whether from reader polls, reviewers or hacks like me. There are no arbiters of what one’s treasure versus trash is, and at best all we can do is perhaps share some things we’ve enjoyed and maybe you might want to explore it yourself. Rankings, and words like best and greatest, are an affront to the hard work that all artists put into their work. Same reason I hate negative reviews: if you have nothing good to say, why say it? The only benefit to any list is that there really is too much music being released, and it’s impossible to sort out on one’s own.

So this year on the FB page I gave everybody a chance to list one and only one favorite album, with the rule being no duplicates. So you needed to read ’em before adding your own. Turned out pretty interesting, with about 75 responses.

But then, knowing that there are those who have suffer from OCD and have a desperate need to share their own lists, I created the above. Here’s some – but not all, sorry – responses. Represents a really wide spectrum of taste, and not quite looking like all the other cookie cutter Americana lists out there in the internet ether.

From Matthew Bashioum, who gave me the idea:

1. Mercy – Cole Chaney
2. Blood Sweat and Beers – Rob Leines
3. Vincent Neil Emerson – Vincent Neil Emerson
4. The Ballad of Dood and Juanita – Sturgill Simpson
5. Renewal – Billy Strings
6. Dark Side of the Mountain – Addison Johnson
7. Depreciated – John R. Miller
8. One to Grow On – Mike and the Moonpies
9. Back Down Home – Tony Kamel
10. All of Your Stones – The Steel Woods
11. Music City Joke – Mac Leaphart
12. Blood, Water, Coal – Matt Heckler
13. The Willie Nelson Family – Willie Nelson
14. To the Passage of Time – Jason Eady
15. You Hear Georgia – Blackberry Smoke
16. 29: Written in Stone – Carly Pearce
17. The Marfa Tapes – Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Jon Randall
18. Broken Hearst & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine Vol. 2 – Various Artists
19. Big Country – RC & the Ambers
20. The Rain – Dallas Moore
Richard Parkison: 
Buck Meek – Two Saviours
Kiwi Jr -Cooler Returns
Julien Baker – Little Oblivion
Sara Petite – Rare Bird
Valerie June – The Moon And Stars
Rhiannon Giddens/Francesco Turrisi – They’re Calling me Home
Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagano – Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagano
London Grammar – California Soul
Ingham, Lambert, Conell – The Marfa Tapes
St Vincent – Daddy’s Home
Holly MacVe – Not The Girl
Allison Russell – Outside Child
Rising Appalachia – The Lost Art Of being In The Know
GreenTea Peng – Man Made
Japanese Breakfast – Jubilee
Tristen – Aquatic Flowers
Amythyst Kiah -Wary – Strange
Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It
Squirrel Flower – Planet (i)
Maple Glider – To Enjoy Is The Only Thing
Anya Hinkle – Eden and the Borderlands
Mega Bog – Life An Another
Leah Blevins – First Time Feeling
Susanna and David Wallmund – Live
Sierra Ferrell – Long Time Coming
Little Simz – Sometime I Might Be Introvert
Bela Fleck – My Bluegrass Heart
Heartless Bastards – A Beautiful Life
Della Mae – Family Reunion
Felice Brothers – From Dreams To Dust
Billy Strings – Renewal
Adia Lea – One Hand on The Steering Wheel The Other Sewing A Garden
Colleen Green – Cool
Pond – 9
Strand Of Oaks – In Heaven
Jackson & Sellers – Breaking Point
The War On Drugs – I Don’t Live Here Anymore
Weakened Friends – Quitter
Jason Isbell – Georgia Blue
Anders Nystrum:
In These Silent Days – Brandi Carlile
How the Mighty Fall – Charles Wesley Godwin
All of Your Stones – The Steel Woods
You Hear Georgia – Blackberry Smoke
Calico Jim – Pony Bradshaw
The Battle at Garden’s Gate – Greta Van Fleet
Free Country – Ward Hayden & The Outliers
Set in Stone – Travis Tritt
Lance Rogers – Lance Rogers
Bones Owens – Bones Owens
Gar Saeger:
1. David Gray – Skellig
2. Amethyst Kiah – Wary & Strange
3. Hiss Golden Messenger – Quietly Blowing It
4. Lucero – When You Found Me
5. Allison Russell – Outside Child
6. The Wallflowers – Exit Wounds
7. Strand Of Oaks – In Heaven
8. Yola – Stand For Myself
9. Robert Plant & Alison Krause – Raise The Roof
10. Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – The Future
Josh Korean wrote: I think I figured out a top ten, but there was a ton of excellent music this year. I’m still finding great stuff that I missed like Mac Leaphart & Margo Cilker this past week.
1. Charlie Parr – Last of the Better Days Ahead
2. Sierra Ferrell – Long Time Coming
3. Amigo the Devil – Born Against
4. The Bridge City Sinners – Unholy Hymns
5. Ryan Curtis – Rust Belt Broken Heart
6. Charley Crockett – Music City USA
7. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – Carnage
8. Taylor McCall – Black Powder Soul
9. Black Country, New Road – For the First Time
10. Sturgill Simpson – The Ballad of Dood & Juanita
Cole Chaney – Mercy
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe – Bloodmoon: I
Jason Eady – To the Passage of Time
The Gallows Dance – Songs for the Godless
Rod Gator – For Louisiana
Charles Wesley Godwin – How the Mighty Fall
JP Harris – Don’t You Marry No Railroad Man
Matt Heckler – Blood, Water, Coal
Joe Johnson – Dark Horse Pale Rider
Ayron Jones – Child of the State
The Joy Formidable – Into the Blue
Ka – A Martyr’s Reward
Jordan Robert Kirk – Western Holler
Adam Lee – The Wilderness Years
Zachary Lucky – Songs for Hard Times
David Olney & Anana Kaye – Whispers and Sighs
Shame – Drunk Tank Pink
Soo Line Loons – Self-Titled
Springtime – Self-Titled (Gareth Liddiard on guitar, Jim White on drums & Chris Abrahams on piano)
Billy Strings – Renewal
Those Poor Bastards – Old Time Suffering
TK & The Holy Know-Nothings – The Incredible Heat Machine
Tylor & The Train Robbers – Non-Typical Find
Viva Le Vox – Where Class Meets Economy
Joshua Ray Walker – See You Next Time