Music Recovery

Have I ever mentioned Maria McKee?  Oh the cracks in that voice.  Found her in the early-to-mid 1980s.  Maria and Lone Justice led me to better music.

This album cover didn’t hurt.

Other music miscellany:

– Two songs that evoke world-weariness, melancholy, and resignation without retreat: “Me and Paul” by Willie Nelson, “Blue Wing” sung by Tom Russell.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore.  Hadn’t listened to him for a while.  Acquired taste, perhaps, but once you got it, you got it.  “Spinning Around the Sun” is the album that hooked me.

– Tompall Glaser – the overlooked Outlaw.  I was listening to the lovely “I Ain’t Looking for the Answer Anymore” but Tompall is best known for being on this album and charting with “Put Another Log on the Fire (Male Chauvinist National Anthem),” a song written by this famous children’s author who also wrote this famous Johnny Cash song.  In the company of his brothers, Tompall created gorgeous harmonies.

– Nicest dry rough voice that isn’t Rod Stewart (or Tompall Glaser): Jimmy Nail singing “What’s the Use.”  I also like many tracks off his Crocodile Shoes album.  Here he is singing “Big River.”

– Hoyt Axton.  Singing “Evangelina” with that voice so deep, easy and placid compared to the turmoiled and talented fellow who owned it.

– Bobby Bare “It’s Alright” – No link, just want to note he is king of the dispassionate death ballad including spoken recitation.

– Favorite lyric of the day: “If money talks, I wish’t it’d speak t’me…“, Jason & The Scorchers.

– Goofiest and most inappropriate (stalker humor, anyone?) song that made me laugh out loud (at the Rin-Tin-Tin reference): “It’s Me Again, Margaret,” by Ray Stevens.

This is what happens when you pull a big writing binge while listening to Pandora.  For reference, although I’ve linked to YouTube stuff when possible, all of the versions I was listening to were the ones up on Pandora.  I note this for reasons of OCD and also to let you know the feel of the versions available on YouTube are not always the same as the album cuts I heard (especially “Evangelina” and “Me and Paul”).  And nope, I’m not on the Pandora payroll.  In fact, although it is free, Pandora frequently winds up costing me money (e.g., buying Jimmy Nail albums).  That’s the point of Pandora, I guess.  It feeds you random songs while letting you tweak the mix.  You can click past a limited number of songs if they don’t strike your fancy, but my Number One Pandora Rule is: Even if you don’t care for the song in question, you NEVER fast forward on Hank Williams The First.  That’s just bad voodoo.


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