Ask most people what they think of when you mention Nashville, Tennessee and they’ll inevitably respond with ‘country music’. The “Music City” has been so closely identified with the country music industry for so long that most people don’t know that the city hosts a thriving rock music scene and is the longtime home of the gospel music industry. Long before Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones helped put Nashville on the entertainment map, the ‘Athens of the South’ was famous for red-hot rhythm & blues.
Nashville’s post-war R&B boom lasted for a quarter-century, a time when almost a dozen clubs featured regional and national performers nightly, attracting wealth and celebrity to north Nashville. This period is lovingly documented by Night Train To Nashville, Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945-1970, a two-CD set featuring 35 songs representing the history of Nashville’s R&B era. Compiled by producers Michael Gray and Daniel Cooper to accompany a Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit, the set includes an excellent introduction by noted music writer and Tennessee native Ron Wynn and song-by-song liner notes by Gray that are accompanied by a wealth of rare photos.
Nashville was once home to independent labels like Bullet and Excello and a literal “who’s who” of R&B talent once came to Nashville to record. Night Train To Nashville features R&B hitmakers like Etta James, Ruth Brown, Arthur Alexander, and Roscoe Shelton. It’s the obscure artists that brighten up the grooves, though, long-forgotten performers like Little Hank Crawford, Rudy Green, and Sam Baker enjoying another turn in the spotlight. Highlights include Gene Allison’s smooth “You Can Make It If You Try”, Sonny Hebb’s pop crossover hit “Sunny”, Frank Howard’s “Just Like Him”, and the Sam Phillips-produced “Just Walkin’ In The Rain” by the Prisonaires, a song favored by Elvis.
Thanks to the Country Music Hall of Fame, fans of classic R&B can rediscover the soulful sound of this overlooked chapter in Nashville’s music history with Night Train To Nashville. (Lost Highway Records, released February 24th, 2004) Review originally published by the Community Free Press, Springfield MO Buy the CD from Amazon: Various Artists - Night Train To Nashville
The Black Keys
found unexpected success with their 2010 breakthrough album Brothers,
which earned the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney three Grammy® Awards.
While Brothers’ mix of psychedelic-tinged blues, rock, and soul music
struck a chord with listeners, the album’s hit single, the groove-fattened
“Tighten Up”, became ubiquitous, blasting from TV sets and radios across the
fruited plains.
The Black Keys have delivered a fast follow-up to
Brothers in the form of El Camino, a solid collection that draws
upon its predecessor’s timeless mix of styles with a pure-at-heart blast of
retro-soul and rock ‘n’ roll. Unlike the band’s previous collaboration with
producer Danger Mouse, 2008’s Attack & Release, which experimented in
lofty sonic atmospherics, there are no loose musical threads here. Instead,
El Camino hits fast-and-hard with inspiration that spans the decades, the
Black Keys turbo-charging their trademark garage-blues sound with elements of
soul, electric funk, and punch-drunk throwback rock ‘n’ roll.
El Camino
cranks from the jump with lead single “Lonely Boy,” which sports a riff-happy
melodic hook every bit as large and in charge as that on “Tighten Up.”
Auerbach’s slightly-echoed vocals are overwhelmed by the song’s dangerously
infectious sing-along chorus and Carney’s propulsive drumbeats. Infusing a
bedrock of rock ‘n’ soul with a maddeningly effective recurring riff and plenty
of engaging “whoa whoa whoa,” the song will stick in your brain long after
you’ve heard it, like some funky brain chigger.
You’ll find no
creative drop-off from the radio-friendly peaks of “Lonely Boy,”
El Camino rolling through its eleven songs in a shockingly efficient
38-minutes, leaving the listener gasping for breath and wanting another taste.
The martial rhythms of “Dead and Gone” belie the song’s melodic R&B
heartbeat, while “Little Black Submarines” is a Zeppelin-styled folk-rock ballad
with melancholy vocals and elegant, atmospheric fretwork. “Money Maker” is a
raucous blues-rock stomp with muscular rhythms while “Nova Baby” revisits the
retro-soul vibe of the opening track with a gorgeously melody and sticky chorus.
The Black Keys have come a long way from their three-chord
garage-blues origins as an ersatz ‘Rust Belt’ White Stripes doppelganger,
finding their own voice in a high-octane blend of styles that is as classic as
it is contemporary. (Nonesuch Records, released October 12, 2011)
Review originally published by Blues Revue magazine, 2012
I’ve been a rabid Jason & the Scorchers fan for a full two decades
now, the band celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year. As such, it is
only fitting that Capitol/EMI saw fit to reissue the band’s excellent 1986
sophomore album, Still Standing on CD for the first time. While listening
to this album for the thousandth time, however, I came to a conclusion, maybe
even a mini-epiphany. Like a lot of rock ‘n’ roll visionaries, listeners
understood where the Scorchers were coming from or they didn’t; you got ‘em or
you ignored them.
The Scorchers’ unique blend of country twang,
roots-rock, and punk fury didn’t play well on MTV in the mid-‘80s and it didn’t
sell many records, but it sure garnered a fair bit of critical acclaim. When the
going got tough, though – as it often did during the Reagan ‘80s – there was
nobody better at getting on stage and blowing away thoughts of your overdue car
payment or impending rent than Jason & the Nashville Scorchers. Any night,
in any venue, the Scorchers gave such cult-fave heavyweights as the Replacements
a run for their money as the best damn rock ‘n’ roll band in the land.
Jason & the Scorchers’ Still Standing
Although they were, perhaps, the most dynamic and consistent live band
playing the rock ‘n’ roll circuit during the mid-to-late 1980s, the Scorchers’
label wasn’t pleased with the exposure and acclaim afforded the band’s debut,
Lost & Found. Rather than wait for the band’s live performances to
create word-of-mouth excitement (and sell records), the label recruited hard
rock producer Tom Werman (Motley Crue) to helm the all-important second album.
The resulting production and the accompanying image “make-over” provided the
band with a glossy sound and glam appearance that dismayed long-time fans.
Even Werman’s slick, metal-tinged production couldn’t hide the Scorchers’
cowtown roots, however. If Still Standing polished a few of the band’s
rough edges, it by turns emphasized Jason’s manic vocals, Warner Hodges’
raging fretwork, and the big beat rhythms of bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer
Perry Baggs.
After all these years, Still Standing sounds
like a revelation. Jason’s songwriting skills had matured nicely between the
early Fervor EP and this second full-length LP, his masterful wordplay
weaving wonderful story songs fraught with emotion and power. Rough-and-ready
rockers like “Golden Ball & Chain”, “Shotgun Blues”, and a wild Scorchers
reading of the Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” emphasize the band’s punk
mindset, Hodges whirling like a dervish, his axework underlining Jason’s
growing confidence in his vocal abilities. What made the band’s approach work
as well as it did is that the members never thought of themselves as punk
rockers, not in the classic British sense of the word, at least. They were
country punks, possessing all of the piss and vinegar of their big city
counterparts; Jason, Warner, Jeff and Perry making their bones playing to
hostile crowds in crappy honky-tonks and dangerous roadhouses.
Country Roots & Punk Attitude
To this punk attitude, the Scorchers added a country traditionalism that
was as firmly rooted in Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and George Jones as any
alt-country band today can claim. Jason was the son of a midwestern farmer;
the remaining Scorchers were brought up in the Nashville area, Hodges playing
with his parent’s gospel band. When punk hit Nashville in the late 1970s,
though, it hit hard, offering a stark alternative to the “countrypolitan”
sound of “Music Row” in the 1960s and early ‘70s. The Ramones’ first
appearance in the Music City, at the legendary Exit/Inn in 1979, would change
the rules forever. Only a hundred or so people attended this mythical show,
but all of them started bands, it would seem. Early ‘80s Nashville shows by
folks like Black Flag, the Replacements, and X would spur further creativity
and evolution of the growing local music scene.
The Scorchers
absorbed these changing musical currents, mostly through the contributions of
Johnson and Baggs, but would remain truer to their country roots than many of
their west coast-based “cowpunk” counterparts. Still Standing manages
to retain a fair share of the twang, especially on slower songs like “Good
Things Come To Those Who Wait” and “Take Me To Your Promised Land”. These were
not so much “power ballads,” like those delivered by hair metal bands, but
rather country torch songs, tortured with emotion, Jason’s image-filled lyrics
and potent vocal phrasing backed by a classic honky-tonk shuffle. On stage,
these slower-paced songs would provide a counterpoint to the band's balls-out
rockers, allowing the audience time to catch its breath. Tunes like “My Heart
Still Stands With You” have aged well with time and sound as fresh today as
fifteen years ago.
To the remastered reissue of
Still Standing, the label has added three bonus songs. The gem
“Greetings From Nashville”, penned by former Nashville resident Tim Krekel, is
a longtime Scorchers favorite (and perhaps the only lyrical snapshot of the
Southern underground of the 1980s). The previously unreleased “Route 66”, a
live staple of the band, is provided a typical raucous treatment while “The
Last Ride”, an unreleased instrumental, proves for once and for all that
Warner Hodges was one of the greatest six-string madmen of the 1980s.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Still Standing should have broken the Scorchers through to the
mainstream, with three or four potentially big singles deserving more than the
nonexistent airplay they received. Johnson would subsequently leave the band
to join Nashville Goth-rockers Guilt on their sojourn to L.A. and the
Scorchers would slightly alter their sound again with their third album,
Thunder & Fire.
The band broke-up at the end of the
‘80s and got back together in 1995 for another run at the brass ring. Core
members Jason Ringenberg and Warner Hodges still perform as the Scorchers
today and through all of the band’s trials and tribulations, they have
retained an enormously loyal fan base throughout the past twenty years. If the
Scorchers are, indeed, the ultimate cult band, Still Standing is
quintessential Jason & the Scorchers. Get it and find out what all the
fuss is about… (EMI America, reissued September 5th, 2002)
Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2002
