Conway Twitty Archives

Review: ‘Once More: Jenni Muldaur & Teddy Thompson Sing The Great Country Duets’

Posted by Seuras Og at 7:30 am No Responses »

Sep 112023

Yes, Once More does and should sound familiar, it being the completion of a project started some time ago, with Jenni Muldaur and Teddy Thompson tackling the great country songbook, specifically as it relates to the duet format. Initially envisaged as a series of three E.P.s, it seemed to grind to a halt after the first two. These two second generation singers had memorably tackled the pair covering first Porter (Wagoner) and Dolly (Parton), the second George (Jones) and Tammy (Wynette). And then we waited.

This time, rather than a third EP, this release is a full-length disc, compiling the first 2 EPs and adding a further four songs. Again the mastermind behind this project is David Mansfield, veteran producer and player, responsible also for Teddy Thompson’s recent My Love Of Country. It seems pointless to repeat and rehearse the opinions around the first eight songs on this album: the songs and our view of them remain the same. But let’s give due space to the new butcher’s handful.

But who, you ask, who are the third and final set of salute recipients? Do the songs “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries,” “We’re Caught Between Love And A Love Affair,” “Makin’ Believe” and “After The Fire Is Gone” help? I would have to confess that unless you are reasonably old or a hardcore C&W purist, these won’t be the songs you have been humming along to much recently, but your Ma and Pa may well be able to help, as Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn (for it is they) were huge in the 1970s, probably the most successful pairing of the three sets of artists this release honors. Already stars in their own right, and an odd pairing, the suave ladies’ man and the no-nonsense women’s champion, but it gelled like a dream, with an album a year, 1971 – 1981, bar 1980, and all 12 singles going top 10 in the country charts, the first 5 effortlessly hitting the number one spot. Back then again they went to their solo careers and solo success, bar a further single finale, which fared less well, in 1988.

First of M&T doing T&L is “When the Fire is Gone,” a surprisingly, um, liberal take on romance along the lines of Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” basically telling you to go a-lookin’ when the “fire” is gone at home: “Love Is Where You Find It.” This was the duo’s biggest hit, their conservative audience maybe missing the thrust of the song. Ted ‘n’ Jen stray little from the template, the first thing being to note that the song is set a semitone down than Thompson’s usual croon, at least in the verses.

“Makin’ Believe” suggests there possibly lingers some reticence, with the lyrical duo keeping up the pretense. Once again the rendition presented here much as the original, unlike the earlier two duos featured, if with a slightly more down-home feel. I guess this may be that they are slightly more contemporary anyway. (Slightly.) Most of the embellishment: piano, fiddle, steel, is Mansfield, and it is well measured and contained, courtesy Mansfield’s capable production.

I’m going to keep up the conceit about these four sings being connected, with “We’re Caught Between a Love and a Love Affair,” with its talk of sleeping around only when they can, as each also care for their woman and man respectively. Heady stuff! And there I was thinking Nashville looked down on such shenanigans, officially at least!

The final song shows they’re still at it, for “Picking’ Wild Berries,” that the excuse given for their turning up sweaty and stained on return to their respective homes. (I confess all this had me checking out the Twitty/Lynn real life relationship; seems they actually were just good friends, with Twitty and Lynn’s husband being also best buddies.) A chirpy little number in the original, with here the cheesiness dialed down a bit, if still the rockiest track here. Which isn’t a whole lot.

Actually the weakest of the three parts, I wonder whether that is the reason for the bundling of these four songs into the overall Once More collection, rather than letting them having a life on their own EP. Nonetheless, as a whole, it is altogether appealing enough, if uncertain who the core demographic is that it might be aimed toward. Will those drawn in by the Thompson and Muldaur names will necessarily have room for this, so soon after Thompson’s solo country disc last month? Or maybe this is aimed, fairly and squarely, at the (even more) mature audience at home, with fond memories of the original pairings, and maybe enough twinkle in their eyes to recall their own berry pickin’ days? If so, there is a further treat for such purchasers, able be to see it is on the old Sun label, with the traditional yellow design.

Once More Tracklisting:

Just Someone I Used to Know
Once More
Just Between You and Me
Put It Off Until Tomorrow
Golden Ring
It’s So Sweet
Take Me
We’re Gonna Hold On
After The Fire Is Gone
Makin’ Believe
We’re Caught Between a Love and a Love Affair
Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries

Review: Willie Nelson’s ‘I Don’t Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard’

Posted by Seuras Og at 9:00 am No Responses »

Mar 092023

With a work ethic that dwarfs musicians a third of his age, good ol’ Willie keeps pumping ’em out, praise be. When listening to him sounding impossibly youthful on I Don’t Know a Thing About Love, his tribute to famed songwriter/contemporary/buddy Harlan Howard, it is impossible to believe Nelson turns 90 at the end of next month. These songs are staples by now, avoiding any purely Nashville C&W silo, so he and (largely) his regular crew, can imbue these songs with some outlaw life, verve and, where necessary, pathos.

It is over 20 years since Harlan Howard died, aged 74, in 2002. Despite that, his songs have remained timeless, seeming to avoid being locked into any of the stylistic cliches of the last century. Striking lucky only a year or two after he began to write, he swiftly scored a couple of major country chart hits, with massive crossover success of the second of those, one you’ll know, his best known song, “Heartaches By The Number,” which Guy Mitchell took to the top of the pop charts in 1959. Unrestricting himself to Nashville, he wasn’t even averse to dabbling in R’n’B, penning “The Chokin’ Kind,” a hit for Joe Simon in 1969. Howard summed up his writing style with the legendarily pithy phrase, since adopted as the yardstick of a good country song, “three chords and the truth.”

I Don’t Know a Thing About Love bounces out the corral convincingly with “Tiger By The Tail,” all chunky guitar twangs and Nelson sounding like he’s having a hoot. Howard cowrote this song (and many others) with Buck Owens, and it gave Owens his biggest hit. It was inspired by the Esso/Exxon tagline of the day, around putting a tiger in your tank. Nelson here certainly sounds as if he has one in his. That aforementioned Joe Simon hit follows, with Nelson slowing it down, stripping out the funk, finding a classic truck stop weepie in the remains. Those of us who can never wait for the inevitable appearance of Mickey Raphael’s mournful harp on any Nelson record need wait no longer, as Raphael blows a corker on this one, ahead a typically stuttering solo from Trigger. (Trigger? Google it, in the context of Willie Nelson.)

Heartaches always a stock in trade for Howard, “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got A Heartache)” could almost be a rerun for the better known song, itself not included, perhaps as Nelson covered it before, if back in 1965, on Country Music Favorites, Willie Nelson Style. A pity, as that was not Nelson’s finest moment, arguably before he hit his stride. Nevertheless, this lighter song gets a good seeing-to that doesn’t disappoint. Mike Johnson’s steel is especially good. As is the piano, provided by Jim “Moose” Brown, for another tears-in-your-beer number, “Life Turned Her That Way,” another short doozy of a harmonica interlude from Raphael, bookending with more whining steel. The title track may be the weakest song in the set; it’s pleasant enough, but Nelson can do this sort of thing in his sleep, it sounding he here he was on automatic pilot.

Thankfully, that is retrieved by a sterling version of Howards’s other best-known song, “Streets Of Baltimore,” popularized to more modern audiences by Gram Parsons and Dwight Yoakam. Lyrically it could be the flip of “Life Turned Her That Way,” taken from the view of the embittered husband rather than those with a kindlier view. The band play it like the best Texas bar band in the world, and hey, maybe they are. “Busted” here manages to find a middle road between the best-known other versions of this song, capturing Johnny Cash’s swagger with Ray Charles’ soul, with Raphael puffing and blowing like an old bluesman. Moose’s organ is great, too.

“She Called Me Baby” captures a glossy retro feel, in waltz time, with lots of echo on the steel and the guitars. That’s lots of echo, and I feel the 50’s Western swing mood deliberate. It is certainly better than the gloopy strings when Charlie Rich covered it and had a hit. (It would have been interesting had there been an effort to look at it in the style of Candi Staton, who also had a hit with it, changing the sex of the protagonist!) “Too Many Rivers” returns to the template elsewhere, with Nelson in as fine vocal fettle as anywhere on this project, he presenting the words convincingly and believably. Trigger gets to show his chops again. Finally, and to close this engaging album comes “Beautiful Annabel Lee,” a sweet song of thwarted childhood love, steel and harp the fuel that feeds this one. A bit soppy, but since when was this sort of music not?

Nelson could possibly put anything out at this stage of his career, and have it praised by default. To be fair, I Don’t Know a Thing About Love stands up on its own legs, irrespective, as does indeed his last album. And for that matter the one before that. So, it is true you do have to have a fair bit of love for country, and it may not quite steer sufficient into Americana crossover territory for some, but that is their problem. Any lover of Nelson and any covers lover should have a field day here.

I Don’t Know a Thing About Love Track Listing:

1. Tiger By The Tail (Buck Owens cover)
2. The Chokin’ Kind (Waylon Jennings cover)
3. Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got A Heartache) (Buck Owens cover)
4. Life Turned Her That Way (Little Jimmie Dickens cover)
5. I Don’t Know A Thing About Love (Conway Twitty cover)
6. Streets Of Baltimore (Bobby Bare cover)
7. Busted (Johnny Cash with the Carter Family cover)
8. She Called Me Baby (Harlan Howard cover)
9. Too Many Rivers (Claude Gray cover)
10. Beautiful Annabel Lee (Burl Ives cover)

The Best Bee Gees Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 19 Responses »

Jul 292020

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Despite the fact that Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb have sold upwards of 120 million records, they can sometimes seem oddly underrated. They aren’t regarded with the reverence afforded to other artists that emerged during roughly the same era, like The Rolling Stones or The Who. They haven’t generated the same level of dramatic intrigue as Elton John or Queen. And discovering their music was never part of some traditional teenage rite of passage like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. But while they don’t seem to receive near the same level of acclaim as the aforementioned artists, their music has remained as utterly ubiquitous as just about all of them. There are few other artists as essential to documenting the sound of an era as The Bee Gees were to the late ’70s.

Throw the Here At Last…Bee Gees… Live album from 1977 on the turntable or queue up the stream. You will be confronted with a veritable assembly line of perfectly constructed, exquisitely performed pop songs. Take a step back and really listen. The outlandish songwriting gift on display is nothing short of mind-blowing, You might think, how is it even possible to have written this many incredible songs? And those are just 20 or so selected tracks Barry, Robin, and Maurice had done up to that point – before Saturday Night Fever! There were dozens more to come.

We were overwhelmed by the number of incredible covers of both Bee Gees classics and deep cuts and their glorious diversity. But we really shouldn’t have been surprised. Despite the band itself not always getting its due, the Bee Gees’ songs remain for everyone and forever.

– Hope Silverman

The list begins on Page 2.