Posts Tagged ‘Glen Campbell’
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Waylon Jennings & the .357′s
Waylon Forever
If country music has taught us one thing over the last decade, it is to never underestimate an aging legend. With much of Nashville doing everything it can to zap tradition and creativity off the mainstream radar, recent efforts by Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Glen Campbell, Porter Wagoner, and Dolly Parton, among others, have quietly upheld the genre’s standards, in many cases producing some of the finest records of those artists’ esteemed careers.
The standard approach among these sets has been to build on an artist’s proven strengths with a younger-minded producer who understands what made the artist great in the first place. It’s a very smart compromise, rejuvenating the old-fashioned while still honoring an artist’s essential identity, and given its successful track record, one might expect the posthumous Waylon Forever to follow the same path and thereby fall easily into the hallowed company of Cash’s American Recordings or Lynn’s Van Lear Rose.
But a cursory listen-through the eight tracks here will quickly put such notions to rest. Waylon Forever is not a hiply updated reminder of what its namesake did throughout his multi-decade career, even as it features no less than six songs Jennings had previously recorded (with “I Found the Body” and a cover of Cream’s “White Room” being the newbies). It might not even be prudent to call the set a proper “album.” It sounds more akin to an unfinished home experiment with a little extra shine, which makes sense given the unusual circumstances leading to its production: son Shooter began recording the project with Waylon in 1995 (which found the former sixteen years old and the latter seven years from death), and the two reportedly arranged the songs here with some of the younger Jennings’ then-inspirations (Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, Pink Floyd, Cream) in mind. The result is a disjointed, scrappy, often weird, and occasionally quite inspired set of recordings that longtime Waylon fans will find fascinating and everyone else will likely scratch their heads at.
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Category Album Reviews
Tags: .357’s, Cream, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, Porter Wagoner, Shooter Jennings, Skinny Puppy, Waylon Jennings
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
Galveston
Glen Campbell
1969
Written by Jimmy Webb
Everything old becomes new again, especially in country music, which is as predictably cyclical as the rise and fall of the moon and sun. The string-drenched charm of Glen Campbell’s signature style is garnering hosannas rich with the joy of rediscovery, as it is used to interpret contemporary rock hits on his current record, Meet Glen Campbell.
It’s an effective project because Campbell has always been a quintessential singles artist, and the new record is like a brand new greatest hits collection culled from the best work of other performers. Among Campbell’s own best work, there are several classic country singles, four of which were million-sellers: “Wichita Lineman,” “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “Southern Nights” and the focus of this entry: “Galveston.”
Released during the height of the Vietnam War, “Galveston” is the inner monologue of a young soldier dreaming of home. The lyrics are striking in their brevity, as a compelling story is told in a mere fourteen lines. “Galveston, oh Galveston”, the full-voiced Campbell sings, “I still hear your sea winds blowin’, I still see her dark eyes glowin’. I was 21 when I left Galveston.”
As he’s on the battlefield, he’s wondering if she’ll still be waiting when he gets home, but his greatest fear isn’t that she’s forgotten him. It’s that she’ll be carrying the flame in vain: “I am so afraid of dying”, he wails, “before I dry the tears she’s crying.”
The production of the song is vintage Campbell, with sweeping orchestral strings and horns. Rather than swamp his performance, they underscore the powerful emotions he is expressing. They are the musical representation of the powerful sounds described in the lyric, both the “sea waves crashing” back home, and the “cannons flashing” on the battlefield. The fear that he is feeling while under attack is overwhelming, but the desire to get back home and see Galveston and the girl who’s waiting there pushes him on.
Campbell’s vocal is beyond reproach, with a particularly chilling “Galveston, oh Galveston” right before his fear of death is confessed. It’s an emotional release that is all the more powerful because of his restrained delivery of the lyric up until that point. And while writer Jimmy Webb didn’t pen it with Vietnam specifically in mind, the song had a heightened impact because of the climate it was released in. For similar reasons, this Campbell classic is worth revisiting today.
“Galveston” is the the latest in a series of articles showcasing Classic Country Singles. You can read previous entries at the Classic Country Singles page.
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
Glen Campbell
Meet Glen Campbell
It’s interesting how Glen Campbell covering contemporary rock songs also brings him back to his musical roots. When Johnny Cash took a similar route on his collaborations with Rick Rubin, it brought him back to the raw sound of his early days on Sun and Columbia. Here, Glen Campbell returns to the bright, shiny country-pop that wallpapered AM radio stations in the sixties and seventies, using compelling songs from a younger generation as his vehicle.
Surprisingly, it works. Campbell doesn’t transform the songs drastically from their original incarnations. Rather, he brings the pop flavors that lingered below the surface to the forefront, sweetening things up with layers of strings and his smooth vocals. His covers of the Travis hit “Sing” and Tom Petty’s “Walls” sound effortless, with Campbell’s voice and taste in production being a perfect match for the material.
The album is most effective when Campbell covers songs that take on added dimension when sung by an older man. Jackson Browne’s lament “These Days” is the highlight of the set, with the added gravitas of Campbell’s weathered voice bringing out deeper shades of regret and loneliness. On Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” Campbell sounds like a man asking for a path to salvation before it’s too late, rather than as a young man simply seeking direction in life.
A similar approach would have been more effective for Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” as Campbell’s strangely bouncy take lacks the subtle shades of bitterness and lingering affection underlying Billie Joe Armstrong’s masterful performance. Campbell misses the mark in the other direction on “Sadly Beautiful,” which would have benefited from a more spirited production to draw out the emotional contrasts and contradictions present in the lyric.
Even on the album closer, where Campbell tackles the John Lennon chestnut “Grow Old With Me,” he overdoes it, leaning too heavily on the strings and sounding somewhat disconnected from the lyric. But overall, Meet Glen Campbell is a reminder of what a stylist he is, and how effective he can be when wrapping his voice around a good pop melody. If listeners do truly meet Glen Campbell for the first time here, they’ll get a good introduction to the man’s talents, though they’ll have to go back a good distance to discover his best work.
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
In a surprising move, music legend and Country Music Hall of Famer Glen Campbell has chosen contemporary material for his upcoming covers album, Meet Glen Campbell. One of the songs included is the modern standard “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”, originally recorded by Green Day.
Here’s the press release:
In a legendary music career that spans more than five decades, Glen Campbell has achieved chart-topping, platinum-selling pop and country success singing everyday tales of life, love, work and heartache. For Meet Glen Campbell, his inspired, dynamic new studio album, the music icon has returned to his longtime label home, Capitol Records. Meet Glen Campbell will be released on August 19 on CD, limited edition vinyl and digitally.
The songs on the album all strike a personal and musical chord with Campbell. He has reinterpreted and re-imagined both older and contemporary songs with his own signature vocal and guitar arrangements. A true musician’s musician, Campbell’s distinct guitar playing, along with the clarity and emotion of his powerful vocal performance, come together to give new life to the songs he selected for Meet Glen Campbell.
The influential singer, guitarist and stylist, who has long made others’ songs his own, is doing it again, recording high-spirited, emotionally charged versions of tracks that have personally moved and inspired him. Campbell’s intimate performances convey an autobiographical and deeply personal connection to the album’s songs, which include Travis’ “Sing,” Tom Petty’s “Angel Dream” and “Walls,” The Replacements’ “Sadly Beautiful,” U2’s “All I Want Is You,” The Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” and Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” among others.
“I really like all of the songs and I had a great time recording them. While I didn’t write these songs, this sounds like a Glen Campbell album, which is important to me,” says Glen Campbell.
I can’t wait to hear your reactions to this one. Please keep the comments focused on the music. Enjoy!
Listen: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Official Site: Glen Campbell
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
100 Greatest Women
#15
Tanya Tucker
She was barely a teenager when she first appeared on the country music scene, but her voice had a tortured wisdom far beyond her years. Her early singles were dark and brooding slices of Southern Gothic, but over time she would mellow into one of the most consistently successful female country artists of all-time, with a span of hits stretching over three decades.
As a young child, Tucker was surrounded by music. Her older sister LaCosta was an aspiring country singer, and by the time Tanya turned eight, she had embraced the same dream. Her father Bo drove her across the West and Southwest, looking for opportunities for his youngest child and taking construction jobs wherever he could find them. She auditioned for a film in Utah, earning a small part, and sang at the Arizona State fair. In 1969, she was discovered by Mel Tillis, who put her on a show with him. This encouraged the family to move to Las Vegas, where Tucker was soon performing regularly.
While still shy of her thirteenth birthday, she recorded a demo tape that caught the attention of Billy Sherrill, head of A&R at Columbia. He was so impressed that he invited her to record for the label. On the first day that he presented her material, he played her what he thought would be the perfect song for a young teen artist: “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.” Tucker hated it, and passed on the song. Sherrill was taken aback, but the next day he returned with another song, “Delta Dawn.” It was a dark and mysterious tale of a 41 year old woman who wandered around town, looking for the deceased lover who was supposed to make her his bride.
The song was a smash, and set the tone for a stunning series of Southern Gothic singles from the throaty young vocalist. Her first #1 single, 1973′s “What’s Your Mama’s Name”, was about an old man desperately searching for the love child he’d learned about in a letter years ago. “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone”) was a love song seeking a promise to share a grave. Her darkest hit was the #1 smash “Blood Red and Goin’ Down”, where Tucker is a young girl following her father from bar to bar until he finds his cheating wife and her lover. “He sent me out to wait, but scared I looked back through the door. And Daddy left them both soaking up the sawdust on the floor.”
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