Friday, August 22, 2014

Blue Country / Tomorrow Night

Blue Country (Joe Dassin)

There are some albums that just sneak up on me.  Lately I've been listening to this Joe Dassin record that I picked up in a thrift store in Vernon a few months ago. A lot.




It's a fairly standard late-70's country record - just in French (mostly - except, oddly, for a cover of Tony Joe White's Polk Salad Annie).  The musicians are great (Nashville vets mostly - Kenneth Buttrey et al).  The song selection is great.  The whole thing is warm and delicious and kind of cheesy.  But so fun to listen to..  particularly on grey, rainy, muggy late-summer mornings.  Here's the title track from the Johnny Cash show:


Tomorrow Night (Lonnie Johnson)

In Cinci last week I made it to Shake It records - and it was a summer weekday (as opposed to a post-Christmas weekend when I usually go), so I had the store to myself more or less.  Thumbing through the Blues records I found an interesting-looking double album of Lonnie Johnson stuff, with minimal liner notes or context, just a lot of music.  Cheap.  So I picked it up and it's been wrestling with Blue Country for turntable time.

He has a polish, a sophistication (particularly compared to Patton / Skip James / et. al.), but a depth of feeling and an amazing ability to put a song across.  There are echoes of Emmett Miller or Furry Lewis or Django or Gershwin here - the blurry lines between blues and jazz and pop.  It's just good.  So very good.

A taste:







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