Category Archives: My Back Pages

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 4

WikiMediaCommons

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Those of you who have been reading my weekly No Depression columns over the years or following my daily Facebook posts at The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily hopefully view me as an observant musical news aggregator and occasional agitator. I usually spend an hour or so each day on the hunt for interesting articles, news stories, photography, art, and video clips that are hiding in plain sight but require a bit of sleuthing to assemble in one place. It’s done only out of curiosity, and to expand my own musical knowledge while staying on top of the new and discovering the unique. The act of sharing it with y’all is simply my hobby; no different than assembling little boats inside a bottle or building birdhouses in the workshop. So instead of picking one topic for this particular Broadside, here are a few things I hope you find of interest.

The Queen of Rockabilly Partners with a Runaway

Wanda Jackson, the 80-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist who began performing back in 1955 and often toured with (and briefly dated) her friend Elvis Presley, is not quite ready to retire. In a 20-year period, she hit the charts with 30 singles and to date has released over 40 albums. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 and two years later released a collaboration with Jack White titled The Party Ain’t Over, and followed that up a year later with Unfinished Business, produced by Justin Townes Earle.

The new project will be released in 2019, and Joan Jett will be producing a set of new songs co-written by Wanda along with some Nashville-based folks including Angaleena Presley of the Pistol Annies and “Ex’s and Oh’s” singer Elle King.”The songs on this project are very dear to my heart, as a lot of them are based on my own life experiences,” said Jackson. “I’m really looking forward to sharing what Joan and I have been working on.”

The Elmore James Tribute Album

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Delta blues master Elmore James, last January Sylvan Songs Records released a tribute titled Strange Angels: In Flight With Elmore James that features Tom Jones, Bettye LaVette, Keb’ Mo’, Warren Haynes, Billy Gibbons, Shelby Lynne and others with all profits going to charity. Since it came out just after the holiday season, it’s possible you may have missed this gem, although it was written up in Rolling Stone (who reads that anymore?) and posted on the NPR website.

Music Radar has recently published an excellent biography of Elmore that I highly recommend, and it includes interviews with a number of the tribute’s participants.

The Sweetheart of the Rodeo Tour

You may have heard by now that Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman are teaming up with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives for a number of concerts to celebrate the release of The Byrds’ 1968 classic album (McGuinn and Hillman are unable to use the band’s name — it’s owned by David Crosby but you never know, he might pop up as a surprise guest along the way). Tickets went on sale recently here in NYC for a September show at Town Hall.

Although I went to buy mine the day they were released to the public, it was already sold out to folks who had Ticketmaster’s “platinum” access and could snatch them up in a presale two days earlier. Now they’re being scalped at $350 each, so unless someone out there wants to help me out, I’ll be home alone that night watching Netflix. It’s interesting to note that the show in Nashville at the Ryman had (as of this writing) quite a few seats available at $35 face value. Check out this Brooklyn Vegan article to see if the show is coming to your town.

John Coltrane Goes Top 40

John Coltrane’s posthumously released Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, with songs recorded back in 1963, was just released debuted at #21 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. In an article published on Forbes‘ website, tenor saxophonist and one-time Coltrane collaborator Sonny Rollins likened The Lost Album‘s discovery to “finding a new room in the Great Pyramid.”

Coltrane’s legend as one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time sadly didn’t blossom until after his death in 1967 at 40 years old. While Giant Steps and A Love Supreme would each offer excellent entry ramps to his music for the new listener, this new album also offers a fresh insight into what made Coltrane so unique.

An Albert Lee Interview

Australia’s wonderful Beat Magazine recently reported on Albert Lee’s current tour with Peter Asher that is taking him throughout the world. At age 74 the versatile guitarist, known for his super-fast guitar picking based on the styles of Chet Atkins and James Burton, is doing a set with Asher that is acoustic and focused on both stories and songs.

“There are a lot of good players out there,” Lee says. “I started out loving country music, but country has changed a lot and I can’t say that I really like a lot of the stuff coming out of Nashville now — they’re good players, good singers — but the kind of music I like is called Americana. It was always country music until about 20 years ago when it became more pop. You don’t seem to hear a clean guitar on those Nashville records any more, it’s more of a rock and roll guitar.”

Keith Richards

Every night at The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily I post a video to close out the day. I like to mix up the old and new, and try to find things lost or forgotten. One night it could be Jackie Wilson on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on another maybe June Carter and Don Gibson doing a duet of “Oh Lonesome Me.” This one is likely something you’ve seen before, but I just came across it recently and it’s one of my favorites. Let’s go with Keith down to South Carolina, where I hear there are many tall pines.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, here at therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Desert Island Discs: My Eight Favorite Songs

Desert Island Discs/BBC Radio 4 -Illustration from The Daily Mail 2012

I’m probably the last person on the planet to discover that Desert Island Discs wasn’t merely a feature in Tower Record’s free monthly Pulse magazine, but a 76-year-old radio show on BBC Radio 4. The idea for the program came from Roy Plomley, an aspiring actor who had supported himself with odd jobs. It worked out pretty well for him, as he became the host on the first broadcast on Jan. 29, 1942, and stuck with it for another 43 years. There’ve been well over 3,000 guests and the concept has remained the same over time: as a castaway on a desert island, you can bring eight discs (that would each have just a single song), one book, and a luxury item.

While music is the dominant part of the program, that “luxury item” is the most interesting. Bruce Springsteen picked a guitar, author Norman Mailer wanted just “one stick of marijuana,” and Simon Cowell chose a mirror so he wouldn’t miss himself. According to a 2012 New Yorker article on the show’s 70th anniversary, “other luxury items have included spike heels, footballs, a Ferris wheel, garlic, cigarettes, a dojo, mascara, wine, a globe, an ironing board, a symphony’s worth of musical instruments, a cheeseburger machine, and, in the same category, albeit much grander, Sybille Bedford’s desire for a French restaurant in full working order.”

When Tower’s Pulse was still around I used to read the lists that were sent in, and it always seemed to be put together with the need to be eclectic, unique, and super cool, which makes sense. If you’re going to etch something in stone that will be around long after you’ve gone, you don’t want people saying “What an idiot … he’s got Vic Damone on his list.” On the other hand, any and all choices are going to be judged somewhere between brilliant and laughable, so I’ll be happy to give it a go and y’all can think what you want.

My luxury item: Now please get your mind out of the gutter when I say this because she’s young enough to be my granddaughter, but my first thought was Kylie Jenner. She’s a mom, reality TV star, cosmetics mogul, has really cute dogs and is currently worth $900,000,000. And most important: there is no way her mother-manager Kris will let her top client escape her grasp, so a fairly quick rescue shall occur. C’mon, isn’t it better than Simon’s mirror?

My book: Music USA: The Rough Guide by Richie Unterberger. Released back in 1999 by the travel and reference publishers, it is the best American big-tent roots music resource book of its kind that I’ve ever come across. It’s big and dense and written beautifully.

Eight songs in no particular order. Could be different if you ask me tomorrow. But for now, try these on for size. Oh … I’ve decided to leave Kylie home and bring a guitar instead.

Moby Grape – “8:05”

Jules Shear and Rosanne Cash – “Who’s Dreaming Who”

The Tuttles and AJ Lee – “Hickory Wind”

Leonard Cohen – “Dance Me to the End of Love”

ANOHNI and Lou Reed – “Candy Says”

Meg Baird – “The Finder”

The Handsome Family – “Gold”

Ana Egge with The Stray Birds – “Rock Me (Divine Mother)”

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Captain America and Old-Time Music In Dittyville

Erynn Marshall and Carl Jones/ oldtimetikiparlour.com

On the fourth day of July I took a southbound train and sat across the aisle from a famous superhero. With temperatures expected to soar into the mid-90s, his red, white, and blue latex head-to-toe costume did not seem to be the best option, nor did the bulky round shield he navigated to fit into the empty seat next to him. As I looked around, I estimated that eight out of ten passengers on the crowded train were staring at their devices while listening to music or podcasts, unfazed in the presence of Captain America, who also was plugged in. The mask he wore covered his entire head, nose, and mouth, allowing you to see only his eyes. Every now and then he’d pull it down just a bit to scratch a scruffy beard. For much of the ride I tried to imagine what sort of music the good Captain might be listening to and whether the latex over his ears distorted or muted the sound. And I highly doubted that he — nor anyone else in that car — was listening to the same old-time music that was being pumped into my own aural cavities.

The dictionary defines bogtrotter as a mildly insulting epithet, which led me to spend too much time researching exactly what a bog is. If you’re interested, it’s a wetland that accumulates peat, and they are either classified by their location in the landscape and source of water or by their nutrients. The next time you visit Latvia you might want to check out the Great Kemeri Bog Boardwalk, which may not offer the same thrills as Atlantic City or Venice Beach. That aside, the video above is from a band neither Irish nor Latvian, but that represents some of the finest old-time music from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. As they explain it on their website, “The Galax Bogtrotters are one of a number of local bands over the last century to use the bogtrotters nickname for the Scotch-Irish settlers who migrated to America to find a better life. The first band to embrace the term was the original Bogtrotters — a popular group in the 1930’s featuring fiddler Uncle Eck Dunford.”

Old Time Jubilations was released a little over a year ago and I recently came across it as I was making my way through the various projects of Erynn Marshall, the Canadian-born old-time fiddle player, teacher, and ethnomusicologist who is now based in Galax, Virginia, along with her husband and musical partner Carl Jones. For this project he plays mandolin and they are joined by Eddie Bond doing vocals, fiddle, and banjo; Bond’s wife, Bonnie, on bass; and Eric Hill playing guitar. These videos were shot during their 2017 tour of Australia, and Joseph Dejarnette is subbing on bass. Every track on the album showcases a tight and energetic band of virtuoso players, and it’s interesting to note that this is somewhat of a side project since each member also performs solo or with other musical configurations.

If you are fans of Jason and Pharis Romero there’s a good chance that Erynn Marshall is a familiar name, as she was the third member of The Haint’s Old Time Stringband, which released only one album, back in 2009, titled Shout Monah. Erynn’s move to Virginia allowed her to fully immerse herself in the culture, history, and musical traditions of the area, and along with Carl they established Dittyville, a state of mind as much as it is a website, that lets them offer online lessons for fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar, and post their extensive itineraries. They actively perform at the ever-growing number of old-time music festivals that span the globe and they each lead classes and seminars at summer camps that offer anyone the opportunity to learn from the masters.

That’s an original song written by Carl, and it appears on their first “official” duet album. Sweet Memories … never leave which came out in 2015. They each have released solo, duet, and ensemble albums, produced two instructional DVDs, and are currently working on their own books. The aforementioned online classes can easily be accessed through Concert Window and are downright cheap, with a minimum donation of only $10.

As it turns out, Captain America is himself an old-time throwback who first appeared in 1940 as a patriotic supersoldier who fought the bad guys in World War II and even punched Adolf Hitler in the nose. Over the decades the story arcs have changed, his comic books have had three different publishers, he died and was reborn, and for a time he resided in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, which is also the home of the Jalopy Theater and School of Music. Being New York’s epicenter of traditional music, it may not be so farfetched to imagine that my train companion was also tappin’ his toes to an Appalachian tune. Brothers in arms, all is well down in Dittyville.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

A Ride Across America in Elvis’ 1963 Rolls Royce

Mike Coykendall, left, and M. Ward in the documentary “The King.” (David Kuhn / Oscilloscope Pictures)

For a film that only a few thousand people have probably seen to date, Eugene Jarecki’s The King has been receiving an extraordinary amount of press coverage and positive reviews. Formerly titled Promised Land and filmed against the backdrop of the 2016 election and ascension of Trump-ism, it is less a documentary and more one man’s celluloid essay on the American Dream. It is certainly not another biopic about Elvis Presley, so there is nothing you’ll learn about the man that you already don’t know. Playing at two theaters in New York and another in Los Angeles, it is a gem in search of a jewelry store. And while it will do a limited summer run of art houses throughout the country, it won’t likely end up at your suburban multiplex popcorn palace alongside this summer’s superhero blockbusters. So keep this film in the back of your mind for when it gets picked up by Netflix or Amazon, because it’s one to be seen.

It’s described by the filmmaker as “a musical road trip across America.” The concept of taking Elvis’ restored 1963 Rolls Royce on a countrywide cruise along the highways and backroads is brilliant, but dropping a few dozen people in the backseat for only brief snippets of conversation and edited performances leaves a music fan only wanting more. Thirty seconds of The Handsome Family is barely a tidbit of an appetizer for a potential feast featuring John Hiatt, Emi Sunshine and The Rain, the Stax Academy All-Stars, M. Ward, and Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers. The full performance of “Rich Man’s World (1%)” from rapper Immortal Technique has been released as a music video, and I am hopeful that more left on the cutting room floor will be forthcoming.

Using thoughts and recollections to measure the impact of Elvis on our society, Jarecki relies on observations from Alec Baldwin, James Carville, Rosanne Cash, Chuck D, Peter Guralnick, Emmylou Harris, Ethan Hawke, Van Jones, Ashton Kutcher, Greil Marcus, and Elvis’ friends, sidemen, and others to illustrate where we once were and what we’ve become today. There is a parallel that I see in the rise and fall of the boy from Tupelo, and the trajectory of post-WWII America. Take a look around you on all fronts: economics, politics, the division between wealth and poverty, loss of jobs and manufacturing, the increase of xenophobia and racism, and the corrosion of addiction from inner-city to suburb to rural. America in 2018 is Elvis in 1977: a body neglected and in decline, a drug-addled brain and a cadre of enablers.

Whether you buy into this premise or not, the film is no less compelling to watch. The cinematography is exceptional, allowing one to connect with the expansiveness and beauty of our country as well as the deterioration. The scenes shot inside the Rolls Royce are cloistered and claustrophobic, successfully illustrating what Elvis must have felt for much of his public life. There is no spoiler alert needed … you already know the ending. But I’ll close this out with the King’s final scene: Elvis performing live in concert as his life is about to slip away. He’s clearly a man on the edge of death, and in four minutes he gives you everything he has left. It’s a last gasp. Welcome to America, now go home.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Most of my articles are available here at therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com .

We Need Pete Seeger Now More Than Ever

Wikimedia Commons

At the opening to this year’s Great Hudson River Revival, a music festival an hour north of Manhattan that was founded by the late Pete and Toshi Seeger 40 years ago and emphasizes environmental activism, I think it might have been either folksinger Josh White Jr. or Tom Chapin who invoked the words “a musical antibody for a political virus” while leading a few thousand people in song. Participatory group singing has always been the calling card of the Seeger clan and their extended family, and that spirit continues.

Pete Seeger had said that “No one can prove a damn thing, but I think that singing together gives people some kind of a holy feeling. And it can happen whether they’re atheists, or whoever. You feel like, ‘Gee, we’re all together.’ I like the sound of average voices more than trained voices, especially kids singing a little off pitch. They have a nice, rascally sound.” (New York Times)

June 18, 2018: McAllen, Texas — Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. More than 1,100 people were inside the large, dark facility that’s divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children. The cages in each wing open out into common areas to use portable restrooms. The overhead lighting in the warehouse stays on around the clock. Stories have spread of children being torn from their parents’ arms, and parents not being able to find where their kids have gone. A group of congressional lawmakers visited the same facility Sunday and were set to visit a longer-term shelter holding around 1,500 children — many of whom were separated from their parents. (Associated Press)

Throughout Father’s Day weekend as I wandered through the festival grounds, it was hard to tamp down the taste of bile emanating from the actions of a despicable and morally bankrupt administration that has ripped to shreds the values and morals of our great land. And yes, while a folk festival is indeed a clustered group of mostly white progressives, and despite the shortcomings of inclusion, it still felt like a better place to spend a hot summer day. As the sweet sounds came pouring from the stages, there were many musicians raising their voices and sharing their anger and frustration, occasionally tempered with hope. At a small workshop beneath a tent, Rhiannon Giddens spoke a harsh truth: “If you want to know what’s happening today, don’t read newspapers. Read the history books.” This song seemed fitting for the day: “Mal Hombre.”

Willie Nelson has issued a statement on the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The country-music icon and Texas native ripped the Department of Justice’s policy under President Trump. “What’s going on at our Southern border is outrageous. Christians everywhere should be up in arms. What happened to ‘Bring us your tired and weak and we will make them strong?’ This is still the promise land,” Nelson says, citing lyrics from songwriter David Lynn Jones’ “Living in the Promiseland.” (Rolling Stone)

Willie does not stand alone.

Singer Sara Bareilles wrote: “I am so sad and feel so helpless about the families being separated. This is beyond inhumane … I am just appalled. I am grateful for those sharing how to engage and help, thank God for you. The idea that there is anyone who believes this is justice is simply heartbreaking.” When House Speaker Paul Ryan sent out a “Happy Father’s Day” message, singer John Legend replied: “Seriously, f**k you. Reunite the families at the border and we can talk about father’s day.” (Channel 3000)

I imagine that many of you would rather read about the Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore set at the festival — it was better than I could possibly have imagined, and the new album has been No. 1 on the Billboard Blues Chart since its release. And there were a few dozen other singers and bands I had been looking forward to hearing that didn’t disappoint. And maybe I could have shared a little about the concert I saw earlier in the week with Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, and Dwight Yoakam. It could have been a great week for music, but much of it was buried under sadness for the families torn apart.

June 19, 2018: A group of more than 600 United Methodist clergy and church members are bringing church law charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration crackdown. The group accuses Sessions, a fellow United Methodist, of violating Paragraph 270.3 of the denomination’s Book of Discipline. He is charged under church law with child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and “dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church.” (NBC News)

“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, ‘How did it happen so fast?’ ”

— Pete Seeger

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Writer’s Block Special: Gene Krupa, The Borscht Belt and Waffle House

Drummerworld.com/Modified by Prisma

Let me state the obvious at the outset: I got nothing for you. Total writer’s block. Spent the last few weeks immersed in reading four Elmore Leonard novels from the 1970s and have been binge-watching murder and mayhem on Netflix from all over the globe. I also have Movie Pass, the service which allows me to go out and see one film each day for only ten bucks a month, and although it’s yet to become a daily addiction, it fills up my time. And then there’s my soundtrack of late: old time jazz, primarily between the twenties and forties. Punch Miller, the Arkansas Travellers, Gus Arnheim, Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet, The Goofus Five, Buster Bailey, and on and on. Over time I’ve also developed an appreciation for Benny Goodman, especially when he had Gene Krupa hittin’ the skins.

Up until the other day I had no idea that Krupa is credited with inventing the rimshot. A percussion technique on the snare drum that’s sometimes followed by a crash on the cymbal, it is described as “ba-dam tsss’” and has been often used to accentuate the punchline of a joke. It’s applied liberally by every late night talk show host during their monologues, and its roots are traced back to the great old summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in New York, when the primarily Jewish comedians of the Borscht Belt would entertain with a style of rapid-fire one-liners. No drums here, but a great example nevertheless.

On an unrelated topic, John Travolta returned to Brooklyn this week to promote his new film about gangster John Gotti. He visited Lenny’s Pizza on 86th Street, which was featured in the opening shot of Saturday Night Fever, and was honored by having a slice named after him. There was a large crowd that waited for hours to get an autograph or a selfie with the actor, and he showed up wearing a white leisure suit. A local politician made a speech and said Travolta’s performance in the 1977 film culturally put Brooklyn on the map. (I seriously doubt that.)

And finally on not stayin’ alive, I was a fan of writer and chef Anthony Bourdain’s television programs, and his death has shaken me. Rolling Stone‘s website paid tribute to his “numerous encounters with musicians” that were featured on his shows and it’s an excellent read. He carried a certain rhythm in his speech that I often found as comforting to listen to as the food he spoke of, and watching Parts Unknown was always an experience that seemed to bring faraway places and the people who live there a little bit closer to me. Never met him and didn’t know him, but he had that rare quality of being able to share both his fearlessness and fear. An imperfect man in an imperfect world. A non-comedic rimshot, a fade to black.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 3

Museum of Applied Art

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Surfing in the digital stream and scouring YouTube for new music, old tunes and whatever I can find of interest. Here’s a few things that caught my eyes and ears this season.

Amilia K Spicer

Amilia’s Wow and Flutter, which was released last year, is full of earworms. Calling her music “red-dirt noir,” she co-produced it with multi-instrumentalist Steve McCormick and put together with the help of friends like Eric Heywood on pedal steel, Tony Gilkyson and Gurf Morlix on guitars, Dylan/Stones bassist Daryl Johnson, and Wallflower/Foo Fighter Rami Jaffee on keyboards. Last week when I told her I couldn’t stop listening to it, she said “Yay! The Glue Album!” And so here we are: tunes that stick like bubblegum on a hot asphalt highway. We’ll kick it off with a live version of Spicer’s “Windchill” and then a video she directed and produced for “Fill Me Up.”

The Tillers

The Tillers‘ self-titled album came out last March and is their fifth in ten years. Based in Cincinnati, they started out playing the great folk classics of the ’50s and ’60s, busking on the corners and playing bars that pass around a hat for tips. Over time they have developed into a super-tight stringband that doesn’t strictly adhere to one genre or another. They often sound like old-time Appalachian, other times they’re the Ramones on acid. They gotta love Iris DeMent’s quote: “The Tillers … I could sit and listen to them all night long!”

Pat Reedy & The Longtime Goners

Pat Reedy is another musician who started out busking, making a name for himself on the streets of New Orleans. He put out a couple of albums with the Longtime Goners of great Cajun-style country before moving to Nashville and morphing into a band of honky-tonk outlaws. He’s an unabashed day-job construction worker who happens to write some great songs, and this summer he and the band are on the road promoting That’s All There Is (And There Ain’t Anymore).

Little Jimmy Dickens and the Columbia Classics Series

I’m going to close this out with two more tunes that each come from older compilations. The first is a Little Jimmy Dickens song that comes from the second volume of the five-disc Columbia Country Classics series. Born in Bolt, West Virginia, and standing at four-foot-eleven, he started out performing as Jimmy The Kid before he was discovered by Roy Acuff and signed to Columbia Records. He was a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry, joining in 1948 and making his final appearance just weeks before he passed away at age 94. Along with Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, and her husband Henry Cannon, he co-wrote “Hey Good Lookin’” sitting on an airplane in 1951. Only Williams got the songwriting credit.

Dave Rawlings Machine

Back in 2014 there was a one-night-only concert in New York’s Town Hall that was released as a film documentary along with a soundtrack album titled Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. It was far better than the original fictionalized feature film depicting a ’60s folksinger, and featured a ton of musicians, including Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, the Punch Brothers, Elvis Costello, Jack White, Joan Baez, and Marcus Mumford, and it was produced by T Bone Burnett. For me, this is the standout track, and in these unsettling times, one that really sticks.

his article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.