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My take on xpost Country Funk 3---this goes on a while, but doesn't tell about nearly all of it [17 tracks]:
Country Funk 3 1975-1982: Judging by round-ups on this site, I seem not to have heard 2012's Country Funk 1969-1975, but did peg 2014's Country Funk 2 1967-1974: (often very stoned, mainly too consistently happy (& sometimes self-congratz 4 bing funkee) to be more country than countryoid---Isn't Western Swing often damn happy? Yes, but it's Western) Well picky picky. So they're countryoid, so what. Self-congratz was more of a problem, but here the funkiness per se is more relaxed, more of a given, with suggestion of NOLA (and Memphis, thinking of early 70s Hi Rhythm): such as Dr. John discretion of the strut, chick-chick-chicken butt and peck of the clavinet and organ, even a savoir d' Allan Toussaint to the horns sometimes; somebody's been studying all that. Disco is a given too, but meant to sound eager–-so LIght In The Attic's catalog page puts it: As the 1970s began to wane and the 1980s approached, the Country Funk pallet expanded to include disco beats, heavy Moog synth bass lines and more clavinet than you could shake a stick at. Volume III shows artists continuing to buck traditional country tropes and production while embracing modern soul, disco, and coked-up 80s synth-pop. This is the true soundtrack of the Urban Cowboy. Saddle up, partners.
Welp, we might need a little help with that, hoss, cause the more disco this sounds, sometimes the more generic, the kind of disco that waned with the aforementioned 70s, 'til the whole per se genre hit a wall in early 80s, at the latest—sure, country tends to run a little behind with mainstream crossovers from the urban clubs etc., and deliberately so, after Saturday Night Fever was re-edited and spread through fly-over suburbs, and my friend's country-to-metro parents snuck downtown to take disco lessons at an Arthur Murray studio (busted by their kids, who suspected them of having joined a cult or somethin)---then and only then, with Revolta trading the white suit and chains of SAF for Urban Cowboy duds (though the actual soundtrack of that was not country funk-disco, cause aimed at the now post-disco mainstream, more like the New Traditionalism of 70s-80s cusp country, only softer-edged), could the country artists' embracing really begin, as they run to catch up with the disco train, now leaving the station. So they can sound excited, still happy, not too stoned now, professional, and certainly sem-romantically horny to a newly overt degree(a little anxious about that sometimes, but part of the excitement).
LITA mentions country tropes: Cousin Conway Twitty reports back, maybe sends us a postcard, about how if you go to the city, up high and look down, you can see folks setting "NIght Fires" on the ground, and those rhyme with "sweet desires," making the moon shine all night long, and he sounds like he loves to see people getting together, in the city and back home, people everywhere need it, just come on in, hallelujah!
Larry Jon Wilson's country trope trophy doesn't mention dancing or fire or desire or any fresh excitement, though he is guardedly hopeful, despite working down in Deatsville, which I know people from, and how it's got him down, and a preacher notices, says, "Come on along to my big church, and bring some money." Larry Jon, remembering his father taking him to a little country church, declines the invitation, says he's still looking for "Heaven on a dirt road." Music pulses under there like distant cousins of sandworms. A fairly dark atmosphere, but maybe just because he's tired with no streetlights; that's my hope.
Another country trope, though it was certainly and prob mainly a movie one too, for quite a while, had , still, in the years these tracks were made, to do with singles running around and around, while their friends and neighbors get married, or already are: the former become something of a vicarious thrill and/or point of concerned speculation for the latter —thus Brian Hyland's "Hale The Man"---maybe sic, or maybe ironic salute–-Hail Hale, you the man and the gang's all here, but you live alone, so why you try to hard to get into that party, while runnin' runnin', and livin' to regret it (spoiler). So maybe there's a tension, a nervous energy to some of the eagerness here. But Travis Wammack doesn't feel it, he's grinning in the shadows, prob best he lets the music do most of the talking, walking up with a rhythm guitar that sounds like a rusty farm implement well-repurposed—then it gets psychedelisized, as the Chambers Brothers would say, and then the whole track does, maybe with synths for horns and the LITA-mentioned Moog bass line, some more voices.
Dolly Parton doesn't seem to feel the tension either, or if she does, she successfully pushes back, with a regal step, ready to chose the man "who will dance me home,"(home is another country trope) if and only if such a one proves qualified: no last call desperation here. For she is a lady who has it all together, a modern one too, and now it can be told, even in a country-aimed song (quite a few country years after Loretta Lynn's "The Pill," but that was not a trendsetter). So too with, sounds like, whichever of Gary & Sandy is singing,"Come on and take it like a man," with a reassurance, or at least warmth, in the smiler's message, "I won't bite, too hard anyway, but ready." Take me home and make me like it! Ronnie Milsap sounds truly ready to "Get it up, get down, giveitallyagot, and get out": that's the chorus, with his lover's even more specific instructions quoted in verse:, lessons learned, says he could go on all night—gets faded out while he's saying it, ha ha, but he's already done 5:21, by far the longest here!
Which can be frustrating—"always leave them wanting more," sure, but how about some club mixes, LITA? If you can't find any for these, find some others, or make some. As written, some of these don't get very far: premise verse, chorus clincher, placeholder verse, gimme that chorus again, the end. Or just verse, chorus, chorus, the end. The usual country approach is to make the stasis more appealing, at least. But sometimes it works here as a statement, not quite standing pat (Dolly and Gary & Sandi and Ronnie make their positions clear, while still in motion, like holograms flying sideways). Terri Gibbs spells it out a little at the end, for us, but maybe also for herself, note to self, in case you're wavering: remembers looking nice in a new dress, while Mama's warning her not to get stuck, like Mama did, with "a no-good gambler for 27 years, get yourself a rich man." Later, she also recalls Mama "in a raggedy old dress, down on her knees scrubbin' the floor—ain't gonna let no destitute fool put a ring on me, gonna get myself a rich man." Cut, print, that's all we need, the way she does it.
In a way it's a story song, and so is Billy Swan's "Oliver Swan," who was laughed at, country and homeless, but with something stashed somewhere, his little hoard–-drunk and shambling, "Oliver Swan had no one." But one night, he stumbles across a flying saucerful of women, "looking for a guy." (Close as this song gets to dance club tropes, verbally, though got a nice beat.) He asks them to excuse him, he'll be back in just a minute.
(Also there's one previously unreleased, amazingly so: "Alone at Last," by Tony Joe White, steady as ever, more poignant than sometimes, even before he suddenly climbs a staircase line, like I didn't know he could do: whole thing is spare and intimate and mobile as a Silk Degrees demo might be.)(Come to think of it, why isn't Boz Scaggs on here? Too expensive? Not available?)
17 tracks, I'd say 11, 12, anyway an LP's worth of keepers, so far.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGwQpcKyjIcuwefRF7rUz1BLEwe8mJ__1
― dow, Monday, 28 February 2022 19:13 (two years ago) link
Sent that to Edd Hurt, and he replied:
The only track here I knew is Dennis Linde's "Down to the Station." Linde is a curious figure, cut his stuff as a one-man band. Christgau reviewed one of his albums, pointing out his lack of vocal character. That's fair enough, I think. Linde's "Trapped in the Suburbs" got airplay in Nashville in the '70s, and none of his albums are on CD. I have the albums, including what some think is his best, Linde Manor, which Jerry Kennedy (a guitarist and producer who worked with Faron Young and many others in the '70s) produced with Billy Swan in 1970. DJ Shadow sampled one of the tracks on Endtroducing.
Looks like the Rob Galbraith single is a lead-up to his 1976 album Throw Me a Bone, which is sort of yacht-rockin', hipster-jazz-R&B stuff akin to what Donnie Fritts was doing around the same time. Better sung than Fritts. I know Rob pretty well, used to see him play with his R&B band--including Genesis-Zappa drummer Chester Thompson--at a now-defunct club in Nashville. Always a good show. Rob has produced Ronnie Milsap since the '80s. I recommend his 1970 Nashville Dirt, which is sparer than Throw Me a Bone and even class-conscious; Numero Group released a bunch of his demos in 2016.
I have a bunch of Travis Wammack records, including two he did in the early '80s, A Man...and a Guitar and Follow Me. But his 1972 self-titled album on Fame may be his best (he's still playing in Muscle Shoals and probably still doing his big instrumental hit "Scratchy"). This is the most psychodynamic of its tracks, "I Don't Really Want You," which has the most interesting structure of anything I've heard him do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERCYB3w_g6k
Talking about rednecks, I recommend Joe South's "Redneck," which Swamp Dogg covered.
I love "Oliver Swan," because it's great to hear how Billy Swan condenses prog rock into three minutes. I don't think Nick Lowe could have done much better.
Looking back at the 1969-1975 comp, I notice they picked the best non-hit song off Johnny Adams' Shelby Singleton-produced album Heart & Soul, which was the result of Adams working with New Orleans producer Wardell Quezergue on a remake of "Release Me" that attracted Singleton's attention. Heart & Soul also features "Reconsider Me," Adams' biggest hit.
Also, Dale Hawkins's L.A., Memphis & Tyler, Texas is an OK album that often just seems obvious. But there's one great track he cut with help from Dan Penn at Ardent Studios in Memphis, "Little Rain Cloud" (you can hear Penn singing in the background). Notable for a great guitar sound Big Star fans might recognize, it's a one-chord boogie that's about as psychedelic as soul-country stuff gets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHRA52f1g1E
― dow, Tuesday, 1 March 2022 18:21 (two years ago) link
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