Nuggets 181 – Country + Western 7

Nuggets 181 - Country   Western 7

 

Loving Brother Pacific. Very tight playing in the big guitar alt country style. Visit Bandcamp to pick up their latest EP for free.

One of Charles Louvin’s last albums was called Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs. This song wasn’t on the disk, but it ought to have been, a bloody tale of gynaecide. Its a song he used to sing with his brother, here Will Oldham aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy fills in. Nick Cave covered this song.

Jim Sullivan was abducted by aliens, but before he went, he made this album. His songs remind me of old film noir, run down motels and deserts. Hence the Glen Campbell track. See the video below.

Brown Rice do Neil Young with girly voices and tom tom drums. My guilty pleasure.

Jimmie Dale Gilmore sings Mack the knife like no other. This is from the soundtrack to French prison flick A Prophet that looks good. Gilmore was last seen in The Big Lebowski as a bowler named Smokey. I see that the The Psychedelic Furs covered the song, must track it down.

Lucinda Williams has a very distinctive voice, salty and sexy. I like the way her voice has changed over the years, getting sexier by the album. Here are 2 tracks from her second album, Happy Woman Blues (the first with her own songs) then 1 track from Essence, an album released 21 years later.

Gene Parsons is a mean banjo player. It reminds me of my year in Ohio in the 1980’s and banjo picking at Indian Summer festivals. Bill Murray is another banjo lover.

The picture is of Chief Running Rabbit of the Siksika Nation.

Nearly all tracks up…

 

Nuggets 175 – Country + Western 6

Nuggets 175 - Country   Western 6

 

(Not all tracks up yet) Before the Velvet Underground there was The Feelies. Here Before is their first album in 20 years. It has some great tracks, and the track featured here, Bluer Skies, is my favourite on this mix – sounds like blissed out Clean. More old timers with the Wedding Present from the 1991 album, Seamonsters with some grungy cow punk tunes. Leader Cheetah sound like The National gone country – they are Aussies btw. Karen Dalton was a contemporary of Dylan who lived in Greenwich village in the 1960’s. She has a distinctive voice, Billie Holiday’ish, that appeals.  The Ollie Gilbert track is taken from a compilation by Max Hunter maintained by the Missouri State University. Spooky field recording of an Ozark woman.

The Max Hunter Collection is an archive of almost 1600 Ozark Mountain folk songs, recorded between 1956 and 1976. A traveling salesman from Springfield, Missouri, Hunter took his reel-to-reel tape recorder into the hills and backwoods of the Ozarks, preserving the heritage of the region by recording the songs and stories of many generations of Ozark history. As important as the songs themselves are the voices of the Missouri and Arkansas folks who shared their talents and recollections with Hunter.

If you like this track, there are over 500 more here with lyrics etc. Don’t you love the interweb?

Finally, the Harry Nilsson track is just excellent, I am looking forward to watching the recent BBC doco on him.