Turn It Up - 4/8/2024

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

We’re back again to start the week with some things we’ve been listening to. Charles goes first this week, then David, and we’ve listed some reading recommendations at the end.

Willie Jones – “Your Man” (from The Live Sessions, 2024)

One week after his Cowboy Carter feature gave him a big boost, Jones – the Louisiana-based country artist who’s been a favorite of ours since he emerged a few years ago – released this knockout on a live EP for Apple Music (but available on other platforms). It wasn’t Jones’ first rodeo with the Josh Turner hit that’s become something of a country standard - in fact, he auditioned with it on X Factor in 2012, a faithful version that both impressed and surprised the judges. (Hopefully, one consequence of the last few years is that we can say goodbye to the “people being surprised Black folks sing country” trope that proved so popular on reality competitions and…well…the rest of pop culture.) But, twelve years later, he’s after something different: here, Jones strips “Your Man” down to its simmering component parts. Over smoky guitar, humming organ, and tender drums, Jones stretches his warm baritone over the song’s lush come-ons. It’s a quiet storm, for sure, and also a welcome return to the the kind of soft-focus grown-folks country that reached its (most recent) peak in the smoldering early 1980s. As far as I’m concerned, this is the version of “Your Man” against which all others past and future will be measured. – CH

Norman North (feat. Willie Jones) – “Forgive Me” (single, 2024)

Speaking of Willie Jones, he also contributed an aching guest verse to the compelling new single from Texas country-rap synthesist Norman North, a remix from a track on last year’s album Place I Don’t Belong. North’s high-lonesome tenor soars over slapping drums and ringing acoustic guitars as he relays the sins of his past in the hopes that he might build a more honest future. A narrative testimony in the truest tradition of country, gospel, and hip-hop, “Forgive Me” blooms into an anthemic hook that seems tailor-made for windows-down radio play on any and all formats. As with so many of the country tracks and hybrids being produced by young Black artists, “Forgive Me” doesn’t so much blend genres as it demonstrates their failure to encompass the sonic wide-open spaces of people like North, Jones, and their contemporaries. Don’t fence them in. – CH

Secret Sisters – “Paperweight” (from Mind, Man, Medicine, 2024)

The Everly Brothers meet the Waco Brothers in a pounding groover from the Muscle Shoals duo that’s been making great, roots-conscious-but-not-confined records for almost fifteen years. Laura and Lydia Rogers weave their gorgeous close harmonies and interlocking melodies over the kind of propulsive, fiddle-driven track that will never fail to catch my ear. But, as with their other records (including the rest of their fine new album), the Rogers siblings find a fresh sparkle in an old standby. Flipping the ramblin’-woman script, this instead becomes an ode to the surprising contentment found in settling down, even when that nesting is brushed with hues of bittersweet regret. It’s layered stuff, but the Secret Sisters and their collaborators keep the touch both light and affecting as this delightful track motors along. Sometimes the best open roads are the ones that lead home. – CH

NEIKED (feat. Muni Long and Nile Rodgers) – “The Moves” (single, 2024)

Here’s another throwback that you won’t want to throw back. A gift from the algorithm, this shining star showed up in a recommended playlist and it’s been spinning me around ever since. I shouldn’t be surprised, given the personnel: Joining the Swedish collective NEIKED are Muni Long, a deeply gifted singer-songwriter who’s written big pop hits and (as Priscilla Renae) recorded a fantastic country-infused record called Coloured back in 2018, and Nile Rodgers, whose legacy of bright dancefloor symphonics and chopped-guitar polyrhythms is engaged on “The Moves” in delightful fashion. The single’s cover image of roller skaters bespeaks its gliding, striding evocation of the rink-rocking classics that it draws from. It’s a joy for every second of its brief running time – and trust me, no one will mind if you keep it going over and over again. – CH

Creekbed Carter Hogan – “Lord, Make Me A Scorpion” (from Creekbed Carter, 2024)

I’m so glad that I still sometimes hear songs that legitimately stop me in my tracks. Creekbed Carter Hogan has three or four of them on their remarkable new record, and this haunting prayer is one of them. Rocking us in the cradle of their gentle finger-picked guitar, Hogan sings of transformations both spectacular and tragically mundane. (The brief slowing of the tempo between verses is just one of the small touches that make this track so devastatingly beautiful.) Hogan’s from Austin, and the grand traditions of Texas folk are all honored and reimagined here, from Lone Star songwriters’ gifts for spare intimacy to how they blend it with mysterious big-sky images and sounds. “Lord, Make Me A Scorpion” is the kind of song that sounds hundreds of years old, but also like it could never have existed before this deeply gifted artist brought it into our universe. – CH

Beyonce – “Jolene” (from Cowboy Carter, 2024)

Beyonce’s reimagining of Dolly Parton’s classic is probably my least favorite moment on Cowboy Carter, but it’s taken me a minute to figure out why. Several folks have noted that covering “Jolene” was already something of a cliché even before album guest star Mily Cyrus started singing it live more than a decade ago. I hear that complaint but also think the new lyrics Beyonce wrote for the song help freshen things up: Sure, Bey’s “Jolene” is yet another Dolly Parton cover but, like Chapel Hart’s “You Can Have Him Jolene,” it’s also an answer song. Admittedly, such revisions only swap one cliché for another. Flipping the song’s point of view from vulnerable to indomitable, from “Please don’t take my man” to “You ain’t woman enough,” allows Beyonce to work her brand, but at this point another round of imperial Bey is its own cliché. (“I’m still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisiane” is at once thrillingly fresh and totally familiar.) What I’ve finally come around to understanding, though, is that none of these “Jolene” takes would resonate for me at all if only the music were better. Parton’s “Jolene” rides one of the great rhythm tracks of my life. (All hail guitarist Chip Young, drummer Kenny Malone, and session-leading bassist Bobby Dyson). By contrast with Dolly’s masterpiece, and inexplicably in conflict with the rest of Beyonce’s own album, this newly remodeled “Jolene” feels leaden and simplistic. The cut’s rhythm track is dominated by an incessant, stiff Lumineers-type thwack, and it builds to a group shout along that reinforces the same dispiriting comparison. “It’s just no fun” are words I never thought I’d type about a Beyonce song, but here we are. Then again, I didn’t see those “Stand by Your Man” allusions coming at the end of Bey’s version either, and I loved them. To paraphrase Tammy Wynette, maybe sometimes it’s hard to be a queen. – DC

Dolly Parton – “Southern Accents” (single, 2024)

Speaking of Dolly P… Boy, did I really need this one from her right about now. Last year’s grandiose and bloated Rockstar was borderline unlistenable. But it did help explain her initial rejection of being recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was nominated there for a singular body of work that included country-pop, country rock, singer-songwriter and just plain rock ‘n’ roll sides. She celebrated her induction by mistaking what brung her for arena rockers and power ballads. Thankfully, “Southern Accent,” Parton’s contribution to forthcoming tribute album Petty Country, gets her back to her strengths. She luxuriates in her own accent here, but never exaggerates its twang the way she sometimes will. Petty’s song is a lamentation about class and regional bigotry and, in one of the great bridges and final verses in all of popular music, it’s also about the ancestors you cling to, when they’re gone most of all. Dolly leans into Petty’s hurt and shares her own. “I ain’t ashamed,” she cries three times. “No, I ain’t,” she adds three times more. Dolly Parton is one of the wealthiest, most celebrated humans on the planet, but in those new lines she added herself, it still sounds like she doth protest too much. – DC

Gumbo – “Like I Showed You” (from Stir the Pot, 2024)

“All True,” the first single off Stir the Pot, found Chuck D in a cough-and-you’ll-miss-it guest spot, but my favorite cut on the album is “Like I Showed You.” Dropping what was once called science, Gumbo—that’s MCs Caro Adé and Danger!—sling a string of revolutionary agitpop rhymes and catch phrases, each one worth its own rap, not to mention an action plan: “And since the phrase ‘great again,’ America’s been so fuckin’ worthless.” “Tired of arguin’ over the best slave masters.” “I agree fuck the Right side, but someone tell me what the Left do?” “Say, ‘It’s not about color.’ Then why show Jesus white?” “Skin bleaching is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Sheesh!” “We wanta see our kids get older and not just see white kids get over.” The beats and roiling vocals, from producer Oh Gosh Leotus, are pregnant with possible change, exciting but notably static, marching in their politically charged place, not even rewarding us with so much as a chorus until we do some work. “Gumbo is the best food,” they say. I believe them and hit repeat. – DC  

Merle Haggard – “Bingo” (from Country Music for Kids, 1992)

This past Saturday, April 6^th, would have been Merle Haggard’s 87^th birthday; it also marked eight years since his death. I could recommend dozens of lesser-known Haggard gems you should check out, and I have. To commemorate Merle’s birth/deathday this year, though, I’d thought I’d show him playing against his always-serious-as-a-heart-attack reputation, just having some goofy fun. The lead track to a Garthmania-era Disney collection called Country Music for Kids (featuring Patty Loveless and Earl Scruggs, among others), the Hag’s version of “Bingo” is a childlike delight. Backed by the Strangers’ characteristic swing-n-twang, Merle gamely races through the song’s nonsense rhymes and even adopts a silly voice at the end. Which all makes perfect sense: Merle’s daughter Jenessa was just two at the time and wife Theresa was pregnant with their son Ben. These days Jenessa and Ben have small kids of their own. What a gift to be able to share their late grandpa Merle singing “B-I-N-G-O” to them. [Sorry, but this one isn’t streaming anywhere I can find. If you come across it, please share.] – DC

Reading recommendations:

-Jewly Hight talks to Holly G, Alice Randall, and Quia Thompson about Black country music in past and present, for This is Nashville

-Grayson Haver Currin profiles Alice Randall, for New York Times

-Stephen Deusner on Pedal Steel Noah, for New York Times

-Stephen Deusner recommends ten essential country albums by black artists, for Spin

-Craig Jenkins on Cowboy Carter, for Vulture

-Tressie McMillan Cottom on Cowboy Carter, for New York Times

-Doreen St. Félix on Cowboy Carter, for New Yorker

-Nadine Smith on the Big Ears Festival and Knoxville, for The Fader

-Brandon Ousley on essential quiet storm albums, for Discogs.com

-Eli Zeger on the future of music criticism, for Boston Review

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