Turn It Up - 6/17/2024

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

This is our 101st post, friends. Welcome aboard or thanks for sticking around. We appreciate you following along. Now, let’s-a get a bit of rockin’!

It’s another week, so we’re back to share some things we’ve been listening to. Charles is up first, then David, who this time out is devoting all of his picks to songwriter Mark James, who passed away last week at 83. As always, we’ve listed a bunch of reading recommendations at the end.

Skeeter Davis and NRBQ – “I Gotta Know” (from She Sings, They Play: Deluxe Edition, 1985, reissued 2024)

A delightful reissue of a delightful album, pairing country singer-songwriter Skeeter Davis with the mighty NRBQ at their most playfully expert (and expertly playful). It’s all a treat, from the slinky duet “Heart to Heart” to the Urban Cowboy joshing of “Everybody Wants A Cowboy” to a lovely lope through Disney classic “Someday, My Prince Will Come.” The bonus tracks are all worthy additions, from a few cracking live tracks to a romp through the Q’s power-pop gem “I Want You Bad” to this rockabilly raver. With punchy double-tracked vocals and stop-start chorus, “I Gotta Know” sounds of a piece not only with the ‘50s heyday of Janis Martin and Wanda Jackson but also the New Wave rockpiles of Carlene Carter or Rosanne Cash. It’s too bad this dream team never made a sequel, but I’m really glad that this glorious one-off is available again. – CH

Shaboozey – “Highway” (from Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, 2024)

I love Shaboozey’s new album. Even aside from knockout hit “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going is the kind of rich and compelling music that should be (and could be) a centerpiece of country music going forward. (After all, where we’ve been doesn’t need to be where we’re going.) I imagine I’ll talk more about other songs later (the evocative Exoduster anthem “East of the Massanutten,” for example), but right now I’m stuck on “Highway.” It’s a standard lonesome-road lament that gains life through one of Shaboozey’s key techniques, in which he pairs his intimate vocals with a sonic palette that expands as the song progresses, here drawing in everything from open-road rock to touches of mandolin. It’s equally mournful and invigorating, an instant entry in the grand country canon of songs about a life on the freeways that isn’t free at all. – CH

Denitia – “Back to You” (single, 2024)

Denitia’s one of the brightest lights among country/Americana’s young up-and-comers. “Back to You,” a preview of her forthcoming album, sounds both timely and timeless, anchored by the kind of sturdy melody and bootstomp-meets-bootscoot arrangement that could’ve lit up country radio from the 1970s until (hopefully) now. With a weepy steel guitar offering response, Denitia applies the supple hush of her soprano to a song that approaches hanging on to love as it slips away as if it were the ambivalently nostalgic pull of the mythic “old home place” that’s animated country music since the very beginning. “Every word just leads me right on back to you,” she affirms, before alternating electric and acoustic guitar solos offer complement and counterpoint. And then, in less than three minutes, it’s over, leaving us no choice but to go right on back to it again and again. – CH

Jett Holden – “Backwood Proclamation” (feat. Charlie Worsham and John Osborne) (single, 2024)

The arrival of Black Opry Records is the year’s most exciting music news, and what a way to kick it off. Jett Holden, who’s toured with the Black Opry Revue since its beginning, will release an album for the label this fall and offers this track as a preview. Over a smoking groove, Holden proclaims his love for his partner with a soaring melody propelled by a twin-guitar solo and supportive background chorus. Holden’s a gifted songwriter who mixes clever country wordplay – “Send my black book on vacation/Forever yours ‘til arbitration” – with a gloriously irreducible hook. “Backwood Proclamation” is a loud and proud love song that’s perfect for windows-down season, and it might be something more too. When Holden proclaims “You feel just like home to me,” it’s hard not to hear the Black Opry mission statement. Welcome home, Black Opry Records. I’m so glad you’re here. – CH

Mary Gauthier – “Coney Island Baby” (from The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed, 2024)

The new tribute to Lou Reed might be as good as the Lowell George salute I turned up a while back. I’ve already discussed Keith Richards’ rumbling “I’m Waiting for My Man,” and the full album reveals several gems. The shiniest may be Mary Gauthier’s take on “Coney Island Baby.” Gauthier’s warm, weathered vocals are a perfect fit for one of Reed’s sweetest narratives, which explores his journey to understanding his queerness and finding love with then-partner Rachel Humphreys. Gauthier hasn’t altered it – she keeps the mellow simmer, the build to the “Glory of Love” chorus, and the ending shout-out to “Lou, Rachel, and the kids at PS 192.” (Extra poignant now that both Reed and Humphreys are gone.) It’s a faithful interpretation, but not redundant. Gauthier should cut a whole album of Reed’s songs, and it’s too bad that Lou’s not around to return the favor. – CH

Ronnie Milsap – “Sunday Rain” (from Ronnie Milsap, 1971)

Mark James moved to Memphis in the late sixties to work with Chips Moman and company at American Studios and that’s where his songs were cut most often in their hit versions. Or, as in the case of Ronnie Milsap’s go at James’ “Sunday Rain,” versions that sure sound like they should have been hits but were not. James’ story here is simple yet mysterious—the singer visits a fortune teller who predicts he’ll find his lost love some rainy Sunday, and then… he finds her in the Sunday rain! Producer Dan Penn’s production, and especially the string and horn arrangements from Glen Spreen, turn that hoary tale into a soaring, surprising, dramatic record: “I felt the rain and heard the name of Mary / And it scared me….” Milsap sings the hell out of it—a dream come true that chills him to the bone. – DC  

Brenda Lee – “Sunday Sunrise” (from New Sunrise, 1973)

Most of James’ best-known songs are associated with male vocalists—Elvis, Willie, BJ Thomas, Mac Davis and so on—but Brenda Lee recorded a number of his songs, the first released version of “Always on My Mind” included. Her work on James’ “Sunday Sunrise” embraces a kind of Donna Fargo, happiest-girl vibe, to embody an woman awakening, at last and still a little disbelieving, from depression. James’ hook, and these Nashville Cats’ country-soul groove, encourage us to join her. – DC

Nancy Wilson – “Are We Losing Touch” (from I Know I Love Him, 1973)

A beautiful soft-soul record, launched by a hurried-up rendering of the guitar lick from “Rainy Night in Georgia” and riding a deceptively ebullient bass line (from studio legend Wilton Felder). James’ song is a conversational relationship check-in that is nothing if not universal but, thanks to Nancy Wilson’s typically graceful and empathetic reading, feels very specific. Yet another James number from the late-60s to early-70s that feels like it surely must have been a good-sized hit but wasn’t—and that, honestly, I’d never even heard until this century. – DC

Elvis Presley – “Suspicious Minds” (from Elvis Live 1969, 2019)

Mark James’ greatest song, and most lucrative copyright, even beyond “Always on My Mind,” was “Suspicious Minds.” Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter scored a minor hit with it in 1970, and the song fully entered the country canon six years later when the pair retrofitted the track with new vocals, added it to Wanted! The Outlaws and topped the “Hot Country Singles” chart. Of course, the song is most intimately associated with Elvis, whose recording of the song, cut at American Studios in Memphis, became a Pop No. 1 in 1969. That’s the one that has the groove and the polish, and it’s definitive. I must say, though, that my favorite version has become the one Elvis cut later that year in Las Vegas, during the debut set of his long-awaited return to the stage. You can tell Presley’s nervous as hell. The performance has been clunky, full of awkward pauses and painfully corny jokes, but near the end of the show, “Suspicious Minds” helps him find himself. Only released as a single two weeks earlier, the song is still fresh to him here and he’s clearly thrilled to be in front of a live audience again and interacting with a live band, especially one as ragged, loose, and committed as his new TCB band, who are even less familiar with the song than he is. Together, they discover the frenetic, charismatic modern Elvis sound. Presley keeps letting the music build, then crashing it down to near silence—down, at one point, to a lone violin—only to build up the sound again and again, for more than eight minutes. He doesn’t want to let it go. Never have the insecurities and itchy rhythms of James’s masterpiece been expressed so powerfully. (Other Mark James songs that Presley cut: “Raised on Rock,” the greatest “Always on My Mind” and, a real favorite of mine in its stripped-down alternate mix, “It’s Only Love.”) – DC

Mark James – “A Taste of Heaven” (single, 1968)

When James moved to Memphis, the singer-songwriter still had ambitions to be a solo act. He never fully put that dream behind him: He released one self-titled album for Bell Records in 1973 and cut a handful singles through the years as well, including the original “Suspicious Minds” in 1968. The B-side to that single was his “A Taste of Heaven,” a walking-on-sunshine pop rocker that James sings agreeably, his voice high and husky, his melody preposterously catchy. He’s playing a guy all giddy and grateful in love, but who turns suspicious and sinister on a dime: “I’m gonna have to clip your wings so you won’t ever fly away!” To quote James and his famous A-side, this woman may be “caught in a trap.” – DC

Recommended reading:

Alexandra E. Petri on Mark James, for The New York Times

Elizabeth Nelson on Ann Powers’ Travelling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, for The Washington Post

John Lawless on the late disc jockey and Bluegrass Now founder/editor Wayne Bledsoe, for Bluegrass Today

Sidney Madden on the new dream hampton documentary, for NPR

Zach Schonfeld on the problem of underperforming arena tours, for Stereogum

Melena Ryzik talks to Nona Hendryx, for New York Times

Luke Turner talks to Diamanda Galás, for The Quietus

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