Buried Treasure
If you were
shopping only at your local record store, you probably missed
some of the best albums to come out of Texas this year.
IT'S THE TIME OF YEAR
WHEN EVERYBODY'S supposed to be buying box sets like ZZ Top's
four-CD retrospective, Chrome, Smoke & BBQ,as Christmas
presents and critics are supposed to be preparing their top-ten
lists. I'll avoid both. Instead, I want to tell you about the
state's most underrated or under-recognized CDs this year-the
best Texas music of 2003 that you've probably not heard of because
it was released by the artists directly or by small independent
labels. In either case, there was little or no money for promotion,
and the Internet was usually the chief means of distribution (many
of these will be impossible to find in most stores). But Lone
Star musicians being an industrious lot, there are hundreds of
indie bands to choose from, so I've narrowed the field down further
by limiting myself to the rootsy stuff. I like my Texas music
to sound like Texas. So go ahead and get the ZZ Top box if you
must, but while you're at it, check out this baker's dozen of
stocking stuffers.
Among country cognoscenti,
the biggest buzz of late is the shuffle, a small-combo kissing
cousin of western swing that's frequently as infectious. Ray Price's
tricky four-four beat was popularized by his "Crazy Arms" in 1956
and then held sway in Nashville for well over a decade before
fading, but around here it's back with a vengeance. The top young
practitioners are Fort Worth's Jake Hooker and the Outsiders
and Martindale's Justin Trevino. On Live/Set One
(southlandrecords.com),
the 27-year-old Hooker's voice cuts and throbs with a sure rhythmic
sense (perhaps because in addition to playing bass on his own
records, he's also a drummer) He's unbeatable on Price's thrusting
"I'll Be There" and Darrell McCall's wrenching slow ballad "Just
Move Your Fingers." On his own album, Hooker's fiddle player,
Bobby Flores, displays a high, smooth voice that
marks him as more of a crooner. With considerable overdubbing,
his Just for the Record (bobbyflores.com)
has less of an organic feel than Hooker's. Still, "Spicher Waltz,"
which features not the usual twin fiddles but a trio of them,
is an elegant variation on Fritz Kreisler's 1910 classical tune,
and the version of Don Gibson's "Oh, Lonesome Me" flat-out skedaddles.
Both men rely too heavily on Price's catalog and could use some
originals, though that hardly matters on the dance floor, where
shuffles are best heard.
Trevino, meanwhile,
didn't release an album this year, but he's the bassist and occasional
lead singer on the Cornell Hurd Band's Live
at Jovita's/Don't Quit Your Night Job (cornellhurdband.com).
Though Hurd does the bulk of the singing, there are actually four
leads, at least as many superb soloists, and guest performers
galore in what's usually a ten-piece country band that includes
a baritone sax and a rubboard. The band also blends together shuffles,
swing, honky-tonk ballads, and countrified rock and R&B with
ingenuity and good humor. For my money, their shows thus capture
the spirit and scope of the original, revue-style western swing
bands better than those of any other modernists. And while Hurd
does resurrect his share of chestnuts, he also writes everything
from deadpan novelties ("Rubboard Playing Man") to stirring weepers
("I Cry, Then I Drink, Then I Cry") and barroom stomps ("I Don't
Care What It Is That You Did When You Lived in Fort Worth"). Fiddler
Howard Kalish, a frequent Hurd guest, is best
known for his fifteen-year tenure with Don Walser's Pure Texas
Band, which ended early this year. On his swinging solo debut,
What the Hey (howardkalishmusic.com),
he's backed by his former bandmates and by Austin A-listers like
pianist Floyd Domino. Kalish is not shy about bearing down on
his bow, but he prefers a light touch, with phrasing that's almost
conversational. Since this is basically a picker's album, it figures
that the instrumentals are the hottest-the title song stays right
on the edge but never quite swings out of control-but Kalish's
cheeky original songs ("I Just Want You for a Friend") surprise
and delight.
Though he too played
for Walser, pedal steel whiz Bert Rivera logged
many more years with Hank Thompson's Brazos Valley Boys. On his
all-instrumental Eclectia (bertrivera.com),
that pedigree is confirmed with tracks like the full-bodied arrangement
of Thompson's "We've Gone Too Far." But it's his lush, delicate
readings of fare like "Godfather Medley" and "Ave Maria" that
enable the album to live up to its title. Tom Morrell
and the Time Warp Tophands are probably the state's jazziest
western swingers. The Dallas band's all-instrumental Stylin'
(westernswing.net)
owes as much to Django Reinhardt as anyone, with the leader and
his lap steel pointing the way on slow, sensuous, late-night standards
like "Begin the Beguine" and "The Nearness of You," as well as
Texas twang like "Steel Guitar Rag."
Houston is one of the
last places in the nation where blues remains indigenous to African
American communities. Still, they usually don't make albums anymore
like Lil Joe Washington's Houston
Guitar Blues (dialtone.home.texas.net).
The 64-year-old Washington, who recorded briefly in the sixties,
has an anarchistic sense of timing that makes for a wholly original
style despite echoes of Third Ward guitar-slingers Albert Collins
and Joe Hughes. On "Unfinished Business," his guitar verges on
dissonance while his raw voice verges on bleating, and he sounds
like he's making the song up as he goes along. The whole album
burns with barely mediated energy and emotion. West-Texas-via-Beaumont
bluesman Long John Hunter's nineties resurgence
was too short-lived for a man of his talents and charm. His return
on One Foot in Texas (docbluesrecords.com)
features support from an unexpected co-star: his younger brother
Tom "Blues Man" Hunter, who had never left Beaumont
or recorded under his own name before now. But Tom's Gulf Coast
variants on B. B. King-style guitar prove as idiosyncratic as
John's, and he has the same country-boy humor. Together, they
cut some rollicking Texas-Louisiana grooves on the likes of "Can
I Depend on You," while the title song deftly Texafies Elmore
James's eternal signature riff.
Nancy Moore,
of Dallas, better known to some by her former nom de punk, Shaggy,
debuts with the genre-busting Americana of These Are
Real (nancymoore.net).
Her voice is brassy but yearning, and her songs are guileless.
On "Tyler '55" she assumes the voice of a friend who met Elvis
back then and there; when Moore sings "And for a moment I held
you /For a moment I dared/For a moment I was the 'Queen of the
World' with jewels in my hair," I can almost see the faces of
teenage girls I used to know who didn't quite fit in but knew
how to savor their occasional triumphs. The bluesy "Miss My Baby"
conjures up Patsy Cline. (Conflict of interest confirmed: I am
among those thanked in the liner notes.) Carolyn Wonderland,
the longtime Houston blues-rock champeen who moved to Austin four
years ago, calls for Bloodless Revolution
(carolynwonderland.com)
on an album more topical than her previous work. The raspy, roof-rattling
singer (and guitarist) is at her best on the likes of the sassy,
Stonesy "Smile," while guitarist (and singer) Scott Daniels's
"He Said, She Said" shows he's an apt foil. Her stance is classic,
with a sweetness, even shyness, that turns swaggering and defiant
when she rocks. Houston's David Brake and That Damn Band
have a harder, post-punk slant on roots-rock with Lean,
Mean Texas Machine (westerlandrecords.com).
Though relying most on country, the music takes in blues and zydeco
as well. The title song, a salute to a barroom babe that features
jagged, screaming interplay between guitars and fiddle, has all
the makings of an anthem. (Come to think of it, I wish ZZ had
been listening to this instead of whatever it was that inspired
their most recent efforts.)
Los Jazz Vatos
is the pet project of Austinite Ernie Durawa, a San Antonio native
and former drummer for Delbert McClinton, Doug Sahm, the Texas
Tornados, and many more. Los Jazz Vatos (losjazzvatos.com)
presents the septet's luminous Latin jazz, with Durawa holding
things down for the bubbling bass lines, angular piano, and sinuous
horns on material from sources as disparate as Stevie Wonder,
Cuban reed player Paquito D'Rivera, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and
Horace Silver. Trombonist Freddie Mendoza's "Chica Loca," the
sole original tune, holds its own among such illustrious company.
Cenobio Hernández was
born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, in 1863, and by the twenties
was in San Antonio playing cello, bass, and bajo sexto in the
Palace Theater Symphony Orchestra and for silent movies at the
Majestic and Empire theaters. In the last decade of his life,
which ended in 1950, he began composing for piano. His grandson
Ricky Hernández, a San Antonio native living
in Los Angeles and the brother of Brave Combo bassist Bubba Hernandez,
interprets twelve of those pieces on Recuerdos Música
(rickyhernandezonline.com).
The best description I can offer of tunes like "Cecilia" and "Alegría"
is that they sound like silent-movie music with a Mexican tinge,
as semi-classical merges into folk forms, with motifs ranging
from European stately to ragtime playful.
As Ernest Tubb sang,
"Merry Texas Christmas, You All!"
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