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"...Shavings Of Your Mind..."
Coming on like a really, really good Lee Hazlewood album that you haven't yet heard – compilers Bob Stanley and Martin Green have pulled out a genuine winner with Ace Records' 2021 compilation "Choctaw Ridge..."
Available as a CD and 2LP Vinyl Album (24-tracks for both, see below for catalogue numbers and barcodes) - there is much to savour on here that even diehard collectors will not have heard. So let's return to the back side of Dallas, Logan courthouses, summer coming early to Strawberry Farm and marooned pregnant girls longing for wayward straw-hatted beaus chasing other unwedded pageant queens with pedal steel guitars down in Dover...
UK released Friday, 30 July 2021 - "Choctaw Ridge: New Fables Of The American South 1968-1973" by VARIOUS ARTISTS on Ace Records CDCHD 1585 (Barcode 029667102322) is a 24-Track CD and 2LP VINYL compilation (Ace Records XXQLP2 078 – Barcode 029667012911) that plays out as follows (76:51 minutes):
1. The House Song – LEE HAZLEWOOD (June 1968 US 45-single on Reprise 0699, B-side of "Morning Dew" – also on the 1968 US Stereo LP "Love And Other Crimes" on Reprise RS 6297)
2. If Only She Had Stayed – CHRIS GANTRY (from the 1968 US Stereo LP "Retrospection" on Monument SLP 18100)
3. Endless Miles Of Highway - JERRY REED (from the 1972 US LP "Smell The Flowers" on RCA Victor LSP 4660)
4. The Back Side Of Dallas - JEANNIE C. RILEY (from the 1969 US Stereo LP "Things Go Better With Love" on Plantation PLP 3)
5. Way Before The Time Of Towns - HOYT AXTON (from the 1969 US Stereo LP "My Griffin Is Gone" on Columbia CS 9766)
6. Strawberry Farms - TOM T. HALL (from the 1969 US Stereo LP "Homecoming" on Mercury SR 61247)
7. Down From Dover - DOLLY PARTON (from the 1970 US Stereo LP "The Fairest Of Them All" on CA Victor LSP 4288)
8. July 12, 1939 - CHARLIE RICH (from the 1970 US Stereo LP "The Fabulous Charlie Rich" on Epic BN 26516)
9. What Am I Doing In L.A.? - NAT STUCKEY (July 1970 US MONO 45-single on RCA Victor 47-9884, B-side of "Whiskey, Whiskey" – Stereo Version also on the 1970 US LP "Country Fever" on RCA Victor LSP 4389)
10. Mr. Stanton Don't Believe It - ROB GALBRAITH (from the 1970 US Stereo LP "Nashville Dirt" on Columbia CS 1057)
11. Saunders' Ferry Lane - SAMMI SMITH (August 1971 US 45-single on Mega 615-0039, A-side - also from the 1970 US Stereo LP "He's Everywhere" on Mega Records M31-1000 - renamed "Help Me Make It Through The Night" with the same catalogue)
12. Four Shades Of Love - HENSON CARGILL (March 1970 US 45-single on Monument MN45-1198, B-side to "The Most Uncomplicated Goodbye I've Ever Heard" - and from the 1970 US Stereo LP "The Uncomplicated Henson Cargill" on Monument SLP 18137)
13. Drivin' My Nails In The Wall - WAYLON JENNINGS & THE KIMBERLYS (from the 1969 US Stereo LP "Country-Folk" on RCA Victor LSP 4180)
14. Ruby, Don't Take My Love To Town - KENNY ROGERS & THE FIRST EDITION (May 1969 US 45-single on Reprise 0829, A-side - also from the 1969 US Stereo LP "'69" on Reprise Records RS 6328)
15. Why Can't I Come Home - ED BRUCE (from the 1968 US Stereo LP "If I Could Just Go Home" on RCA Victor LSP 3948)
16. Mr. Walker, It's All Over - BILLE JO SPEARS (February 1969 US 45-single on Capitol 2436, A-side - also from the 1969 US Stereo LP "Mr. Walker, It's All Over" on Capitol ST 224)
17. Harlan County - JIM FORD (August 1969 US 45-single on Sundown SD-115, A-side - also on the 1969 US Stereo LP "Harlan County" on Sundown JHS 1002)
18. Widow Wimberly - TONY JOE WHITE (from his 1970 3rd US Stereo LP "Tony Joe" on Monument SLP 18142)
19. Belinda (Alternate Take) - BOBBIE GENTRY (recorded in 1970, first issued on the September 2018 UK/Europe 8CD Box Set "The Girl From Chickasaw County (The Complete Capitol Masters)" on Universal/UMC 5383971)
20. Joanne - MICHAEL NESMITH & THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND (from his 1970 US Stereo LP "Magnetic South" on RCA Victor LSP 4371)
21. Mr. Jackson's Got Nothing To Do - JOHN HARTFORD (from his 1969 US Fifth Stereo LP "John Hartford" on RCA Victor LSP 4156)
22. Alone - LEE HAZLEWOOD & SUZI JANE HOKOM (November 1969 Promo-Only MONO US 45-single on LHI Records LHI 19, B-side to "Same Old Songs")
23. Fabulous Body And Smile - SIR ROBERT CHARLES GRIGGS [aka Bobby Charles] (1973 US 45-single on Capitol 3714, A-side - also from his 1973 US Stereo LP "The Legend Of Sir Robert Charles Griggs" on Capitol St-11234)
24. I Feel Like Going Home - CHARLIE RICH (August 1973 US 45-single on Epic 5-11040, B-side of "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World")
NOTES: All Tracks in STEREO except No. 9 and 22 in MONO
The 24-page booklet is a thoroughly satisfying feast of knowledge and affection from compiler BOB STANLEY (with nods to friends who helped) that's also jam-packed with rare US 45/LP artwork with the occasional trade adverts (full pages to Michael Nesmith and Charlie Rich). Top quality Audio is by Ace's long-standing and mucho-experienced NICK ROBBINS - 22 Stereo cuts with only Nat Stuckey and the Lee Hazelwood/Suzi Jane Hokom duet in Mono. VINYL collectors should also note that all Ace Records issues of the double are black vinyl, but there's a rare GREEN VINYL variant of 500 copies (with the same catalogue number) on Rough Trade, which was available direct from their mail order. To the chunes...
The underling menace/relationship-sleaze inherent in the song "Ode To Billie Joe" acts as an idea springboard for this collection of lesser-heard 60ts and 70ts Country and Folk Rock from Southern States USA (not surprisingly most of these songs were on RCA Victor or Columbia - two principal homes of Country). What comes as something of a surprise though is how this compilation proves the extraordinary reach of that song - its unusual structure, words, weirdly downbeat yet intriguing story - all of it – beguiling and inspiring. Five tracks in and it's pretty clear that huge swathes of great artists had heard Bobby Gentry and her stunning 'Son Of A Preacher Man' type-tune and had been duly blown away (Tony Joe White practically started writing his own material because of it). Seizing the sluice-gates day, they too began aping its searing lyrical honesty and between 1968 and 1970 (especially) tackled subjects usually off-limits to a three-minute radio song appealer.
But amongst these knowing tales of serial cheaters, guitar-case railroad-track walkers and swamp-rocking widows are surprisingly touching odes to genuinely tremulous hurt and loss. It opens with a gorgeous remastered Stereo cut from Lee Hazlewood (the king of deadpan drama, lyrics from it title this review) where a tempestuous marriage puts the house up for sale every Wednesday morning only to see it taken off the market that afternoon once their even hastier make-up kicked in. Dolly Parton too – so often seen as a bubble-headed Barbie Doll in mock Cherokee tassels singing about good old Kentucky gals – stuns with her open-wound pain story of a pregnant girl hiding her smock bump - abandoned by a huckster in "Down From Dover". Bob Stanley quite rightly calls it brave at a time when so many in her genre wouldn’t have gone near such real-world nastiness with a barge pole. And just how early-morning God-of-life beautiful is Hoyt Axton's "Way Before The Time Of Towns" – a stunning soft-as-silk orchestrated acoustic epic from a writer normally associated with Rock stuff like Three Dog Night's keyboard-upbeat chart-topper "Joy To The World" and Steppenwolf's hard-hitting anti-drug song "The Pusher".
Gentry herself gets a showing with an Alternate Acoustic rendering of "Belinda", a song that turned up on her fifth and final album "Patchwork" for Capitol Records in 1970. Its first appearance came on CD7 of the exemplary and seriously sought after September 2018 8CD Box Set "The Girl From Chickasaw County". Sat on the front-door steps of some large house in her patchwork dress, tasselled hair and wicker basket of oh-so-darlin' flowers - it's a pared-back acoustic rendering and a clever choice over the issued version – this brute being starker and darker and better for it. Before the Nancy Sinatra duets, Lee Hazlewood over on his Lee Hazlewood Industries LHI label had been pairing with Suzi Jane Hokom and their Jack Nitzsche-arranged "Alone" makes for another slyly dark sleeper (a Promo-only 7" in the USA). Other genius inclusions are the hard-to-find-on-CD B-side "I Feel Like Going Home" by Charlie Rich (flip of the Silver Fox's huge hit "The Most Beautiful Girl") and anything from the Country-Soulful Jim Ford album "Harlan County" is a doozy in my books. And on it goes...
I would admit that this CD would be an acquired-taste listen for some – a lick-of-the-lips they don't ever want to experience. But "Choctaw Ridge..." is the kind of compilation that's rare in the 2020s - the listen is good (discoveries galore); it sounds great and has on-the-money annotation that will make you dig deeper and explore. And all of it collated by British men brandishing brave trouser choices - decent chappies proffering us American Country Music cultural-less Neanderthals with tunes and artists we really need to pay more attention to/reappraise. Top stuff and well done to all involved...
