A session from Don Was's 1994 project, Country, Soul and Blues.
They perform the Willie Nelson composition, Funny How Time Slips Away.
An incredible record, sort of a mental geographic record of the thin line that once upon a time existed in Detroit...Between Cass and Second Avenue up from Cass Park...one side of the road was Black Soul, Jazz and Blues and the other was Country and Honky Tonk, but the middle blocks were an alchemist's mixing bowl where there the twain truly did meet.....
5 comments:
If you saw the PBS program that filmed those sessions you know that Lyle and the Reverend Al didn't exactly "click" together. Green was often perturbed by Lovett's attempts at harmony, and on more than one occasion stopped the recording to bitch about Lyle "singing the wrong part again."
It worked out in the end, and it's a cool version of Willie's song, but it was anything but smooth sailing during production.
We all know about the Rev's ego...but then, that's part of what I love about Al Green. Lyle is is one of the coolest humans on the planet.
The song I really wanted to find from this project was Patches...BB King and George Jones...
The most over produced, hyper emotional, tear jerkin version of that piece of highly engineered manipulative pop music that ever walked the earth...but god knows, I love it.
by the way, I really am a fan of Don Was and Dave Was and I wish I had seen the PBS Special about the recording of the record. I didn't know it existed!
It was aired as part of a fund-raising show, one of the neverending beg-athons they do whenever they have something really worthy to watch. Don Was had been working with Bonnie Raitt and others at the time and was probably the hottest producer in the biz for a bit. You might be able to find digital copies at www.half.com or Amazon (if you don't mind dealing with them) I'm pretty sure it's available, unless I dreamed about seeing the program (which is entirely possible... I did a lot of brain damage as a younger man)
Speaking of Lyle, I shot a Xmas party in Nashville a few weeks back, and struck up a conversation with one of the entertainers there before the party started. He had recorded and toured with Lyle's Large Band when Francine Reed was singing backup, and had nothing but praise for Lyle. Said he was a perfectionist, too... insisted that the concert sound exactly like the albums. Made them practice for three straight days before they took the show on the road, despite the fact that the same crew (Matt Rollins on keyboards, etc) had recorded the music.
I had expected a little dirt, but this guy sang Lyle Lovett's praises more than I do, and I'm a disciple!
I bought the cd when it came out and we still listen to it. I was always a fan of Was/not Was. I learned about the Algerian singer Khaled from Don's work with him.
My wife is a real Lyle fan.
I saw that Sweet Pea Atkinson has been a member of the Large band for years. Sweet Pea is one of the greatest old school soul singers on the planet!
Great back ground story on Lovett.
Funny, we listen to a lot of American C&W music here.
There's a great DJ, George Laing, who has been broadcasting on RTL Radio here and every Friday night for years, he does 5 hours of radio straight from Nashville, France!
He has all the radio call stuff from American Stations and gets current artists to record intros to their own songs....
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