T-BONE BURNETT - "THE PRODUCER"

Musician Joseph Henry Burnett is more well known as T-Bone Burnett, but I've been calling him "Him Again." He has produced so many of my favorite albums of recent years, including Gregg Allman's Low Country Blues, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, Willie Nelson's Country Music, and the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration, Raising Sand, as well as the soundtracks to O Brother, Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski and Crazy Heart.

A neat new compilation that I bought at Starbucks (but I don't believe it's exclusive to the chain) collects lots of the cool music he has produced over the years.  T-Bone himself writes about all the songs, which is really cool.  The collection does a good job of hitting many of his recent high points, although it omits the Willie album.  Still, definitely worth getting, particularly if you don't have a lot of these records.

O BROTHER, TEN YEARS ON

I just picked up a copy of the deluxe reissue of the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack.  It's well worth the money, especially if you didn't get it the first time.

It's the rare soundtrack that stands apart from the film, even though the film is an absolute classic.  I'd liken it to Saturday Night Fever in that it really introduced a genre of music to the general public.  SNF introduced disco, and O Brother kind of re-introduced bluegrass and mountain music to America and the world.  Both movies were huge (I barely remember SNF, but O Brother is one of my favorite films ever, I enjoy it more every time I see it) but still the soundtracks stand as their own creations.

I'd also argue that O Brother introduced some great talent to larger audiences, namely Gillian Welch.  Alison Krauss was doing quite well before the film, but I think a lot of people discovered her through the album. And without a doubt, Ralph Stanley really benefitted from the exposure he got from his haunting version of "O Death." And as producer T-Bone Burnett says in the liner notes, people who didn't have houses were now able to afford houses.  That's an amazing thing.  Another great story in the liner notes is about James Carter, who leads a group of convicts in a field recording of "Po' Lazarus," from 1959, which is used at the beginning of the film. After the soundtrack went to #1, he was tracked down: out of jail for decades, he didn't remember recording that song, but now he gets performance royalty checks from one of the best selling soundtracks of all time. "So a movie about these prisoners on a prison work farm down South recording a song and having it become a hit song unbeknownst to them, started off with a song recorded by a prisoner on a prison work farm which became a bit hit unbeknownst to him."

This is all the context of the film and the soundtrack.  But how is the expanded reissue?  Well, it adds some songs from the film that didn't make the original version, as well as a couple of songs that weren't used in the film. Many are different versions of songs from the film: "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" (by Colin Linden, in addition to Chris Thomas King's from the original soundtrack), "I'll Fly Away" (by The Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling, complimenting the Krauss/Welch version), and another haunting field recording, Ed Lewis and other prisoners singing "Tom Devil," recorded by Alan Lomax the same day he recorded "Po' Lazarus."

I'm not sure the album necessarily needed an expanded edition, but I found the other versions of the songs a welcome addition to an album that I've listened to many times.

PATTERSON HOOD, GILLIAN WELCH AND ELVIS PRESLEY

I've been trumpeting the greatness of The Drive-By Truckers on No Expiration a lot lately, I've become a big fan of the band thanks to the fact that I am a listener to Outlaw Country. Last week, in honor of the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth, he did a post on his myspace blog about Elvis, and also wrote about Gillian Welch's classic song "Elvis Presley Blues," which he rates, as, bar none, the best song ever about Elvis Presley.

I used to really not care much about Elvis Presley - I'm still not a big fan, and don't like much of his post-Sun Records era. It's true that he may have been the original rock star, but he was also the original sell-out. I was probably influenced by Public Enemy's song "Fight The Power" where they say "Elvis was a hero to most/But he never meant shit to me/Racist, simple and plain/Motherfuck him and John Wayne!" I'm not sure he was racist, either. But anyway, I realized that however ambivalent I was about him, the guy changed the world. He influenced everything that came after, which is pretty much all rock and roll music. His bad movies, fat outfits, embarrassing Vegas era, lame albums, etc. would never change his influence. He influenced The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Clash, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty, Tom Petty, and so many other great artists. Nothing can change the impact he had on those artists, and thousands (or millions) more.

And by the way, check out Gillian Welch.  I remember hearing her Hell Among The Yearlings album when it came out, it seemed so "out of time," not in a gimmicky way at all. And she was scary, she sounded truly haunted. Writing this (and having watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? for the millionth time this weekend - she's on the soundtrack and makes a cameo) reminds me, I have to listen to her music more often! Her partner David Rawlings just released a new album, but that's for another post.