/Asleep at the Wheel/Half a Hundred Years // released 2021/acquired 2024/listened 2025
One of the surprising things that happened when I watched Ken Burns’ documentary series on country music was that I discovered an unsuspected fondness for Western swing music – popularized in the 1930s by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. So I listened to the music of Wills himself, and also a couple of modern Western swing bands: Asleep at the Wheel and the Time Jumpers. (I had had a chance to see the Time Jumpers before I knew I would like them.)
This Asleep at the Wheel album – still their most recent – celebrates the 50th anniversary of their founding in 1970. It has some stomping dance pieces and some slower pieces – including their classic weeper, the cleverly-titled “The Letter that Johnny Walker Read,” here sung by Lee Ann Womack. There are other big-name guests, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, and Emmylou Harris among them. Lots of highlights, among them “Take Me Back to Tulsa” and “Spanish Two-Strep” (both by Bob Wills), “Miles and Miles of Texas,” “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” and Irving Berlin’s “Marie” (sung by Willie Nelson and Asleep leader Ray Benson).
Okay, not for everyone – but really, why not? It’s good stuff.
Badfinger/Timeless…The Musical Legacy // released 2013/acquired 2023/listened 2025
I never minded listening to Badfinger on the radio or if other people played their records, but I never bought any of them myself. So, this collection looked appealing. It has 16 tracks from 6 of their 9 albums, from three different labels, including a couple tracks from early enough that they were still using the name the Iveys. (The Beatles insisted they change it when they were signed to Apple Records.) Quite the line-up of producers here: Beatles McCartney and Harrison, Beatles associates Mal Evans and Geoff Emerick, Tony Visconti, Todd Rundgren. The hit singles like “Come and Get It” and “Day After Day” still sound great, and the songwriting and musicianship are strong throughout. (Any weaker album tracks are of course omitted from this compilation.) They had a checkered (or chequered) history, two of the four committing suicide, the collapse of Apple Records messing them up financially and business-wise, multiple versions of the band in existence a couple times. None of that matters when you listen to the music on this disc.
One amusing moment for me: the second track here is “Without You.” I was unfamiliar with their version, which is okay but not as good as Harry Nilsson’s version. I was startled when looking at the credits to realize that this is the original, and Nilsson’s is the cover. I had no idea.