A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (Nation Press) by Antonino D'Ambrosio is a very passionately conceived and written book. That album (as I must have mentioned a score of times on this blog) is one of my favourites and definitely worthy of full-length treatment, but overall I felt unsatisfied by the book.

"The making of" in the title is in the broadest sense, painting the entire social changes of the early 60s as its backdrop. Of course as an early 60s "protest album" (Cash's own description of the record) that context is not irrelevant, but I think the book fails to really distinguish between the topics with a primary relationship to the album, and those that reside in the outer circles of background. It's A Rough Guide to the Greenwich Folk Boom, the Civil Rights Movement, Music in the Civil Rights Movement and Johnny Cash and Peter La Farge and Some Other Stuff from the Last 50 years in American Popular Culture, which is ... well, OK in theory and would have been better received by me if basic facts of the album itself did not remain cloudy. Also, it's a short book and each of those topics is Big, you know? It's a lot for 230 pages.

Some of the songs of the album (the official album, let alone the outtakes etc) actually go unmentioned through the whole book, and from reading it you wouldn't know, say, who played drums on it. Perhaps I have been trained by Dylanology to expect too much; books about his albums include details of every running sheet, every session, every player, every outtake and alternative version. I'm open to the idea my expectations are skewiff, but even trying to step back from that, there were rather more questions than answers.

The Johnny-Cash-on-the-studio part of the making of Bitter Tears sometimes left me confused. For instance, in the space of a page or so we have conflicting information about Cash's contract at Columbia. On page 64, "[L]earning from his tenure at Sun, Cash made sure the freedom to explore and record different kinds of sounds ... was included in his new deal at Columbia." This is interesting; of course Sam Phillips' aversion to letting his hit machines branch out is well known. (He wouldn't even let Cash record a gospel album, which you would think not terribly controversial in the mid-century mid-South.) But I'm very interested to know of the actual terms in his Columbia contract which guaranteed more artistic freedom. Sadly The Smoking Gun doesn't have a copy of the contract. A couple of pages later, the book quotes producer Bob Johnston (of "Is it rolling, Bob?" Highway 61 Revisited fame) saying Cash was "encountering the same king of stuff [creatively] at Columbia [as he had at Sun."] It leaves me wondering, if "the freedom to explore" was really included explicitly in Cash's contract a) in what terms and b) how could he encounter obstacles to something to which he was contractually entitled? How did that all actually work? Alas, the book does not tell me.

At this point in the story is the recording of The Lure of the Grand Canyon, a project I was not familiar with and still has not been released on CD. Released in 1961, it consists of six tracks, the first five of which are classical pieces and the last Cash's spoken word; you can hear the Cash track here (complete with singing mules!), at the wonderful WFMU Beware of the Blog. Please do so. Composer Ferde Grofé and conductor Andre Kostelanetz have other albums on Columbia going back to the 50s and before, and rather than a mavericky tangent powered by the singular artistic vision of J.R Cash, doesn't it make sense to see the Lure of the Grand Canyon as a project Columbia would have done anyway, and used Cash's mainstream star value to lift up its profile? D'Amrosio says Cash "brought in" conductor Kostelanetz, implying our hero was the creative force. Perhaps true, and I'd love it to be, but I dunno, I'd like to hear more about it to accept that story. This is what I mean that the book raises more questions than it answers.

In Stephen Miller's Johnny Cash: The Life of an American Icon it states it 'was an employee at Columbia Records, Gene Ferguson, who had first alerted Johnny to "The Ballad of Ira Hayes." A Heartbeat and a Guitar doesn't mention Ferguson and gives the impressed the Bitter Tears album sprang solely from Cash palling around Greenwich Village with La Farge and others. No doubt Columbia preferred Cash the hitmaker to Cash the artistic maverick with mavericky ideas about, say, doing a live album from a prison but I find myself wondering exactly what the internal involvement was with the genesis of the record. I would like to have known more of the actual mechanics of how the record comes to pass. It does not diminish the importance of Johnny Cash as a popular artist who pushed and exceeded the boundaries of his genre and time to know that, like all of us, he was pushing and being pushed amid many forces, administrative and bureaucratic as much as any else. I would never begrudge a retelling of the Birmingham bus boycott story but the book is more interested in those wider social events as animating forces than the mundane facts of life, even creative life, that actually produced this record.

I do know a fair bit about the Greenwich folk boom and the Civil Rights movement of this period so I admit that might lie behind some of my frustration. The Native American politics of that period (or any period really) are far less familiar and you may call me hypocritical for accusing the author of the opposite on this score: I would like to have heard more about it. Peter La Farge was not "an Indian", but like Cash adopted that as a persona which makes for a fascinating parallel between the two which I was hoping to see teased out more. I recall as a child people telling me, while contemplating Cash LP covers, "you can see the Indian in his face as he gets older" and it seemed reasonable to me. But of course you couldn't. Cash had no Native ancestry, and he sheepishly retracted the claim after he got sober in the 60s ("the higher I got, the more Indian I got.")

Cash gravitated towards the persona of the outsider in his public life, and this sort of fantasising is part of the addiction, in a way. It's not politically unproblematic of course but at least he disavowed it when his mind cleared of barbiturates. The magical thinking of La Farge, who died in 1965 and sadly never made it to the "survivor" phase of his addictions, is a more interesting case. His father was a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who was very active in "Indian" rights advocacy, leading one of its major organisations. The books sort of suggests he "let people believe" he was Native. Perhaps initially, but once he made a clean break of his Colorado upbringing and landed in Greenwich Village did people "just believe" or did he given them a nudge along? The liner notes of the Bear Family release of La Farge's As Long as The Grass Shall Grow and On the Warpath, written in 1990, state flatly he was "a full-blooded Nargaset Indian" which is simply not the case. He had no Native American ancestry. I don't enquire into this to judge him or wag a finger (the Native American activists quoted in the book don't seem to reflect on it) however failing to deal with it left a gap in the treatment of La Farge in the book. It doesn't take an enthusiastic armchair psychologiser to see some low hanging fruit here. Here's kid who grows up in the shadow, and eventually becomes estranged from, his Pulitzer Prize winning father, who also happens to devote most of his time not to his kids but to public advocacy for Native American rights and the misfit son adopts a "more Indian than thou" public persona. Daddy issues, much? I don't mean to be flippant (well perhaps I do) but D'Ambrosio is not averse to some critical theory or reaching into the minds of his "characters" and yet on this interesting issue of cultural appropriation - which goes to the heart of his project, yes? -- he lets it slide by without a mention. If you're going to devote two whole pages (in a 200 page book) to the history of Carnegie Hall, as the book does, but not give a paragraph in passing on this stuff, I'm sort of afraid you have lost me.

I was moved to read about how "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow" is still regularly spun on radio stations serving upstate New York around "Lake Perfidy" and the extensive bibliography has given me a lot of things to follow up for which I am grateful. If you were the kind of person who wanted to read a whole book about one album, you should probably still get this one but I think the topic is very far from being fully explored in print.

I'm watching The Highwaymen Live DVD, which I got for Christmas. There are a lot of clips on YouTube if you're interested.

Saw Crazy Heart the other day; its quite alright and if you're stuck for something to do on half price Tuesdays, do check it out. The movie didn't quite blow me away in total. Jeff Bridges is certainly brilliant, no complaints here if he wins the Oscar. Maggie Gyllenhaal does well in the thankless ... well, not quite the Manic Pixie Dream Girl role but close enough. The weak acting link is Colin Farrell (tho I like his songs on the soundtrack well enough). Maybe it was the Character but man he was WOODEN and I felt embarrassed for him having to act next to Bridges.

Bridges certainly does, apart from his own acting chops, have the boozy washed up country thing down, in a spine tingling way. On stage he looked crazily like Waylon, and in other light (mostly the Morning After the Night Before seedy kind of light) looked chillingly like Kris. The movie is based on a book and I wouldn't mind reading that. Of course I hope Ryan Bingham, who has a small role in the picture too, wins the Oscar for the song. The Stephen Bruton songs the characters sing, particularly "Falling an' Flying", are spot on, no wonder the soundtrack is top of the Americana charts for sales and radio plays right now.

This audience footage is interesting, of the Bridges/Farrell concert sections of the movie. The clip says it was half time at a Toby Keith gig -- gotta get that authentic country audience on film for free -- although in an iTunes Celebrity Playlist thing with Jeff Bridges I just listened to he said it was a Montgomery Gentry gig. I don't care enough to find out which is right (I assume the audience person has more incentive to know for sure than the Hollywood B+ lister) but it's interesting if you've seen the final thing.

EDIT!!!!!!! Apparently it is both. Toby Keith with Montgomery Gentry as back up band. This is how much I (don't) know about modern country music, folks.

If you have an iPhone and are a music lover you could do a lot worse than drop $2.49 on the TuneIn Radio app, which streams radio stations from ... well, just about everywhere. I've only had it a couple of days and haven't explored beyond the USA but I've heard great things about the African, Caribbean, South American stations you can get. Was just tuning into some bluegrass show on the legendary WSM Nashville and then surfed to Cajun Radio 1290 out of Lafayette. Been very impressed with its reliability on 3G, trundling on the bus down George St didn't even upset it. I'm told the bandwidth usage is very reasonable too, so all in all four hoofs and a tail up for TuneIn Radio.

Marianne Faithfull at the Opera House the other night was a very satisfying affair in front of an engaged and appreciative audience. She went through most of Easy Come, Easy Go plus the old stand-bys "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan", "Broken English", "As Tears Go By" and "Why'd You Do It."

The band mostly stayed out of the way and were good without being dazzling; they were a little heavy handed at times but I was in a box on the side so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that that was a function of the always loose acoustics in that room. There was a low musical point (for me) during "Sing Me Back Home" featuring a musical saw. We can finally answer the question, most robustly in the negative, whether a musical saw is any replacement for a pedal or lap steel. It's a party piece, comrades, not a musical instrument.

There's a fragment of "Broken English" here, questionable phone recording quality but evidence the old trooper is still in fine, passionate voice.

I did mildly enjoy the Leonard Cohen tribute a few years back, a Wilner and friends love-in along the same lines, but the concept does lend itself to self-indulgence and complacency. I thought this event offered all the pitfalls of Came So Far for Beauty (acts not learning the songs, lack of rehearsal etc) but with the added variables of uncertainty about outside acoustics, the weather and ambient noise of one of the country's busiest commuter and tourist hubs. The Opera House forecourt should be left to Australian Idol finales and triathlon finishing lines.

Despite Marianne Faithfull being singled out for a shellacking I'm still very excited about her solo show, it's hard to judge whether I would've felt so hostile to her performance. i don't really mind divas getting drunk and slurring out of tune, really, in fact I quite like it. I'll be sure to let you know Wednesday night.

Not Byron-related but kicking off the season in style is Marianne Faithfull only the week after next. Playing the Concert Hall at the Opera House -- ugh, I have a prejudice against it for popular music -- and I only have a seat at the back of one of the mezzanine boxes but still I can't wait.

"Solitude"

Then, Dan Sultan at the Factory on February 27th -- for a measly $20. For realsm his recent album of late 2009 -- Get Out While You Can -- is a gem of soul, rock and country. For twenty bucks you can't afford not to go.

The above dodgy but illustrative video of Dan was taken by me at the Blue Mountains Music Fest the year before last and that will be my next port of call, in March. As well as seeing two of the Bluesfest drawcards for me Chris Smither and Nanci Griffith, the rest of the line-up is superb. My posts from my previous visit. I'm sure there will be a number of new discoveries but I'm also looking forward to revisiting with the boys from Genticorum, who do fabulous traditional Quebec music.

As for the rest of the Byron folk, well The Flatlanders top the list but they haven't announced any sideshows yet. I'll be there when they do (they have to, right?) I've lined up to see Dr John and the Lower 911 at the Basement; seen him a few times before (but not for yonks) and I might have wavered but the opportunity for a show at a joint that size (real small) cannot be passed up. And ... that might be me tapped out for another year ...

Cool. Robert Duvall is mandatory for such a fillum. Sorta glad its fiction though, don't think this old world could cope with "a combination of Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard." Talk about never getting out of this world alive.

Was dubious about Colin Farrell's tracks but he's not half bad -- none of the above but pretty passable for the job.

If I Needed You is IMHO in TVZ's bottom half of songs buts its the most covered go figure.

I beg to differ with the writers of the "Goofs" section of IMDB for it though:

Revealing mistakes: When Tommy and Bad walk out of a restaurant supposedly in Phoenix, cars are shown with Arizona licence plates on their front bumpers. Arizona does not provide licence plates for front bumpers.

Perhaps they don't provide them nor make them mandatory (FREEDOM, Y'ALL!), but my sister lives in Arizona and she has New South Wales plates on the front of her rig -- goof writers need to use more imagination as to how such a car park might exist!

1. Easy Come Easy Go - Marianne Faithfull. I got this back in January and here it still is, top of the list.
2. Blood and Candle Smoke - Tom Russell. Typically full-bore TR effort of weaving biography and myth, now with mariachi horns
3. The Bright Mississippi - Allen Toussaint. Refreshing, transfixing, dreamy masterclass
4. Midnight at the Movies - Justin Townes Earle. No sophomore nerves here, proving the first album was not a fluke.
5. Hills and Valleys - The Flatlanders. Slipped a little in list over time but still an album of a grade Americana song to song
6. Traditions in Transition - Quantic and his Combo Barbaro. Genre tinkering with respect and passion, Latin on the wild side
7. One to the Head, One to the Heart - Gretchen Peters. What I said at the time
8. A Friend of a Friend - David Rawlings Machine. Should be higher really, but couldn't drop anything.
9. Mountain Soul II - Patty Loveless. Infectious bluegrassy country, highly polished but full of affection
10. Get Out While You Can - Dan Sultan. Well now, I only got this yesterday so given a few more days it could have really shot up the charts. Brilliant collection of soul, country and blues and heaps more soul. Dan is a star, no doubt.
11. Potato Hole - Booker T From the show in April
12. What Have You Done My Brother? - Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens. Preach it, sister
13. Dirt Town City Limits - Mat d and the Profane Saints. See Jim's great review.
14 Today, Tomorrow and Forever - Pete Molinari feat. The Jordanaires. Only an EP, but a perfectly formed one.
15. For the Mission Baby -- Malcolm Holcombe.
16. Ready for the Flood - Gary Louris and Mark Olsen. Was rather "meh" on it for eight of the last nine months but sort of started to grow on me ....
17. Animals in the Dark - William Elliott Whitmore. Should be higher also, what can you do? Lists are stupid. Hat tip Phineas, some very cathartic tracks on here believe me.
18. Cotton - Sam Baker. Also needs more time but exceptional story songs and that kind of creaky Texas voice I love.
19. Lucky One - Raul Malo A little bit country, a little bit croony, very pleasant listening.
20. The Soul of Black John - John Black