Guy Clark's Golden Hooks

Guy Clark was the songwriter who could whip out three words and leave you in a cloud of dust. You could also taste that west Texas dust in almost every song and there never seemed enough whiskey or wine to clear your throat.

It was Ohio State's Woody Hayes who famously extolled football's winning formula: three yards and a cloud of dust. Sometimes it took Guy more three words but he always won you over. The best way to pay tribute to him is to simply replay some of those phrases. He pretty much defined the "Outlaw" in modern roots music:

Desperadoes waiting for a train...

If I can get off of this LA freeway without gettin killed or caught.

And all that I learned from a Colt 45
Was to curse the smell of the black powder smoke
And the stand in the street at the turn of a joke

Then of course there were those fascinating, mesmerizing women

And the blues had a way with her smile
And she had a way of her own
Like prisoners have a way with a file

He always said that heaven 
Was just a Dallas whore

Hill Country, Honky Tonkin'  Rita Ballou
Every beer joint in town has played the fool for you
Backsliding, barrel riding Rita Ballou
Ain't a cowboy in Texas would not a ride a bull for you

Oh me, oh my how she makes that bow hair fly
How she hangs that music in the air

Then there was the company he kept. Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill and Jerry Jeff Walker and Rickey Skaggs among others. They are among many who would say to Guy Clark: Thanks for the songs.

VINYL The Book

One of the best parts of the HBO series “Vinyl” is the opening credits in which the mechanical cutting of grooves and the pressing of wax records are presented in slow motion close-ups worthy of Stanley Kubrick. No matter how often I have watched that or read about the process, I could never quite fathom how sound goes from electronic recording to wax grooves and back to sound waves created by a stylus and a turntable.

Then again I never appreciated how that process had driven the art of making music until I found the coffee table history, VINYL The Art of Making Records by Mike Evans (Sterling  Publishing). It is both a labor of love and a thing of beauty created by Evans, who started in Liverpool’s Cavern Club as a musician and has produced more than sixty books on music, movies and fashion.

If this were only a collection of album covers, it would be illuminating.  David Bowie’s foreshadowing of his sexual persona on Diamond Dogs.  Frank Zappa’s send up of Sgt. Pepper on We’re Only It For The Money.  Alice Cooper’s School’s Out as a wooden school desk (with the disc wrapped in panties). Rolling Stones’s Sticky Fingers (they had to unzip the fly because it was scratching the vinyl during shipment).

Evans starts with Marconi and takes us to the gold plated “Sounds of Earth” attached to the Voyager space craft (Mozart and Chuck Berry on the A-side) and into the current vinyl revival symbolized by Jack White.  The book is organized by decades with sidebars that include eye-popping Turntable Treasures, segments on live albums and features on major music events.

It is fascinating to learn how the push for long playing discs (33 1/3 with some 40 minutes of playing time) was driven by record companies who wanted to release classical performances on something more convenient than a stack of 78s (about four minutes to a side).

The first concept album? In Evans' view it was from 1955: Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours.

The first double album? Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde.  The idea of four different canvases ignited a revolution in cover art while giving the musicians twice as much recording time.

Motown’s first chart topping LP?  The 12-Year-Old Genius, the first of many hits for Stevie Wonder.

Mixed in with the rich history of blues, rock, rap and punk is an endless supply of trivia. LL Cool J is short for Ladies Love Cool James. Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, which Decca released in 1954, sold an estimated 25 million copies. Sgt. Pepper took 129 days to make and was one of the first albums to print all the song lyrics.

Opening this volume is like uncorking a bottle of Chateau Margaux. You can’t decide whether to devour it all once or savor it sip by sip.