Know Country For Old Men (Part 1)

The Old Guard (There's gold in them there hills...)

                                            
Following on from my earlier ruminations on country and alt-country, 'No Stetson Required' (which you really ought to read first), I'd like to offer a few signposts to help you on your journey down this lost highway.  Please bear in mind this is in no way a definitive list. It is a very personal guide, there are many alternative routes and diversions. I make no apologies for being a 'cry in your beer' country kind of guy or for recommending actual albums over songs. I've tried to do this in a vaguely chronological way, at least as far as the artists are concerned.

1) Hank Williams - 40 Greatest Hits (1978)

If not quite the first king of country music (Jimmie Rodgers beat him to that) his was the most enduring reign and unquestionably it's the Hank Williams songbook that represents the crown jewels in the country firmament: Cold Cold Heart, Your Cheating Heart, I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love with you... etc Simple songs of heartbreak, longing and loss that have a timeless appeal. And even if he didn't invent county music, as the original hard-drinking, hard-living hellraiser he was rock n roll before it was invented. You've got to take your ten gallon hat off to the man.

2) Johnny Cash - Live At San Quentin/Live At Folsom Prison (1968/9)

                                        

Not much more needs to be said about the man in black these days thanks to his late career renaissance. These live albums are probably Cash at his peak. When he sings "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die", for all their whooping and a-hollering, you can imagine even this captive audience of hard-nuts shitting their collective pants.

3) Merle Haggard - If Only I Could Fly (2000)

The 20 year old Merle Haggard was once such inmate at Cash's first San Quentin prison concert in 1958 and he often credits this as the turning point in his life. 'The Hag' made much of his outlaw credentials: I'm A Lonesome Fugitive, Branded Man, Mama Tried etc and still refuses to grow old gracefully. His 2000 album 'If Only I Could Fly', opens with "watching while some old friends do a line. Holding back the want in my own addicted mind..."  Oh, and it's better than all of Cash's Rick Rubin produced 'American' albums put together.

4) George Jones - The Grand Tour (1974)

                                     

Aah, 'The Possum'...   Outside of country circles the late George Jones is sadly better known for being Mr Tammy Wynette and if he is known in his own right it's more likely for his boozing rather than his music. Such extreme hell-raising earned him the nickname 'No Show' Jones as he was often too inebriated to make his own gigs. One of the most often quoted GJ stories concerns his second wife Shirley's attempts to prevent him from drinking. Having removed all the liquor in the house and hidden all their car keys Shirley reckoned she'd cracked it, given that they lived miles away from any bar or store. She hadn't banked on George taking the only means of transport available to him, his lawnmower.

George's alcholism meant he had a less than professional attitude to recording also, so the quality of his albums varied wildly. 1980's Double Trouble, a rock n roll duet album with the equally sozzled Johnny Paycheck, marks his nadir. But what George always had was a remarkable voice - a pure tone with impeccable phrasing. Matthew Diebel's scholarly obituary proclaims him to be the greatest of all American 'pop' singers. 

http://www.today.com/entertainment/george-jones-greatest-american-pop-singer-ever-recorded-6C9628922?franchiseSlug=todayentertainmentmain 

His fourth wife, Nancy cleaned him up  and arguably saved his life yet you could argue that it was writer/producer Billy Sherrill that saved his professional life a decade earlier. Under Sherrill's guidance he recorded some of his most consistent work and had huge crossover hits with 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' and 'A Good Year For The Roses.'  Ploughing this furrow George became a self-styled King of misery, perfectly demonstrated on the title track of  'The Grand Tour' - where the listener is invited to gaze around the physical and emotional debris of a broken home. "As you leave you'll see the nursery... she left me without mercy, taking nothing but her baby and my heart." Step right up. Come on in.   

5) Faron Young -  Hello Walls (1961)/Four in The Morning (1972)

He might seem an odd inclusion in this list, alongside such household names as Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, but I don't think the country genre ever produced a better singer than Faron Young.  

Young started out in the 50s as a honky-tonker in the footsteps of Hank Williams but his deep rich tone is perhaps more reminiscent of the crooners of that age. Maybe that's why he appeals so much to me. 

1961's 'Hello Walls', an early Willie Nelson cover, was a huge hit for him and  the album of the same name is perhaps his most consistent recording - although I'd argue that the title track is one of the album's weaker songs compared to his original compositions. 

                                   

Faron's biggest hit came in the 70s with 'Four In The Morning'. If his earlier work had bordered on 'easy-listening' with a country styling, here the transformation to full-blown crooner was complete. Not necessarily a bad thing. That said, 'Four In the Morning', the album, is a terrific country LP with enough honky-tonk to satisfy the purist... 

                                               

                                                   

          

Sadly Faron's career came to something of a halt in the 80s. Deteriorating health and a feeling that Nashville had turned its back on him led to him taking his own life in 1996.

I must confess that my first encounter with the name Faron Young was the Prefab Sprout song of the same name that opens their classic 'Steve McQueen'  album. 

    

                                        

For years I thought 'Faron Young' was the narrator's lover and  the lyric "Forgive me, Faron Young... it's four in the morning"  was a plea to the lover for forgiveness. Today I'm still not 100% sure what the actual lyric, "You give me Faron Young, Four In The Morning", means - is he suggesting that his lover leaves him with that feeling of desolation that the song 'Four In The Morning' encapsulates? 

Is it an argument about the virtues of country music over pop music, "you give me infrared instead of sun, you offer paper spoons and bubble gum"? 

I don't know. 

I do know that Faron Young is one of the all-time great country singers. And there's not many like him left.

NO STETSON REQUIRED

Ok, here goes. I know it's not cool to say this but... 

I love country music. 

There. I've said it.

My embarrassment in making this confession has probably something to do with the public perception of country music. If country music still conjures up images of line-dancing, good dental work, big hats and leopard-skin cat suits then this blog may not be for you. 

Shania Twain. The highest paid lap dancer in Nashville, according to Steve Earle.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'll change your mind. If you're still struggling with that mental image ask yourself, what is country music, in essence? Nicholas Dawidoff describes it as 'simple songs of sincerity and feeling - songs about common people by common people.' (In the Country of Country). Put in another way (and I'm paraphrasing 60s country singer Buck Owens here), if Chuck Berry had been born white he would have been a country singer. Historically speaking then, Country is the white man's (or woman's) blues. Or America's own 'folk' music, if you prefer. 

My own personal interest in country goes back to my childhood. My mum was a huge fan at a time when country was probably at its most unfashionable. Distinctly I recall the strains of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E echoing through our house (prefiguring her own actual D.I.V.O.R.C.E from my dad). 

Some of the good stuff stayed with me, like this...

So I can probably blame these recent purchases on her...

                               
Now, clearly something happened to country music in the 1990s. Put simply it crossed over in a BIG way. Shania Twain's 1997 album Come On Over is the best selling album of all time by a female singer. Garth Brooks has sold more albums than Take That, Robbie Williams, JLS and One Direction have put together.  Things haven't changed greatly. Last year Toby Keith, a kind of Garth Brooks with stubble, earnt more from his Republican rabble-rousing than a certain Justin Beiber with all of his endorsements. And, of course, Taylor Swift earnt more than either of them. But that don't impress me much.

A muppet and some characters from Sesame Street.

For me, it wasn't country. Nor was it for Nicholas Dawidoff, who described Garth Brooks as 'a pop star masquerading as a country singer - a yuppie with a lariat.' Steve Earle was more blunt. "If Garth Brooks is country, then I aint." 


During the 1990s an oppositional movement sprang up, known collectively as 'alternative country' (or, depending on what magazine you read, 'Americana', 'Insurgent Country', 'Hillbilly Noir', 'Rural Contemporary', 'Y'Alternative'...) 

Unusually for such 'movements' a definite starting point can be pointed to, the release of Uncle Tupelo's No Depression  album in 1990.  (I should mention there were a number of highly influential artists ploughing this furrow before the movement took hold, whose importance shouldn't be underestimated: The Long Ryders, Giant Sand,  The Blasters, the whole 'cowpunk' sub-genre and a whole host of others I've probably forgotten).

No Depression's title track is a cover of a 1934 Carter Family song (No Depression in Heaven) yet Uncle Tupelo sprang from the mid-west punk scene. They couldn't decide whether they wanted to be Husker Du or Hank Williams, but ultimately it didn't matter; by interpreting their musical heritage in a thoroughly modern way they changed the landscape forever.  

In 1995 Grant Alden and  Peter Blackstock started the first dedicated 'alt country' magazine of the same name - it now resides online http://www.nodepression.com/

Country music itself hasn't always always translated easily across the Atlantic. And it was just so with country's twisted little cousin - it took a while for this sub-genre to cross over to the UK. 

Uncut magazine, from its inception in 1997, was something of a standard bearer. 

The free cd given away with issue 16 of Uncut, entitled Sounds of the New West, might well be the best alt.country collection on disc to this day: The Flying Burrito Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Will Oldham, Calexico, Lambchop, The Handsome Family, Neal Casal, The Pernice Brothers, Josh Rouse...

 

Yet as much this was a movement, it was very much an underground one. 

I was working in a record shop at the time and it didn't really come on my radar until 1996/7 when most of my peers were still taking sides in the phoney Britpop wars or buying Spice Girls cds.

There was something wonderfully cool about following such an underground movement and I distinctly recall our excitement at being able to fill a whole shelf of these obscure artists (although it was tempered by having to file them at the bottom of the country section after the compilations and line dance cds...) 

Leicester seemed like the unofficial capital of the U.K's alt country scene at the time. Thanks largely to Ian from Magic Teapot promotions, artists like The Handsome Family, Lambchop, Chris Mills, Neal Casal, Grand Drive etc played regularly at the Princess Charlotte (now sadly defunct) and the grandly named International Arts Centre (which was essentially a bingo hall). Ditto Cosmic American Music and the Maze in Nottingham. These were exciting times for me: from sharing beers and discussing a mutual love of the Louvin Brothers with Brett Sparks of The Handsome Family, to deeply insulting one of my all-time heroes Mark Olson (ex-of The Jayhawks)... 

Me: "Your new album (Political Manifest) seems like a bit of a change in direction...it's more political"  
Mark: "We've always been political."  
Me: "Ok... musically it's a bit of change too, it's less acoustic more... funky." 
Mark: "We've always been funky."   

And so it went on... and so my aspirations towards a career in music journalism ended.

The alt-country scene grew through the next decade but I guess it left me behind a little. Most of the artists I truly loved either disbanded or moved on: Wilco ventured into deeper waters and became a kind of American Radiohead. The reconstituted Jayhawks split, although I was fortunate to see their first reunion show in the U.K in 2011. Ryan Adams went from releasing three albums in a year to going on strike. Some great bands from this first wave just disappeared entirely. Whatever happened to Nadine, Wagon, Lullaby for the Working Class, Lincoln '65 etc? 

The Jayhawks, Birmingham Academy  2/8/11
(l-r) Gary Louris, Marc Perlman, Mark Olson, Tim O'Reagan

What almost all of these alt-country artists had, and what much of contemporary Nashville lacks, is that 'sincerity and feeling' that Dawidoff was talking about. Or as Steve Earle puts it, "It's not about country or rock, it's really about any kind of music that's real."

Citizen Blimp

An English Citizen Kane : Powell & Pressburger's 'The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp' (1943)  

Putting aside personal opinion  it's difficult to argue with 'Citizen Kane's' status as the most lauded film in cinema history. For 50 years 'Kane' has topped the British Film Institute's 'Greatest Film of All Time' poll, and similarly it sits on top of the American Film Institute's '100 years of movies' list.

 http://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx

So, it is a bold claim indeed to compare what is probably Powell & Pressburger's fourth best known film (after The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life & Death and, perhaps, Black Narcisuss) to Welles' meisterwerk.  Not only would I argue that 'Blimp' is every bit as good as 'Kane' but there are a number of striking similarities between the two films.

                  

Both are life stories of fictional characters; Clive Wynne-Candy and Charles Foster Kane. Yet both Kane and Candy are more than that; they are are archetypal figures representative of their respective nations. 

Major General Wynne-Candy, the 'Blimp' figure, is a man out of time, a military man of the old school, whose values of fair play, 'clean fighting and honest soldiering' are outmoded in an era of modern warfare.  He is also, clearly, nineteenth century Britain, struggling to find an identity in the modern world.

Wynne-Candy: A man out of time

Charles Foster Kane has often been interpreted as a pastiche of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Whether this is true or not, only Orson Welles (and perhaps Herman J. Mankiewicz) could say, yet Kane is clearly a parody of a certain type of American: the rich, materialistic, power-hungry businessman. 'He was born poor and raised by a bank' as Welles himself put it. In short, he is The American Dream turned nightmare.

Kane in his Xanadu palace/prison

Both films begin with their titular character in old age and then proceed to tell their stories in flashback.  In 'Kane' Welles famously uses the device of a snow globe to initiate the first flashback...

Various reporters are given the task of unraveling the meaning behind Kane's mysterious last utterance, "Rosebud". It is their investigations that provide the framing device for the film's many flashbacks to Kane's past. Snow is repeatedly used as a visual metaphor in this.

   

In 'Blimp' we first meet Wynne-Candy in the Turkish baths of his gentlemen's club during WW2. Retired he is now head of the Home Guard, but finds that playing by the rules, even in a home guard training exercise, isn't the modern way.

Here Powell and Pressburger brilliantly use the water of the Turkish baths as the flashback device. Candy emerges out of the Turkish baths 40 years previously in the prime of his life, at the end of the Boer War. The story unfolds chronologically from this point as we follow him through three wars.

Now, at this point I should confess Citizen Kane, though a great film, isn't my favourite film. While no-one can deny it's technical brilliance it is, for me, a film lacking in heart - it's difficult to warm to. Maybe that's part of the point. The mature Kane is an unlikeable character, one incapable of forming meaningful relationships. This is demonstrated in a brilliant montage sequence where we see Kane and his wife breakfasting together over a number of years, literally becoming further apart. 

                                   

In contrast 'Blimp' is a film full of heart, one that admittedly at times borders on sentimentality, yet it is also technically brilliant. 

Roger Livesy gives a barnstorming performance as Clive Wynne-Candy. Pompous and arrogant, yes, but it's hard not to sympathise with the character. As much as Powell & Pressburger are satirising the reactionary old guard they are also paying tribute to an era of lost decency and honour that Candy represents. 

During the Boer War scenes Candy meets the love of his life, Edith, played by Deborah Kerr, only for her to slip through his fingers. Rather like Scottie in 'Vertigo', Candy, dedicates himself to finding an exact replacement for Edith (coincidentally Vertigo is the film that has finally supplanted Kane in the B.F.I's Greatest Films Of All Time list). Which he finds in Barbara, also played by Kerr.  In the third, present-day WW2, sequence of the film this ideal is represented  by Candy's driver, again brilliantly played by Kerr. Rather surprisingly Kerr was given top-billing on some of the film posters at the time, perhaps because Roger Livesey was something of an unknown at the time (Laurence Olivier having been the first choice for the role).

Yet, arguably, Candy's most important relationship isn't with the Kerr character/characters, but with the German he loses Edith to, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (brilliantly played by Anton Walbrook).  His rivalry with Theo becomes a lifelong friendship that transcends the world wars.  One of the most moving scenes in the film, in any film, is the speech Theo gives when pleading for asylum from Nazi Germany. 

Of course there was an obvious propaganda purpose to the scene, and many others in the film. There is also clearly an autobiographical element, on the part of the screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, a Jewish-Hungarian who fled to Britain in 1935. Yet drawing a clear distinction between a German and a Nazi was a brave thing to do in 1945. It was too much for Winston Churchill who thought this sentiment might damage the war effort and proceeded, unsuccessfully, to try and ban the film.  He did manage to refuse the release from military duty of Powell's first choice for the role, Laurence Olivier, but this is no great loss. 

The final scenes of the film return to the imagery of water that began Candy's story. Staring into the bombed and flooded remains of his house he at last realises his time has come, and recalls the words he spoke to his wife as they stepped across the threshold, "now here is the lake and I still haven't changed..."

There is of course a  supreme irony in that  Churchill himself  was very much a Blimp figure, not just in appearance and bluster. Like Candy  he  too  was a man out of time at  the end of  WW2, swept away in the  general election of  1945 on  Labour's tide  of  social reform. 

A new world beckoned. But maybe something was lost along the way.

Je T'aime Amour

It was with an equal measure of delight and surprise that I read of  'Amour's' nomination for the prestigious 'best picture' Oscar. Delighted because 'Amour' is the best film I've seen in an age, since.... well, the same director's 'Cache' in 2002. And it might even be better than that. Surprised because it is a rare thing for a foreign language movie to be nominated for Hollywood's main prize - a cynic could argue that the Academy created the token 'best foreign film' award in 1947 so it didn't need to worry about Johnny Foreigner gate-crashing the big party.  It's rarer still for such a serious film, one that deals with old age and death, to be acknowledged.

'Amour' is only the 9th foreign film ever to be nominated in the award's 90 year history and is a film like none of the recent, unsuccessful, nominees: 

Life Is Beautiful (1997) - serious topic, but schmaltzy. Very Hollywood. Jim Carrey would probably star in the remake.

                                             

Il Postino (1994) - see above. Added pathos of star's posthumous death. Very very Hollywood. 

                                          

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - the highest grossing foreign film ever in America. Less an arthouse movie than a computer game with fortune cookie philosophy. Balletic, slow-mo violence was hugely in vogue at the time - see The Matrix.

So, realistically, what are 'Amour's' chances?

It ticks a number of boxes:

Critically acclaimed director who's previously paid his dues and now 'come in from the cold'?  Tick.

'Worthy' but universal topic? Tick 

Accessible to English speaking masses? Tick

Brilliant lead performances? Tick

Add to that the paucity of other great films amongst the nominees.

Of course Speilberg's 'Lincoln' is the overwhelming favourite. 

Academy award winning director? Tick

Academy award winning actor? Tick

Biopic of American Icon? Tick

It's  almost like an identikit 'best picture' on paper - but is it too obvious?

There is something beautifully ironic about 'Amour's' director, Michael Haneke, receiving this award and a best director nomination. I'm struggling to think of a more esoteric, intellectual, more European, figure in cinema history -  the very antithesis of a Hollywood hack.  It's like Solzenitzyn being the frontrunner for the Richard and Judy book club award.  Or  Scott Walker beating Olly Murs to best male solo artist at this year's Brits.

It's even more ironic when you consider that Haneke's 'Funny Games' was an explicit attack on Hollywood's fascination with ultra violence and exploitation.  A joke well made, but one that missed its target, precisely because most Americans wouldn't ever watch a 'foreign' film. Aware of this Haneke  re-told the joke, almost shot for shot, in English with an American cast and setting. And judging by the youtube 'comments' a lot of people still don't get the joke.

'Amour' is a different beast altogether, compared to Haneke's other self-consciously arty movies.  It has a serene simplicity, an Ozu like quality.  It's tremendously moving but never tugs at the heartstrings in an obvious way.  In truth it's surely far too subtle to win the big prize against such a flag-waving patriotic heavyweight as Speilberg's 'Lincoln'.

But then who'd have thought a silent movie would be last year's winner? 

Maybe, just maybe, Hollywood is finally growing up.

   

Vinyl Desperation

Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, as the late Andy Williams frequently sang. This is particularly the case if you happen to be a Gregarious Monk as it's that singular occasion where you can indulge both your social/secular and religious selves.  For me, this Christmas has been a splendid one, partly as a result of Mrs Monk buying me a vintage record player (Fidelity HF 45 for those who are interested in such things). And as James Marshall Hendrix once said, music is my true religion.

Now I must confess,  my motivation in asking for such a thing was largely aesthetic - part of my continuing aspiration to live a vintage lifestyle - but owning a record player for the first time in 20 years has been an absolute revelation. 

I've waxed lyrical elsewhere (Nov 2011) about my early record shopping days, but at the risk of repetition, they were magical times. Clutching one of the Left Legged Pineapple's gaudy bags at lunchtime was as much a symbol of my 15 year old identity as the mullet and David Coverdale t-shirt (worn during P.E, often  prompting the question 'Why have you got Princess Diana on your t-shirt?) 

The Left Legged, as it was affectionately known, was also inadvertently the scene of my first drug experience - passively inhaling shop assistant reefers while browsing the metal section - you don't get that at HMV. It certainly made double History pass a little more easily, I can tell you. We'll also leave aside the fact that I later spent 10 years working for an arch-rival that undoubtedly contributed to the LLP's downfall.

Fast forward to the present day, I'm ready to begin record buying again. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusion that re-purchasing White Lion and Vinnie Vincent Invasion LPs is somehow going to magically transport me back to my youth. Nor do I have any interest in purchasing new LPs, as is the current cool kid fad.  My interest in new music ended largely when I stopped working in record shops (sometime even before then, if I'm being honest). Besides, have you seen the price of new release vinyl?! No, this is to be an exercise in nostalgia. But not nostalgia for my youth rather nostalgia for a golden age of music - music I so far only experienced through cd. 

Equally I was under no illusions about the audio quality of my 40+ year old machine (although it is surpisingly good). This is not going to be a blog for vinyl purist/techy audiophile types - this machine was built for playing old music and so it shall be. So far I've purchased over 50 lps (it was an early Christmas present); mostly easy listening, jazz, and country, mostly from the 1950s and 60s. My only concession to pop-modernity is a few Hall & Oates records and Todd Rundgren's Back to the Bars from 1978. My be-mulleted 80s self would be aghast.

H2O v2

My starting point, and end point in all probability, was Sinatra. This should come as no surprise to anyone that knows me. I've written elsewhere about my love of FAS, or rather his music.

http://armpitofpopularculture.blogspot.co.uk/2011_08_01_archive.html

'Getting' Sinatra was like having my world-view altered; like suddenly realising the world was round (alright, spherical), that Santa Claus was just my dad dressed up and that Bon Jovi were actually never very good. I found it hard to listen to anything else after this Damascene conversion - everything else sounded insubstantial and insignificant in comparison. So, for about a year, around 2000, I literally listened to nothing else. When I say 'I' listened to nothing else I also mean the shop I managed at the time, Andy's Records, Lougborough. Colleagues and customers of a certain vintage will vouch for this. The staff largely tolerated this obsession although they took great pleasure in deliberately putting the discs in the Capitol Years box set, that sat proudly behind our counter, out of chronological sequence.

The greatest body of work in popular music?

This might sound a small matter but the spines of said discs, when put together in the correct sequence, formed a mosaic of Sinatra in his fedora-ed prime. As a result of their meddling most mornings Frank bore more of a resemblance to Niki Lauda, post-accident. I should probably also apologise to the poor sod who eventually bought this box set thinking they were getting a 'new' one, as I must have played each disc a dozen times.

It is my tremendous good fortune that Mrs Monk lives 5 minutes away from two amazing record shops: 'Music and Video Exchange' and 'The Diskery'.

Aah.. The Diskery, just the thought of this place fills me joy. If you've seen the recent Last Shop Standing documentary, or read the book, you will have come across The Diskery. I won't say too much about this King among record shops right now but it's the kind of shop that offers you cups of tea while you browse and makes you your own bespoke cds. Oh, and they have a Sinatra room. That's right, not a Sinatra section, a Sinatra ROOM.

'The Sinatra Room' at the Diskery. Needs a woman's touch according to Mrs Monk.

I exaggerate slightly as there are a few other artists featured in this private area, but the bottom two shelves are frankly Frank. So, I've filled my boots as you can imagine.

Spoils from my first visit to The Diskery

Perhaps the most enjoyable purchase from these visits has been this baby, a 6LP boxed set covering Sinatra's early years with Tommy Dorsey's big band (1940-42).

These recordings weren't new to me, but I must confess to having previously dismissed them as you might a great writer's juvenilia. How wrong I was. There's something gloriously romantic about this music. Sinatra famously claimed to have learnt his legato, or long breath, technique from studying Dorsey's trombone - but the technique is only useful in as much as it allows him to get inside a lyric and impart it with real feeling, and even at this tender age his phrasing is immaculate. Arguably Sinatra never sounded better than when backed by this most melodic of the big bands. It brings to mind Philip Larkin's words (writing about Sidney Bechet), "on me your voice falls as they say love should, like an enormous YES." Yes indeed.

I couldn't let myself get too carried away with the LP buying as the record player was supposed to be a Christmas present, so to maintain the pretence I thought it best to hold back a few LPs for Christmas day.  Now, I don't do Christmas albums per se, even Phil Spector's, but there is one Frank curio that came to mind.

'A Man Alone' is not one of Frank's best, but it has a certain charm. It was, I think, the only time FAS recorded an entire album by one songwriter, pop poet Rod McKuen. An odd choice but this was 1969 and the 60s were a difficult time for Frank, musically speaking. His voice had deteriorated markedly and he struggled to incorporate newer, baser forms of 'pop' songwriting to his singing style. This was one such example, and for some reason, known only to Frank himself, he decided to narrate a number of the songs in a spoken word style, rather than sing them.

This, and perhaps also Richard Harris' A Tramp Shining from the previous year, unwittingly inspired a vocal stylist and pop career even more unlikely than that of Mr Harris himself....

Perhaps it's Don Costa's 'wintry' orchestral arrangements, perhaps its the memory of playing it one Christmas at Andy's Records that make me associate this record with the festive period. This memory has stayed with me because it was one of those rare record shop moments where the background music seemed to be in complete accordance with mood of the shoppers. For a few seconds they palpably froze in their browsing and peered towards the 'now playing' sign before stampeding simultaneously towards our counter. Unfortunately the only copy we had was the one playing and I therefore hold myself responsible for the ensuing fight that broke out. Between two pensioners.

But the LP I was really looking forward to spinning, and the one I would recommend above all others to the Frank neophyte as a first purchase, was Sinatra At The Sands with Count Basie. As consummate a studio musician as Frank was, he was never more comfortable than in a concert environment - loose, and often juiced. And never more so than here, at the court of his Rat Pack Kingdom, backed by the hardest swinging of the big bands.  

This was to be the soundtrack to my Christmas dinner. And as most of the nation was tucking into its turkey accompanied by the Queen's speech it seemed somehow fitting that the King's speech should accompany mine.

Salut!