V/A

Tin Roof: Small Town Country Music

(Sun Records)

In 1971, at 12 years old, I spent a weekend with a paternal uncle and his family. They lived in one of Iowa's tiny rural towns.

I was from a city. So, for me, country life was a different reality. Sunday meant all-day fundamentalist church, punctuated at noon by a houseful gathering. A table was loaded down with hot dogs, cold meats, breads, pop, and potato salad. A spirited throng gathered, dressed in church-going finery.

Roaming the rooms, I found a black-and-white 8x10 stashed on a bookshelf. It was a posed publicity shot, and depicted a Country Western combo complete with stand up bass, drums,  acoustic, electric, and steel guitars. They sported de rigueur cowboy attire: big hats, neckerchiefs, boots.

I didn't know the photo's vintage, nor did I recognize anyone featured. (Some distant family members, perhaps -- ones who'd once dreamed vainly of celebrity?)

In future years, though, I came to understand that authentic Country and Rock'n'Roll sprang from the same real-folks well.

(The foregoing was excerpted from my Flesh Made Music, published in 2016 by Retro Riff Books)

Sam Phillips knew what I later grasped, of course, back when these real Country tracks were put to wax. He had for decades rubbed shoulders with the regular folks who'd ambled into his crackerbox Memphis studio and recorded sounds that would electrify generations and tear up the extant popular-music blueprint.

Presented are some 50 minutes of home-folks America. Tracks capture quintessential Country -- unpretentious picking, steel-guitar sways, resolute beats, and affable drawls -- as well as the healthy nationalistic pride too many today wrongly think malign.

Also humbly offered are the playful whimsicality later spotlighted on Hee Haw and misty recollections of earlier, simpler times and much-loved elders who'd gone to rewards.

Some songs are so backwoods-lively as to wreath faces in open grins while prompting couples' whirling. More sedate others invite listeners to ponder plain-spoken narraratives and perhaps even gaze inward. 

All will gratify.

Recommended: "Troublesome Creek" (Ben Story), "Tin Roof" (Jimmy Louis), "Don't Bite the Hand That's Feeding You" (Leroy Van Dyke), "Mule Skinner Blues" (Dennis Roberts), "Howard Hughes Is Alive and Well" (Sonny Hall), "Ants In My Plants" (Wanda Birdsong), "My Own Native Land" (Johnny Freedom), "If I Could Get One More Hit" (James O'Gwynn), "Granny's Patches" (Ben Story), "Shade Tree Fix-It Man" (James O'Gwynn)

Video: "Don't Bite the Hand That's Feeding You"   "Howard Hughes Is Alive and Well"   "My Own Native Land"

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Leroy Van Dyke