Of brother Shine                                                               

Even in death, Tennessee's James Louis "Shine" Wilbourn maintains as rightful a grasp on American music as anyone found on this site. He was reportedly a staple at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market. He ran a shoeshine stand there, into his seventies, and entertained by unspooling familiar musics of the region in one-man guitar / harmonica renditions -- a feat not in common evidence today.

No record establishing his final year could be located when this piece was being prepared. But an account relates he was active as recently as October 2014; in fact, he was that year made the first recipient of the Jack and Jerry Smith Community Spirit Award, in Nashville.

A Jackson Sun newspaper account at the time related that "When it was announced that Wilbourn had won the award, the craft room at the West Tennessee Farmer's Market was filled with shouts of joy and clapping from friends."

He had devoted decades of his hard life to folk musics -- Blues, Rock'n'Roll, Country, Bluegrass, and Gospel. In 2012, Shine (he'd gotten the nickname while shining shoes as a youngster) explained to an interviewer how he came to music; more precisely, how it had come to him.

"Well, down in Toone in the 1950s, my uncle had a cafe," he recalled. "On Friday, after people had worked in the fields all week, they'd come to Uncle Ray's. The Kids would play outside while the grown-ups danced to the jukebox. They listened and danced to everything from Elvis to Chuck Berry, Fats Domino to Gospel.

"Sometimes us kids would look in, and they'd be crying. We guessed they had the blues."

He eventually took up a guitar. And he was soon inspired to also reach for the harmonica. 

"I worked at Old Country Store, and the Bluegrass players would come out and play. I'd hang around behind the counter. And while they played, I'd play along 'til I could make my sound fit theirs."

In Shine's autumn years, he operated a Memphis shoeshine stand. But he could on a moment's notice produce a harmonica and give free, loud, and stirring vent to real-world feelings familiar to all. 

Some said he was closely associated with Jaxon Records, located just down the street from his shoeshine stand. But accounts differ as to whether he personally recorded for the label. (An email query sent to Jaxon was not answered by presstime. Perhaps the label is now inactive.)

Underscored by Shine's story is the vital connection everyday people have to music. It belongs to those unheralded by fame machinery, no less than the limousine fortunate.

Panther Burns

In 1979, Tav Falco and Alex Chilton copped the new band's handle from a Mississippi plantation that had stood near Greenville. Listeners freshly graduated from the Punk Class of '77, and ignorant of the infamous Adkins, were likely as flabbergasted as fractured by the shambolic primitivism, as Rockabilly and Skronk played Run Rabbit Run in its bloodstream.

Video: "I'm on this Rocket"

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Hillbilly Casino: World's toughest bar band                                       

"I defy you to find five other bands in the U.S. that can play Hank Sr. back-to-back with Motorhead, back-to-back with Ernest Tubb, back-to-back with Tex Ritter, back-to-back with the Ramones," first-era slap-bassist Geoff Firebaugh declared.

The amalgam of crunch-blast dynamism and individualist tunecraft locates the group miles over the headset mics of choreographed in-fashion video mannequins. Profoundly American roots-music stylings old and new, raved forth unaffectedly and with devotion a-burnin' rollick, sway, and reel until time and space lose significance and all around is bacchanalian abandon. 

Currently in this barnstorming, Honky Tonk-hearted confederacy are six-string assassin Ronnie Crutcher, straight-out skins-attacker Sam Clay, double-bass wrestler Colin Taylor, and windmilling frontman Nic Roulette. 

Roulette's manically howled sermons ricochet from neon beer-signs to scuffed hardwood and from shoulder-to-shoulder blue-collar brethren to sudsily euphoric dimensions not locatable by eggheaded NASA star-charters. 

Hillbilly Casino's is a diversely splendored Rock'n'Roll of feverish honesty. And it is possible that they are the most important, most eminently grounded in Americana, and most knockabout agitative band in the land.

Hillbilly Casino's maiden wax was 2006's Sucker Punched. As was made manifest, the group was never blueprinted as hidebound. (Members then included bassman Geoff Firebaugh and drummer Andrew Dickson, who today fills in on occasion.) 

During 2008's Buy In DVD, hip-chained tumbler/mic guru Nic Roulette spelled out the combo's ethos: While roots musics gush through members' circulatory systems and have spattered innumerable of the group's stage boards, innovation, too, has formative pull. Syd Nathan and Norman Petty didn't use Rudy Vallee-era technology, after all. 

Reverence for both Ernest Tubb commoness and Johnny R. chordal blitzkrieg were etched with bold-font bravado. Billybo-butcher Ronnie Crutcher pared deftly and slammed out broadsides that evidenced forward-and-backward knowledge of the Americana repertoire. 

Videos: "Plain to See" (live)   "Shoe Leather" (live)   "Way Past Gone"    "Mimes of the Old West"   "Blanche's Song" (backstage)

Disc #4, Tennessee Stomp (Hobolight), portrayed self-made sideburned rovers. HC's anti-Industry bootstrapism -- entailing self-recording / booking / everything -- had grown organically from the band's above-all calling: taking Rock'n'Roll (in all of its sundry aspects, including Country and Punk) to barrooms full of hoarse-throated, mug-waving true believers. 

Unanticipated permutations, rendered with brawn nobody better've looked at funny, posted notice that a uniquely multi-faceted proposition had maintained its jaw-jutting residence beneath spotlights.

The band's rambunctious oeuvre towered as testament to its consequence. Every outing featured, in vigorous exercise, slap-bass navigations, Ronnie's bent-string exclamations, and percussive insistence. One hears why Hillbilly Casino is indispensible for fans the world over.

Videos: "Tennessee Stomp" (live)   "Heartburn and Heartbreak" (live)   "The Doctor" (live)   "Psycho"   "Violets in May"

Platter the sixth was Red, White, and Bruised (Hobolight).

HC had by this moment become a favorite of average working folks in Nashville and all hep points beyond. Like HC, swarm honky tonk dance floors and throw off real-world cares. Like Hillbilly Casino, folks that swarm joint dance floors and throw away real-life concerns grasp that there are only two kinds of songs - good ones and bad ones.

Each portion of Red, White, and Bruised huffed with limber-limbed freshness and an audacity possible only for dynamite-in-every-paw roustabouts. One was knocked flat by the economical storminess. 

Add in frontman Nic Roullette's irrepressible vocal declarations and onstage gymnastics, and one perceived the stuff of legends -- in their own time.

Videos: "Knockin' at Your Door" (official video)   "She's Got Tricks" (official video)   "It's Not Me It's You"   "Jibber Jabber" (live)   "Troubles"

Come now the crispest: Singles "Tow Truck" and "Red on the Line" - initially issued as 2024 digital-only efforts - landed in bins last October, having been paired on 7" Swelltune vinyl.

The ecstatic squad remained in the first rank. Founders Nic and Billy-Bo suzerain Ronnie were abetted by fresh accomplices Sam Clay and Colin Taylor in storming through characteristic Americana genre-grafting that here pulls fresh oxygen. 

In a Facebook post, balletic energy crisis Nic disclosed: "Replacing 2 members of Hillbilly Casino has been quite a challenge. The fact that these two talented young men live 7 hours away from Ronnie and I make the entire project a different animal, altogether. We are doing our best, though, and I personally feel like the band has taken strides toward cultivating a great sound that is better than I could have imagined."

Videos: "Tow Truck" (live)   "Red On the Line" 

Rock'n'Roll this unaffected, cleverly folding populist lilts and barroom stomp into forcibly guitar-mastered celebration, may never realize the corporate success that demands numbing, processed music product for the ringtone legions. 

Remember, though, that that is not the only mark of distinction. For truly, no music scene can have too many sheerly devout, crazy-from-the-heart back-alley minstrels. 

Nic Roulette & the Ricochets

Cindy Walker penned this for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, who recorded it for Columbia in 1941. Now, Nashville's Ricochets put down as genteel and slyly spry a take as has caressed ears since Mr. Wills and his booted minstrels two-foured into the descending sun. And Hillbilly Casino dervish, Nic, proves to be exactly the voice needed to crest Jackpot Ridge.

Video: "It's All Your Fault"

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Dale Watson: Music as the reckoning of a man

Does Dale Watson realize how important he and his music are?

The man upholds and advances traditional Country Music -- the hand-tooled kind that reflects the aspirations, heartaches, and end-of-work-week, shout-and-stomp barroom release that a million corporate Nashville types twiddling computerized studio knobs for a million years couldn't replicate.

From his easy smile and laconic drawl to his silver, mile-high pomp and classy, Grand Ole Opry-redolent, populist troubadour clothes, Dale couldn't be anything but the authentic Country music last call luminary his loyal fan base lauds. And, issued earlier in the year by 40 Below Records, fresh platter Unwanted offers the many splendored barroom serenading for which Dale has long been known.

Steel-guitared romps bounce affably, with winks and cosmopolitan assurance. ("Gotta Try Harder," "Never Mend the Broken Spoke.") Sporadic punctuation arrives, in the person of movingly introspective material whose subdued manner is of wholly Country bearing. ("If You Truly Love Me," "If I Can.")

Located here and again are even strapping numbers that might could drive a fella to try his hand at that mustang nobody could break. ("What the Hell Happened To the Cadillac," "Don't Let the Honky Tonks Go," and the five-star title cut.)

Dale's Telecaster rhythms pulse and shimmer, his inventive leads sing out, and his ingratiating vocal warmth encourages all to pull up bar stools. Whether the clever material is dynamically uptempo, infectious and witty, articulating profound emotions, or charging gleefully into melodic mischief, adjoining players negotiate every backroad and neon-lighted avenue in sterling manner, as their leader maintains good-hearted command.

His objective importance lies in his priceless role as devoted counter to insipid Pop-Country. (A sterile contraption that can neither speak for plain home-folks, nor goad them to don whirlyspurs.) That needed function, and simply because the music itself is so damned good, is why Dale Watson is of significance to every listener who knows Real Country when he is lucky enough to hear it. 

In fact, Dale Watson and Wayne 'The Train' Hancock are of the same rank: crucial, contemporary interpreters of bona fide classic Country styles who have every right to be hailed and featured by industry award-bestowers and powers-that-be, but who are too real and uncompromising to ever turn painstakingly manicured 'show me the money' heads.      

As long as music this wood-grained and leather-worked is accessible, does it really matter that industry-calculated honors generally salute dreckish artificiality? After all, such foolish, televised corporate pageantry doesn't impede appreciators of the real deal from enjoying it. 

Historians recall Thomas Jefferson remarking, when asked how he could abide the free exercise of religions other than his own: "They neither break my arm, nor pick my pocket." With similar indifference, we will let the clothes-horses prance. 

Dale Watson must realize how important he and his music are. If he doesn't, he's the only one.

"South of Roundrock Texas" (Austin1996?)   "I Lie When I Drink" (Austin City Limits 2014)   "Don't Let the Honky Tonks Go"   "What the Hell Happened to the Cadillac" (both from new Unwanted)   

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Lee Denson

Late '50s / early '60s songsmith and singer Lee sometimes recorded under pseudonym Jesse James. (He is reputed to have schooled young Presley on fret-neck navigations.) This flying-feet frolic merited greater success than it received in its moment. But future years heard revisitations, like those of Jimmy and the Mustangs, Wilko Johnson, and Bob and the Bearcats.

Video: "Red Hot Rockin' Blues"

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Kyle Lacy

The Record Hop!   vinyl, CD, digital

(Lacy Records)

The quiet joy that animates young Kyle's features, as his fluttering digits deflower frets, communicates that he very much digs his jump down, turn around musical existence, and wouldn't live differently for a dollar and a quarter. Jazz grooves, Rockabilly-inflected rompings, Blues graspings, and ground-level rhythms gyrate like shameless fun shake-'em-ups. All the wild while, the tipped-brim slew at Kyle's elbow gives up icy-cool jumpin' that has dancefloor folks executing gran mals one song, and exchanging belly rub intimations, the next. 

Ahmet Ertegun would slap a contract on the desk.

Recommended: "One Trick Pony," "More Than That!," "Cryin' and Shakin'," "Lucky Ducky," "Love Spectator," "Everlasting, Everchanging," "Two to Tango," "Playing in My Head," "Give Back My Name," "What is Hip?"

Videos: "One Trick Pony"   "More Than That!" (official video)   "Cryin' and Shakin'" (official video)   "Love Spectator"

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Warren Smith

Sun Records Originals: Rock'n'Roll Ruby

(Sun Label Group)

The geiger counter is going, going, gone - and not owing solely to "Uranium Rock." The flattop cats raving behind Warren (whose number, in moments, included a kid named Jerry Lee), threw out a hot-wired, hot rodded Country/Rockabilly amalgam that landed everlastingly in many-a chain-wallet compendium bearing Sam's smoking imprint. Even amidst slicked-back peers who in future years would live in high cotton, Warren put the size 10 into it like all get out.

Recommended: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby," "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache," "Do I Love You," "Uranium Rock," "I've Got Love if You Want It," "Ubangi Stomp," "I Fell in Love," "I'd Rather Be Safe than Sorry," "Who Took My Baby," "Stop the World (I'll Jump Off)," "Miss Froggie," "I Like Your Kind of Love," "Sweet, Sweet Girl," "So Long I'm Gone"

Videos: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby"   "Do I Love You"   "Who Took My Baby"   "Sweet, Sweet Girl"

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Bailey George and the Hit Paraders

s/t   Two-track digital single

(Cheap Thrills Records)

Any doctor examining Bailey would faint away, upon finding back-country airs ambling amidst his red and white corpuscles. It's always prizeworthy to locate someone in whose essence lie bents seemingly germinated in countless evenings well-spent in jukes and at barn soirees. In decades past, nonchalant-but-engaging Country-folk stylings like these rang out from modest clapboard houses' wood console radios. With Hoss Logan introducing. 

To paraphrase Ferlin, these sides make you feel better all over, more than anywheres else.

Recommended: "Hot as Blue Blazes," "Hello Mr. Teardrop"

Videos: New videos not available. Here are slightly previous ones: "Here, Kitty Kitty" (Bailey and the Oscillators, live)   "Truth is Out There" (Bailey and the Oscillators, live)   "Rock on the Moon" (Bailey plays all instruments.)

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