Folk and Country: Now More Than Ever

Each New Year's week means the same ritual for rock fans: AM radio playing the Big 100 Super Hits, rock critics pondering their definitive Top Ten albums, and heavy debates' at intimate parties turning to. "Who do you think's going to be the next Beatles?"

You know, rock's in trouble when you start reading about "trends:" the New Eclecticism, the Emergence of the Superstar, the Electronic Wave, and so on. When change happens, the excitement doesn't permit detached reflection. No one mulls over, "Where's the music going?" It just goes, and it should. Rock is intrinsically ephemeral. When some movement has run its course, such as rhythm and blues in the late fifties or post-Beatles rock now, music returns to its roots--folk, blues, and jazz--and a new synthesis follows when the market is ripe. But no one is going to explode new group excitement in music while Nixon is President; given the apparent mood of audiences and performers. I predict relative stagnation for at least two or three more years.

What was left in 1972 of popular rock was mostly nostalgia and trash. With a few exceptions, mostly British, very little innovation surfaced. The main contributions of the two supergroups left, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, were Greatest Hit-type albums. And it took Alice Cooper to finally prove that a nihilistic bisexual wearing a boa constrictor and grotesque makeup could actually be boring.

For the kinds of music called "folk," the last twelve months were strange ones. People seemed to be fed up with conventional rock, but no one made the move to start any mass folk revival. A lot of energetic, even unusual folk music was recorded, but America was too downcast to take it to heart.

What follows is, then, a very personal list of some of the best signs of things stirring in 1972. I have omitted "underground giants" like John Fahey and Leo Kottke mostly because, from what I've listened to, their good albums from any year are among the best albums every year. I've also tried to be somewhat representative; while I'm suspicious of arbitrary distinctions between so-called traditional folk, folk-rock, folk-blues, popular folk, and country, I've used my vague sense of these to pick it list touching all of them.

1. For the Roses--Joni Mitchell (Asylum), Usually a year's love affairs provide the material for any one Joni Mitchell album. Her most recent triumph is less obsessively introspective, more poetic, and more varied in tone. Unlike the upbeat but somewhat plodding piano style of other piano and guitar-playing folk-singers, Mitchell plays richly enough and sensitively enough to make an orchestra from one instrument. Her voice--which covers so broad a range expertly that it becomes another part of the orchestra--sounds more resonant on this album, but that may be the consequence of a new record company.

Almost every track on this album is stunning and most are adventuresome. The more intricately arranged songs with strings and woodwinds backing the lead guitar or piano approach a classical-sounding folk which very few writers manage successfully. There's a hint of calypso in some of the rhythms, and Mitchell has made good use of Graham Nash's harmonica playing. No folk album offers a wider variety of rhythm, texture, and melody.

2. Don't It Drag On--Chris Smither (Poppy). An artist like Chris Smither is less likely to scale Himalayan peaks than a joni Mitchell, but this album flies consistently at a remarkably high level. A folk singer whose music is closer to rock and blues than to the classics, Smither has a powerful voice with a controlled roughness. Don't It Drag On is a supremely economical album; each track is strong, the moods are well balanced from sedate to raucous, and Smither never stifles the impact of his or other people's songs with flabby arrangements or excessive lyrics.

On "Down In The Flood." Smither and background pianist Eric Kaz turn in a performance that out-stomps the high-spirited Dylan original. My favorites among Smither's songs include the title cut and "I Feel The Same," both of which are dominated by Smither's acoustic and John Bailey's electric guitars. Smither is about the only folk writer I've heard who writes about loneliness without ever reverting to romantic drivel or embarassing self-pity. One key to his success over a wide range of moods is a sense of humor that keeps him from taking his crises too seriously.

3. Will the Circle Be Unbroken--The Nitty Gritty Dirl Band, el al. (United Artists). Bill Mcl uin who manages. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, one of the first of the 60's mass market groups to turn to bluegrass for inspiration, decided he wanted to make a recording with all the Nashville greats he's admired all his life. The resulting three-record set contains probably the single most exciting collection of classic country songs ever recorded.

The scope of the repertoire is absolutely breath-taking. There are banjos and guitars sounding like railroad engines, a violin vibrating with an aching loneliness, and some of the happiest of this country's most characteristically American music. Almost miraculously the set avoids the hokier you'll-always-be-my-treasure doggerel and demonstrates the immense vitality and still-refreshing simplicity of songs far older than this generation.

The people playing with the Dirt Band are near-legendary--Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Earle and Randy Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, and so on. Vassar Clements, whose fiddling steals the show almost whenever he appears, reveals the clear distinction between a virtuoso fiddler and a fiddler who just moves his bow fast. Those like me, who have only begun listening to country music in earnest recently, will find this set a priceless introduction to the greats. Those initiated long ago may think of the collection as all of country music's all-time greatest hits.

4. Demon in Disguise--David Bromberg (Columbia). Bromberg made his reputation as a guitar-player. Hereafter, he will enhance it as a versatile entertainer. To pick my favorite cut on this album would be absolutely impossible. The title song and "Jugband Song" show off Bromberg's sense of humor both in performing and writing. Some Irish fiddle tunes and "Sugar in the Gourd" give him a chance to display his guitar and mandolin-playing talents. His "Tennessee Waltz" is as kind to the old standard as any singer's rendition could be, and his version of "Mr. Bojangles"--half-singing, half-storytelling--is the first genuinely moving version of this ballad I've heard since Jerry Jeff Walker's original. There are probably some guitarists who play as well as Bromberg. There are certainly people who sing better, but perhaps no folk performer since Bob Dylan has attained as engaging a presence on record.

5. Together--Jesse Colin Young (Raccoon). The Youngbloods may well have been the most under-rated group of the 60's, and the chief impetus behind its creations came from lead singer Jesse Colin Young. Young's first solo album shows his style at its best--lively, competent guitar-playing, light arrangements, gently rocking rhythms, and lyrics whose leanness only sets off more dramatically the appropriateness of his imagery. His songs work because of the feeling behind them; Young is managing to grow old gracefully as a flower child, and his singing about sunshine still never fails to feel warm. Comparing records is unfair, but I am astounded by the hype given to Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina this year, who play in a similar vein but nowhere nearly as well as Young.

Besides these albums, there were other good things to choose from: new albums from Bonnie Raitt and Gordon Lightfoot, Peter Yarrow's intelligently romantic debut solo album, and Colors of the Day (Electra), Judy Collins's greatest hits, which would be worth the price for her versions of "My Father" and "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" alone. Below the Salt (Chrysalis) was a major breakthrough for Steeleye Span one of the few British folk groups to successfully infuse new excitement into traditional madrigals with stirring musical arrangements and tightly knit choral work. Their lead singer. Maddy Prior, has a supremely clear and expressive voice.

The variety in this list suggests the futility of predicting the future from last year's music, but when something new does emerge, the new music is likely to include both highly instrumentalized, perhaps electronic rock, probably attempting a new kind of orchestral sound, and a simpler folk-rock emerging from the music of people like Jesse Colin Young, Jerry Garcia, and Robbie Robertson. After all, when a year passes in which Bobby Darin, Robert Thomas Velline (Bobby Vee), Rick Nelson, and Dion (of the Belmonts) try to cash in on folk music, it is reasonable to claim some movement from rock to folk--wherever that movement may finally lead.