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David Cantwell

John Prine - In Spite Of Ourselves

John Prine - In Spite Of Ourselves

The first song on John Prine's latest album is a cover of "(We're Not) The Jet Set". The original version, a 1974 hit for George Jones & Tammy Wynette, was bursting with jokes both lyrical (corny rhymes like "We're the old

Joe South - Retrospect

A few years back I asked a critic friend if there was a good Joe South collection available on compact disc. No, came the expected reply, along with a partial explanation: When it comes to Joe South, "Yankees don't get it." Yet back in 1969, South

Ernest Tubb & The Texas Troubadours - Waltz Across Texas

Ernest Tubb often attributed his extraordinary success to his less-than-ordinary voice, to the way any listener might hear one of his songs and conclude: "I can sing better than that guy." But you know what? We can't. Granted, Tubb couldn't hit a lot of

Various Artists - The Excello Story: Vols. 1-4

In 1957, Nashville-based Excello Records released a doo-wop record called "Little Darlin'" by five-member vocal group the Gladiolas. Written by the group's soon-to-be semi-famous leader, Maurice "Stay" Williams, "Little Darlin'" was built around a cacophonous, faintly Latin rhythm that sounds

A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul Of America

Nowadays, a music critic is what we call anyone who writes about music, though actual music criticism has all but disappeared. As Greil Marcus wrote in his rock crit classic Mystery Train, "a critic's job is not only to define the context of an artist's

Ray Charles - The Complete Country & Western Recordings: 1959-1986

Nearly four decades later, it's hard to imagine just how bold Ray Charles' 1961 album Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music must have sounded to the unsuspecting listener. A country record from the Genius of Soul? You put the needle to the record, hear Charles shout

George Jones - A Picture Of Me (Without You) / Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half As Bad As Losing You)

You aren't ever going to catch me complaining when Koch reissues old George Jones albums, but, in a couple of ways, it does seem an odd decision to package these two particular early-'70s LPs, Jones' second and third with Epic producer Billy Sherrill, on a