James Mcmurtry - Americana Master Series: Best of the Sugar Hill Years
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Artist: James McmurtryEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-03-13
Music Label: Sugarhill
Free Music Notes for Americana Master Series: Best of the Sugar Hill Years
Free Music Review: The Cream of McMurtry's Middle Period
Hit: 4 Stars
James McMurtry had a brush with major label fame when his John Mellencamp produced Too Long in the Wasteland brought him attention in the early 90's. James' lyrically brusque songs echoed Mellencamp's worldview, and the McMurtry family tradition of quality wordsmithing covered the album like so much dustbowl dirt. But that attention was short lived, and CBS let James go after three albums. The roots label Sugar Hill scooped him up, and this compilation covers three albums between 1997 through 2002.
It's a good baker's dozen covering James' oft-told favorite stories; losers that have given up ("60 Acres"), the decline of the world as we know it ("No More Buffalo") and those that wrestle with our inner demons (the amazing "Choctaw Bingo"). These are not 'feel-good' songs, pointed out bluntly by the first song's family-infight over grandma's farm and the will the family squabbles over in "60 Acres."
Glory glory, Hallelujah,
Right back at'cha, don't she look natural.
Don't look at me like there's something growing out of my head!
Just 'cause that old bird's dead."
There's the alcoholic trying to regain control right after in "Every Little Bit Counts," and the dry delivery to "Broken Bed" underscores the pain of the singer's romantic break-up. And when the occasion calls for it, he can turn a phrase with the best of them, like "Fast as I Can's" tale of "a drinking man with a guitar problem."
While the political detonation that occurred on 2005's Childish Things "We Can't Make it Here" had yet to reach its flash-point, "The Best Of The Sugar Hill Years" presents a rootsy singer with a hard-boiled journalist's eye. James McMurtry belongs in the same company as Steve Earle, Don Henley and Mellencamp. This is a great place to make a discovery, then go back for more.
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