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The 1960s

Chet Atkins
The Essential Chet Atkins
(RCA)

Before the Beatles, there were singles. Singles were collected with a bunch of tracks that could never be singles onto albums. If you were a Chet Atkins scholar, you'd study his early albums, because the sessions that yielded the recordings would have a fairly consistent set of session musicians, and maybe the state of Chet's relationship with a writer or the vision of an early record producer added something to Chet's art of the moment. But for us, who just dig a fine lick and relish one of the defining pop stylists of the '60s, a hits compilation is the ticket and this is the one for me. The Essential Chet Atkins concentrates on his instrumental tracks. "Yesterday" is a bit maudlin, the reverb-y guitar failing to engage a '90s listener as the Beatles' vocal still does. But most of these tunes remain the lite delight today that they were when first pressed into those 7" vinyl discs with the donut hole. Even Chet's careful take on "Zorba the Greek" is bittersweet, reflective, and a respectable reflection of the iconic movie theme. "Alley Cat," ubiquitous with the '60s, is one of the best na�ve musical portraits of strutting kitties, that was followed by the Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut" and ultimately, Cats on Broadway. Two Jerry Reed tunes are clustered in the middle with "Black Mountain Rag" and " Fiddlin' Around" to remind us where Chet came from. Doc Watson duets on the beautiful "Tennessee Rag/ Beaumont Rag" from 1979 before the producer shows you where Nashville went country club in the closing medley which none of us will ever sit through. But the rest is a pleasure as well as an education.
(M.D.)

Clifford Curry
"She Shot a Hole In My Soul" (single)
(Elf)

Clifford Curry, a.k.a. "Sweet Clifford," was Knoxville's greatest proponent of east-coast beach soul. He released this boardwalk classic in 1967, when, as best as we can recall, the verb "to shag" meant something a little broader from the stricter definition promoted by Austin Powers. This song, an R&B hit (it also reached #95 on the pop charts) appears on a few compilations, including the fabulous Rhino collection Beg, Scream & Shout! The Big Ol' Box of '60s Soul.
(J.N.)

Ida Cox & Coleman Hawkins Quintet
Blues for Rampart Street
(Original Jazz Classics)

One of the most prominent blues singers in the country back before electric guitars, Ida Cox performed in Knoxville at least once, with one of her vaudeville reviews, a memorable show at the legendary Gem Theater on Vine in 1931. In a day when few vocalists wrote their own lyrics, Ida Cox did. Hers were darker, eerier, often more sophisticated than most. One of her best-known, "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues," first recorded in 1924, warns women never to treat men "on the square":
I've got a disposition and a way of my own
When my man starts kicking, I let him find another home
I get full of good liquor, walk the streets all night
Go home and put my man out, if he don't act right
'Cause wild women don't worry, wild women don't have no blues...

In contrast to her persona, Ida "never led the wild life the rest of us did," according to her friend Lovie Austin. Still, the hard life of a traveling entertainer dragged her down. In April 1945, Ida suffered a stroke while singing at a club in Buffalo. She finally retired to Knoxville to live with her daughter and invested much of her energy into singing in a church choir. She would live in Knoxville longer than she had ever lived anywhere in her life.

In April, 1961 Riverside Records persuaded the reluctant Ida to travel to NYC and record what was to be her final record (and perhaps in her mind, her first album) with the stellar jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, and his frequent partner, trumpeter Roy Eldridge. Blues from Rampart Street remains a joy today. Ida sounds like a grandmother, but a grandmother you'd love to take out for some beers to a place where the music is loud and the girls dress to dazzle. The standout song, of course, is "Wild Women." Six years later after a battle with cancer, her family buried her here in Knoxville, at New Gray Cemetery off Western. Her tombstone reads "Mother." Her home on Louise Avenue in East Knoxville still stands.
(M.D.)

Carl Martin, Ted Bogan and Howard Armstrong
Martin, Bogan & Armstrong
(Flying Fish)

I didn't know Carl Martin, Ted Bogan and Howard Armstrong had Tennessee roots when I took a critic's advice and picked up this sumptuous stew of party-caliber string band entertainment several years ago. It is such a pleasantly rowdy and imaginative New Orleans-like blend of diverse Americana that it could easily remain my favorite string-band record forever. Bit by bit I learned that Carl Martin moved to Knoxville early in the century when Carl was about 14 and already playing around with a guitar. The Martin brothers met a remarkable young fiddler from LaFollette named Howard Armstrong. They called themselves the Tennessee Chocolate Drops and sometimes played on Knoxville radio station WROL, well before its reputation as a country-music broadcaster. Their instrumental "Vine Street Drag" immortalizes our downtown Vine Street, only a scrap of which remains today; their recording of it, made at the St. James Hotel around 1930, is sought by collectors.

In the 1930s, they moved to Chicago, where they trumped other deep-South blues bands by the fact that they could sing in German and Italian. As age and rock 'n' roll made it harder for them to reach an audience, they drifted apart and disappeared from the public eye. After somebody rounded them up in the '60s, they crafted this brilliant album. The intelligence and stylistic span of the music is comparable to the Holy Modal Rounders, Duck Baker, and John Hartford; this album is a better party than anything those folks ever recorded.
(M.D.)