Music
In the spring of 1973, University of Arizona Dept. of Anthropology Assistant Professor William Rathje founded the Garbage Project, drawn from the notion that one could learn as much about a society by what it discards as by what it keeps. A culture’s refuse is a reflection and refraction of itself, a negative image that brings the positive image into clearer focus.
Similarly, the ultimate fate of the “waste” generated by a recording project—the outtakes and alternate takes, the demos and detritus—can also tell you a little something about the culture of a musical genre. In jazz, it has long been a given that any note Charlie Parker or John Coltrane blew through a saxophone is worth examining for the light they might shed on the geniuses in question. It took rock ’n’ roll longer to decide there were geniuses among its ranks, but that point has arrived: releases like Bob Dylan’s various Bootleg Series volumes, the Stooges’ 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions and Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks present an alternate take on the artists’ “official” canons. The revelatory results teach us as much about the creative processes of their respective creators as, say, the new Miles Davis Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions box set.
But it takes a while for this respectful attitude to develop. The history of Jimi Hendrix’s posthumous releases are a case study in the development of rock garbology, from the bastardizations of unfinished songs on 1971’s Cry of Love to the kid-gloves handling of the same elements on 1997’s First Rays of the New Rising Sun. It’s only recently that country has determined that a select few of its stars are artistes deserving of the same careful treatment.
The exploitation of archival recordings is nothing new in country music—Jim Reeves was the Tupac of his day, enjoying more No. 1 hits after his 1964 death than before. It’s the manner in which this material is approached that makes the difference: Like Tupac’s, Reeves’ “new” releases were presented free of context, as though they were fresh artistic statements from an artist who just happened to no longer be breathing. To find reverential treatment of archive material in country, one has historically been forced to pay import prices for the massive multi-disc excavations from Germany’s Bear Family label. Three new releases suggest that stateside, country’s attitude toward the contents of its vaults is changing.
Like Hendrix or Tupac, Gram Parsons’ early death (at 26, during the ground-zero garbology year of 1973) means that each note he left behind is inevitably fetishized. Parsons was not as prolific as either of those artists, and the slim material that does exist doesn’t differ drastically from what he chose to release at the time. Nonetheless, the previously unreleased tracks included on The Complete Reprise Sessions at least offer a slightly fresh slant on Parsons’ very brief solo recording career. Parsons released just two albums under his own name, 1972’s GP and 1973’s Grievous Angel. In 1990, they were combined on one CD; with Parsons’ influence lingering 16 years later, each album now merits its own disc, plus a third CD of alternate takes. These teach us little about Parsons’ artistry, but at least offer a subtle change of pace for acolytes who’ve memorized each moment of gossamer harmony between Parsons and Emmylou Harris on the two originals.
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As Parsons was establishing himself as a solo act after his pioneering work with the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers, Willie Nelson was undertaking a reinvention of his own. Newly signed to Atlantic Records after more than a decade as a songwriter for hire, Nelson was granted artistic latitude and he used it: 1973’s Shotgun Willie found him breaking with Nashville and heading for New York, while 1974’s Phases and Stages ventured into narrative structure, surveying a crumbling relationship from each partner’s point of view.
If Nelson is to be seriously regarded as an auteur—and it’s about time he was—then the Atlantic years constitute a vital period in his work, the decisive moment when his sturdy persona and artistic M.O. were forged. It’s a period worthy of minute examination, and that’s what the three-CD Complete Atlantic Sessions offers. (Note the Complete tag here and on the Parsons set, previously the purview of jazz.) Both studio albums are gussied up with outtakes and alternate takes that are, if not surprising, at least consistently engaging. The third disc features a planned Atlantic live album that was scuttled when a corporate shakeout cut Nelson loose. (It briefly saw release in 1991.) Not the best move, as it turned out: Nelson’s next album, The Red Headed Stranger, was a multi-platinum monster commonly regarded as one of the greatest albums country music has ever produced.
Meanwhile, back in Nashville (well, Hendersonville), 1973 presented a more daunting artistic moment for Nelson’s future Highwaymen bandmate, Johnny Cash. Whether out of frustration with the need to keep up with the musical times or a simple desire to keep a record of the songs that meant the most to him, Cash began laying down simple guitar-and-voice tracks on tapes marked “Personal File.” It was a practice he continued through the early 1980s; the result was only discovered after his September 2003 death, as his family sought to take stock of what he left behind.
Personal File proves that while Cash was publicly struggling with a changing marketplace, he always understood the elemental power of his own granite voice and sympathetic guitar to bring a song home—even if the only audience was an engineer. Pristinely recorded and carefully sequenced, Personal File is quintessential Cash. Frequent spoken-word introductions provide vital flashes of autobiography; the devotion of the entire second disc to gospel numbers restates Cash’s devotion to spirituality, even when no one was looking.
Cash knew full well that no major label would dare release such stark music in the 1970s and ’80s; in the ’90s and ’00s, he would prove the soundness of the approach again and again with the American Recordings series, towering works not far removed from the approach he takes here. Personal File offers the best argument for vault-clearing archival projects like these: occasionally, great music goes unreleased because the world isn’t ready for it yet. As William Rathje could have told you, sometimes what people throw out is very much worth keeping.