Sleepy Labeef – Tomorrow Never Comes
First off there’s the name. Can there ever be a more perfect name for a rock ‘n’ roller than Sleepy LaBeef? It makes Conway Twitty sound positively gentrified; even Hasil Adkins pales next to such a mighty moniker. Next there’s the look. Six foot seven inches of orange polyester topped off by the baleful eyes that generated the magnificent name, holding a huge Gibson that is totally dwarfed by his Sasquatchian presence.
Then of course there is the voice, a stentorian baritone that makes Johnny Cash sound like the long lost Gibb brother. It wraps itself lovingly around whichever one of the 6,000 tunes in his repertoire Sleepy has chosen to prove to you that he is the last of the rockers — the journeyman, the survivor, the last man standing.
The true essence of Sleepy is nearly impossible to capture on record; even his live record is not completely successful. The performances on Tomorrow Never Comes are uniformly excellent and the accompanying musicians sympathetic, especially piano player David Hughes, but some of the material is a bit too familiar, such as “Polk Salad Annie” (complete with bass solo!) or “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”. I’m sure they were included for the sake of familiarity; what I’m not sure of is why the caterwauling Maria Muldaur was allowed within five miles of a studio where real rock ‘n’ roll was being laid down. She is ignorable on “Raining In My Heart”, but she renders “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” absolutely unlistenable.
But there is a whole lot to love on this record. It kicks off with a killer version of Spade Cooley’s “Detour” and continues to careen off the main road through a great version of the Jerry Wallace-penned Ernest Tubb classic “Take My Heart” and obscurities such as the Bailes Brothers “I Want To Be Loved” and the vastly underrated San Antonio R&B singer Gene Thomas’ “Sometimes”.
Ultimately, what Sleepy does best will never be available for purchase. It has to be experienced over three sets with way too much beer and followed by that horrible “was I really dancing like that?” morning-after feeling. But Tomorrow Never Comes makes a fine introduction to this underappreciated icon.