Billy Joe Shaver – Salt Of The Earth
Grant Alden
Posted On January 1, 2001
Wait long enough and Billy Joe Shaver’s entire catalogue will be in print, at least for an instant. Which in itself is a striking endorsement of the work of a gifted songwriter who has never more than waved at commercial success as a singer.
Salt Of The Earth, co-produced by Billy Joe and his son Eddy in 1987, has a pleasantly rough-and-tumble quality. Playing as a trio (the drummer is uncredited, but one wishes he had been rather less fond of his cymbals), the band has the roadhouse bluntness of Shaver’s own voice. Eddy’s guitar rocks nicely and with less prominence than on later recordings. And Billy Joe’s voice is in fine, raw form.
Some songs will be familiar from subsequent versions, notably “You Just Can’t Beat Jesus Christ” and “The Devil Made Me Do It The First Time”, a conjunction of titles that says as much about Shaver as anything.
The rest is of a piece with Shaver’s entire canon: tough, unadorned songs, phrases worn down to hard truth. None tougher than “Fun While It Lasted”, a broken romance classic. Still, Salt Of The Earth wasn’t (and isn’t) the best record Shaver made, nor would this set of songs vault him into public consciousness. But to date he’s not made a bad record, and it’s nice to have this one back in print, if only for a moment. Pity the packaging — as with the entire Lucky Dog “Pick of the Litter” reissue series — is so slapdash.
