J.D. Crowe & The New South – Live In Japan

J.D. Crowe & the New South were, simply put, one of the most important and influential bluegrass bands of the 1970s, but only their self-titled 1975 Rounder debut has remained in print (though Crowe’s previous band released three albums on the tiny Lemco label). The reissue of 1979’s Live In Japan, which features one of Crowe’s best backing bands, should help bring a greater appreciation for the brilliance of the banjo-playing pride of Lexington, Kentucky.

Crowe started out in 1956 as a teenage member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys, quickly gaining a reputation as a hard-as-nails picker and supportive harmony singer. After spending most of the 1960s and the early ’70s as a part-time bandleader in Lexington, he was ready for a change. Though the 1975 album (which brought well-deserved national attention to Crowe and New South members Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs and Jerry Douglas) leans toward the traditional, his main preoccupation during the decade was with a synthesis of bluegrass and country, including the country-rock of Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, embodied in songs such as “Sin City”, “God’s Own Singer” and “Devil In Disguise”.

By 1979 he had found a sympathetic frontman in Keith Whitley, whose brief tenure at the top of the country charts in the 1980s was ended by a fatal dose of alcohol in 1989. Originally a practitioner of Carter Stanley’s mournful mountain style of bluegrass singing — he worked two separate stints with Ralph Stanley earlier in the decade — Whitley had, by the time he joined Crowe, incorporated the influence of hard country singers (especially Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and Merle Haggard) into his supple, expressive singing.

The rest of the 1979 New South was flexible as well. Mandolinist and tenor singer Jimmy Gaudreau had worked with the Country Gentlemen, and though less grounded in traditional bluegrass, he was thoroughly familiar with the use of rock and country material. Electric bassist Steve “Boom Boom” Bryant had been with Crowe for several years, while Bobby Slone was a veteran, having started the decade as Crowe’s upright bass player before switching to fiddle after Skaggs’ departure. Though Whitley had joined only recently, this was a band whose members were comfortable with one another, able to navigate with ease along the line between country and bluegrass. In the course of the year, they cut an outstanding studio album for Rounder, My Home Ain’t In The Hall Of Fame, and worked a grueling tour schedule that put them in front of thousands of fans and in the top ranks of bluegrass.

Live In Japan was originally released by Japanese label Trio Records; Rounder issued it in the U.S. on vinyl in 1987, but this is its first appearance on CD. Rounder’s original liner notes (included in the CD booklet, along with new notes Jon Hartley Fox) contrast Live In Japan with My Home, claiming that the band’s personal appearances featured “solely” bluegrass. However, the disc includes not only bluegrass material such as an extended recreation of Flatt & Scruggs’ old Martha White radio show (Whitley’s Flatt imitation is both accurate and hilarious) and Bill Monroe’s “Sugar Coated Love”, but also several obviously country numbers — including “Rose Colored Glasses”, a hit for John Conlee just a year earlier; Fred Rose’s “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”, a No. 1 for Willie Nelson in 1975; and the Jimmy Buffett/Jerry Jeff Walker-penned “Railroad Lady”, one of Lefty Frizzell’s final chart hits.

The chief difference between the live show and the studio album was not the repertoire but the instrumentation, with Crowe’s extraordinarily flexible banjo playing a more than adequate replacement for the studio’s pedal steel, even on ballads. Gaudreau’s mandolin style, too, covered a lot of ground, including his “Memphis Mandolin”, a reworking of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” that retained much of the rockin’ feel of the original.

At the center of all of the New South albums, though, are the vocals, and Live In Japan is no exception. Whitley is a marvel, applying a distinctively delicate enunciation and a country-flavored approach to even the most traditional of bluegrass songs, wresting every bit of emotion out of the ballads (enough to make one forget Conlee and Nelson on their respective hits) while bringing a jaunty self-confidence to “Don’t Give Your Heart To A Rambler” and “My Window Faces South”. The harmonies, too, are outstanding: Crowe is one of the best baritone singers ever to hold down the low end, and Gaudreau is at the top of his game here. Bluegrass veterans will tell you it’s the singing that ultimately matters, and even without the crackerjack instrumental work of Crowe and Gaudreau (Slone’s fiddling was never quite the equal of his outstanding bass playing), this album would still be highly regarded.

As it turned out, the edition of the New South that made Live In Japan didn’t last long. By the end of the year, Gaudreau was gone, and after an even more squarely country album than My Home (1982’s Somewhere Between), so was Whitley. Slone and Bryant hung on a bit longer, but by the late ’80s they were gone too. Crowe retreated into a semi-retirement which, fortunately, lasted only a few years before he assembled yet another version of the band to make the Grammy-nominated Flashback.

The product of a fleeting association of some of the music’s greatest talents, Live In Japan is not only, as Fox’s liner notes claim, “one of the premier ‘live’ albums in bluegrass history,” but it’s also a convincing demonstration of the power of straight-ahead, hard-driving bluegrass and soul-stirring country, and the innovative intermingling of the two — a reminder that there’s a lot more to bluegrass than just its legendary pioneers and its latest stars. Perhaps most importantly, it’s a testimonial to the artistry and vision of J.D. Crowe. Live In Japan makes clear that, no matter what the song says, it’s only a matter of time until Crowe’s home is in the Hall Of Fame.