James Talley – Nashville City Blues

Having the blues doesn’t exactly cramp James Talley’s style. Hot on the heels of Woody Guthrie And Songs Of My Oklahoma Home comes Talley’s second release on his own label, Cimarron. The two discs, both recorded in the ’90s and previously unreleased, inaugurate a long-term project to re-release, on Cimarron, all of his albums.

Wresting control of his material from Capitol Records was a challenge, but if Music Row executives (who “wouldn’t know old Hank if he came walkin’ down the road,” according to the title track here) had taken one listen to those old masters, they’d have realized that Talley’s a bulldog who can outsmart and outlast the best of them. And endurance, after all, is what the blues is really about.

Now in his ’50s, Talley has the voice of a man 20 years younger, though its caress is seasoned with a little hard travelling. Backed by Jono Manson’s stinging electric lead guitar, Talley chomps into the title track’s driving rhythm. He moans the blues on “So I’m Not The Only One”. And a barrelhouse piano and sassy “choo choo” chorus steam along behind him as he swaggers through “House Right Down The Road”.

There’s even a trace of pop spliced into the disc. And Talley’s working stiff sensitivity and social conscience remain intact, callused hands and disenfranchised lives haunting him so much that, “If it wasn’t for the blues, I’d be crazy too.”