Various Artists – The Songs Of Jimmy Rodgers: A Tribute / Various Artists – Stone Country: County Artists Perform The Songs Of The Rolling Stones / Various Artists – One Step Up / Two Steps Back: The Songs Of Bruce Springsteen

Tribute albums have become such an established genre that many record stores now organize them in their own separate department. I was in one used record store recently where the tribute section took up a quarter of the store. There’s a good reason for that: Most tribute records are of marginal artistic merit, which is why when consumers pare down their CD collections, these various artists compilations are usually among the first things to go to the used bins.

Tribute albums often are put together by overzealous record company A&R types. Like the top-10 lists rock critics dish out each year, they’re fun to put together, but there’s not much interest on the part of consumers. Artistically, almost all tributes tend to collect covers from well-known artists, and yet these versions nearly always pale in comparison to the better-known originals.

The handful of exceptional tribute albums of the past few years have tended to focus on great songwriters, such as Till The Night Is Gone: A Tribute To Doc Pomus, a brilliant disc put together by Rhino Records featuring Bob Dylan, Rosanne Cash, Lou Reed and others. Also successful are tributes such as The World Of The Zombies on PopLlama, which features obscure Northwest artists covering obscure Zombie songs, and as such doesn’t bear comparisons to the originals. Still, for my money the best tribute to date is Folkways: A Vision Shared, which showcases modern-rock artists covering classic songs by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie.

To a list of essential tributes, you may now add The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute, which is everything a tribute record should be: It combines quality songwriting (these tunes are as classic as it gets in country music) with inspired performances by the likes of Bono, Dylan and Van Morrison. Produced by Jeff Kramer and Jeff Rosen, this collection also benefits from astute timing: Rodgers is long overdue for such a tribute, and a recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame symposium and concert have raised interest in this overlooked legend. The deep pockets of Columbia helped pull this collection together, and once Kramer and Rosen had Dylan aboard (he also wrote the excellent liner notes), other big names quickly followed.

Sometimes superstar talent spoils a tribute; many established artists have such distinct styles that such compilations can end up feeling disjointed. But on the Jimmie Rodgers set, every contributor is kept in check, and there is a flow and tempo rarely found on such a project. Bono’s take on “Dreaming With Tears In My Eyes” is so beautiful that you’re reminded why U2 was once the most important band in the world. Dylan’s “My Blue Eyed Jane” finds the blues-country groove he searched for on his last two albums of covers. Steve Earle & the V-Roys nail “In the Jailhouse Now”, a subject the singer knows far too much about. Alison Krauss & Union Station’s rendition of “Any Old Time” may be the best recording they’ve made to date. The artists who aren’t platinum-sellers, such as David Ball and Iris DeMent, also turn in remarkably strong efforts. And if only Dwight Yoakam could match the quality of “T for Texas” on all his albums, his career might be different.

The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers achieves exactly what a tribute album is intended to achieve: It serves as a reminder of the talent of the songwriter behind these numbers; it makes the listener want to delve into more of Rodgers catalog (much of which is out of print in the U.S.); and it works well as a listenable album on its own merit — i.e., you don’t need to like Rodgers to be drawn in by the spirited songs that make up this disc.

There is a certain irony that the Rodgers tribute features several rock artists, while Stone Country: County Artists Perform The Songs Of The Rolling Stones has only country acts. All but a couple of the artists on Stone Country are also platinum-selling acts. And while there are a few surprises and a couple of unexpected charming turns, this collection unfortunately suffers from the far too common malady that afflicts most tributes: It makes you miss the Rolling Stones’ own albums.

Much of the problem is that there simply may be no better rhythm section in rock ‘n’ roll than Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman (which makes it an even bigger loss that Wyman has left the Stones). These covers just don’t have the punch of the originals. Travis Tritt does an admirable job with “Honky Tonk Women”, but he ultimately ends up, like a billion bar bands before him, with a song that doesn’t have enough funk. In contrast, Little Texas’ take on “Beast of Burden” is one of the few here that does work, in part because this tune is almost a parody of a Stones song itself; it’s late enough in their repertoire to be playful. The other highlight is George Jones’ rendition of “Time is On My Side”; he brings his own weariness to the tune, stamping it with an entirely different tone than the youthful swagger Mick Jagger once had.

A couple performances here are just plain awful. Deana Carter brings nothing to “Ruby Tuesday” except her picture inside the CD cover. Her singing conveys elation rather than the sarcasm the song requires. Sammy Kershaw’s “Angie” illustrates why much of this disc is so misguided: The Nashville approach seems to be to throw a few steel guitars on the songs, change the British “you” to the hick “yew,” and slow down all the tempos a beat. The Stones did share a lot with the roots of country, and Exile On Main Street can be considered a country-blues recording, but you won’t find any signs of linkage on Stone Country.

Among the current crop of tribute albums, few are as ambitious as producer Cheryl Pawelski’s One Step Up/Two Steps Back, a two-CD compilation of songs written by Bruce Springsteen. The first disc is conceived as newer covers recorded specifically for this tribute, while the second CD collects rare Springsteen covers that have already been released in various forms. There have been Springsteen cover collections before (most notably Rhino’s Cover Me), but this is the first time a producer specifically sought artists to do their own versions of Springsteen’s songs.

Though Pawelski has gathered a few modestly big names, such as John Hiatt and the BoDeans’ Kurt Neumann, most of the contributors here are developing artists or cult favorites. That’s probably for the best, because covering a song by an artist as individual as Bruce Springsteen brings with it a whole set of problems: Do you attempt to one-up The Boss, or is it better to take an entirely different tack and try a new interpretation?

If this CD is any indication, the answer is the latter, because the songs that work here are the ones that are so different from the original that they re-craft the lyrics in a whole new skin. Syd Straw turns “Meeting Across The River” into a blues vamp, while John Wesley Harding turns “Jackson Cage” into a British folk ballad that sounds like it could have been written by Nick Drake. Dave Alvin speeds up “Seeds” and makes it sound like a song he wrote himself, the ultimate proof of an interpreter’s skill.

But more than a few of the performers attempt to match Springsteen head-on, and without the E Street Band they end up sounding like the ill-fated ensemble Springsteen himself took on the road in 1992-93 (his first tour without the E Streeters). Hiatt’s “Johnny 99” lacks the desperation of Bruce’s live versions, while Aram’s “Something In The Night” doesn’t have any of the thumping bass that made the track on Darkness On The Edge Of Town such a wonder.

More successful are some of the previously released covers that make up the second disc: Dave Bowie’s “It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City” is playful and fun; Southside Johnny’s “The Fever” has been on at least four other CDs but is a better performance than anything Springsteen ever did with the tune; and Italian bar band the Rockin’ Chairs romp on “Restless Nights”, a song that benefits from the fact that there is no officially released Springsteen version to compare it to.

Ultimately, One Step Up/Two Steps Back doesn’t have enough of a re-interpretive bent to compare with an inspired tribute like The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers. This collection may be as notable for what it doesn’t contain as it is for what’s here: I can imagine some far more misguided covers, and thankfully no one has attempted to add their own stamp to “Born To Run”. Still, given how often tribute albums continue to come out, it’s only a matter of time before Deana Carter gets that phone call. Let’s hope the line is busy.