Cover stories

Dave Alvin, Van Morrison, Rickie Lee Jones, and more

by Bill Kisliuk

Dave Alvin

There's an old tune Dave Alvin likes to sing to himself when he's had a few beers too many. It's called "What Did the Deep Sea Say," and the ex-X guitarist and co-founder of the Blasters first heard it on a Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston 78 he bought when he was a kid. Over the phone from his home in Los Angeles, Alvin recalls a night about two years ago when he was sitting in a Houston hotel room after a gig, a couple of beers deep, picking out the song on guitar. Down the hall, one of the other performers on that evening's bill, folk legend and Guthrie contemporary Ramblin' Jack Elliott, heard Alvin's smoked-out voice and put his head in the door.

"Where'd you learn that?" Elliott demanded. "I haven't heard that song for 30 years. When Woody Guthrie'd get drunk, he used to sing that song for hours."

The tune has surfaced again on Alvin's new CD, Public Domain (HighTone), which is devoted to songs from the early part of the 20th century. And it's been joined in stores by a number of other notable albums by respected artists who have taken a similar break from recording their own material to put their spin on other people's songs. There's Rickie Lee Jones's It's like This (Artemis), which she'll support with a show on December 9 at Berklee Performance Center, and which finds her doing tunes by everyone from Steely Dan to Frank Sinatra. There's You Win Again (Virgin), a collaboration where Van Morrison and Jerry Lee Lewis's piano-playing kid sister, Linda Gail Lewis, dust off a number of honky-tonk chestnuts. And there's Chris Whitley's Perfect Day (Valley Entertainment), on which the Texas singer/songwriter (and former Columbia recording artist) joins forces with percussionist Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood (Medeski Martin & Wood) for an eclectic collection of songs by the likes of Lou Reed and Howlin' Wolf. In addition, Johnny Cash takes on Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down," U2's "One," and Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man" among other covers on American Recordings II: Solitary Man (Columbia), and Hootie and the Blowfish pay tribute to some of their favorite artists -- including R.E.M., the Smiths, and Bill Withers -- on Scattered, Smothered and Covered (Atlantic).

A well-placed cover can certainly improve a band's career prospects. It was New Order's "Blue Monday," for example, that helped Orgy gain their first foothold in commercial radio back in '98. Run-DMC became the first real rap act to cross over to a mainstream-rock audience when they put a hip-hop spin on Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" back in the '80s. And at the height of the electronica hype, techno-savvy Moby made a run at rock radio with his guitar-driven rendition of Mission of Burma's "That's When I Reach for My Revolver." Sometimes it's hard to tell whether the impetus for a cover is artistic or commercial. And though there have been plenty of amusingly irreverent covers released over the years (Sid Vicious's "My Way" comes to mind), it's probably fair to assume that labels are crunching the numbers when they encourage an artist in a sales slump -- say, Hootie or Rickie Lee Jones -- to release an album of familiar tunes. Whatever the reason, cover tunes can be revealing and rewarding, giving artists a chance to wear their influences on their sleeves and also to branch out, as Ray Charles did back in the '60s when he recorded two classic discs of country weepers.

For Dave Alvin, Public Domain is his chance to revisit his Americana roots and map the path he took to his own rough-edged style. He recalls fielding a handful of outside suggestions for material when he began work; one was to include one of his own tunes -- but as he points out, "To me that would defeat the whole purpose of the record." He was also encouraged, he says, to "get famous people on the record. But that's not what it's about either. I think that's being done too much now. I actually recoil now when somebody says [of a new release], `Steve Earle's on it. God's on it. Bruce Springsteen's on it.' I say, `I'll check it out later.' "

Not only did Alvin forgo big-name cameos, he also avoided widely recognized songs and artists. What he came up is a set of obscure folk songs from the public domain plus a few favorites by less-appreciated figures from the 1920s and '30s, like Blind Willie McTell ("Mama, Ain't Long for Day") and Gus Cannon ("Walk Right In"). The one exception is "Shenandoah," the disc's opening track and a song that's been whitewashed over the years by the likes of Lawrence Welk and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Alvin makes it a stately, primordial power ballad accented by his ringing, restrained guitar passages and the sturdy work of his band, the Guilty Men.

In keeping with the mongrel tradition of folk music, Alvin alters the arrangement of each tune to fit his needs. He borrows one set of lyrics here or a cadence there, and he transposes each tune into the right key, which is where he says his deep, coarse voice has been hiding. "I've always wanted to do an album like this. The songs on this album give me a sense of place. They give me an understanding of American history, but not in a history-book sense. There's a lot of violence on this record." He means "Murder of the Lawson Family" and "Engine 143," the latter based on the true story of an 1890 railroad wreck. Tunes like these, he says, were the "Combination CNN/National Enquirer of their day," bringing the news of the countryside verse by verse.

But he had more in mind than just playing the part of the guitar-strumming armchair historian and dredging up yesterday's news. "One of the reasons I chose the violent imagery has to do with our perception of what folk music is today. We've drained a lot of the blood out of it." Call Public Domain a timely and timeless transfusion.

UNLIKE DAVE ALVIN, Rickie Lee Jones wasn't against inviting a few famous friends -- including Joe Jackson, Ben Folds, Taj Mahal, and Dan Hicks -- to join her on It's like This, which follows her widely ignored experimental 1997 release Ghostyhead. But it's Jones's sidelong wit and boho style that come across in both the tune selection and the delivery. The opener, Steely Dan's "Show Biz Kids," is a far less polished studio creation than anything Donald Fagen and Walter Becker ever recorded, but it still conveys the aloof, sarcastic pose they perfected. Triangle and stand-up bass set a subdued, funky pace before Jones materializes with her languorous vocals, building to an insistent jab at the Hollywood/Vegas scene: "Show-biz kids making movies of themselves/You know they don't give a fuck about anybody else."

It's a great song, and so is the next number, "Trouble Man," which was written and performed by Marvin Gaye for the 1972 blaxploitation film of the same name. Gaye's best work had a jazzy foundation and an erotic vibe, and Jones has those qualities in abundance. Other cuts include a reflective version of the Beatles' "For No One" and a few standards well suited to Jones, including "Up a Lazy River." The CD ends with "One Hand, One Heart," from West Side Story, a musical that she's said to have memorized when she was a teenager.

VAN MORRISON has probably known some of the numbers on his You Win Again (Virgin) since he first got turned on to American jazz and R&B by his father in Belfast. In fact, he has often drawn on his roots and his record collection for inspiration. In 1988, he collaborated with the Chieftains on Irish Heritage, a set of traditional folk tunes. More recently he released The Skiffle Sessions -- Live in Belfast with guitarist Lonnie Donegan, who's credited with founding the UK folk-rock style that helped spawn the original British rock-and-roll scene. Over the course of his career, Morrison has also taken on jazz standards and collaborated with such towering figures as jazz philosopher/pianist Mose Allison and boogie king John Lee Hooker.

You Win Again grew from his chance encounter with Linda Gail Lewis, whose off-and-on honky-tonk career has fallen under her brother's shadow. She toured with Jerry Lee for many years, starting when she was 14, and cut some duets with him more than 30 years ago. In keeping with the wild tradition in the Lewis family, she also married three times before she was 16; she's written a book called The Devil, Me, and Jerry Lee, and she plays piano in the over-the-top style that her brother made famous.

Although Lewis pounds the keys with authority and sings pretty well in the twangy Southern-fried tradition, her voice is no match for Morrison's. Not too many voices are, and his is in great vocal shape and high spirits on these tracks, which were cut live and with little rehearsal alongside the Red Hot Pokers, a tough country rock quintet from South Wales. Both Lewis and Morrison are buoyant on "Let's Talk About Us," a rockabilly tale of teenage love written by Otis Blackwell and recorded by Jerry Lee for Sun back in the day. The world probably doesn't need another version of "Jambalaya," one of three Hank Williams tunes here; the more obscure material -- like Smiley Lewis's "Real Gone Lover" and Bo Diddley's "Cadillac" -- fares better.

THERE'S A FITTING MISTAKE in the credits for Chris Whitley's Perfect Day: the song "She's Alright" is credited to Morganfield McKinley, which reverses the family and given names of the blues hero better known as Muddy Waters. It's fitting because when Whitley takes hold of a song -- be it the Doors' "Crystal Ship," Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning," or the cynical Lou Reed ballad that serves as the album's title track -- he upends it with his ghostly and evocative falsetto, recasting it as a tender, wandering love poem.

Perfect Day is an intensely personal statement, both in its material, which includes a pair of ragged, poetic Dylan cuts ("Spanish Harlem Incident" and "4th Time Around") and a handful of moody blues numbers (Jimi Hendrix's "Drifting" and Robert Johnson's "Stones in My Pathway"), and in Whitley's restless delivery. The accompaniment is appropriately spare -- just Whitley on acoustic guitar, Billy Martin's quirky, knockabout percussion, and Chris Wood's somber, occasionally bowed bass. Like Alvin, Whitley seems to know that some songs are good enough to speak for themselves.