Various Artists
Cool Blue Outlaws: Songs of Rogues, Rascals, and Rapscallions
Sugar Hill Records

by William Michael Smith

Well it all got started one Friday night
When the 'shine was flowin' free
I started a fight and took a man's life
And they hung those shackles on me
-- Jay Don Johnson, "Jailhouse Blues"

I don't care whether it's Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, or the Stanley Brothers, I do love a good outlaw song. Songs about outlaws, their crimes and their punishments go back to the earliest known popular music in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and I suspect in others as well. With 16 choice tracks, Cool Blue Outlaws: Songs of Rogues, Rascals, and Rapscallions is another disc that points out the depth of Sugar Hill Records roster of traditional artists and is my favorite among a recent spate of theme compilation discs from the Durham, North Carolina company.

Producer Stephen Brower chose well in opening this disc with Lonesome Standard Time's "Bandit." A rural hoedown tune about a small time thief, it has great ole-timey Opry shout harmonies and a hook that once set in the brain is hard to get out. I've been singing these lines in the shower for weeks with no end in sight.

Now here I sit upon a limb
They've got me dead to rights
Ol' Hank points his gun and grins
He's got me in his sights
Then he puts his rifle down
And shakes me to the ground
Looks like I'll live to run again
If I can whup these hounds

Run all night, sleep all day, never spend a dollar
All I own is on my back in an old tree up the holler

As with outlaws and murderers throughout time, prison, chain gangs, and hard labor get plenty of mention. Ronnie Bowman has the "Jailhouse Blues," Aubrey Haynie is "Doing My Time," and Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver have got it rough busting rocks "In the Gravel Yard."

For my money, it doesn't get much better than a graphic, gritty bluegrass murder song. Find a murder in a bluegrass song and you'll usually find one or a combination of these factors: an innocent girl and a bottle of hooch ("Willow Garden," Lonesome River Band); a good man married to a bad woman ("Blackbirds and Crows," The Nashville Bluegrass Band); a good-lookin' woman and a man done wrong ("Philadelphia Lawyer," The Seldom Scene); a jealous man and a "foolin' around" woman ("River Bottom," The Country Gentleman and "Open Pit Mine," The Nashville Bluegrass Band). Judging by the songs here, it seems in bluegrass murder simply represents a form of rough eye-for-an-eye grassroots justice, as sweet Rosie discovered when, after convincing her man to spend the money he made laboring in the open pit mine on a ring, he finds her fooling around with another casual lover.

One night I caught Rosie on her rendezvous
She was huggin' and kissin' with somebody new
It was said that I shot 'em while their arms were entwined
And I buried them deep in the open pit mine

The centerpieces here are Doc and Richard Watson's moody version of the traditional "Columbus Stockade Blues" and Sam Bush's straightforward interpretation of Willis Alan Ramsey's "Ballad of Spider John." Watson always seems to find a way to give us a new reading of familiar traditional songs, often providing us with new emotional insights through his performance as he does here. Watson's voice was made for dark, no-way-out songs like this. There are few lines sadder than the prisoner's final lamentable realization as he marks his time and Watson manages to put us right there in the cell with him.

Go and leave me if you wish to
Never let me cross your mind
In your heart you love another
Leave, little darlin', I won't mind

Bush's rendition of Ramsey's epic tale of lost love is surprisingly direct as Bush puts his emphasis on the lyrics and the players concentrate on support rather than on the instrumental flashes of brilliance so often associated with Bush's musical forays.

Two tracks deal as much with social issues as they do with crime per se. Dudley Connell and Don Rigsby's haunting version of Bob Dylan's "Hollis Brown" (there is no doubt from the first guitar licks that bad things are going to happen before this song is over) vividly paint a desperate picture of a South Dakota man driven to crime by poverty and social indifference. While it is certainly accidental given the time that has passed since Dylan wrote the song, the parallels with the Andrea Yates situation may be coincidental, yet they stand in bold relief as Hollis Brown kills his five children, his wife, and finally himself to escape an intolerable situation.

With the current criticism of the FBI, Peter Rowan's "Ruby Ridge," told from the point of view of Randy Weaver, paints a much different picture of events than the official story. In fact, given the later testimony at Weaver's trial and the outcome, much of Rowan's version appears to bear closer to the truth than the official government reports. This track also has a chorus that won't go away.

Don't shoot me down, don't shoot me down
Got a wife and kids on Ruby Ridge
Please don't shoot me down

With the usual Sugar Hill suspects handling the wood and steel, the picking on this album is first rate. Fans of bluegrass with rapid-fire picking and seamless changes between solo instruments will find this album certainly fills that bill. The album also features fine examples of some of the great harmonizers in the genre. All in all, a can't-go-wrong compilation for afficianados or neophytes.

And remember, music lovers: there may not be any room for vulgarity in bluegrass, but that doesn't rule out cheating, drinking, gambling, robbing, stealing, or murdering.

* Take your posse on over to www.sugarhillrecords.com for Cool Blue Outlaws and the other fine compilations in Sugar Hill's "Cool Blue" series of budget priced discs.


Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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