yesterday’s album a day was george jones sings bob wills. i haven’t posted one of these in a couple days. this isn’t because i haven’t been listening to music i haven’t really heard (or really listened to) before. the past few days i have listened to john coltrane: the complete prestige recordings.
i play a lot of instruments, and the sax is probably my best. and i’ve always liked john coltrane. i’ve listened to him a hundred hours in my life, but i dunno how much of these prestige recordings i’d heard before.
coltrane has never quite hit me the right way, though i admire him. he seems like great background music but to sit and just listen to a whole album, for whatever reason, i find taxing. i don’t find this to be the case with charlie parker, sonny rollins or coleman hawkins, for instance. even dexter gordon can keep my attention better. and a couple of these guys sometimes play their tenor saxes in a similar fashion. i don’t know what it is. but because of these facts and the legendary status of coltrane already, i didn’t feel the need to bother with writing about it, although it seems i just have.
anyways, yesterday i listened to george jones’ first album to get release, george jones sings bob wills.
a bit ago i wrote about an asleep at the wheel album, and that probably put bob wills back in my mind. and, this is one album in jones’ catalog i’ve never listened to at all.
george jones sounds so young here, almost hopeful. although i think i really like him best when he is singing his own songs, here he does quite well singing sweet, often upbeat songs the are immediately accessible and wonderful to listen to.
although there is a somber undertone in a couple of these songs, like the classic the warm red wine, written by cindy walker:
Oh the prison of stone with its cold iron bars
is no more than a prison than mine
I’m a prisoner of drink who will never escape
from the chains of the warm red wine
Oh the wine is red so warm and red
like the ruby its sparkles and glows
But I fade for the wine yeah that warm red wine
With all of my hopes and my dreams
