DAVID ALLAN COE
17 GREATEST HITS
1985 – COLUMBIA NASHVILLE
No Production Credits
1. She Used To Love Me A Lot
2. Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile
3. The Ride
4. Now I Lay Me Down To Cheat
5. Tennessee Whiskey
6. If That Ain’t Country
7. Longhaired Redneck
8. Jody Like A Melody
9. Please Come To Boston
10. You Never Even Call Me By My Name
11. This Bottle (In My Hand)
12. Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone)
13. Jack Daniels If You Please
14. Take This Job And Shove It
15. Willie, Waylon And Me
16. Pledging My Love
17. Hank Williams Junior-Junior
Don’t be fooled. There was never an outlaw country artist more outlaw than David Allan Coe. He wrote much of his debut album while in prison. He was a member of the Outlaw Motorcycle Club. He released albums that were pornographic, and he was perceived as a massive racist (which he always denied). His appearance, his attitude, and his songs made him never a star, even though he turned out to be one of country music’s greatest songwriters. Waylon and Willie embraced him, and also distanced themselves from his toxic persona. Later in life, he wrote and performed questionable material with Kid Rock. And yet, Coe was also a beloved performer, and his songs were recorded by others with great success. 17 Greatest Hits covers his career with Columbia, which lasted from the dawn of the seventies through the end of the eighties. You may not like him, but these songs don’t lie.
17 Greatest Hits is a perfect soundtrack to the early years of the train wreck that was Coe. This is outlaw country 101, harder and more real than Waylon and Willie ever did it. His songwriting is on display (“Longhaired Redneck”, “The Ride”), as is his choice in covers…the songs that kept him on the charts (“Please Come To Boston”, “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile”). His versions of his own “Take This Job And Shove It” (a hit for Johnny Paycheck) and “Would You Lay Me Down (In A Field Of Stone)” (a hit for Tanya Tucker) are here as well. His best recording is also here. “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”, written by Steve Goodman and John Prine, is as excellent as outlaw country ever got. Coe made a career out of bad moves and poor decisions, and yet he somehow managed to remain vital until he passed away in 2026. This one is a keeper.
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JUDE COLE
A VIEW FROM 3RD STREET
1990 – REPRISE
Produced By DAVID TYSON
1. Hallowed Ground
2. Baby, It’s Tonight
3. House Full Of Reasons
4. Get Me Through The Night
5. Time For Letting Go
6. Stranger To Myself
7. This Time It’s Us
8. Heart Of Blues
9. Compared To Nothing
10. Prove Me Wrong
Jude Cole’s career has been hit and miss…mostly miss. Early on, he played with Moon Martin and recorded an album with The Records, as well as making guest appearances with everyone from Ted Nugent to Peter Noone. He went solo in the eighties, and A View From 3rd Street is his second album. It’s also the high mark of his career. Cole had two singles reach the Billboard Top 40 in his career, and both of them are here. “Baby, It’s Tonight” established him as a capable John Waite like singer, while “Time For Letting Go” is a pure adult contemporary ballad. The album itself sold poorly, and it was all downhill for Cole from here. This record is not bad for what it is, which is bland rock for forty somethings who were not ready for what the nineties had in store. “Time For Letting Go” was later a minor hit for Billy Ray Cyrus. Enough said.
Cole plays guitars, bass and piano on the album, and he’s a more than capable singer. His songs tend to run thin, though. “House Full Of Reasons” is okay, but ballads like “Compared To Nothing” will not really leave you wanting more. The presence of seasoned pros like Leland Sklar and Jeff Porcaro help, but it’s ultimately not enough. Cole made three more albums before becoming the full time manager of Lifehouse and producing albums for the co-owner of his Irontown label Kiefer Sutherland. He returned to his solo career after a twenty year hiatus in 2021, and no one really noticed. Give Jude Cole credit…he’s made a career out of making music. He’s just never made it past being pretty good. If you must have one of Cole’s records, A View From 3rd Street is as good as he ever got. No reason really to go any further than this.
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JOHN COLTRANE
GIANT STEPS
1960 – ATLANTIC
Produced By NESUHI ERTEGUN
1. Giant Steps
2. Cousin Mary
3. Countdown
4. Spiral
5. Syeeda’s Song Flute
6. Naima
7. Mr. P.C.
8. Giant Steps (Alternate Version 1)
9. Naima (Alternate Version 1)
10. Cousin Mary (Alternate Take)
11. Countdown (Alternate Take)
12. Syeeda’s Song Flute (Alternate Take)
13. Giant Steps (Alternate Version 2)
14. Naima (Alternate Version 2)
15. Giant Steps (Alternate Take)
John Coltrane made great music like he knew he had limited time to do so. Which was actually the case. After spending years as mostly the greatest of sidemen for the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, he stepped into the sixties with Giant Steps, the beginning of a period of great records as a bandleader that lasted until his death in 1967. He had just finished recording Kind Of Blue with Davis, and had just signed a new contract with Atlantic. Mostly recorded over a two day period in May of 1959 (except far “Naima”, which came seven months later), this album is simply perfect. It’s not as spiritual as his later albums would be, but it’s just as personal, and just as excellent as anything he ever did. And that is most certainly saying a lot.
The original album is the first seven songs. The title track shows how advanced Coltrane was as a musician…it’s still used as a teaching tool for jazz students. “Naima” is one of the greatest jazz tracks ever recorded. And “Countdown”, “Mr. P.C.” (named for bassist Paul Chambers) and all the rest make this as good as any album from the early sixties could be. A phenomenal album, especially given that this came out in 1960. I’m not thrilled that there are more bonus tracks on this 1998 reissue than the original album had, and the fact that they are all alternate takes of songs on the album doesn’t win points from me. It’s all still great, and the extra material is great, but I still mostly turn it off after the seventh track. Otherwise, this is an absolute winner.
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RYAN ADAMS
ASHES & FIRE
2011 – PAX AM
Produced By GLYN JOHNS
1. Dirty Rain
2. Ashes & Fire
3. Come Home
4. Rocks
5. Do I Wait
6. Chains Of Love
7. Invisible Riverside
8. Save Me
9. Kindness
10. Lucky Now
11. I Love You But I Don’t Know What To Say
In what may have been the shortest retirement from the music industry in history, Ryan Adams left his band The Cardinals for a quieter life. He was suffering from Meniere’s disease, which makes hearing and balance difficult. He promptly got married, wrote a pair of books, and then began an even more amped up recording career. Ashes & Fire was the first album from the revitalized Adams, who found new songwriting inspiration in an album by Laura Marling. This version of Adams was more focused, less tortured and more mature than his previous work. The album is more acoustic in nature, with a calm and laid back attitude that matches its focus on his California life. As we’ve learned from Adams over the years, he can make any scenario work for him. No exception here.
Because he is such a prolific writer, the measure of any Ryan Adams album is the always quality of songs. Ashes & Fire contains a lot of very good material…but there’s nothing top shelf here. He seems to be content to be…content. He sounds more relaxed than normal, which may not be the best thing musically. The keyboard duties are interestingly split between Norah Jones and Benmont Tench, while the production is ably handled by the veteran Glyn Johns. The best track here is “Lucky Now”. The album has been compared to his solo debut, Heartbreaker, but this lacks the punch and immediacy of that record. This is an artist who never makes a bad album, and in that regard, Ashes & Fire falls right in line. It’s a good one, but does fall short of greatness.
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CONCRETE BLONDE
MEXICAN MOON
1993 – IRS
Produced By CONCRETE BLONDE & SEAN FREEHILL
1. Jenny I Read
2. Mexican Moon
3. Heal It Up
4. Jonestown
5. Rain
6. I Call It Love
7. Jesus Forgive Me (For The Things I’m About To Say)
8. When You Smile
9. Close To Home
10. One Of My Kind
11. End Of The Line
12. (Love Is A) Blind Ambition
13. Bajo La Lune Mexicana
Bloodletting is universally viewed as the best Concrete Blonde album. I beg to differ. I say it’s the follow up, Walking In London from 1992. This isn’t about either of those records. Mexican Moon is the follow up to Walking In London, their last before their first breakup in 1994. The band is heavier than ever on this one, but the promising direction of Johnette Napolitano’s songwriting from the previous album falls short here. Instead of building on songs like “Ghost Of A Texas Ladies Man” and “Walking In London”, which were improvements over Bloodletting’s hit “Joey”, this is enough of a step backwards to spell the effective end for the band. This is still a good album, but it’s unfortunately the end of the band’s momentum. As always with Concrete Blonde, it’s another case of oh, so close.
“Jonestown” was the single here. It begins on the album with a full minute of cult leader Jim Jones rambling about warfare, then continues as a critique of his religious ideas. “Heal It Up” is pretty good, as is the title track, a song about losing love and fleeing from it as far as you can. “End Of The Line” is a fine Roxy Music cover from the Siren era. There are some flaws, as some of the songs will slip right by you unnoticed, and Napolitano’s voice can be a challenge if the song is not top quality. But ultimately, this one ends up as the third of their best three albums, right behind Walking In London and Bloodletting. Subsequent reunions have resulted in three other albums, the last coming in 2004, although they can’t help but get back together every once in a while.
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JAMIE CULLUM
TWENTYSOMETHING
2003 – UCJ
Produced By STEWART LEVINE
1. These Are The Days
2. Twentysomething
3. The Wind Cries Mary
4. All At Sea
5. Lover, You Should Have Come Over
6. Singin’ In The Rain
7. I Get A Kick Out Of You
8. Blame It On My Youth
9. High And Dry
10. It’s About Time
11. But For Now
12. I Could Have Danced All Night
13. Next Year, Baby
14. What A Difference A Day Made
15. Frontin’
It’s easy to dismiss Jamie Cullum as another modern day Sinatra wannabe. Much of what he does is in that vein, throwing out standards left and right and sounding as sincere as he can be while doing so. Twentysomething is his third album, but at 24, he sounds closer to twelve and more like a curiosity than anything else. But there’s more to Cullum than trying to be the second coming of Harry Connick Jr. And while this album is dominated by standards, there are other avenues he explores here. There are five original songs here, (written by both Cullum and his brother Ben), which you don’t hear from jazz crooners. He also tackles a pair of songs from rock royalty, in strange arrangements of songs witten by Jimi Hendrix (“The Wind Cries Mary”) and Jeff Buckley “Lover, You Should Have Come Over”).
So, this isn’t just some kid singing the music his parents (or grandparents) listened to. And that does make this more interesting. But on the standards, he sounds way out of his league. He doesn’t seem to grasp the maturity of songs like “I Get A Kick Out Of You” and “Singin’ In The Rain”. Those songs are better left to artists with a better understanding of that history. That didn’t mean much to audiences in the UK, which made this the best selling jazz album in their country’s history. What you get here is an odd duck of an album, seemingly lost in time and sung by a voice that wasn’t quite ready for the material. But it is very well made. If you can get past the almost childish level of his singing of those classic songs, you might really like this. But it’s surely not great.
My Rating: ***1/2
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