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Talley blends country, blues
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Sunday, February 24, 2008
by Jack W. Hill
Singer-songwriter James Talley is proud and tickled to credit a career detour into real estate with being the salvation of his musical career.
Talley, a cult hero who has never had a show in Arkansas, will perform on Friday for Buffalo River Concerts in Yellville and on Saturday at the Lyric Theater in Harrison.
Born in Oklahoma and raised in New Mexico, Talley was widely hailed when he released his debut album, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love, in 1975. The album became a favorite in President Carter’s White House, which led to a couple of Talley shows there as he continued with a string of albums that melded folk and blues sounds so successfully that he was praised by music writers Greil Marcus, Robert Hilburn, Nat Hentoff, Chet Flippo and Peter Guralnick, who wrote of Talley in his book Lost Highway.
There were three more albums in the 1970s: Tryin’ Like the Devil, Blackjack Choir and Ain’t It Something.
“Back when my contract with Capitol Records ran out, I made what was probably the worst mistake of my career,” Talley recalls, “and I took some bad advice and got out of that contract. When you’re young, you’re more likely to be fo- cused on the artistic aspects of the music business, and you can find yourself in the hands of someone who tells you to do something and you do it.
“Two months after I left Capitol, this guy abandoned me, and when that happened, my career went downwards, like stairsteps. First I had to quit hiring a band; then the dates got fewer and fewer; then the booking agent said for me to call him when I got another record deal.”
After floundering for a couple of years, Talley knew that with a wife and two kids, he needed to make a living somehow. Real estate didn’t exactly beckon, but circumstances combined to provide an answer to his dilemma.
“A guy in the construction business approached me, and since that’s one of the things you can do with a fine arts degree, I listened,” Talley says. “It turned out he was also in real estate, and he wanted to take time off so he could go on trips in the summer with the Boy Scouts, so I took on some of his work.
“As I wrote in the liner notes for one of my albums, Nashville City Blues, I felt kind of low to go from playing at the White House to having my name and phone number on signs in people’s front yards.”
In the midst of his low period, he drew comfort from friends who told him that he had “accomplished more than 90 percent of the dreamers that came to Nashville.”
For 15 years or so, Talley was out of performing, and when he finally agreed to do a small show or two, the response was, he says, incredible.
“I’ve been with the real estate thing for 25 years now, and other musicians have come up to me and say they envy me for the way I’ve made a living,” Talley says. “I finally made enough that I was able to get the rights to my early albums back from Capitol. It only took me nine years and two trips to meet with different presidents of the label.
“Like everywhere else, real estate is slow as death right now, what with the economy and the mortgage crunch, but when it was better, we sold investments and apartments, and we built our future ‘sitting-on-the-porch’ home out in New Mexico, that we might eventually get to. Right now, we just rent it out.”
One of Talley’s proudest moments was convincing B.B. King to play on a song Talley wrote, “Bluesman,” which turned out to be the first time King had done any recording in Nashville.
“We sent him a cassette of the rhythm track and he was delighted to come in and play,” Talley says. “He was so gracious, and about five years ago he was in town, signing copies of his autobiography. My wife, Jan, and I went through the line and bought a copy to be signed, and when we got up there, he looked at me, got up, spread his arms out wide and gave me a huge hug.
“He told the person at the store, ‘This is James Talley, he was the first one to mix the blues and country music. It was a wonderful moment, since he not only recognized me, but he remembered my name. And I’d gone from a beard and a lot of hair way back when to a small mustache now.”
Four years ago, Talley wrote an essay titled “The Future of Music in Our Time,” in which he wondered what would become of musicians and labels and shows. Talley had just gotten news of the impending closing of No Depression magazine, in which he had advertised whenever he released a new album or re-released an old one.
“We’re all sinking in this business, together,” he predicts. “It’s getting harder and harder to make any money in music. If we can’t sell the product, we can’t advertise. And it costs about $15,000 to record an album the right way, and another $25,000 to release it properly, so that’s $40,000 right there.
“It’s a recipe for disaster if putting them out costs you money. So I may just put songs up on my Web site and sell them as downloads or offer them as custom CDs, without the essays and photographs and liner notes, which we used to like in the old LP days.
“The need for music in people’s lives will never go away, but how it will be distributed is changing very fast and radically.”
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Long Road Finally Leads Back Home
Albuquerque Journal
January 18, 2008
by Aurelio Sanchez
James Talley still doesn't take himself too seriously, though his footprint is a big one in country music. He's performed with blues legend B.B. King. He's had his songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Johnny Paycheck and Gene Clark.
His first album, recorded in 1975— with perhaps the longest title ever: ''Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love''— was voted by Rolling Stone as one of the essential albums of the 1970s. The album last year received widespread critical acclaim with its 30th anniversary reissue.
He performed twice at the White House for President Jimmy Carter.
Yet, the 64-year-old singer-songwriter, who grew up in Albuquerque, still feels that he needs to write a personal letter to a newspaper editor: ''You may not know much about me as a singer-songwriter, but there is more information than most people would probably care to know on my Web site.''
In a phone interview, the Oklahoma-born Talley, in a slow and easy drawl, said of his self-effacing pitch for publicity, ''I don't think you can take yourself too seriously; as an artist you just try to make your own little footprint.''
Talley has been making footprints all over country music for more than four decades, but you'd need an experienced tracker to find them.
Told once by Pete Seeger to write about the places and people he knew and cared about, Talley did it, though what he had to say wasn't always what the industry wanted to hear.
As a Bernalillo County welfare worker straight out of college, he learned about poverty on the eastern slopes of the Manzanos, in mountain villages like Chilili and Torreon. One of his first collections was called ''The Road to Torreon,'' a portfolio of songs about Hispanic life.
Armed with a fine arts degree from the University of New Mexico in the late 1960s, Talley found he could get only ''working man'' jobs, like being a carpenter, a horse wrangler, or a real estate broker.
Already a devotee of Woody Guthrie, partly because of his mother's family's roots growing up as tenant farmers in Oklahoma, Talley found in his own experiences a reverence for country music's roots, in the tradition of Guthrie, Bob Wills and Jimmie Rodgers.
It gave him a connection to the working class and a determination to do his music his way. His songs reflect parts of different styles: country, blues, rock, swing and even Tejano music.
''The two major influences in my music came from my family's roots in Oklahoma and the Depression, and the time I spent growing up in New Mexico,'' Talley said. ''I just write about life and what I see around me; I listen to what people say and I write it down.''
Talley came with his family to New Mexico as a fourth-grader. He went to McKinley Junior High and Sandia High School, and remembers when they were sparkling new schools. He learned guitar and became interested in music.
He went to UNM thinking he wanted to be a journalist or a painter, but he changed to music when he found he could write songs.
''I tell people that writing songs is a lot like painting except you're using different tools,'' he said. ''All of my songs are like paintings.''
In Nashville, where he's lived for 40 years, he's forged a successful career in commercial real estate. Disillusioned with major record labels, Talley started his own label, Cimarron Records, in the 1990s. He continues to perform when he can.
Though he's been back to Albuquerque occasionally to visit friends, this will be his first performance here since the late 1970s, when he was an artist for Capital Records. He recently got a second house in Abiquiu.
''I'm thrilled about coming back to perform in Albuquerque,'' he said.
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Singing the Songs of the Working Man
High Plains Reader - Grand Forks, ND
October 17, 2007
by Janie Franz
Oklahoma born, James Talley has been writing and singing songs about working people for nearly forty years. He will make a rare North Dakota appearance in Grand Forks, Thursday, October 18, to perform at the Empire Theatre. His performance is part of a community celebration, commemorating the fiftieth birthday of the Northern Valley Labor Council.
The folky, country-blues singer/songwriter got his start in Nashville in the 1970s when he was mentored by the late John Hammond, Sr. Hammond, a recording executive at Columbia Records in New York, who bolstered the careers of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen, connected Talley with Capital Records in Nashville.
He recorded four albums in the 1970s for Capitol Records. Though his relationship with that major label turned sour–and he’ll gladly tell you the details–and he eventually formed his own record company, Cimmaron Records, Talley was able to perform twice for President Jimmy Carter at The White House. He also appeared at the Smithsonian Institution and in other concert venues around the United States and in Europe. B.B. King played guitar on Talley’s third album, “Blackjack Choir,” in 1976, marking the first time the legendary bluesman had ever recorded in Nashville. Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, Alan Jackson, Hazel Dickens, the late Gene Clark, and most recently Moby, among others, have recorded Talley’s songs.
Talley’s critically acclaimed first album, “Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love,” was originally released by Capitol records in 1975. It was reissued in a 30th Anniversary edition last year on Talley’s Cimmaron label.
Talley has recorded country blues, songs of hard living, and even a tribute to Woody Guthrie in “Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home” (1999). Some of Talley’s material was released in Europe and was quickly picked up. That spurred a tour through Italy in 2002 where selections of his concerts were recorded live for the “Journey” (2004) CD.
One of Talley’s exceptional works is the boxed edition of “The Road To Torreon” (1992). It is a full-length CD that is enhanced by a book of heartrending photographs. Both the album and the photos were in reaction to the poverty that Talley witnessed when he worked in New Mexico as a social worker. Like John Prine, Talley was able to paint telling portraits of the lives of the people living in small Hispanic villages in the state.
“The Road to Torreon is very popular in Europe, especially in Italy for some reason,” says Talley. “The Italians just loved that album, and everybody knew about it when I was over there. They requested songs from it that I haven’t played in years.” Talley’s “La Rosa Montana,” from that album, is featured on “The Journey.” It is a haunting ballad delivered with Talley’s soft western lilt that has a Willie Nelson quality.
Talley strives to say something and tell a story. “I really try to stay away from polemics. I don’t want to tell people what to think,” he says. “But if you can paint a picture and cause them to think for themselves, that’s the best that you can do. That’s what I try to do in my work is to give somebody something to think about.”
But he also wants to give his listeners a good balance between serious works and something lighter. “You’ve got to give people a release,” Talley says. “I wrote a ditty about the old cliche, ‘When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.’...Every now and then you have to have a ditty to break the pace.”
Yet, Talley takes his writing life very seriously. “If you’re a painter that’s 64 years old and you went into a gallery and saw a retrospective of all of the things you’ve painted, it’s the same thing as looking at my catalog of songs on all those CDs. That’s my gallery,” he says. “That’s were you see my vision the same as you would see a painter’s vision. It’s whether you are an artist or whether you’re just an entertainer. Art can be entertaining, but entertainment is not always art.” Talley adds, “I think our dreams are what enable us to face the rigors of reality. I think everyone has got to have something that they love doing. It doesn’t matter whether they make any money at it or not.”
Certainly, James Talley enjoys what he’s doing. “I’m just constantly writing,” he admits. He even has a new album ready to release. “There’s one in the can, and I’m working on some new stuff. I’m always working on something.”
Tally also continues to perform throughout the United States and Europe on a limited touring schedule, and his CDs receive airplay throughout the world. Last year, he appeared on NPR’s Mountain Stage and American Routes Radio.
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Best Reissues of 2006
No Depression
January-February 2007
Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love - Top 10 Reissues of 2006
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An Interview with James Talley
American Routes Radio with Nick Spitzer
July 8, 2006
Listen (Real Audio)
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JAMES TALLEY talks with Spencer Leigh
Country Music People - United Kingdom
June 2006
by Spencer Leigh
PDF File of Article
If you could take a degree in country music, I could imagine an examination question: “James Talley – what went wrong?” Just over 30 years ago, the Oklahoma singer/songwriter released his first album, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love. The songs were by no means as clumsy as the title and the quiet and intimate album received excellent reviews. There was, however, no hit single from the LP. James Talley made three more albums for Capitol - the more robust Tryin’ Like The Devil (1976), the bluesy Blackjack Choir (1977) and the socially aware Ain’t It Somethin’ (1977) – and again it was critical plaudits, but limited sales.
Nevertheless, Talley’s sincere and earnest songwriting has been recognised by his fellow musicians. B.B.King played on Bluesman and both Johnny Cash and Alan Jackson have recorded his marvellous picture of pre-war country show, W.Lee O’Daniel And The Light Crust Dough Boys. Talley writes:
“I got no troubles, I’m feelin’ no pain,
I got moonshine whisky down in my veins,
So let the Light Crust Dough Boys and ol’ Pappy Dan
Play us a song we’ll never forget.”
After that, there was nothing until 1985. Bear Family then released American Originals and followed it four years later with Love Songs And The Blues. In 1992, they issued Talley’s first collection of songs, a concept album with stunning presentation about Hispanic life in New Mexico, The Road To Torreon, and followed it with James Talley: Live. All the Capitol and Bear Family albums have been reissued on Talley’s own Cimarron label and they have been followed by a look at his roots with Woody Guthrie And The Songs Of My Oklahoma Home (1999), Nashville City Blues (2000) and Touchstones (2002).
I realise I am writing about someone whose work may be unknown to you, and, if so, I would recommend you to his website, www.jamestalley.com, as you can hear extracts from everything and, in many instances, the complete songs. You can order CDs direct from James, autographed if you want.
The live album, Journey (2004), is as close to a greatest hits collection as you can find. In actuality, there aren’t any greatest hits, but listening to these songs, I wonder why not. Several of the songs appear commercial enough, so is it just bad luck? Did James Talley mix too many styles as there are country, blues, western swing and rock influences there, but then again, that worked successfully for The Band. In short, James Talley: what went wrong? And who better to answer the question than James Talley himself.
Spencer: Can we start by finding out about your background and asking if it was a musical family?
James: I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943, but I lived in a little town south east of Tulsa. My parents were working people. My father had a wonderful tenor voice and he could play guitar and would sing Jimmie Rodgers songs. He loved country music and Bob Wills was his hero. Bob Wills had played at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa when he and my mom were courting.
Spencer: Have you a favourite record by Bob Wills?
James: Well, I have several – San Antonio Rose, Take Me Back To Tulsa, Stay All Night – I could list a whole lot more. He was a wonderful bandleader who was capable of drawing out the very best in his musicians. I have just been down in Austin at a seminar, organised by Johnny Gimble, who played with Bob Wills. When we were looking for a fiddle player to play on my first album, my bass player said, “Why don’t we call Johnny Gimble?” I didn’t know him and he said, “Well, he played with Bob Wills”, and I said, “Call Johnny Gimble.” Johnny was talking about Wills at this seminar and he would be a wonderful interview for you sometime.
Spencer: You recorded a tribute album to Woody Guthrie, so had you known those songs from a young age?
James: My father was always singing Oklahoma Hills but I didn’t know that Woody had written it at the time. When I was in high school, the folk movement started and the Kingston Trio came out with a lot of records. A lot of their songs were by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie. They struck a chord with me, probably because of all the stories that my family had told me about the Great Depression in Oklahoma. I have always written from the heart and that is what Woody did himself. He saw a lot of injustice and the 1930s was a very tumultuous time. Capitalism was failing the people, and a lot of people were trying to find other solutions such as Communism and Socialism. Guthrie was chronicling what he saw.
Spencer: And he wrote so poetically - “In the misty crystal glitter of the wild and windward spray”.
James: Yeah, Arlo’s really fond of that line - it is a very poetic description. Woody’s songs get to the heart of things. They are so powerful in their simplicity and their incisiveness. I got my first guitar in high school when I was 15 and I started playing Woody’s songs. I was in Los Angeles at graduate school in 1965/6, and I picked up a book by Robert Shelton about Woody and called Born To Win. I said to myself that there were things that needed to be written about today, and so I started writing. In 1967, Pete Seeger came to the University of New Mexico to do a concert and one of my graduate English professors asked Pete if he would listen to my songs. Pete said, “Obviously you have some talent, but don’t try to write songs as if you live in New York City. You’re here in the south-west in Albuquerque, so write songs about the things that you’ve seen. Write about your family and your friends and your part of the country, and the rest of it will take care of itself.” I have always followed that advice and have passed it on to many young songwriters.
Spencer: Did studying English also help you to write the songs?
James: I was an English minor and a fine arts major, so I specialised in painting and drawing and art history. It’s just that I went in another direction after I got out of school. They are all connected. It is important to be an observer and look at things visually and that is what I’ve tried to do in my songs. But to answer your question, an education helps. Kristofferson studied William Blake and he became a really poetic writer. He wasn’t some hack writing something for the radio. He wrote some very gorgeous songs and, in a similar way, I think that the training and the outlook that I had as an artist has helped a lot. It gives you a broader perspective to draw on.
Spencer: How did you get your recording contract?
James: That’s a long story. I had written a group of songs based on Pete Seeger’s advice that eventually became the album, The Road To Torreon. That was an album about the Hispanic people in New Mexico whom I was working with as a welfare case worker, which is a job you can get with a degree in fine arts! John Hammond Sr was a monolith in the music business: he started with Bessie Smith in the 1930s, and then with Billie Holiday and Count Basie and Benny Goodman and then he was the one who championed Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and Aretha Franklin. He had ears and it was quite easy to get to see him at Columbia in New York. I played him my songs and he wanted to sign me, but the president Clive Davis had to agree. I met with Davis and his entourage in Memphis and here I was with my little Martin guitar, fingerpicking songs about poor Chicanos. The big acts at the time were Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, big power bands with lots of horns, and it must have been like the dark side of the moon to these people. Clive Davis turned me down and John Hammond was upset. He sent me to Jerry Wexler, who wanted to sign me to Atlantic Records. He asked me how much money I was making and he told me that he would pay me more and that I could write songs for a year.
Spencer: But you didn’t record an album for Atlantic?
James: Atlantic had an office in Nashville but they didn’t have it together. Jerry was going through a divorce and his life was upside down and consequently, a lot of the record company was upside down. He had signed Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm, Troy Seals and me. Jerry made a couple of albums with Willie but they didn’t do the job for him and he went to Columbia. I could see the Atlantic thing was coming to an end. I recorded an album on spec, which meant that the musicians played with the hope of getting paid at some point. I finished the album and my contract came to an end. I had a finished album and it was a very unusual album for Nashville. It was far too acoustic and it was a conceptual album like the Beatles would make.
Spencer: What did you do with it?
James: I was pounding nails as a carpenter for a couple of years and a Canadian, Frank Jones, who was the head of the country music division for Capitol, was moving back to Nashville from Los Angeles, and I had been asked to work on his house. Another carpenter told Frank that he should hear my record as it was really good. Frank, who was incredibly nice, said he’d love to and he was surprised by how good it was. We finished the job and that was that. Then, every morning when Frank got up, he would hear Red River Memory being played on the radio, and another station was playing Give Him Another Bottle as he drove to work. He called me and asked me how I was doing. I told him that I had done about all I could from the trunk of my car. He told me to come in and talk about it. I offered him a real good deal. I just wanted $5,000 to pay the musicians: actually, it wasn’t quite enough as I had to borrow $500 from my mother to pay the taxes. The Vice-President of Sales for Capitol in California said, “How can this record be any good when we didn’t pay anything for it?”
Spencer: That album was Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love and there’s a goodtime instrumental on the album, Big Taters In The Sandy Land.
James: That was the last thing we recorded. I had read a Carl Sandburg poem about an old time fiddlers’ contest and he said that the No.l song was Turkey In The Straw and the No.2 was Sweet Potatoes Grow In Sandy Land. I asked Johnny Gimble if he knew this song and he said, “No, but I know a song called Big Taters In The Sandy Land!” and I asked him to play it. We threaded the tape up real fast and Doyle Grisham played a little rhythm. Johnny said, “Okay, the machine’s going and here’s Big Taters In The Sandy Land.” It was totally impromptu and as someone missed a chord change, we faded it at the end of Side 1 and faded it back in on Side 2. Johnny finishes with an “Aaaah!”, and I couldn’t have planned it better.
Spencer: When I first heard your records, I thought of Mickey Newbury, who also merges blues and country.
James: That’s okay by me! Mickey Newbury was a great inspiration and a dear friend. I saw that he was someone who could write country songs that had something to say and it’s funny you should mention the blues because Jerry Wexler said, “Every time I hear you and Willie sing, I feel like I’m hearing somebody singing the blues.” Mickey Newbury was very creative, and I couldn’t figure out why Kristofferson became the star and Mickey didn’t as Mickey could sing circles around Kris. Mickey lived his whole life as a songwriter and the planets never lined up for him. A lot of it has to do with exposure. Look at when Jimmy Buffett went on tour with the Eagles. They were at the top of their game and filling Shea Stadium like the Beatles. If you play in front of an audience like that and have something to offer, there are going to be millions of people by the end of the tour who will know who you are. Recently, Merle Haggard was complaining that he wasn’t going to make as much money by touring with Bob Dylan as he did by himself. I said, “Merle, you’re crazy if you don’t do the tour as it’s going to open up your music to a whole new audience.”
Spencer: And what about your own touring?
James: I was touring as much as I could but I’ve never had a powerful booking agent to put me into situations where you are opening in front of people who can draw a lot of folk. I did tours with J. D. Souther and Randy Newman and a couple of dates with Ry Cooder and Jonathan Edwards. I’ve just seen Jonathan at the Folk Alliance and we hadn’t played together in 30 years. He still sounds great. Mostly, I’ve been like Mickey and Townes and Steve Young, just slugging it out in little clubs. I was on tour with Gene Clark of the Byrds out in California. He heard Give My Love To Marie and said he was going to record it on his next album, and he did it too. There haven’t been too many covers but Johnny Paycheck did New York Town.
Spencer: The second album, Tryin’ Like the Devil, came very quickly.
James: Yeah, we cut the second album so fast after Capitol released the first one. Frank Jones believed in me and my vision and he gave me creative control over all of my albums. I didn’t have a producer telling me that we will do it this way or that, and I could use the musicians I wanted. I had written a lot of songs the year I was with Jerry Wexler and so I had a backlog of material.
Spencer: Is there a problem when you are writing about people you know in that you can’t really add anything fictional?
James: Well, you can to a point, but the strongest songs come from real life. You can take some liberties. I wrote Sometimes I Think About Suzanne on the second album for Capitol and every time I play that song, people ask, “Who is Suzanne?” There wasn’t anybody named Suzanne. I needed a two syllable name so I couldn’t use Beth or Elizabeth. I had never dated anybody named Suzanne but it’s a pretty name and I used it in the song.
Spencer: And that was immediately followed by Blackjack Choir.
James: I had written a group of songs about the South and I had worked with African-Americans. I had worked with a rat control programme in Nashville, another job you can get with a degree in the fine arts. I worked with Henry Murphy from Hattiesburg, Mississippi and he had a degree in political science from Tennessee State University, which was an all black college at the time. Henry and I became real good friends and he had a 1956 black Ford Crown-Victoria with a chrome strip that went over the hood. He had an old radio in the car and the speaker didn’t work. He put in a speaker with a couple of wires that hung out from underneath the dashboard and it was on that speaker about 1968 that I heard B.B. King’s Why I Sing The Blues. It was such a powerful song and I wrote Magnolia Boy for Henry as he told me that his grandfather called him ‘Magnolia Boy’. The magnolia flower is white, but his grandfather said, “Yes, but the magnolia flower is also very sweet like you are, my boy.”
James: I recorded the songs and someone said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get B.B. King to play lead guitar on Bluesman?” We sent B.B. the rhythm track and asked him if he would be willing to play lead guitar. Much to our surprise, he agreed to do it. What a wonderful experience that was. We took him out to the airport after the performance and he ordered two dinners –a plate of spaghetti and a big plate of tacos – and he ate them all. He is an amazing guy and I hadn’t seen him in years but when he had his autobiography out, my wife and I thought we would get a copy signed. We were in this long line of people to get B.B. to sign their books and when we got to the table, he instantly recognised me. He wrapped his arms around me and started telling the lady from the book company that I brought the blues to country music. He was talking about the session as if it were yesterday. It was a wonderful moment and it is indicative of the man that he would remember that after all that time.
Spencer: And that in turn was quickly followed by the fourth Capitol album, Ain’t It Somethin’.
James: Well, we had lots of material as I was writing a lot and I love to write: I wish I had more time to write right now. We recorded Ain’t It Somethin’ in June 1977 and that’s when I hooked up with Marty Grebb on saxophone, who played for years with Bonnie Raitt. He is still a dear friend and Tommy Cogbill, who played with Elvis, played bass, but he died shortly after from a cerebral haemorrhage. It was a wonderful experience to play with these guys. We were on a roll with the songs and I still had absolute control over the album with nobody telling me what to do. We were trying to make great music, rather than something that was commercial.
Spencer: The Bear Family album, James Talley Live, shows that you also had a great live band. That was recorded in the 70s but not released at the time.
James: Those were just board tapes that I had with the band off the sound system and they were recorded on cassettes. The shows turned out pretty well and we decided to make an album of it. There was no remixing as it was just what was on the two-track. Considering the circumstances under which they were recorded, it came off pretty well.
Spencer: You comment on the Cimarron reissue that the Bear Family CD was released “without licence” and yet you were clearly involved with it.
James: All of the Bear Family albums have been released without licence. Richard Weize came over to Nashville when I had nothing going on and nobody was interested in releasing anything. I told him that he could release my albums but I never got a contract. The problem is that I have never received any money from Bear Family. It became obvious to me that there was no future in releasing anything further with Bear Family as I might never get a dime for it.
Spencer: That’s a shame as they make such a good job with the presentation.
James: Oh, they do a quality product. They released an absolutely gorgeous version of The Road To Torreon in a box set with a book and the photographs. It was everything John Hammond envisioned in the 70s, so artistically, I have no qualms at all.
Spencer: You were so productive on Capitol and then I lost track of you. Nothing was released and it was like you had disappeared.
James: I had lost my manager in California. I was a fledgling act and he couldn’t live off what he was making from me. I had done a number of shows with Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker. Jerry Jeff had a well-oiled machine going and his management approached me. I thought I would agree. The Ain’t It Somethin’ LP came out and this manager said that Capitol wasn’t doing a good job. I was young and naïve and I didn’t realise that the real motivation was that my Capitol contract called for me to produce all my own albums, and there was no money for a producer. It was fairly economical for Capitol and he looked at my contract and decided that he could feather his nest by getting me another deal, and he had got Guy a big deal at Warner Brothers with a $500,000 advance. I put my trust in this guy and when he went to Capitol and got my release, they said, “No, we want him to go in the studio in January and record another album.” He said, “We don’t want to record any more albums for you.” I was young and I didn’t question this, and it was the worst decision of my career because two months after that, I couldn’t even get him on the telephone. He had derailed my career and abandoned me. He wasn’t able to get the deal he wanted and he screwed things up so bad at Capitol that I couldn’t go back. They had put a lot of effort into it and out of spite, they deleted my whole catalogue so by 1979, you couldn’t buy any of my records. I contacted Capitol about 12 years later, and I went through four different presidents and nine more years of negotiations before I could get the rights to reissue them myself. If they had been for sale, I might have had four platinum albums by now and I wouldn’t be in the real estate business. As it is, I have been in real estate for 23 years and finally I’ve learnt something about negotiating contracts!
Spencer: Did you mind being selling properties?
James: I was devastated at first. I couldn’t believe it. I had been written up in every magazine and every newspaper. - People, Time, New York Times, you name it – and suddenly, I am broke and have got my name and home phone number on signs in people’s front yards. I had a friend who had a store which sold cooking utensils and gourmet coffee and I was selling gourmet coffee for him one Christmas and using my van to deliver things to his stores. The president of the CMA bought some coffee from me and it was humiliating but I had no choice as I had to support my family. I was like Woody Guthrie as he was a sign painter and various other things. It wasn’t until I became successful enough in the real estate business and was selling commercial property that I had the income to invest in the music. The music is still a losing proposition and I am still in real estate. I do one thing to make a living, and I do the other to make it worth living.
Spencer: You came back with American Originals in 1985.
James: Yes, but I consider that I came back in the States when I released the Woody Guthrie album in 2000. In 1985, yes, I released American Originals but all of those Bear Family releases were only released in Europe. They did no promotion at all in the United States. I did some promotion with a friend, but I didn’t have enough copies to do a thorough job in terms of mailing them to radio stations. Most of the Bear Family things got their attention in Europe.
Spencer: Has the subject matter of your songs changed?
James: I write about what I see in my culture, what I see in America. There are some new songs on the Journey album including a song about Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and another about 9/11, I Saw The Buildings, and I don’t think my perspective on life has changed. We put an interview album with the thirtieth anniversary album of Got No Bread, and a friend who was listening to it said, “You’re saying the same things today as you said 30 years ago.” I hope I’ve grown but I don’t think my core values have changed. I didn’t start out as a liberal and shift over into some kind of arch-conservatism like some people.
Spencer: How did you approach writing about 9/11?
James: We all know how it happened, but what was the underlying motivation that caused this to happen? What is the feeling of people after it happened? It was difficult to get my mind around it. I don’t write protest songs or polemics and I just try to tell a story. I don’t think I’m superior to anybody else and if I have a criticism with the folk movement, it is the attitude that we are just a little bit smarter than you and we make fun of this, that and the other. I don’t feel that way. It is like I said in the chorus of I Saw The Buildings, “The mystery holds, which no one knows, and our hopes and dreams sustain us”. Here we are in the 21st century and even though nobody knows what happens when we die, we are killing each other over different versions of the afterlife.
Spencer: Are you performing much these days?
James: It goes in spurts. Three weeks ago I was out in California and two weeks ago I was in Iowa and last week I was down in Texas. I don’t have an agent and if it is a place I want to go or if it makes sense, I will take the booking. The one thing I don’t want to do is to lose money performing. If I am going to lose money, I would rather lose it on the records as they are lasting documents of what I do. I would love to perform in the UK as I know from emails to the website that I have a lot of fans there, but I have never had anyone who could put anything together.
Spencer: You’ve been unlucky in that you haven’t had that one big song that has been covered by 50 artists.
James: Right. Steve Young had Seven Bridges Road which the Eagles recorded and he can live on that for the rest of his life! I saw Danny O’Keefe at the Folk Alliance recently and he is a wonderful craftsman and I really admire his writing. He wrote Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues, which is a milestone song for him. There are probably some in my catalogue that could have been like that, and both Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash recorded W. Lee O’Daniel And The Light Crust Dough Boys.
Spencer: How did they come to record the song?
James: Steve Popovich, who was with Columbia Records for a long time, came down here as head of Polygram to sign Johnny Cash. He heard the song and loved it and arranged for Cash to hear it. I’ve always felt a great kinship to Cash’s recordings and if Johnny had been able to hear them, I think that there are a lot of my songs that he would have loved. We both come from a poor background with a deep sense of a folk tradition, and a lot of his early recordings are just folk songs. Alan Jackson had an album produced by Stan Cornelius, and I don’t know whether Stan played him my version or Johnny Cash’s version but Alan added a verse to it. He didn’t ask for my permission: he just changed it. I’m not too much of a stickler on things like that, but I don’t think that he strengthened the song.
Spencer: Well, I must let you get off and sell some properties.
James: Thank you. I really appreciate Country Music People’s interest in my work.
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James Talley: Review - Got No Bread ...
Dirty Linen
June/July 2006
by (CM)
Originally released in 1975, this CD preceded the term Americana, but it fits nicely within it. This anniversary reissue includes extensive reminiscence written by Talley about his early years, including the original release of this CD. It's a welcome bonus for a new audience who might never have felt a dirt road underfoot.
Talley's songs are full of Saturday nights, Sunday suits, honky-tonks and sweethearts. Those are the good times. Allusions to a harder reality seem incidental and add a bittersweet flavor to the mood. Johnny Gimble on fiddle and mandolin, Doyle Grisham on guitar and dobro, Rick Durrett on piano, and a host of other musicians and singers join Talley in creating a sond resonant of rural Oklahoma. The second CD is a half-hour interview with Talley from the 1975 Capitol Records release. It's a nicely done package elevated to significant musical history.
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Perseverance has been a hallmark of singer-songwriter James Talley's career.
Prime Time - New Hope, Pennsylvania
May 2006
by Tom Wilk
Perseverance has been a hallmark of singer-songwriter James Talley's career. It's helped him enjoy the peaks - performing twice at the White House for Jimmy Carter - and survive the valleys - playing before an audience of four in Albany, N.Y. "That was my record low for turnout," he recalled in a recent phone interview from Nashville.
Now he gets to celebrate one of the high points with the 30th anniversary reissue of "Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love" (Cimarron Records), his debut album. The reissue includes the original album on one CD and a bonus interview from 1975 on a second CD.
It's an album that has stood the test of time, from the country swing of "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys" to the reverie of "Red River Memory" and the amorous "No Opener Needed." Talley combines the directness lyricisim of Hank Williams and lyricism with the production aesthetic and ensemble playing of the early albums by The Band.
A native of Oklahoma, Talley sees the world through working-class eyes in his songwriting, drawing inspiration from fellow Oklahoman Woody Guthrie. Talley acknowledged a debt to the legendary folksinger in "Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma," his 1999 album.
Talley's songs - such as "Tryin' Like The Devil" and "Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?" - were influenced by his earlier jobs as a welfare caseworker, carpenter and horse wrangler. He finds common ground with the subjects of his songs. "My life's like a lot of people's. We have the same hopes, dreams and disappointments." At 62, he's following an unconventional path, juggling careers in commercial-investment real estate and music. Talley left Capitol Records after releasing four albums in the 1970s. He found it difficult to make a living in music without a record label and got involved in real estate in the Nashville area in the early 1980s. "You meet every type of person in the real estate business, including some greedy sons of bitches," Talley said.
His success in real estate allowed him to continue to write songs and perform in concert. He launched Cimarron Records, his own label, in the late 1990s, using his earnings from his day job. He sells albums on his own Web site - www.jamestalley.com - and knows he still has an audience for his music. "I've gotten orders from all over the world: Oakland, CA, England, Italy, Germany, France," he said.
In fact, he found his fan base in Italy was strong enough that he recorded "Journey," a live album, there in 2002. Talley was touched by the experience as the audiences knew his songs from the first notes he and his band played. "People were singing along in English," he recalled, still marveling at the memory.
While he's not a household name, Talley has seen a wide range of artists, including Moby and Johnny Cash, record his songs. Moby reworkerd Talley's song "She's The One," from his "Tryin' Like The Devil" album and released it as "Evening Rain" in 2003 on the movie soundtrack "Daredevil." "It was unbelievable," Talley said. "Moby buys a lot of old albums and he heard my song." Cash's recording of "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys" carried special meaning for Talley. "The first song I learned to play on the guitar was Leadbelly's "I Got Stripes" by Johnny Cash," he said.
Music remains a passion and he still has goals. "I'm working on new songs that I hope to record later in the year. I also want to reissue my other three Capitol albums."
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James Talley's 'Got No Bread': Got No Complaints
The Washington Post
April 23, 2006
by Bill Friskics-Warren
This spring marks the 30th anniversary of "Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love," the debut of singer-songwriter James Talley. Just reissued with bonus material, the album stands as a monument to heart, modesty and nuance. It also just might be the one country album made in the last 30 years that's loved by people who don't especially care for country music, notably rock critics.
When "Got No Bread" first came out, it wasn't the press in Nashville that heralded it as a classic but a chorus of rock scribes led by Greil Marcus, Peter Guralnick and Robert Christgau. Talley says that executives at Capitol Records, his Nashville label, didn't suspect they had anything special on their hands until raves started pouring in from the East Coast.
An unvarnished wonder steeped in the music of Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills and Merle Haggard, Talley's record sounded nothing like what was coming from the Nashville hit mill at the time. Today people consider the music alternative-country, and it's no wonder: Talley's latter-day audience consists of fans of Steve Earle and Gillian Welch, not Kenny Chesney and Jo Dee Messina.
Even when "Got No Bread" came out -- a time when pop stars like Olivia Newton-John and John Denver were cleaning up at the country awards shows -- the album sounded a note of judgment about how far country music had strayed from its rural, working-class roots. Not that those roots weren't exposed enough in American life. The nation was in the throes of a recession, with gas rationing and long lines at the pumps. The war in Vietnam had ended a year or so before the record's release. Poor and blue-collar families across the country were mourning casualties, both living and dead.
"Give him another bottle, let him ease his mind," Talley sings to the locomotive rhythms of "Give Him Another Bottle," hoisting a glass for hard-hit people everywhere. When drinking wasn't enough to chase away the blues on a Saturday night, there was always dancing, just as Talley's folks used to do back in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, an experience that he vividly brings to life in "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Doughboys."
The rest of the time, people just hunkered down and counted their blessings. Extolling his wife's virtues in the album's title track, Talley sings: "Yeah, she is quite a woman/And you know I don't like to brag/But she can squeeze my dinner/Out of an old dishrag/And when it comes to lovin'/Let me tell you she's all right."
Talley isn't indulging in nostalgia or making any of this up. He hails from the same resilient Okie stock as Guthrie and Haggard. When he made this album, Talley, who was working for the county department of animal control and moonlighting as a janitor, had to barter for the studio time and hire his pickers on spec.
Today he sells real estate to feed his dream, funding a new album or reissuing an old one whenever he saves enough in commissions to swing it. He now sings a different blues, that of a troubadour in a music business with no use for unadorned melodies and honesty. Nevertheless, given the ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots in this country -- indeed, throughout the world -- Talley's old blues are still relevant, prophetic even.
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James Talley: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love
The Austin Chronicle
March 10, 2006
by Margaret Moser
James Talley's name may not ring any bells, but in the olden days, the Nashville singer-songwriter was rootsy before the phrase was hip, a talent that saw him perform for President Jimmy Carter's inauguration in 1977.
His latest, [30th Anniversary reissue of] Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love, is a comfortable patchwork of songs from 1975-2005, stitching together his acclaimed 1975 Capitol album Got No Bread and a radio interview from the same year.
The Oklahoma native's deft songwriting and unfettered ear for slice-of-life Americana ring sharp and clear now as then. Songs such as "Red River Reprise," "Blue Eyed Ruth and My Sunday Suit," and "Calico Gypsy" are as sharp as covers like Johnny Gimble's "Big Taters in the Sandy Land." Talley's workingman's ethic is ever-present, a philosophy inextricably sunk deep into his story-songs ("W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys," "Meehan, Oklahoma"), and so multifaceted that he's been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash, Gene Clark, and Moby. Produced by Talley and Steve Mendell, Got No Bread is a timeless collection, tall as Tennessee mountains and twice as strong.
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Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love
Goldmine
March 3, 2006
by Bruce Sylvester
Upon Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love’s 1975 release, it was called a musical counterpart to film director Peter Bogdanovich’s Last Picture Show and noted for having one of the longest titles in memory. Anachronistic in theme and sound, it embraced simplicity at a time when simplicity wasn’t cool.
Starting with its swinging opener, a salute to Texas bandleader turned governor W. Lee O’Daniels, it was a romanticized look back to the Depression Era southwest. Bob Wills’ fiddler Johnny Gimble heightened the authentic feel by reprising his “Big Taters In The Sandy Land.” As Talley brought his warm tenor to two quiet renditions of “Red River Valley” (one called “Red River Memory”), the whole album felt like a memory with populist writers John Steinbeck and Merle Haggard among Talley’s inspirations as a populist writer. Critics lauded Got No Bread’s artistic vision and tasteful production ... For its 30th anniversary, Talley retrieves it from Capitol for reissue on his own label, Cimarron.
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Review: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love
NO DEPRESSION
March-April 2006
by John Morthland
James Talley's debut sounds as revelatory now as it did then [1975]. With family roots in Oklahoma, Talley writes simple, straighforward, folk 'n' western workingman songs that embrace and extend the Woody Guthrie tradition. But they're not protest songs. They celebrate love and family and hardwon pleasures ... His voice is straight from the Dust Bowl, his melodies are built to last, with some sizzling hot fiddle from Johnny Gimble. Talley is sometimes sentimental but never precious or cloying, sometimes nostalgic but never starry-eyed ... this quietly proud album evokes a time and place and a way of life like very little other music before or since.
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MUSIC: Staying Power
The Nashville Scene
March 2, 2006
by Roy Kaston
James Talley’s newly reissued debut album sounds as classic today as it did three decades ago
James Talley was 29 when he recorded his debut album in 1973. The title summed up his station. He had been a songwriter for Atlantic under producer Jerry Wexler, but mostly worked as a carpenter to support his family. He had never set foot in a radio station; the country music he loved most was fused with familial memories of Oklahoma, Washington and New Mexico—shack porch string-bands and barn dance Western swing. Pete Seeger had told him to write about the world he knew, and so he did. The sound and spirit of the album that resulted, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot of Love, wasn’t nostalgic; Tally’s western memories were more real and rich with promise than his Music City home.
With the exception of legendary fiddle player Johnny Gimble, the 20 musicians who gathered for the Got No Bread sessions were mostly unknown (including a young John Hiatt) and they played on spec. Talley bartered for the studio time. The sound couldn’t be less hurried. The string arrangements glowed, as if answering countrypolitan’s excesses, and the spaces between lines contained lifetimes. “Take me from destruction, the anger and the pain,” Talley sang on the final song. His voice and words seemed to make the present and the future—from the aftermath of Vietnam to uncertain house payments—go away.
The cover of the album featured a black-and-white photo that could have been taken by a camera placed on a brick and set to automatic. Talley smiles as he leans against a cinder block store (“Talley’s Grocer” the sign says, but there was no relation), his arm around a very pregnant Jan Talley, their son Reuben James playing before scrub grass and a truck tire. Capitol, Talley’s record label, wasn’t releasing this kind of country. No one was. The album sold around 5,000 copies before being deleted in 1979.
That wasn’t a surprise, but the response from three of the counterculture’s best rock-oriented critics at the time, Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau and Peter Gurlanick, was. Talley had never met or even heard of these young writers, and his debut bore no pop or rock traces, yet Marcus responded to the depth of emotion, while Christgau captured the album’s commercial context, or lack thereof: “[T]o market it as ‘country’ is to miss how perspicaciously it looks beyond such categories.”
Thirty years on, the album’s lack of pretension or artifice remains its key. “Pure” is the word most often used to describe it, but the music restores meaning to that sanctimonious plaudit. The swing is so subtle you could miss it; likewise the wit of Talley’s songwriting and the warmth of his tenor. The album’s influence is quiet but significant. Steve Earle’s Train a Comin’ and John Hiatt’s Slow Turning owe the record a palpable debt.
“When Jan and I were first married, we didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of,” Talley recalls. “I probably went to the refrigerator one night, saw that we had no bread and no milk and no money to buy any. But we did have love.” And music, which after decades locked in Capitol’s vaults, still sounds like the most unexpected, generous gift.
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Review: James Talley - Got No Bread
LE CRI DU COYOTE - France
March 2006
by Bernard Boyat
Et voilà le nouvel opus de l'ami James, toujours dans le même signe acoustique qui mêle ragtime, folk, bluegrass et country. On retrouve aussi de belles ballades comme Red River melody ou Mehan, Oklahoma, un peu folk, le médium Calico gypsy et la superbe ballade Take me to the country. Côté titres plus enlevés, entre hillbilly bop et bluegrass, on a W Lee O'Daniel & Light Crust Doughboys et Blue-eyed Ruth and my Sunday suit. Il est dommage que, de ce côté de l'Atlantique, on l'oublie un peu lorsqu'on pense aux chanteurs / compositeurs, alors que les noms de Guy Clark ou de Billy Joe Shaver viennent plus facilement à l'esprit. Voilà quelqu'un que l'on pourrait songer à faire venir chez nous.
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Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love
FASEN - Italy
March 2006
Un disco che risale a trent'anni fa eppure è attuale ancora oggi. Ecco come lo presenta lo stesso James Talley: "Quando andai a Nashville, credo di essere stato molto realistico. Non mi aspettavo che qualcuno saltasse e gridasse e ballasse con le mie canzoni. Comunque, la prima settimana che ero lì provai a fare girare un nastro. Non conoscevo nessuno e non sapevo niente delle regole. Prima di tutto non sapevo cosa fosse una canzone commerciale, perch´ ho sempre considerato la musica come un modo per esprimere se stessi. Non riuscivo a realizzare che ci fossero così poche, misere categorie nella country music commerciale. Per me il songwriting è sempre stato una cosa personale e solitaria. Non sono mai stato a mio agio neanche a pensarlo come se fosse una collaborazione con qualcuno figurarsi se ho mai pensato che potesse essere il tipico lavoro dalle otto alle cinque, come una catena di montaggio". Non è cambiato molto, ma James Talley allora trovò un accordo con uno studio che gli offrì delle ore di registrazione in cambio del lavoro di carpenteria e tornò ad incidere le sue canzoni. Lui ci mise tutti gli ultimi soldi che aveva e pagò i musicisti che suonano in Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love e lo stampa in un migliaio di copie, tutte distribuite alle radio e alle etichette discografiche. L'idea, secondo lo stesso James Talley, era cercare di farsi notare ed infatti una copia del disco finì alla Capitol Records. Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love divenne una realtà e la sua storia è rivisitata oggi in questa bellissima riedizione comprensiva di un intero compact disc dove lo stesso James Talley racconta la sua gestazione e un pò tutta la sua storia.
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Spin Factor: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money 30th Anniversary Edition
Nashville City Paper
February 28, 2006
by Ron Wynn
It took nearly two years after its completion before James Talley was able to get his landmark album Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Love released in 1975. The LP’s storytelling impact and musical excellence immediately set it apart from almost anything else issued at the time in pop or country circles.
Now available once again in a 30th anniversary edition, Talley’s wry observations, urgent lead vocals, and epic descriptions and narratives in such songs “Calico Gypsy,” “Mehan, Oklahoma,” “Red River Memory” and “No Opener Needed” still have plenty of edge and relevance, and reflect the skills of a completely unique performer and free soul whose music never fit into any thematic or musical straightjacket.
This set also contains a highly informative and entertaining interview with Talley conducted by then WKDA program director Mike Hanes that nicely illuminates his personality, idiosyncrasies and skills.
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Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money ...
Barnes & Noble.com
February 27, 2006
by David McGee
One of the defining documents of what became the Americana movement nearly twenty years after its initial release in 1975, James Talley's debut album, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money But We Sure Got A Lot of Love, is getting a proper reissue on its 30th birthday.
It is buttressed by a stirring, Talley-penned essay on the life's journey that forged him as an artist, as well as a bonus disc containing an unabridged interview with the artist that was originally issued as a promo-only disc to radio stations prior to the album's release. It's an impressive package honoring a landmark work by a still-vital artist who continues to conduct his career with an uncompromising vision of himself, his music and his message.
Mainstream country was in the first throes of the Outlaw movement in 1975, and though Talley was never lumped in with Willie, Waylon and the boys, he possessed (and still does) the same reverence for the music's deepest roots, its link with the working class, and an unswerving self-assurance when it came to presenting his music his way.
The music lives on the shoulders of giants, such as Woody Guthrie (both in the populist sentiments of the folk-ish, strutting title song and in the clever nursery rhyme wordplay of "Daddy's Song"), Bob Wills (in the spirited western swing of "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Doughboys") and any number of classic country tunesmiths whose influence is evident in tender, beautifully crafted, soulfully rendered love songs such as "Take Me To the Country" (with an aching pedal steel line every bit as sensitive and nuanced as Talley's heartfelt vocal), and the honky tonk hearbreaker, "No Opener Needed" (check it out, Willie Nelson). This is where the soul of a man resides. Bear witness.
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Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love: Thirtieth Anniversary Edition
East Bay Express
February 22, 2006
by J. Poet
In the early '70s, young songwriter James Talley arrived in Nashville with a vision that combined folk, country, blues, and swing, not to mention a lyrical sensibility reflecting the best aspects of Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers. Industry big-shots weren't interested, though, so he recorded this debut on his own, promising to pay the pickers and crooners -- including John Hiatt, Doyle Grisham, and other names big and small -- when and if he got a deal. He did, but despite three subsequent records with Capitol, it's this indie that lingers, now reissued on Talley's own imprint, Cimarron. Got No Bread was Americana before Americana was invented; he has a soft, timeless tenor, and the backing musicians are masterfully understated. The title track is one of the greatest blue-collar love songs ever written, "Red River Memory" brings tears to your eyes with its understated melancholy, "No Opener Needed" is honky-tonk with a heart, and the swing tunes are effortless and free, just as they should be.
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Guide Review - Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money ...
About Entertainment
February 2006
by Kathy Coleman
Occasionally I get introduced to someone I should have known for years. It's always a surprise and a great delight to find music that's new to me that's this good; that it came out in 1975 annoys me slightly simply because I never heard it before, and I should have. A performer this influential on all the other music I love should have come to my attention sooner.
Like the others who came from this time, such as Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Graham Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, etc., etc., James Talley is a vibrant, unique, and incredible voice. Talley's music is full of life and gusto, rich and real. From the heart music, it's both humorous and touching, performed with Talley's strong vocals and played with consummate skill by a collection of terrific musicians (including John Hiatt on guitar).
But it's just the start of what has been a long and amazing career. Talley has taken on various jobs, but his music has been appreciated by millions. He's had songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, and Moby, to name a very few. He's performed at the White House. His life has been fascinating, and he illustrates only a bit of it in his autobiographical essay.
All in all, this is plainly a fine album. Pure, perfect Americana from the "dawn" of the idea of Americana as its own genre, a 30th Anniversary re-issue that's genuine, timeless, and terrific. There's no need to think of this as "old" music, or consider it was originally recorded in the mid-70's - it's good. Enjoy it. Savor it. Love it. Americana has been around for some 80 years, but some of these guys perfected it around this time, and James Talley was there to help show ‘em how.
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REVIEWS
All Music Guide
February 2006
by Ronnie D. Lankford
While James Talley probably never qualified as an Outlaw in the mid-'70s, his rootsy country sound was closer to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings than say Larry Gatlin. Even then, Talley was never an easy artist to pigeonhole, and it's hard to imagine an artist as idiosyncratic recording for Capital today. Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love was Talley's debut, and make no mistake about it: it's real country, with fiddles, dobro, and mandolin.
The arrangements are -- compared to today's country standards -- spare, with small variants custom-made for each song. Lyrically, Got No Bread is an ode to another place and time, an album that never forgets country music's working class origins and rural roots.
Got No Bread is filled with original songs and great playing, and will be a real treat for anyone who appreciates the authentic sounds of honest-to-god country.
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Got No Bread, Got No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love – 30th Anniversary Edition
Country Stars On-Line - Australia
February 2006
by George Peden
If music is your passion, and I’m not talking hats, hair and navels or the twang of the latest CMT wannabee, I’m talking real, heartfelt and revealing music that’s strung with vision, depth and humanity, then, if your answer is yes, remember this name: James Talley. The sensitive troubadour is celebrating the re-issue of Got No Bread… on Cimarron Records. It marks the 30th anniversary of the original release. At the time, it was an album that claimed wide critical interest for its lyrical honesty and life-worn observations. It deserves the title of classic album; one listen and you’ll easily hear why. And despite the time travel, it still holds strong.
Now repackaged into a two-CD set, it’s a collector’s gem. Talley is a crafted songwriter, who despite a rich catalogue, remains just off the radar. Yet his work and his history, as well proven by this release, show that good music, like fine wine, ages well. Before getting to the music, you’re encouraged to listen to the second disc. It’s a one-hour radio interview where Talley, in a modest and self-effacing style, shares a bit about himself, his life and his driving passion, the music. It’s an honest piece of audio that sets the mood for this now-dated but highly rewarding debut. Also, check the liner booklet with its engaging essay, dated photos and song lyrics. It offers a historic context that’s both interesting and revealing.
The history of the album is a story in itself. The Oklahoma-born Talley believed strongly in the value of his songs. Arriving in Nashville in ‘68, as he shares on the album with not even a phone number to call, the singer and songwriter with a degree in fine arts set about a recording contract. Undeterred when it didn’t come as expected, he did the next best thing -- he made his own record. Hiring a band of top session players, and armed with 12 crafted and rural-shaped tunes, Talley invested some of the dollars he made as a daytime health and welfare worker and produced 1000 copies. The album attracted fans and wide and varied favorable reviews. Capitol Records eventually picked up the album. Time has proven it was a wise decision.
Talley’s style is simple, honest and no-frills. He writes from his heart. He takes his inspiration from life. He taps into the social, the rural, the forgotten, and a myriad of other humanitarian matters and issues, circumstances and situations that hallmark a gifted and creative writer.
When asked about his particular gift, Talley has said: “I’m not a missionary. I’m just someone that tells stories about our culture and tries to put them together in a craftsman-like fashion.”
Well, there’s no doubt. He succeeds. On an album laced with swing, shades of Guthrie, blues and country, he shares rich tales of lost love, the everyday existence of ordinary lives, all peppered with sharp social observation. It shows someone who’s spent the time to look, reflect, and, then when the picture’s captured and understood, meld it into music.
“These songs,” tells Talley,” have brought me some of my greatest joys in life as well as some of the greatest sorrows. They are my dreams, my creations, my children. To this day, I still believe in the power of these dreams. Dreams are our light, dreams are the impossible, dreams are our desire and our longing. Dreams are reaching for something beyond, something around the bend and over the hill. They propel us into the future. They sustain us and give us hope. I still have many dreams left to dream…and many songs left to sing.“
James Talley is a musical poet, a visionary and a lyricist with a honed heart. His double-CD, which hits the shelves on February 21, proves it. His varied and rich back catalogue confirms it.
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James Talley - Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot Of Love
Ilpopolodel Blues On Line - Italy
February 2006
by Salvatore Esposito
After years of legal battle with Capitol Records, finally Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love, James Talley’s masterpiece is on sale again on cd. At the time of the first release music journalists like Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick wrote very enthusiastic rewiews about this album.
James Talley è sicuramente uno dei songwriter americani meno noti al grande pubblico eppure le sue canzoni rappresentano la coscienza collettiva dell’America delle periferie, quasi fosse il naturale continuatore dell’opera di Woody Guthrie, a cui ha dedicato un intero disco nel 1999. L’Oklaoma, la sua terra d’origine, diventa lo specchio di una intera nazione, e dalle sue canzoni emerge un’onestà intellettuale raramente riscontrabile in altri cantautori. Eppure la sua storia è uguale a quella dei tanti “Alias Bob Dylan” degli anni settanta, ovvero un successo bruciante agli inizi e una altrettanto rapida scomparsa dalle scene. Ciò ha fatto si che la sua giungesse ad un pubblico ristrettissimo che tuttavia annovera tra i suoi estimatori gente come Greil Marcus e Peter Guralnick che all’epoca della pubblicazione nel 1975, lodarono Got No Bread..., il suo album di debutto. Proprio Got No Bread…, dopo una battaglia legale con la Capitol durata trent’anni, finalmente è stato ristampato in cd in occasione del suo trentennale e ciò ha permesso finalmente ad un pubblico più ampio di ascoltare questo piccolo capolavoro dimenticato. La storia racconta che questo disco fu inciso nel 1973, quando James Talley era solo un muratore con una famiglia da mantenere, e che ad aiutarlo ci fosse solo un gruppo di amici pagati pochissimo tra cui spicca un giovane John Hiatt alla chitarra acustica. Pubblicato il disco a spese proprie, Talley si limitò vendere il disco solamente ai suoi concerti, quando un giorno si trovò per caso a riparare un guasto a casa di un manager della Capitol. Cambiò tutto ma solo momentaneamente come racconta sia lo Talley stesso nell’intervista con Mike Hanes della WKDA di Nashville inclusa come bonus disc sia Chet Filippo nelle liner notes. Più che la storia dietro al disco, ciò che affascina davvero è l’ascolto, nella musica di Talley, si respira il country più puro e rurale, quello che viene dritto da Jimmie Rogers e Hank Williams ma anche il folk di Woody Guthrie, e a dimostrarlo sono la ballata W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys , la filastrocca Daddy's Song ma soprattutto le struggenti note di Red River Memory, un affresco del sud degli States in musica. Di non minor valore sono anche la title-track, Mehan Oklahoma, e il toccante country gospel No Opener Needed, la cui potenza espressiva tocca per un attimo l’infinito. Got No Bread, è un disco da riscoprire necessariamente, sia per il valore storico, sia soprattutto per il suo valore poetico.
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Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money
Third Coast Music
February 6, 2006
by John Conquest
Back in 1992, Cash Edwards mounted a campaign to get Folk Alliance to
hold its annual conference in Austin and asked me to write a letter of
support. Guess it didn’t do much good as it's taken 14 years for it to
happen. However, the 18th go-round will be centered at the downtown Hilton, with performances spread all over the place, and one thing’s for sure, between February 10th and 14th, there’ll be more acoustic guitars than you can shake a stick at in a town that doesn't exactly have a shortage at any time.
This year’s theme, in tribute to Townes Van Zandt, is ‘For The Sake Of The Song’ and, while Folk Alliance may not care for being characterized so narrowly, the most interesting thing about the conference is the way it’s become an annual rally for Americana singer-songwriters. Some will be better known, some will be better off, some may even be arguably better singers or songwriters, but it’s hard to imagine anyone at a gathering like this who has more stature than James Talley, who’ll perform twice during the event, and the following week release
the 30th Anniversary Edition of his very first album.
Born in Tulsa, OK, in 1943, but raised in the Pacific Northwest and New Mexico, Talley is, though not by design, a songwriter for whom music has long been a passion rather than any kind of career. Except for two brief periods, a year writing songs for Jerry Wexler during Atlantic’s abortive attempt to break into country and three years supported by Capitol royalty advances, he’s worked for a living, before and after his Atlantic stint, as a carpenter. In 1973, wanting to make an entire album, when the Nashville norm was to make singles which were then put on LPs padded with filler, he persuaded a group of musicians, including Johnny Gimble and a very young John Hiatt, who wandered into the studio and wound up playing acoustic lead guitar, to play for free in the hope of getting paid down the road.
Unable to get his foot in any Music Row door, Talley eventually pressed up 1000 LPs on his own Torreon label and was rewarded with local airplay but still no hint of a record deal. Then, in 1974, he was fixing up a house for Capitol’s country VP and they made a deal, part of his payment would be that the exec would listen to his album. He did, was impressed, and agreed to pick it up. Not knowing anything about the business side, Talley asked for $5000, peanuts even then, so he could pay the musicians (“I didn’t know to calculate Social Security payments. I had to borrow $500 from my mother in order to sell the album to Capitol”). When the rave reviews started coming in, Capitol’s sales VP wanted to know how it could be any good if they’d paid so little for it.
Three more albums followed, all to glowing reviews, before Talley made a fatal career decision. On the advice of his then manager, he left Capitol without having lined up another deal. Capitol deleted his albums, cutting off his income, and, as he’d quit mid-contract, owing another three albums, no one else was willing to take a chance on him. Worse yet, the manager abandoned him shortly thereafter and a promising music career ground to a halt. In the early 80s, the president of Bear Family sought him out and the German label released four of his independent productions between 1985 and 1994, but Talley never saw a penny out of the hand shake arrangement, so, after nine years of negotiations with Capitol, he won control of his masters and started his own label in 2000.
Though, of course, one would like to see someone like Talley make a decent living from his music, one could well argue that being cast into the outer darkness was not necessarily a bad thing for a writer whose subject matter was ordinary working people and songs that chronicled their lives. Even in the less frenzied 70s and 80s, it would still have been hard, had he become a Nashville star, for him to stay rooted, and having made four acknowledged masterpieces in four years, one has to wonder if he could have maintained that quality at that pace.
In short, perhaps the hiatus between Capitol and Bear Family was a perverse blessing in disguise, at least for the artist, if not the breadwinner. Talley says, “At the time it all collapsed it was really hard on me. In the late 70s, I’d been written up in every magazine and newspaper from coast to coast, recorded with BB King, performed twice at the White House for Jimmy Carter, and here I was with my name and home phone number on signs in people’s front yards.” They’re still on signs, only now as a successful Nashville realtor, a second career that from time to time provides a little extra money to record on his Cimarron label. “Now, at 62, I don’t have to beat myself to death on the road for a living. I can perform for my fans when it makes sense, and I continue to do that as much as I can, because it means so much to people—and that in turn means a great deal to me. They, the people, have always been my inspiration.” However, parallel careers means putting in long hours in two demanding professions. “My only regret,” says Talley, “if I have one, is that I don’t have more time to write, for that has always been my lifelong passion. But as my mother, who was raised on a tenant farm in Oklahoma, always told me, ‘In the game of life, you deal with the cards you are dealt and try to make something of it.’”
30 years ago, Talley’s debut was hailed as a future classic, and, holding up magnificently, it’s more than fulfilled that praise, but reviewers didn’t quite know what to make of this oddball, the consensus being that it was a great country album by a great folksinger. The problem was that Talley was about 20 years ahead of his time, today it would shoot straight into the Americana/roots charts, with nobody turning a hair. Got No was arguably the first Americana album, but I do have one criticism of it—the title’s too damned long.
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A classic reissued
AmericanaUK
February 5, 2006
by Patrick Wilkins
This record, James Talley’s debut effort, originally appeared in 1975 and has now been remastered, and repackaged with an additional bonus disc containing an interview from the same era. Talley has provided songs for a whole host of big country names (Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Johnny Paycheck etc.), and listening to this record its easy to hear the appeal. Musically he has an easy relaxed dusty barroom style, nicely unpolished and free of studio additives. A mix of influences comes though, some classic Hank Williams here, some wistful Woodie Guthrie there, and a certain timeless melancholic twang throughout. This is not a Nashville sort of country, but much more rural, and backwoods than that. There are welcome interruptions from the blues, zydeco, western swing and bluegrass camps. Let alone now, this record must have sounded old fashioned when it was released, when you consider it was made at the same time as punk was about ready to go to the delivery room. Lyrically, as well as musically, nostalgia seems to be the key, with many references to the simple pleasures of less complicated times. There’s lots of ‘picture shows’ to go to, cruising on a Saturday night to do, moonshine whiskey to drink, and girls to chase like ‘blue eyed Ruth’ and ‘sweet Rose’. There’s also, back on the Okie trail, boarded up shops, and trains that don’t run anymore. This emphasises Talley’s Oklahoma roots, and therefore an obvious relationship to Guthrie, and also his attachment to the everyday issues of the small town world. A record that offers an uncomplicated and straightforward antidote to the excessive gloss of so much modern country.
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James Talley has passed the test of time
Denver Post Blog House - Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money ...
January 26, 2006
by Gil Asakawa
The best music – the kind that can stand that clichéd ol’ test of time – has a way of resonating as deeply and fully today as it did back when it was first recorded.
That’s what comes to mind when I listen to “Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love,” the debut album by singer-songwriter James Talley. The album was released way back in 1975, but it sounds as fresh and relevant as it did back then – and as a bonus, it sounds downright hip today, even though it was something of an anomaly back then.
Never heard of James Talley? Don’t feel bad, most music fans haven’t.
He never had a “hit” in the Top 40 sense, and his oeuvre has always waltzed along the genre-busting “Americana” line… even though the term “Americana” didn’t even exist back 30 years ago. So unless you’re a fanatic of fine songwriting performed with a twang (in Talley’s case, it’s more of a slight, genteel Okie drawl) and backed up with acoustic guitars, a bit of steel, the occasional fiddle and tasteful intrusions of electric guitar, you may have never come across this guy’s name.
But once upon a time, he was all that and a bag of chips in the music industry buzz brigade. Rolling Stone magazine was where I first heard of him, when reviewer Chet Flippo raved about “Got No Bread…” And for good reason – the album came out of nowhere, with a stripped-down, rootsy sound that flied in the face of Nashville’s then-overproduced, string-laden pop pap. Talley had more in common with the rebel roots-rockers forming their genre in the Austin music scene than the industrious song-peddlers of Nashville, where he had moved.
Talley’s musical mates may have been Waylon, Willie, Joe Ely and later, Lyle Lovett – Texans all – but his own roots were deep in the heart of American’s heartland, in the folksongs and common-folk observations of Woody Guthrie.
“Go No Bread…” (why the hell did he use such a long title, anyway?) was a collection of songs that resonated with Guthrie-esque wisdom and American scope (hence the fit with “Americana” today). It’s a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and a whole lot of folk music, with his stories of plain people and their problems presented with Talley’s sometimes droll, sometimes pretty, always wise, understated vocals.
The debut album led to three more released by Capitol Records during the 1970s, including his best-known, “Tryin’ Like the Devil” from ’76, a whole bunch of hype from rock critics tired of the increasingly homogenized FM radio rock, and two invitations to the Jimmy Carter White House.
Over the decades since then, Talley’s music has resurfaced for those of us who’ve followed his career like sleuths tracking a lifelong case. When the major-label music biz discarded him like yesterday’s news, he made his living selling real estate in Nashville (which he still does).
But he continued writing and recording, and at various times there’s been renewed interest in his work (the German Bear Family label heroically re-released his music in the ‘80s). He released at least one more classic – a collaboration with a photographer, of songs and photos chroncicling the poor Hispanic communities of northern New Mexico, titled “The Road to Torreón.”
He recorded a live album, and then an album of his favorite songs. He’s kept in touch with his small but devoted fan base, and has a dozen CDs to his credit, which he subsidizes with his real-estate earnings.
But it had been a long time since I’d sat down and listened to that first taste of Talley. He just re-released “Got No Bread…” in a special two-CD package (the second CD is a curio, a digitized version of a promotional-release-only album that was released by Capitol Records with the first album, in which a Nashville DJ interviewed Talley about the music), to celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary. The set also has extended liner notes with a very nicely written, sweet tribute to Talley’s Okie family roots (by way of Washington and New Mexico), and a retelling of the making of “Got No Bread….”
Pop in the first CD for the real teasure.
The songs are rich and smooth, and in many ways a roadmap for the generation of “Americana” (there’s that word again) songwriters who’ve walked the same path as Talley since 1975. Which is to say, it’s a gentle breeze of fresh air that has about as much chance of being played on corporate radio today as it did back then.
Who needs radio? The music feels good, and it’s worth seeking out, whether or not it gets played on your local Clear Channel affiliate.
Gil Asakawa is the superintendent of the Bloghouse, and in a previous life got paid to listen to music and mouth off about it.
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James Talley's Touchstones and Journey
www.folkworld.de
January 10, 2006
by Eelco Schilder
[Translated from German] Almost thirty years are gone since his first LP, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love, was published. Now two CD's are for sale on the Cimarron label - one from 2002, Touchstones, and his most recent CD, Journey (2004). Both CD's contain songs from his rich musical past.
Touchstones is focussed on his work from the mid seventies and contains pure country and blues presented in a traditional way. Journey also has a few songs from the earlier mentioned period, but focuses more on the years that follow. This CD is a live recording from 2002 in Italy and the CD's do have some of the same songs on them. The live CD is a bit more powerful, but both cd's are comparable in style. This is a pure artist who brings the blues and country in a hard to find natural way.
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Got no Bread, No Milk, No Money, But we Sure Got a Lot of Love (30th Anniversary)
Roots Highway - Italy
January 3, 2006
by Fabio Cerbone
James Talley è un uomo di una generosità infinita, oltre ad essere purtroppo una delle voci più sconosciute del songwriting americano. È stato e continua ad essere una coscienza viva dell'America più periferica e sincera, un artista che è partito dalla gente, la common people del suo povero Oklahoma e li ha voluto mettere radici, parlando delle loro vite e di un mondo in antitesi ai lustrini del music business. Con quest'ultimo ha avuto sempre poco da spartire, lo ha sofferto sin dall'inizio e ne ha pagato le conseguenze in carriera, come molti colleghi vissuti nel cuore degli anni '70: ci sono infatti voluti trent'anni perché riuscisse a trovare un accordo con la Capitol records, pubblicando su licenza i nastri del suo mitizzato esordio (Greil Marcus e Peter Guralnick spesero al tempo parole di elogio). Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love celebra il trentennale per mezzo di una sacrosanta ristampa: un disco che ancora sprigiona una bellezza commovente, perché semplice e diretto come le storie che vuole fotografare. Woodie Guthrie, punto di riferimento indiscusso per Talley (gli dedicò un bellissimo tributo qualche anno fa), e così Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams e Bob Dylan soffiano alle spalle di un country rurale e festoso, racchiuso nella saga poplare di W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Dough Boys, nella filastrocca "infantile" di Daddy's Song, così come nella title track e in Mehan, Oklahoma, un delizioso ballonzolare d'altri tempi. È tutto il disco ad essere sospeso nel tempo: le struggenti melodie di Red River Memory e To Get Back Home, l'aria sudista e il corale country-gospel di No Opener Needed, sono canzoni che appartengono ad un'epoca indefinita. Il "populist traditionalism" di Talley, così come lo definisce David McGee, è stato il prodromo di quel sentire musicale che oggi in molti definiscono Americana. Giustamente Talley sottolinea come nel 1975 non si sentisse lontanamente l'esigenza di un tale termine: la sua era e resta country music purissima, con quelle inflessioni tra folk, blues e radici southern che sempre più avrebbero caratterizzato i lavori a venire. Con pochi soldi in tasca, un lavoro da carpentiere ed una giovane famiglia da sfamare (in copertina la moglie in cinta e il primo figlio), James Talley produsse e registrò il disco da solo nel 1973 a Nashville: chiamò qualche amico (tra gli altri Doyle Grisham, Johnny Gimble, Rick Durrett, Jerry McKuen e un giovanissimo John Hiatt alla chitarra acustica) offrì scarsi compensi e incerta gloria futura, ma tutti lo seguirono ciecamente. Passò un anno, vendendo i dischi per conto proprio (eravamo nel 75 e internet non esisteva nemmeno nel mondo dei sogni), poi finì a fare riparazioni nella casa di Frank Jones, managaer della Capitol. Da quel momento inizia una storia tutta da scoprire, in parte riassunta nel prezioso libretto che accompagna la ristampa, con nota introduttiva di Chet Filippo e tutti i testi acclusi e nel curioso cd aggiunto, l'intervista promozionale che Talley fece nel 1975 con Mike Hanes, direttore dei programmi della stazione WKDA di Nashville. Se avrete la pazienza di seguirlo, lo sentirete raccontare la sua vita e il suo modo di intendere l'arte e la musica: un Don Chisciotte contro i mulini a vento, merce sempre più rara di questi tempi
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James Talley - Journey
Rambles - Cultural Arts Magazine
October 29, 2005
by Nicky Rossiter
James Talley's songs have been recorded by a list that reads like a "who's who" of great Americana music. He has had his share of hits with his own releases and now we get to hear a compilation of his magical musical offerings in a live setting over a couple of concerts in 2002.
"Bluesman" has a fantastic feel that will make you believe that you are there at a live concert with all the atmosphere conjured up by simple lyrics, laidback performance and professional backing.
Among the better-known tracks on offer we also get a few previously unreleased pieces. One of these is my favourite on the album. "My Cherokee Maiden" has all the ingredients for music magic; the beat, the picking and the melody allied to a sensitive simple lyric story are just right.
Get on the boots and check your shirt for "Tryin' Like the Devil" as you feel that you are cruising down the blacktop with the CD player blasting. He keeps us out in the wide-open spaces as "Sometimes I Think of Suzanne" draws us with its plaintive rendition into a lonely world of loss. Drawing on life yet again Talley tells us the story of "La Rosa Montana." Listen carefully and I dare you not to weep.
His love of the Native Americans is evident on tracks like "The Song for Chief Joseph" and "Somewhere on the Edge of the World." More recent American history is recalled on a previously unreleased track called "I Saw the Buildings." The tragedy of 9-11 is recalled but with a positive spin that people can recover from the worst happenings.
This is great album that gives us a variety of moods and insights while always entertaining. The insert gives us the lyrics as well an excellent short autobiography.
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JAMES COUNTS THE TALLEY OF MUSIC ROW
www.nucountry.com - Australia
September 8, 2005
by Dave Dawson
"Now people let me tell you about this Nashville town/ 25 years I've watched the deal go down/ written every kind of song, sung every kind of tune/ been treated every kind of way, had every kind of blues/ aw, people, it's a cryin' shame/ I've got them Nashville city blues/ and I ain't leavin' this town, people, 'til I get paid." - Nashville City Blues
The first time I saw Oklahoma born singer-songwriter James Talley he was hanging out at an Eric Andersen concert at the Lone Star Café in New York City.
On the second occasion I was with a bunch of Australians chased from that venue by a waitress for not leaving a large enough tip at Talley's own gig. Both artists were accused of being Dylan prodigies but Talley's music was cut more from the Woody Guthrie cloth that Dylan wore on his sleeves. And Andersen is still one of the great country folk rock love song singers whose fine catalogue has soared through the years.
But let's go back to my live entrée to Talley's music in 1978. It was just a year after Talley played the inauguration concert for President Jimmy Carter who owned his 1975 debut LP, Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got A Lot Of Love and successors Tryin' Like The Devil (1976) and Blackjack Choir (1977).
But despite enjoying presidential patronage akin to latter day White House warriors Shotgun Willie Nelson and Kinky Friedman this was not a career catalyst suffice to sustain stardom for Talley. Talley worked as a carpenter to finance his autobiographical debut album before he signed with Capitol - the 12-album veteran has financed his recent discs from his off stage real estate career. The wide acclaim for the singer's vivid vignettes about his rural roots was favourably compared to Woody Guthrie and featured in my letters from America but was not the Trojan horse needed to leap over radio moats.
Sure, Talley again made his name in Music City 22 years ago - not just as a singer but also as a real estate agent. So how did I know that - I saw his realtor signs on my last U.S. sojourn in 1988 and learned of his joint careers. Now, 17 years down the Lost Highway, Talley is reaping the benefits of exposing his music to new audiences at home, Europe and here in Australia.
CIMARRON LABEL
Talley has released his new albums on his indie Cimarron label and also retrieved the rights to his embryonic discs that were swallowed up by the Capitol conglomerate and withered on the sales vine.
But Talley bit the bullet and emulated the late, great Doug Sahm and Ed Burleson and recorded album of songs, Touchstones, at Tommy Detamore's Cherry Ridge Studio in Floresville, Texas. That was where Sahm cut his final studio disc, The Return Of Wayne Douglas - it also meant James was a beneficiary of pedal steel of Detamore and fiddle, mandolin, bajo sexto by Bobby Flores. Touchstones was also enriched by guests Joe Ely on W Lee O'Daniel And The Light Crust Doughboys, accordion from Ponty Bone, bassist David Carroll, pianist Ron Huckaby, drummer Dan Dreeben and trumpeter Al Gomez.
But this time Talley is in charge of his destiny - he paid producer and piper and owns the music - culled from his early discs - on his 11th album.
NASHVILLE CITY BLUES
Nashville City Blues is too modern to be included but is relevant and maybe a reprise for one of his memorable early tunes Are They Gonna Makes Us Outlaws Again? "Yeah, people let me tell you about this Nashville town/ they've taken all the music and watered it all down/ they've taken its heart, they've taken its soul/ they wouldn't know old Hank if he came walking down the road/ people, it's a crying shame, old Hank had something to say."
Woody Guthrie So did Guthrie who inspired Talley from the sixties and belatedly triggered his album Woody Guthrie And Songs Of My Oklahoma Home recorded in 1994 and released in 1999? "My father was born two years before Guthrie, my mother two years after," Talley revealed. "They both came from that same Dust Bowl, bound-for-glory period. And I grew up with that - flour sacks stitched together for bed sheets, no running water. When you come out of that,
you really understand what Guthrie was all about."
Talley's disc, cut in four days at Stepbridge Studio in an old adobe house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, wasn't the first Guthrie tribute album but was more credible than others by artists with less empathy for the dust bowl legend. The 21 songs include Pretty Boy Floyd who won a name check in Talley's tune Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?
Belated release is not new for the former case-worker for New Mexico's Department Of Public Welfare who wrote most songs for his 1992 album, The Road To Torreon 24 years before its release. The album, released without licence by Bear Family, was accompanied by Cavalliere Ketchum's photos of Hispanic Mountain Families whom Talley worked with before invading Nashville in August, 1968.
James was born in Pryor and moved to Commerce, Oklahoma, hometown of baseball legend Micky Mantle, a few months after his birth. But towards the end of World War II they headed to Richland, Washington - source of the song of the same name about his father working in a plutonium plant.
TOUCHSTONES
That historic song [Richland, Washington] was one of 16 re-recorded for Touchstones and reinforces Guthrie influences. Talley blames exposure to plutonium for the death of his guitar-playing dad at the age of 57 - his mother, a retired schoolteacher, is now in her eighties.
"He made plutonium in Richland, Washington/ he bought our groceries, he paid our rent/ it was a pretty little town, that Richland, Washington/ where my daddy worked at the Hanford plant."
History repeats - the plutonium was used in "fat man" bombs dropped on Nagasaki in Japan. Talley says: "It's probably where my father ruined his health because when we moved to New Mexico they found a big tumour on one of his lungs nobody could identify." The singer, whose family later moved to Albuquerque in New Mexico, proved more than just master of salient satire.
Up From Georgia, Sometimes I Think About Suzanne, Not Even When It's Over and To Get Back Home are evocative love songs. Give My Love To Marie enables the singer to combine love and social comment and W Lee O'Daniel And The Light Crust Dough Boys is an ode to the famed, historic Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. Although they date back 25 years they benefit from fresh Texas production and have stood the test of time.
LIVE FROM LONE STAR CAFÉ
Some appeared on his 1979 live album recorded at the Lone Star Café and the Great South East Music Hall in Atlanta. And to prove that Talley tempered his cynicism for the music industry with humour he finishes his live disc with the traditional tune, Take A Whiff On Me. Maybe to entice prospective buyers for river frontage he sings this refrain - 'two old maids a fishin' in the creek/ ain't caught a man since way last week.'
Talley is ecstatic about the reaction to the belated release of his material - long out of print - on CD on Cimarron.
Although he cut his debut album for just $5,000 from his carpentry earnings in 1975 its value appreciated over the years with a new generation discovering his music. Talley earned acclaim in the L A Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice and a chapter by Peter Guralnick in his Lost Highway book. Now he is elated to be belatedly discovered by the No Depression flame-throwers and the cyber chappies and chappettes.
"The wonderful thing about resurrecting my music through my new Cimarron label, has been the discovery of twenty-five years of good will that exists out in the world," Talley told me from his Nashville home, "people I never knew personally before have been so very kind. In my darkest hours, friends of mine would assure me that good music would eventually find its way. The Internet is such a wonderful communication tool. The world is now a small place.
"We had the Woody and Nashville City Blues albums in the can, unreleased, for so long. I am trying to get Bear Family to stop issuing my work, as they have never paid me a dime for using any of it. Since I paid for all the production - musicians, studio time, tape, etc. - allowing them to continue releasing the music for free doesn't do me much good. And when we reissued the catalogue, I didn't want to have to compete with them."
"It will break your heart and it will knock you down/ the glitter and the glamour, it's a big-time game/ and people, the music, well it don't mean a thing/ it's all about the money that's made/ aw people it's a crying shame/ I got them Nashville city blues/ and I'm not leaving this town till I get paid."
And, if you buy enough, we might persuade Melbourne roots promoter Rob Hall to tour Talley in Australia - maybe they could buy some venues to showcase the best roots music. "Who knows, maybe my work will gain enough popularity there, so I can come and perform, before I get too old and decrepit to do it!", says Talley, "I appreciate your support so very much; you take care."
FIFTH GENERATION COUNTRY MUSIC
JAMES TALLEY AND CHET FLIPPO
"You know, I think we're now living in the fifth generation of country music," Talley recently told Nashville columnist and author Chet Flippo.
The first generation of country music started with the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers and extended through Hank Williams in the 1940s and early 1950s. The music reflected its simple beginnings and rural roots.
"The second generation reflected the more urban taste of people like my mother," said Talley, "who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and danced to Bob Wills at Cain's Academy in Tulsa. Wills was the transitional figure who added sophistication to the early string band sound with three fiddles and horn sections. The second-generation audience was proud that they were now living in town or in the city, they had come through the Great Depression and now they had a good job in the post WW II society and were moving to the cities and were no longer following a plow.
Country music moved more uptown with artists of that generation, like Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline and Ray Price. They represented the advent of what came to be called the 'Nashville Sound.' It had lusher string and vocal arrangements. It was smooth, not corny, and it reflected the newfound urban post WW II success of its audience. The second generation era continued in many forms, but to me it sort of ended with the production style of Billy Sherrill as it gave way to the third generation."
THIRD GENERATION COUNTRY
Talley identified the third generation in the 1970s as his generation. "We rebelled against the strings and the producers' control," he said. "We wanted to make our music as we felt it should be made - as we felt it. We were the artists, and we wanted control of our music and our lives. The record companies' job, as we saw it, was not to 'produce us' and tell us how to say what we had to say ... but to take what we had to say and sell that! Much like it was with the artists of the first generation, and we found kindred spirits in the artistic integrity of the first generation - Will the Circle Be Unbroken! It was a return to the simplicity of the first generation." Talley's generation brought steel guitars and fiddles and a traditional edge back to country. "That was what people like me, Steve Young, Doug Sahm, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, and Waylon and Willie were trying to do," Talley told Flippo.
"It was also the generation of the songwriter. Even though Hank wrote most of his material and Lefty wrote a lot of his, the artist then was the focus; not the fact that he was a songwriter. We were also of the Vietnam generation. We were hippies; we questioned authority and the status quo. We wanted to make country music the same way the Beatles made pop music. We wanted albums without filler, with meaningful, well-written material."
FOURTH GENERATION COUNTRY
The industry changed drastically after the recession in the 1980s, ushering in what became the fourth generation. Economic changes caused mergers and shutdowns in the record industry. After the album Wanted: The Outlaws introduced Nashville to the platinum-selling era, commercial expectations were higher for artists and record labels alike. The audience was also changing.
"Most of us third generation folks could not get arrested at record labels at that time," said Talley. "Willie and Waylon did survive, as they had strong enough footholds to weather the transition. Us third generation folks were too old. People like me had to find day jobs to feed our families. There was a new generation of listeners who had been raised on rock, and they wanted a rock sound."
Another important shift occurred as a result of the changing economies and new sales expectations. Manufactured stars and assembly line songs and production came to dominate Nashville. "In the early days of the first generation," said Talley.
"The labels went out in the field and sought out musicians that had a unique style and with something to say - Rodgers, the Carters, Bob Wills, Hank, Lefty Frizzell and the others. In the fourth generation of Garth Brooks, Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson and the rest, it was big business. The producers were making music based on marketing research and focus groups."
CD REVIEW 2004 - JOURNEY
"I saw the buildings fall from the sky/ I saw the people, I watched them die/ I saw it all on the morning news/ I saw what hate will do." - I Saw The Buildings - James Talley.
When James Talley cut half of his first live album at the now defunct Lone Star Café in Greenwich Village in 1979 he mastered a raw, organic country blues hybrid. Although Talley's disc was belatedly released 15 years later on Bear Family three songs were revamped for a new live disc Journey (Cimmaron), cut in Italy in 2002. One of them was his 1974 tribute to W Lee O'Daniel And The Light Crust Doughboys - on whom the singing Governor in O Brother Where Are Thou was reportedly based. And the famed Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa in his home state where Pappy O'Daniel, Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys reigned.
Although Talley chose that as entrée to his 12th album he also showcased five new songs. I Saw The Buildings is one of the most evocative parables to emerge from the carnage and rubble of his one time adoptive home on September 11, 2001. Talley, now 60, examines the effects of the grief - the vitriol of the victims and survivors - and the futility of the prolonged Palestine-Israel war.
"I saw the children of Palestine strap on their bombs/ I watched them die" and "I saw the young men of Jerusalem/ with their tanks and with their guns/ through the broken dreams they pursue."
CHIEF JOSEPH
Talley's strong suit is narratives plucked from ancient and modern history. Another new ode for an old hero victim is The Song Of Chief Joseph - a Nez Perce Indian chief who tried peace in wars over tribal lands seized by the U.S. government after the 1863 gold rush.
"I heard the thunder from the mountains/ I saw the blood there on the plain/ I feel a sorrow never ending/ among the tears, everlasting pain."
Chief Joseph, born in Wallowa Valley, Oregon, in 1840, reportedly died from a broken heart in 1904 long after a bloody surrender in 1877.
"Once this great land was my home/ where my people freely roamed/ now the world is torn apart, there is darkness."
It's not surprising Talley chose a live album, cut over three nights in Italy, to showcase such powerful new songs. Talley plays acoustic guitar in his band featuring famed bassist Dave Pomeroy, guitarist Mike Noble and drummer Greg Thomas. Talley's powerful vocals ignite Tryin' Like The Devil, Up From Georgia and Richland, Washington - a pathos primed eulogy to his father. And he lightens up with My Cherokee Maiden and celebratory Somewhere On The Edge Of The World.
Talley has had songs cut by late Johnnies - Cash and Paycheck - and superstar Alan Jackson but the latest was Moby who rewrote Talley's 34-year-old song She's The One as Evening Rain for Ben Affleck's 2003 movie Daredevil.
James' extensive liner notes reveal like Texan superstar George Strait, he has two blue heelers - Shiloh and Cheyenne.
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Journey Review
Barnes & Noble
by David McGee
This live disc from country singer-songwriter James Talley was recorded live in three Italian cities in October 2002. Journey's song selection features nine Talley evergreens and five powerful new songs, tracing the arc Talley's career has taken, musically and spiritually. Picking a resonant acoustic guitar and backed by a tight trio, Talley offers up a buoyant, western swing reading of "W. Lee O'Daniel and the Light Crust Doughboys," followed by his poignant "Bluesman" done at a slower tempo than the studio session, accentuating both the attraction of and the loneliness at the core of the titular character's lifestyle. "Bluesman" exemplifies the deep well of humanity at the center of Talley's portraits, which are as keenly observed and as empathetic as Dorothea Lange's Depression-era photographs, perhaps never more so than on "Richland, Washington," his stark, solo reflection on the price his father paid working for years in a plutonium factory. The new songs include the haunting, heartbreaking "That Old Magic"; "The Song of Chief Joseph," a story-song about the trials of the wise Nez Perce chieftain; the ethereal, mystic "Somewhere on the Edge of the World," an evocation of the greatest of all Sioux warriors, Crazy Horse; and a sensible, and extremely moving, comment on the events of and surrounding 9/11 in "I Saw the Buildings," which examines terror and hatred -- and their legacies -- from a global perspective. To take this Journey with James Talley is to have your heart touched, your soul enriched, and your conscience stirred.
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Americana Star Shines Bright on His Italian Journey
CMA Closeup
November 30, 2004
by J. Poet
James Talley's music owes as much to Woody Guthrie as it does to Hank Williams, and draws on the same wellspring of American folk, blues and Country Music that made their work so powerful.
For years, Talley has been called an artist "ahead of his time," although a more proper designation for his music might be timeless. His early albums for Capitol Records Nashville, including Blackjack Choir and Tryin' Like the Devil garnered raves for their combination of Texas swing, Country blues and roots rock – a blend now dubbed Americana – but they never translated into album sales. After four albums for Capitol, Talley was working in a Nashville coffee specialty shop.
"I came from a poor family of Okies," Talley said philosophically. "There's no trust fund in my past, present or future and I was used to doing for myself, just like every other working man in this country."
Talley eventually went to school for a real estate license, but never stopped making music. Today his real estate business supports his family and his label, Cimarron Records.
"I'm in this for the music, not the money," Talley said from his Nashville office at the end of another long day bouncing between the real estate and music businesses. "You only live one time and you have to follow your dream no matter how hard it may be to make it come true.
"I fund [the albums] out of songwriting royalties and real estate commissions. I work most days till 10 or 11, but I'm my own boss and arrange my hours to accommodate the music. Got No Bread, No Milk, and No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love [Talley's first album] was an indie project before Capitol picked it up, so having my own label brings me full circle."
In the last few years Talley got an unexpected boost from two unlikely sources. Moby covered Talley's "Evening Rain" and put it on the Daredevil soundtrack, and his friend Jono Manson returned from Europe with the news that Talley had a large following in Italy. The result is Journey, a live album recently released on Cimarron Records.
"I released four albums in the mid '80s on Bear Family Records – Love Songs and The Blues, Road to Torreon, Live and American Original. I never saw a dime, but they created enough interest in Europe for Capitol to re-release a few of the early ones. In 2002, Jono hooked up with promoters in Sarzana who wanted to do a live album and set up a small tour. I contacted Dave Pomeroy [bass,] Mike Noble [electric guitar] and Gregg Thomas [drums] and we went.
"When we got over there, I was amazed. We played in Sarzana, Gallarte and Chiari and hundreds of people showed up calling out song titles and singing along in English. I was blown away. At the end of the concerts I said, 'I'll stand up and shake hands with all of you on the way out of the church.' One couple told me 'We've been waiting 25 years to hear you play.' It was humbling."
And somewhat puzzling.
"There's no official Italian release," Talley explained. "Although I do have a distributor over there, which has obviously been good for me. The interesting thing is that Country Music has a worldwide market. This record [Journey] is being played all over Western Europe in Poland, Serbia, Austria, Holland and lots of little lone ranger stations. We get airplay in Australia and New Zealand, which was not possible a few years ago. With e-mail, a radio station in Uruguay can send a playlist and I can send them a thank you note. I can stay in touch with them on a personal level and they can stay in touch with me. We've developed a list of 400 stations outside the United States that we service.
"In the U.S., we work the college and community radio stations – the stations so small the conglomerates don't want to buy 'em up. On Americana radio, they can play any cut they like off an album."
As owner of a small record label, does Talley have any opinions about downloading and e-commerce? "I'd like people to come to my Web site, but I don't know if that qualifies as e-commerce. If you're a big act, downloading hurts you, but I think serious collectors like the real thing. That's why I put a lot of time and money into my CD packages - I put lyrics, essays and photos in 'em. Most downloading is driven by peer group pressure. Kids carry their CDs around in a sack, or their purse, it's disposable to them. Serious collectors have the same mentality as people who buy hardbound books.
"It's always hard to run a small business, but what's the price of a dream? Van Gough painted his whole life and never sold a painting. Did that make what he did less valid? If you're an artist, you're an artist, so I'll keep working hard as long as I can."
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Journey Review
IndieWorkshop.com
August 2, 2004
by Stephanie Haselman
James Talley’s story can easily be considered a tragic one. It’s full of bad decisions, a failed music career, and obscurity that resulted in a back catalog erased from Capitol Records. All is, however, in the eye of the beholder and while it may not be a story full of money and success, he is not a man that has been altogether forgotten. After a highly successful decade, the seventies ended disappointingly for Talley. Due to bad business advice he made the decision to leave Capitol Records at the height of his career. In response, the label deleted his back catalog, four albums in total.
He went on to become successful in Nashville real estate although in his heart he remained devoted to his art and music. After all, as Talley states in the album’s liner notes, “Working people, not professional musicians, made much of the most heartfelt and inspiring music. It also keeps you humble and builds character. If you can withstand the hard times, it makes the good times that much sweeter; and you finally do begin to understand that maybe you really are an artist, and not some marketing fabrication of the music business.”
The liner notes to Journey include a documented career history told by Talley himself. It is both the touching story of a man with a heart for music and the business that wouldn’t give him a second chance. It is as much a commentary on the music business as it is the artist relaying the hard lessons he learned along the way. I must admit it is a powerful read and a story that every musician should know.
Johnny Cash, Alan Jackson, Gene Clark, Johnny Paycheck and Moby have since recorded his songs. The classic Talley penned song, Evening Rain, was recorded by Moby for the soundtrack to Daredevil. It was written thirty-four years ago.
Talley remains a singer/songwriter with a devoted cult following both here and in Italy, which is where he recorded the songs for Journey to a series of live audiences. Included on the fourteen-track collection are five new songs. But the rest are classic Talley, now being sung to a new generation who is discovering him on their own without the aid of a monster record label to show them the way.
Whether there is a back-story or not, these songs stand on their own as some of the most poignant, significant songs put to tape. He says, “…what really matters is that these songs speak for themselves.” And they do. These are folk/country songs the way they used to be, honest, humble, eternally relevant and socially conscious. I have to say, they just don’t write them like that anymore. Many of these songs are so beautiful they stopped me in my tracks throughout the several listens that lead up to this article. Tracks such as Sometimes I Think About Suzanne and Up From Georgia are moving love songs that could melt the heart of the hardest music critic. Several more tracks are important reflections on social concerns such as one of the new songs, La Rosa Montana, about the plight of the Hispanic culture of New Mexico. There is also the tragic The Song of Chief Joseph, a heartbreaking song sung from his point of view. Each song is important and shows that Talley’s relevance today is as strong as it was thirty years ago.
His voice vaguely resembles that of country legend Willie Nelson but Talley’s influence is singularly his own. It makes no difference whether or not you are a fan of modern country music. It, in fact, will help you not to be as these songs are timeless in a way that no music coming out of Nashville today can be. This album is certainly a must have for fans of the seventies Austin scene as well as those who relish the songs of country music’s rebels from today and yesterday. If we can’t have the original albums, we can at least have this wonderful collection. It is the voice of a songwriter who, after thirty years, still has his “soul intact”. You can hear his humility and inspiration reverberating through not only the words of his songs, but through Talley himself, a songwriter who, despite his circumstances, never lost his vision.
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Journey Review
thebridgeworks
July 2004
by Bill Littleton
Of the relatively few performers genuinely qualified to sing "I did it my way," we should never leave James Talley out of that group, whether he ever chooses to sing it or not. He attained momentum in the '70s to a level sufficient for Rosalyn Carter to refer to him as her favorite singer, then, seemingly overnight, those of us in Nashville mostly saw his name on real estate signs, interrupted from time to time with word about an appearance here or there or a European tour. Later came news that he had acquired his old Capitol catalogue and the release of new music as well. This CD is all of the above -- songs new and old, delivered in a group of live performances in Italy. Furthermore, the booklet contains an essay in which he tells "what happened" that shifted his name from marquees to real estate signs; the music stands up wonderfully without knowing the details, but awareness does have an enhancement effect on appreciation. I'd rather you get those details from him, so we'll concentrate on the music. The concerts are performed through the auspices of MusicVillage, Sarzanna, Italy; James is accompanied by Dave Pomeroy, Mike Noble, and Greg Thomas, on bass, electric guitar, and drums, respectively, in addition to his own acoustic guitar. He has worked with these musicians over various periods, so there is no hint of a pickup band syndrome, with Pomeroy characteristically pulling off some effects that definitely get a musician's attention without sidetracking the songs. While the performances are flawless, the heart of it all lies in the songs. Longtime fans like Mrs. Carter and me can take comfort in the quietly disturbing messages of such old friends as "Richmond, Washington" and "Tryin' Like The Devil;" we also have new adventures here -- dramatically leading that parade is "I Saw The Buildings," a painful cry from the 9/11 situation that brings its own historical perspective to the table. This important music is from an unquestionably important performer.
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James Talley - Journey
Roots Highway - Italy
J