Best of 2021 Playlist – Parting Gifts

After the reactions to last year’s more formal (as opposed to background for a Pink Elephant) playlist honoring people who passed away that made an impression on me. I tried to keep better, more methodical track, and good lord. So many people who changed how I heard things or turned me around on a genre, who deepened my connection with a kind of music or got me interested in a genre, who connected me with people. The person the track stands for who passed away is in parentheses. 

On that same note, there are people who aren’t musicians or producers who have as great an impact on my understanding and love of music who should be acknowledged. Lane Campbell, who I probably knew less well than 50 people on my friends list, but who I met at Twangfest many years ago and still remembered me well enough to see me on my front lawn during the pandemic when he and his partner were visiting Columbus and stop to say hello. I thought about him a lot after that chance meeting, and more after he passed away, often revisiting music I loved that I hadn’t gone back to as often in recent years. 

George Wein, who created the contemporary music festival, and certainly helped create the versions of it I still love even as I grumble about the ubiquity and encroachment of the festival as a thing: it’s easy to draw a line that there’s no Big Ears without Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals, no Nelsonville without New Orleans’s jazz fest. I finally read the great autobiography co-written by Nate Chinen this year and it made an impression on me. 

Wrapping this up on January 3^nd, with a second case of COVID, and grateful to meet another day. Thankful for anyone reading this, anyone who turned me onto any of these artists, and anyone I might talk about them with. I’m sure I’ve missed some, I always do. That impossibility is one of the things that keeps me going. Continue reading if you’re interested in my rambling.

• Mandy Patinkin, “Finishing the Hat” (Stephen Sondheim) – I’m not sure there are five artists, regardless of medium, who’ve had as profound an influence on me as Stephen Sondheim. As I said in the Theater list, finding his musicals – through the influence of some friends who were further along – gave me a slice of the genre (I already had an inherited fondness for) that felt like mine. And it felt like ours to every wordy, off-beat kid who loved theater I’ve met over the years. After my first loves of Sweeney Todd and Assassins, finding the PBS version (in a later DVD release) of Sunday was the knockout blow. I’m still unpacking, arguing with, drilling into, its arguments about the utility, the pleasures, and the cost of making art, and I think this might be the single best song ever written about that struggle, with a gorgeous but prickly melody – sung the hell out of by the character’s originator, Mandy Patinkin – and glimmering, uneasy Reich-inflected harmonies. “Mapping out a sky. What you feel like: planning a sky. What you feel when voices that come through the window go, until they distance and die. Until there’s nothing but sky. And how you’re always turning back too late, from the grass or the stick or the dog or the light.” 
• Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, “My Mysterious Death (Turn It Up)” (Bob Petric) – TJSA weren’t the first local band I saw, that was the Haynes Boys or Scrawl, with Gaunt and the New Bomb Turks later that summer, but Bait and Switch might have been the record I played the most, and they made an outsized impression for not catching them as often. Even the handful of shows I saw with them falling apart, there was always something – a song or two, a moment – that made me glad I was there, made the moment feel special or reminded me that every moment can be special if you look for it – and very often, that came from the surprise and furious joy of Bob Petric’s guitar. Years later, I became decent friends with Bob, forged in the newly opening Ace of Cups in 2011, though, again, I probably knew him less well than 100 of my other friends. I’ve waxed rhapsodic about it before, but this is one of those almost perfect records, a killer showcase for Ron House’s voice and wit with a bouncing rhythm section of Craig Dunson on bass and Ted Hattemer on drums and especially Petric’s metallic shower-of-sparks guitar. The riff and handclaps on this, backing up the unabashed mystery, the smirking chorus, “Turn it up again, the end of this song is sure to reveal my mysterious death,” mocking any of us who would go to a song for that kind of a concrete ending and reveling in the fact that the meaning is turning it up, makes it one of the great statements of purpose I’ve ever heard in rock and roll, not just Columbus rock. 
• Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, “Jungle Fauvre” (Greg Tate) – I’m not sure there’s a bigger influence on the way I think about music, especially the way it connects to other art forms and life, and a bigger bullseye I keep trying (and often failing) to hit in terms of the music he landed on the page, than Greg Tate. One of the million things I admired about Tate was his ability to not only comment but get into the thick of what he’s commenting on – curating art shows, appearing on panels, co-founding Black Rock Coalition, producing records, and leading various bands, most prominently the chimerical funk/free jazz collision of Burnt Sugar. This track, with a name conjuring both the furious drum ‘n’ bass offshoot jungle and recalls the fauve movement associated with Matisse, from a blistering 2004 live album Not April in Paris, sums up so many of the pleasures that band doled out for over 20 years, and I hoped to get to see again in January. 
• Lloyd Price, “Stagger Lee” (Lloyd Price) – I’m an unabashed fan of the Specialty Records era of R&B/early rock and roll and there might not have been a finer voice in that collection of legends than Price. This smoothed-out, rhythmically punchy take on one of the classic American murder ballads, set the standard for the next 60 years of American popular music and set a bar few people have hit since. As Anne said when we listened to this a few days ago, “You don’t get ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ without this.” 
• The Marvelettes, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” (Wanda Young) – We lost two pillars of quintessential Motown groups this year. I’ve always loved this Marvelettes song, a classic Smokey Robinson melody and lyric with lead vocals by the great Wanda Young accented by the great Marvelettes harmonies and ominous strings, with a mournful harmonica setting off the chorus but without diminishing its status as a crackling dance number. 
• Waco Brothers, “Going Down in History” (Joe Camarillo) – Joe Camarillo’s vibrant, surprising drumming enlivened everyone from Kelly Hogan to NRBQ to Renaldo Domino, but he lent a special magic to the great Chicago party band with teeth, the Jon Langford-Dean Schablowske collaboration Waco Brothers. I watched them with another drummer or two over the years, but everything felt looser and more three dimensional with Camarillo behind the kit. Langford said they wrote the 2016 album this served as the title track for as a showcase for Camarillo and, in a city known for some of the best drummers, this is a ten-song hall of fame, and this title track a rollicking tour de force. 
• Madvillain, “Figaro” (MF Doom) – Hearing MF Doom passed away last New Year’s Eve was a punch in the face. One of my favorite MCs from an era of underground hip-hop that gave me so many of my favorites, he put the lie to most claims to authenticity, deploying rock-solid craft and a deep understanding of the music’s history in the service of a voice and a perspective none of us had ever heard. This collaboration with Madlib is still one of my favorite records of all time and forcing myself to revisit it front to back was a small consolation. 
• Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, “Higher Ground (Live)” (Naomi Shelton) – Daptone never put out a record I didn’t like – for damn sure in the first decade – but I have a special love for 2009’s What Have You Done, My Brother? By the heavenly-minded Naomi Shelton and her band the Gospel Queens.  As good as that record was, the couple sets I saw at their Friday night residency at West Village jazz club/game room hybrid Fat Cat really made my heart soar. Other musicians before their later gigs, rare groove nerds like me, true believers, and baffled frat boys just there for some ping pong, all swept up in the spirit that even made the walls sweat. So, this example from this year’s stellar The Daptone Super Soul Revue LIVE at the Apollo is a welcome flashback. 
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit featuring Brittney Spencer, “Midnight Train to Georgia” (Jim Weatherly) – Jim Weatherly wrote a fistful of iconic songs – “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” is a favorite of mine – but when you have something as perfect as “Midnight Train to Georgia,” everything else recedes into the background. Obviously, nothing is as perfect as the Gladys Knight version, but I was charmed by Isbell’s covers record Georgia Blue, and their tributes to so much of the great Georgia music history and kept coming back to several tracks including this one with a marvelous lead vocal from Brittney Spencer. 
• People Under the Stairs, “Tales of Kidd Drunkadelic” (Double K) – I think I found LA hip-hop duo People Under the Stairs through a WaxPoetics article and picked up their third album OST which this came from. In a sea full of obscure, dusty samples, there was a magic here, a glowing, flexible sense of not taking it too seriously. I raved about it to everyone, put half the songs off the record on mixes. I didn’t always keep up with them, as my pal Andrew Patton gently razzed me about when we had our first party of the year, but as soon as I queued this up that corner of the party went almost as crazy as the first time, I heard this at a party almost twenty years ago. 
• Ray Fuller and the Bluesrockers, “Pay the Price” (Darrell “Tutu” Jumper) – Columbus blues institution Ray Fuller has led several versions of his Bluesrockers and occasionally it’s one of the most exciting bands in town. Everyone talks about the version that spun off RC Mob but later, in my show going lifetime, the version represented on this record, underpinned by the swinging drums of Tutu Jumper, was a brilliant showcase for Fuller’s voice and the kind of relaxed tempo, nonshowy blues our town could always use a little more of. Jumper also added his jazz-inflected by hard driving drums to classic Columbus outfits from doo-wop legends The Four Mints to Willie Pooch to Teeny Tucker. 
• The Supremes, “Come and Get These Memories” (Mary Wilson) – If I had to choose a single Motown group it’d be the Supremes. One of the handful of Supremes hits sung by Mary Wilson who we lost this year, and who we were graced with when she appeared with the Columbus Jazz orchestra in 2014, I always had a great deal of affection for their version of this Holland-Dozier-Holland tune even while I wouldn’t argue the Martha and the Vandellas version is definitive. 
• New York Dolls, “Trash” (Sylvain Sylvain) – Another core member of the band that reduced American rock and roll to its bleeding-edge basics and re-introduced some ineffable strangeness, Sylvain Sylvain, left us this year. I love everything off those first two records, but this tune, one of two songs on their eponymous debut Sylvain cowrote with David Johansen, is a particular favorite and Sylvain’s choppy riff is as much the reason as Johansen’s sneering soul boy vocal. 
• James and Bobby Purify, “I’m Your Puppet” (James Purify) – One of the great soul singles, bar none. My favorite memory of this song was Matt Benz and I seeing its co-writer Dan Penn (backed by Bobby Emmons) play it to a pin-drop quiet evening at the Mannerchor. Recorded over and over again, but nothing’s approached the perfection – the gentle thump of the rhythm into and the way it roars out of the chorus like a jet engine, and those deep sibling harmonies, 
• Howard Johnson and Gravity, “Stolen Moments” (Howard Johnson) – Probably the first jazz tuba player I knew as a soloist and leader (instead of a bass line generator), Johnson’s signature tone and melodic inventiveness added essential color to records I loved by Mingus, Jaco Pastorius, Andrew Hill, and Taj Mahal. This lush Oliver Nelson piece augments Johnson’s tuba with those of Marcus Rojas (probably the first record I ever heard him on), Joe Daley, Earl McIntyre, and Dave Bargeron, with a surging rhythm section of James Williams’ piano, Melissa Slocum’s bass, and Kenny Washington’s drums. 
• Junior Mance, “Don’t Cha Hear Me Callin’ for Ya” (Junior Mance) – I first knew jazz pianist Junior Mance from Dinah Washington records my grandmother loved. His work with Cannonball Adderly, his crucial rhythm work on Benny Carter’s A Man Called Adam soundtrack, all fantastic. But I think I love this era of instrumental funk from him most of all. This Rudy Stevenson tune, played by a blistering quartet, could get any party turned up. Mance’s piano sounds like it’s shouting instructions to a sweat-soaked room and Billy Cobham’s drums keep the steady pulse but also set off “strictly for the real dancers” explosions, with Eric Gale’s guitar and Chuck Rainey’s bass holding the groove down. 
• The O’Kanes, “Tired of the Runnin’” (Jamie O’Hara) – My Mom was my gateway to most of the neo trad ‘80s country movement, with Dwight Yoakam as her favorite, and these O’Kanes records are still in my blood all these years later – partly from periodic visits from O’Hara’s partner Kieran Kane to Alec Wightman’s Zeppelin series. Better known for co-writing The Judds’ monster “Grandpa (Tell Me About the Good Ol’ Days)”, there’s not a dull track on those first two O’Kane’s records. This song sums up that mix of setting weariness to a jaunty groove that’s one of the moods I first identified in country music, that I keep going back for. 
• Tanya Tucker, “Texas (When I Die)” (Ed Bruce) – Ed Bruce wrote or co-wrote dozens of indelible American songs, including “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”, but this is the one that I immediately wanted to hear when I heard he passed, and this flamethrower version from Tanya Tucker is the definitive version. 
• The Long Ryders, “Too Close To The Light” (Tom Stevens) – I came to the Paisley Underground stuff a little late, largely through my friendships with Matt Benz, Mark Wyatt, and Shirley Tobias, but when I did get it, I went in hard. I probably go back to those Long Ryders records the most often of that scene; I remember Katy Moffatt introducing a cover of a song of theirs and I was the only one who audibly knew who they were. The ethereal harmonies here floating over driving, dry punky drums and slashing guitars, set the template for at least half the bands I loved in my 20s. “Ashes and sand all around you now, there ain’t no way when there ain’t no how. Like a lawman checking your ID; the first you know you’re a little less free.” 
• Children of Bodom, “Needled 24/7” (Alexi Laiho) – In 2004, I went to the Alrosa Villa to see Lamb of God (whose first two records I loved but hadn’t seen yet), and Fear Factory (one of my favorite bands almost a decade earlier, having just reformed). A little over a year into working at the bank, I showed up after a long shift, still in slacks and a button down, I walked in and grabbed a beer to the one national band on the bill I didn’t already know (knowing the Alrosa, I’m sure there were four locals earlier than I got there for): Finland’s Children of Bodom, touring the previous year’s Hate Crew Deathroll record. The moody atmospherics – keyboards featured prominently – and slashing riffs knocked me back against a wall and held me rapt for a blistering 45 minutes. I saw them once a little later at the Newport (a room about twice the size) and it still packed that same wallop. 
• Pauline Anna Strom, “Morning Splendor” (Pauline Anna Strom) – I got into Strom’s work with RVNG Intl’s release of this archival material, Trans-Millenia Music, probably on my radar because it was compiled by Columbus ex-pat John Also Bennett. And it’s probably good because a younger me might have dismissed it out of hand as “new age” instead of being able to appreciate the beautiful tone and textures in evocative post-rainstorm haze through stained glass compositions like this one. 
• Ghédalia Tazartès, “Casimodo Tango” (Ghédalia Tazartès) – Tazartès’s organic avant-garde, using tape loops based on feeling and intuition, recalling the cut ups of Burroughs and Gysin and anticipating what JG Thirlwell and Nurse With Wound would be known for later, were a perpetual inspiration to me from the moment I heard him (I think this debut, Diasporas, but could have been Tazartès or Check Point Charlie) through fascinating work he was putting out just a few years ago. 
• Steve Lacy and Bobby Few, “The Rent” (Bobby Few) – Two of the great American expatriate voices in duet, now both gone. Cleveland native pianist Bobby Few’s chopped up chords and soulful approach even in the freest of settings enhanced great records with everyone from fellow Cleveland natives Albery Ayler and Frank Wright, to David Murray, Alan Silva, and Noah Howard. But his longest and most fruitful collaborations were with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, and his best work came in duo or trio formats where his piano had space to shine.  
• Circle, “There Is No Greater Love (Live)” (Chick Corea) – There’s no arguing with Chick Corea’s place in the canon but – aside from a couple tracks – I respect his work more than I love it. The colossal exception to that is his late ‘60s/early ‘70s collective band Circle, with Anthony Braxton, Dave Holland, and Barry Altschul. This track from Live in Germany, captures their power and their magic as they explode this jazz standard into a jagged glass mosaic. 
• Milford Graves Percussion Ensemble, “Nothing” (Milford Graves) – Nobody taught me more about drums as a healing force and storytelling vessel than Milford Graves. Hearing him on classics with Albert Ayler, the New York Art Quartet, Don Pullen, Sonny Sharrock, and then the record that blew it open for me: Stories on John Zorn’s label Tzadik, the first solo percussion record I wholeheartedly loved, that took me places and made me want to write, to walk, to make things. And he was still doing it, still had that power, as recently as the last Big Ears I went to where I saw him in deep, thoughtful duet with pianist Jason Moran, and beyond (I’m still sorry I didn’t make it out to see the exhibit of his visual art). Neither the Moran nor any Tzadik are on Spotify (good for them) but this ‘65 duo with Sunny Morgan captures a good bit of the magic I mean. 
• Razzaq-Jenkins-Smith, “Invocation” (Hasan Abdur-Razzaq) – Columbus lost one of our giants last year: saxophonist Hasan Abdur-Razzaq. Open to playing in any context – and killing in any of those contexts, genuinely enthusiastic about music even when it wasn’t his own, fiercely dedicated to helping other people and teaching and health, and one of the kindest people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. This trio record, teaming Abdur-Razzaq (on various reeds and percussion) with guitarist LA Jenkins, and Lisa Bella Donna on drums, percussion, and synths, is a great primer to that marvelous tone and intense dialogue with his fellow musicians, and the release of more recordings is one of the many things we should thank Gerard Cox and Delian Abdur-Razzaq for, but nothing’s ever as good as being in the room. I remember seeing a duo set with Ryan Jewell on drums, opening for Mats Gustafsson’s The Thing, I took my favorite rock and roll saxophone player Bob Starker to along with jam band/avant percussionist AJ Barnes, and both their jaws dropped. And that was just the first example that comes to mind. 
• Ralph Peterson, “Right to Live” (Ralph Peterson) – There was no strain of jazz drummer Peterson couldn’t play brilliantly – I got turned into him through his work with polymath/collagist Uri Caine when I was early in college, especially Caine’s Goldberg Variations reconstruction, and went deep into his work with David Murray and Don Bryon, then all his records as a leader. This example from this year shows him still going at the highest level – with a sizzling rhythm section completed by Zaccai Curtis on piano and Luqus Curtis on bass – before cancer took him. 
• Tom T. Hall, “Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken” (Tom T. Hall) – One of my favorite songwriters of all time and one of my great regrets I never saw live. My grandmother had a few of his records – I remember hearing “The Year Clayton Delaney Died’, “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine”, and “Faster Horses” pretty often as a kid – but the two things that set the lightbulb off were the tribute record Real (I once talked RB Morris’ ear off about his killer version of “Don’t Forget The Coffee, Billy Joe” from it) and a two-disc compilation I bought at Singing Dog Records when I was 17 or 18, Storyteller, Poet, Philosopher. The breadth of his work the way he centered people, the empathy suffusing every line, stuck with me, and this – still maybe my favorite Vietnam song – is a prime example of his ability to fuse a subtle, insinuating melody to stab-you-in-the-heart perfect lyrical details. “The bottle hidden underneath the blanket over my two battered legs. I can see the stewardess make over me and ask, ‘Were you afraid?’ I’ll say, ‘Why no, I’m Superman and couldn’t find the phone booth quite in time.’ A GI gets a lot of laughs if he remembers all the funny lines.” 
• U-Roy, “Natty Rebel” (U-Roy) – One of the great voices of the 20^th century, it’s impossible to imagine any of the hard, percussive reggae that topped the charts when I was a teenager/in my early ‘20s (Shaggy, Sean Paul, Beenie Man) without toasting pioneer U-Roy lighting the way. When I got my first compilation of his I don’t think I listened to anything else for a week. 
• Bunny Wailer, “Armagideon” (Bunny Wailer) – As the last of the original Wailers left us, this ‘76 roots stunner still sounds just as fresh and every bit as urgent. Like everybody I knew, I started with Bob Marley then got deep into Peter Tosh with a marketing push including a fantastic box set when I was 21, so I came to Bunny Wailer’s solo work a little later, but I loved it just as much. 
• Winfield Parker, “Mr. Clean” (Winfield Parker) – Winfield Parker worked with everyone in the ‘60s, from the Ike and Tina Revue to Otis Redding, to Little Richard, on sax and guitar, all the while putting out stunning records of his own like this piano-driven smooth shouter. 
• Waylon Jennings, “I’ve Always Been Crazy” (Richie Albright) – Part of the Waylon Jennings legend is how often he brought his own band into the studio instead of relying on Nashville pros and drummer Richie Albright was key to that driving magic, the drama and immediacy of that big kickdrum and thumping snare is as much as signature of the “Waylon Jennings” sound as his worn-leather voice. For me, this late ‘70s hit is one of the key examples of the magic chemistry they had together. 
• The Blasters, “Kathleen” (Gene Taylor) – Gene Taylor’s piano was one of the magic ingredients setting the classic Blasters lineup apart from their LA punk contemporaries and most of the later roots rock bands following after. I was overjoyed to see the reunion tour of the original five down in Cincinnati with a gang of my dearest friends. This track that didn’t surface until The Blasters Collection has some of their loosest, most jubilant playing ever caught in the studio and is as close to what I saw twenty years later (with the added bonus of Lee Allen and Steve Berlin on saxophone, obviously that wasn’t part of the package in the ‘00s) as anything on record, with Taylor’s scorching piano solo as a highlight. 
• Ray Campi, “Wildcat Shakeout” (Ray Campi) – I found underground rockabilly star Ray Campi through guitarist/producer Skip Heller and while I love the ‘50s stuff for Dot and other classic labels, it’s the ‘70s/’80s work when he was briefly label mates with the blasters on Ronnie Weiser’s Rollin’ Rock Records, and those couple ‘90s albums Heller produced, that really speaks to me, like this ‘79 barn burner with a growling sax solo and laser-sharp guitar. 
• Dan Sartain, “I Could Have Had You” (Dan Sartain) – I found Alabama singer-guitarist Dan Sartain when he opened for one of the best Dirtbombs shows Anne and I saw at The Basement with a gang of fantastic out of town friends. His vibrant, fresh take on rockabilly, turning the R&B groove up as high as the country and proto-punk propulsion other purveyors favored, made an impression on me (in a night where the Dirtbombs took the fucking roof off, so that’s saying something) and I was always sorry I never got to see him a second time. 
• Frank Black and the Catholics, “If It Takes All Night” (Dave Philips) – Dog in the Sand is my favorite of the Rolling Stones-ish period of Frank Black and the Catholics and a big part of the reason was the added guitar of Dave Philips who also played with Bob Pollard and Tommy Stinson. This corroded late night trucker jam probably hit 80% of the mixes I made in 2001. “Now every job it is important, but still sometimes the money’s right. I saw the ghost of Johnny Horton; he said ‘We’re gonna make it to El Paso if it takes all night.’”
• Akron/Family, “No Space in This Realm” (Miles Seaton) – Akron/Family was at the heart of the Brooklyn scene I felt most connected to when I’d visit. Their first record – and their backing Michael Gira on Angels Of Light Sing “Other People” – knocked me sideways but this sophomore record, Meek Warrior, felt like a reckoning, like promise being fulfilled. These extended songs mutated and changed forms, in ways that touched on what some of my friends found in jam bands but with enough tension and dissonance to keep me interested. The addition of Hamid Drake here didn’t hurt but this was one of those Sunday morning records I always got something new from. 
• Sardool Sikander, “Sanu Ishq Barandi Chand Gayi” (Sardool Sikander) – I mostly knew Sikander from singing on some film soundtracks but the name rang a bell when I saw notice of his death. Asking several of my coworkers turned me onto what a massive name he’s been in Indian music since the ‘80s and I went on a deep dive that reminded me no matter how much I try to hear in a year, there’s always an ocean I can barely glimpse the edges of. 
• Thione Seck and Raam Daan, “Mass N’Diaye” (Thione Seck) – I got into Orchestra Baobab, the Senegalese band, with the Pirate’s Choice reissue in 2001 and their subsequent reformation – it was one of the records I played most that summer – then went back into their earlier work, which is how I found the period Thione Seck fronted them in the ‘70s and then Seck’s smoother but phenomenal solo work. This track, with seas of percussion and horn and guitar stabs, sums up so much of what I love about mbalax and his singing and bandleading. 
• The Headhunters, “God Make Me Funky” (Paul Jackson) – There’s no shortage of Paul Jackson tracks that show off his undeniable, catchy, thick and funky basslines, but I keep coming back to this first track off the first post-Herbie Hancock album Survival of the Fittest. Everything here is good – Mike Clark’s sinewy drums, Blackbyrd McKnight’s razor-sharp guitar, Bennie Maupin’s reeds, the Pointer Sisters’ backing vocals – but it all falls apart without that shifting, shiny bass. 
• Amy Farris, “Anyway” (Don Heffington) – Don Heffington’s played drums on as many of my favorite records of the last 30 years as anyone, always adding to the song without being ostentatious. I even love those two weirdo folk records he sang lead on. So it was a hard call, choosing one track, but first and most importantly, I have loved this song since I first heard it: the title track from Farris’s (also sadly RIP) one record as a frontwoman, co-written and produced by Dave Alvin, it puts Farris’s voice at the center of a classic ‘60s girl group soundscape which highlights his simpatico relationship with Alvin and lets his drumming and percussion really shine. 
• DMX, “Stop Being Greedy” (DMX) – Another standout track from the debut album of an artist gone too soon, this was the first DMX song I heard, and I picked up It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot the next week. The slinky, ‘70s throwback strings and shuddering drums set up the flexible suppleness of his delivery, moving between meters and even voices. It’s a tour de force on a record without a weak moment. 
• Stevie Wonder, “Living for the City” (Malcom Cecil) – I love that classic run of five Stevie Wonder records as much as any music ever made, and Malcom Cecil’s (also associate producer here) TONTO synthesizer is key to the steam-rising-off-pavement soundscape Wonder paints sonically here. 
• War, “The World Is a Ghetto” (BB Dickerson) – I grew up loving War, one of the handful of bands both my mom and Dad (Stepfather) had in their collection when they got together, and even saw them in the late ‘90s, before I was 21, that blew my mind. Obviously, that was long after founding bass player Dickerson left the band, but this song – on this original recording he also contributes lead vocals – is exactly the kind of fiery slow jam I love so much in their catalog, and even two decades after he left the band, this still brought the house down as an extended centerpiece jam in their set. 
• Sonny Simmons, “Metamorphosis” (Sonny Simmons) – Fire-breathing free jazz alto saxophone player Sonny Simmons put out a couple landmarks of the ‘60s ESP Disk era, especially the debut Staying on the Watch this song is taken from. Leading a killer band featuring his wife Barbara Donald on bass (check those ferocious unison lines they do), with a more traditional rhythm section of John Hicks (Modern Jazz Quartet) on piano, Teddy Smith (Horace Silver’s Song for My Father) on bass, and Marvin Patillo on drums, who all seem to relish going out. 
• Mos Def, “Bedstuy Parade & Funeral March” (Paul Oscher) – Mos Def’s The New Danger was an uneven but interesting attempt at a rock record that felt disappointing after his super-consistent Black on Both Sides, but it had some huge highlights. One of them for me was this song which featured Paul Oscher who also guested on a Hubert Sumlin record around the time I first saw Sumlin at the Thirsty Ear and was a key presence on those great late ‘60s/early ‘70s Muddy Waters records, but this was where his name burned into my mind, and I made the connection. 
• Black Rob, “Whoa!” (Black Rob) – Publicly I’d join my friends railing against Sean “Puffy” Combs and his Bad Boy stable as degrading music we grew up loving, privately, I loved more of those records than I’d let on and my inept version of those moves would work their way into my dancing on the regular. But this was one of the songs that united the people I knew in both camps and basement parties with old friends from high school. That infectious flow with a strings-draped beat courtesy of Buckwild, it’s a dance party even if I play it now, more than 20 years after I first heard it. 
• Meat Loaf, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (Jim Steinman) – Growing up I remember hearing Bat Out of Hell a fuck of a lot. One of my mom’s favorite record, one of the only tapes I remember her replacing when it wore out in her car, and I loved it immediately, especially this song. As a kid it was just such a weird mish-mash of styles, those heavy metal guitars and the Broadway-via-R&B-supper club delivery, the doo wop backing vocals, the time signature shifts, the sense of drama that echoes the teenage sensation that everything is the end of the world, and nothing is all that important. I’m not sure I’d played this in five years, but I still remembered every word, a testament to Jim Steinman’s songwriting. 
• Bay City Rollers, “Shang-a-Lang” (Les McKeown) – Another favorite of my mom’s when I was a kid, and one friends of mine still talk about or reference with fondness. 
• Digital Underground, “Heartbeat Props” (Shock G) – The constant fountain of creativity, diversity of sound, and sense of fun Digital Underground brought in the early ‘90s was a vital tonic, carrying the Parliament-Funkadelic torch into my era, you’d see props to them in as far-flung sources as Mondo 2000 magazine. I loved the big hit Sex Packets – and every record has some songs I wouldn’t want to live without – but my favorite is still the sophomore album Sons of the P. The piano line here and cracking snare/handclap combo with those chopped up horns get me excited every time. 
• Karma To Burn, “Nineteen (Live in Brussels)” (Will Mecum) – I was never as big a Karma to Burn fan as many of my friends but they made a big impression on me and the rest of Columbus. I had so many mutual friends with guitarist Will Mecum that when he died, I felt the reverberations all around. And this live album is a reminder that they were always a force to be reckoned with live. 
• Mahavishnu Orchestra, “Birds of Fire” (Rick Laird) – The gorgeous, ineffable strangeness of these first couple Mahavishnu records still delights and baffles me many years later and a big part of that mystery and joy comes from Rick Laird’s bass playing, always rooted in the groove but unafraid to follow the paths that revealed themselves. 
• World/Inferno Friendship Society, “So Long to the Circus” (Jack Terricloth) – Another band that played with genres and textures but always felt like they were following no guiding star except their own tastes and interests. Terricloth’s agitator vocals over the horn and keyboard charts on this song, from my favorite of their records, Red Eyed Soul, always put me in a specific time and place not long after college, but the songs hold up even at this remove. “It was just another circus, it was just your first time. You didn’t know what you were seeing. You didn’t know what you missed. What did you get out of it?” 
• Anita Lane, “Do The Kamasutra” (Anita Lane) – I remember walking into Shake It Records in Cincinnati and seeing this record, Sex O’Clock, caused me to exclaim out loud. I’d been a fan of Anita Lane from co-writing some of my favorite songs from Birthday Party (“A Dead Song”, “Dead Joe”, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (“From Her to Eternity”, “Stranger Than Kindness”), Einsturzende Neubauten (“Blume”), and various vocal appearances. This, her second record, was an offbeat disco album, with glittering string charts and organ, produced and arranged by Mick Harvey behind her perfect, studiedly disaffected vocal. “I was feeling like a bad omen.” 
• Pita, “3” (Peter Rehberg) – Peter Rehberg’s seismic impact on my taste and even my understand of what music is extends so far beyond his own work, as a producer, as a label owner (of Mego and Editions Mego), as an archivist (with Recollection GRM), all of which helped coalesce whole international scenes, that I almost lose sight of the beauty of his own music. Then I put this – Get Out – on after some years, or his work with Stephen O’Malley as KTL, or the three-way collaborations with Christian Fennesz and Jim O’Rourke as Fenn O’Berg, and I’m silenced but just how beautiful it is. This track uses crackling noise and static to add another sensual layer to the long synthesizer tones it disrupts; an end of the world and a world being born. 
• Alvin Lucier, “Navigations” (Alvin Lucier) – One of the great experimental American composers, Lucier is best known for I Am Sitting in a Room, and make no mistake, I love that piece, but there’s so much rich other work. He drew a direct thread from Aaron Copland to John Cage through Keith Rowe up to Missy Mazzoli and Claire Chase. 
• Bill Dixon, “Windswept Winterset” (Mario Pavone) – Bassist Mario Pavone put out dozens of astonishing records as a leader but some of my favorite work of his as a player comes with Anthony Braxton or Bill Dixon. This mind-blowing date, November 1981, set Dixon’s trumpet against two basses, Pavone and Alan Silva, and drummer Laurence Cook, for textures that turn into fireworks and vice versa. 
• Curtis Fuller, “Algonquin” (Curtis Fuller) – More jazz trombonists I love died this year than I’m thrilled with. Curtis Fuller lent his singular sound to one of the great records of the 20^th century, John Coltrane’s Blue Train and was a key piece of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, plus kept making great work until very recently. But I keep going back to his records as a leader with Blue Note and Savoy in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, especially this one, Bone & Bari, pairing him with Tate Houston on baritone saxophone and the cooking rhythm section of Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers, and Art Taylor. 
• The Staple Singers, “Samson and Delilah (Live)” (Pervis Staples) – Despite never having the prominence in the sound of Pops or Mavis, Pervis Staples was crucial in filling out those group harmonies and a crucial voice in turning them to incorporate more contemporary writers and musical elements without selling out their message. 
• Etta James, “Tell Mama” (Roger Hawkins) – Roger Hawkins is another musician who’s played on more records than I’m even aware of – if his drumming didn’t exist a good 20% of my record collection vanish to dust, one of the best parts of it. This Etta James cover of a Clarence Carter tune has always had a special place in my heart and it’s a killer showcase for Hawkins’ special pocket Hawkins. 
• Sammy Davis Jr. With Sam Butera and the Witnesses, “April in Paris” (Bobby Morris) – With any act of this vintage, there’s no way of knowing 100% who’s on which session but my hope is because Sam Butera and the Witnesses are credited on the record it means the full band is acting as Prima’s rhythm section. Bobby Morris wrote a hilarious, knowing memoir My Las Vegas, and was a go-to drummer for what seems like every great singer to come through Vegas in its golden age, but was best known with Sam Butera’s Witnesses in a long association with Louis Prima. They also backed Sammy Davis Jr on my favorite of his records, and this is a masterclass in subtle restraint behind a powerhouse vocalist.  
• Boog the Bandit, “Heart Away” (Boog the Bandit) – Boog the Bandit (Courtney Bruce) was one of the rising Columbus hip-hop stars, gone far too soon at 26 this year. The unhurried bounce on this record is a perfect showcase for her vocals about promise for the future and the world expanding before her and the lover mentioned in the lyric. 
• Blackalicious, “Deception” (Gift of Gab) – Blackalicious’s – Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel – Nia came out on the British alternative hip-hop label Mo’ Wax when I was 19 and that label could do no wrong in my eyes. Not long after, avant-garde music magazine The Wire ran a whole article about the California based Quannum Projects collective (including DJ Shadow, Lifesavas, Latryx) and I at once started buying everything I wasn’t already. I already went back to Nia and the follow up Black Arrow probably once a year but going back after hearing that Gift of Gab passed away, I’m struck all over by how fresh it sounds, how hopeful in the wake of the bullshit they’d come through and how intensely it believes in community and music as forces for good. 
• McCoy Tyner, “Presence (Live in Montreux)” (Juini Booth) – The greatest composer in town, Mark Lomax II, posted an extremely touching message about jazz bass legend Juini Booth after his passing, speaking to Booth’s engagement with younger musicians and how well he used his power of the bandstand. Booth shines on this live Tyner track, perfectly in sync with Alphonse Mouzon on drums shifting around the leader’s piano and Azar Lawrence’s saxophone. 
• Louis Andriessen and Ivo Janssen, “Image de Moreau” – I got into Andriessen when Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall uptown jointly presented a series devoted to him in 2010. I’d heard the name, but I thought anyone teaming up those two institutions deserved more of my attention, and I gorged myself on him. This dazzling, hypnotic piano piece, played brilliantly by Ivo Janssen, is one of my favorites. 
• Frederic Rzewski, “The People United Will Never Be Defeated, variation 12” (Frederic Rzewski) – One of my favorite composers and pianists. This is from the boxset that blew his work open for me, Piano Works: 1975-1999, and a section of his most famous work. I’m still sorry I never lined up a trip to Pittsburgh, one of my favorite cities, to see Rzewski play his semi-regular residency at a fish market. 
• Sanford Clark, “The Fool” (Sanford Clark) – Another rotating, meditative take on a folk form, this track always beguiled me. The bare bones song, written by Lee Hazelwood with Naomi Ford welds everything to a haunting, rumbling bass line and those same guitar chords over and over as Clark sounds desiccated, haunted, barely able to go on. 
• Biz Markie featuring TJ Swan, “Nobody Beats the Biz” (Biz Markie) – Biz Markie’s sense of wonder and curiosity seemed to lead him through everything he pursued: ghostwriting, acting, collaborations with Don Byron and Yo Gabba Gabba. He was an inspiration for reminding us you can make a life doing what’s interesting to you and stay grounded and have a good time. And these early singles are unassailable. 
• Paul Johnson, “Get Get Down” (Paul Johnson) – I love early house and this 1999 track from one of the original Chicago practitioners sums up everything it does for me, the sped-up blues piano arpeggios and hard, flattened almost airless drums, pitched up vocals. Anything I’ve ever heard from Paul Johnson sounded like a party without trying too hard. 
• Slipknot, “Opium of the People” (Joey Jordison) – Being in high school in the second half of the 90s, nu-metal was just starting to show up everywhere and I hated it. The one exception I made, a couple years ago, was Slipknot. Seeing them at an Ozzfest, it was an exciting mélange of everything I did like, churning rhythms and slashing riffs, power and catharsis without ever feeling stupid, and Joey Jordison’s drumming was one of the key reasons it spoke to me so strongly.  I still put on Iowa and Volume 3: The Subliminal Verses pretty regularly. 
• Entombed, “Wolverine Blues” (LG Petrov) – I’ve talked at length about how much the Earache death metal scene meant to me. While Carcass was my favorite and Napalm Death were who I’d proselytize about, I had a special place in my heart for the death ‘n’ roll stylings of Sweden’s Entombed – just hearing Petrov’s signature howl is enough to make me smile, especially paired with one of the perfect rhythm sections, Lars Rosenberg and Nicke Andersson (the latter of whom went on to found garage rock revivalists The Hellacopters). 
• Turbonegro, “Selfdestructo Bust” (Hank Von Hell) – Most days, and certainly for a lot of years, Norway’s Turbonegro are the platonic ideal of a meat and potatoes rock and roll band, with enough humor – winking lyrics, a bass player dressed up like Raggedy Andy, the high-pitched backing vocals here – to keep it from falling into the self-serious black hole that’s swallowed too many big guitar bands of this nature. My favorite period always had Hans-Erik Dyvik Husby as Hank von Helvete or Hank von Hell, singing. 
• ZZ Top, “Tush (Live)” (Dusty Hill) – My favorite power trio, easily one of my top five classic rock bands. I grew up with all these ZZ Top hits and they still sound great on a jukebox or cranked up on a stereo. The loose, swinging hookup between the three members, with Dusty Hill’s thick, shimmying bass as much a melodic instrument as rhythm, is just magical. It was a little more pro forma by the time I saw them but there was still some of that magic to go around and I was overjoyed to see them once. 
• Johnny Ventura, “Patacón Pisao” – International merengue superstar Johnny Ventura (Juan de Dios) had hit after hit in the ‘60s, all great, and later served as mayor of Santo Domingo. These vibrant, swinging records, sound just as good today as ever. 
• Larry Harlow, “That Groovy Shingaling” (Larry Harlow) – Harlow’s piano was the backbone of much of the Fania label, one of the great American catalogues and his records like this as a leader are some of the great examples of salsa and Latin soul we’ve ever had, along with his tireless work helping to create the Latin Grammy categories. 
• Little Richard, “She’s Got It” (Charles Connor) – On record, the Little Richard sound is tied deeply to great New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer, but other Nola drummer Charles Connor helped to architect that sound with James Brown saying that version of the band was “the first to put the funk in the rhythm.” This rare recording with him shows how much the subtle difference in feel changes the tenor of the track.  
• Kool and the Gang, “Who’s Gonna Take the Weight” (Dennis Thomas) – Saxophonist and co-founder of Kool and the Gang, Dennis Thomas, introduces this classic track with an iconic rap and leads it with an even more indelible riff. His tone is crucial to one of the defining funk bands of the 20^th century. Another band I don’t remember when I started loving because they were always there and always marvelous. 
• Tower of Power, “Come Back, Baby” (Bruce Conte) – I love Tower of Power in general but my favorite period is this record with one of my favorite soul singers, Lenny Williams, singing lead, and this song highlights the writing as well as the slippery-smooth guitar of the great Bruce Conte. 
• The Notorious BIG, “Big Poppa” (Chucky Thompson) – Chucky Thompson came out of DC, influenced by the go-go scene at its height and he brought some of that feeling into the work he did with Puffy. This co-production is a marvel of flattened nostalgic textures – courtesy of a big sample of the Isleys’ “Between the Sheets” – and just-hard-enough drums. I remember one year, over a decade after this record came out, three different friends of mine (all from wildly different socioeconomic backgrounds) said “That’s going to be played at my wedding.” 
• The Everly Brothers, “The Price of Love” (Don Everly) – This diamond-hard, sparse Everly Brothers classic made it into a particular roots-rock nerd zeitgeist in the early 2000s, showing up on a Buddy Miller record and a BR549 album in very close proximity. I already loved a lot of those songs but this one I hadn’t been familiar, co-written by both brothers, sent me down the rabbit hole into full-on fandom. And that opening line is just perfect – for the ages: “Wine is sweet, gin is bitter. Drink all you can but you won’t forget her.” 
• Tommy Flanagan, “They Say It’s Spring” (George Mraz) – Mraz cast a long shadow as a bass player starting in the ‘70s, setting a high standard for empathy and support. My favorite work of his was with the piano titan Tommy Flanagan, especially in these formats where it’s just the two of them. 
• Dolly Parton, “Jolene” (Kenny Malone) – Malone’s another drummer without whom a sizable chunk of my most beloved songs of the 20^th century wouldn’t have the same punch, that same feeling. There might not be a better example than Dolly Parton’s original recording of “Jolene.” The driving, clipped snare-and-cymbal beat makes the throwback lyric and circular acoustic guitar incredibly modern, reminding everyone this takes place in 1974 and also rubbing against the other elements in a way that helps keep this record form seeming dated, even 35 years later. 
• The Rolling Stones, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” (Charlie Watts) – Charlie Watts is a brilliant example of a drummer not only driving the engine of the band but continuing to move with them without ever sacrificing the most crucial elements of himself. The great Caryn Rose maybe put it best when she wrote for Vulture, calling this song “an incredible showcase of at least half a dozen different techniques, approaches, rhythms, and beats.” I could have filled out an entire list this long with just Charlie Watts features that meant the world to me. 
• Lee “Scratch” Perry, “Judgement in a Babylon” (Lee “Scratch” Perry) – Dub reggae spoke to me when I first heard it as a teenager, well before I’d done any drugs or been anywhere tropical, or any of the bullshit environmental elements people use to dismiss it. The heaviness and humidity of it takes me somewhere else, and Perry was the architect behind what we know as dub. This ‘80s tune has always been a favorite of mine, I’m a sucker for someone calling out their record label boss – by name, no less. 
• Black Oak Arkansas, “Fever in My Mind” (Rickie Lee Reynolds) – A different angle on heavy and humid, Black Oak Arkansas is one of my favorite of the ‘70s classic rock bands, partly from my dad. I’ve gone to this live record dozens of times and Reynolds’ unshakable rhythm guitar is as much a reason as Jim Dandy’s growl. 
• Melvin Van Peebles, “Sweetback’s Theme” (Melvin Van Peebles) – Melvin Van Peebles has long been one of my inspirations as a writer, a filmmaker, a polymath, a renaissance man, but two extended posts from friends of his, DJ Jonathan Toubin and baritone saxophonist “Moist” Paula Henderson, got me to go back this year and more seriously delve into his music. The Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song soundtrack is even better than I remembered, the electric piano melody, the woozy guitar and the horns, all courtesy of a young Earth Wind and Fire, are a fucking party smash, and this was just the beginning. 
• Hot 8 Brass Band, “What’s My Name?” (Bennie Pete) – At the vanguard of the current wave of brass bands, Hot 8, under the leadership of sousaphone player Bennie Pete, helped normalize hip-hop rhythms and smoother R&B integrated with the classic New Orleans second line. There’s never a time the vibrancy and deep funk of this kind of music does not bring me out of myself in the best ways, and no one does it better. 
• Jemeel Moondoc Trio, “Judy’s Bounce” (Jemeel Moondoc) – Jemeel Moondoc was a free jazz saxophonist who seemed to synthesize every strain of fire music that had come before when he appeared on the scene in the early ‘80s. This early record still knocks me out, teaming him with two musicians (both also departed) who came with a history with some of Moondoc’s inspirations, Fred Hopkins on bass who was best known for his years with Henry Threadgill, and drummer Ed Blackwell maybe still best known for his time with Ornette. The trio merged an earthy connection to the blues with thoughtful, untethered abstraction in a deeply personal language. 
• Bill Withers, “Use Me” (Melvin Dunlap) – Dunlap’s bass playing with Charles Wright’s 103^rd Street Rhythm Band is all superlative but their backing Bill Withers and turning the power of that band on some of the best songs in the American songbook led to my favorite of their work. Dunlap gives us one of the great bass lines here, without overpowering the song. 
• Sarah Dash, “Sinner Man” (Sarah Dash) – I love all the Labelle records but when we talk about Sarah Dash, I always come back to this slice of disco perfection. The three dimensional Tom Moulton mix envelops the vocal, with a marvelous, good for all times bass line, and the right mix of ache, intrigue, and defiance in the vocal. 
• Cabaret Voltaire. “Sensoria” (Richard H Kirk) – As a high schooler digging into industrial and going backwards, still a pal Artie handed the deluxe CD reissue of Micro-Phonies to me. I’d missed the MTV video for this so didn’t realize these were the band’s hits, but I fell for it instantaneously. Not long after, I got into the noisier earlier work, but this fried-around-the-edges, clattering pop still holds a place in my heart. 
• James Brown, “Cold Sweat” (Pee Wee Ellis) – James Brown reshaped American music at least a few times over an astonishing career, but this collaboration with sax player and arranger Pee Wee Ellis, who also provided vital textures to some of the best work by Van Morrison, Brother Jack McDuff, and Maceo Parker, and played a key role in records by Ali Farka Toure and Cheikh Lo when I was in my 20s, was a hydrogen bomb. This was the world breaking open and a million spirits rushing out. That crunching breakdown alone under an undulating Maceo solo and Brown’s adlibbing alone made a million babies, physical and figurative. And it still sounds like a call to action. 
• Dr. Lonnie Smith, “I Can’t Stand It (Live at Club Mozambique)” (Dr. Lonnie Smith) – One of the crucial organ players. I was lucky to see the good Doctor lead an octet in a lower Manhattan church as part of Winter JazzFest a few years ago, into his ‘70s, and it still blew my mind. I love so much of his work over an extensive career – the expansive jams like Afrodesia, his thumping groove setting up Lou Donaldson on those ‘60s Blue Notes, his later work as a leader and with people like sax player Javon Jackson – but I always find myself coming back to this burning live set with George Benson on guitar and Dave Hubbard and Ronnie Cuber on horns. 
• Bush Tetras, “Punch Drunk” (Dee Pop) – Funkiness from a different angle. It’s no surprise how much I love most of the No Wave scene and loved it as soon as I heard it as a kid, but the Bush Tetras have a special place in my heart, for witty, rock-solid songs, Cynthia Sley’s perfect, sneering vocals, the airtight hookup between Pat Place’s guitar and Laura Kennedy’s bass, and especially Dee Pop’s at once identifiable drumming. 
• Morphine, “Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer” (Billy Conway) – Morphine had antecedents but sounded like nothing else when I heard it.  One of those handful of shows I saw as a teenager that I still meet friends who were there too. Such an enormous sound for a three piece, a big part of which came from Billy Conway’s sparse, driving, intuitive work in the drum chair. I’ve loved other work of his over the years – a fantastic record he backed songwriter Bill Morrissey on, I even enjoyed that rep band Orchestra Morphine – and I love every Morphine record, but I’ve got a real soft spot for this final record The Night. 
• Slide Hampton Octet, “Strollin” (Slide Hampton) – One of the great jazz trombonists, Slide Hampton made unassailable records well into the 200s but these ‘60s Atlantic sides are something else. Him tearing into this great Horace Silver composition with a fiery band including salsa great Ray Barretto, Horace Parlan on piano, and George Coleman? Nothing’s better. 
• Philadelphia Experiment, “Call for All Demons” (Pat Martino) – This collaboration between Philly natives Uri Caine on keys, Christian McBride on bass, and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson on drums had as much to do with me getting really into soul jazz as anything else, I’d heard a couple of the classics, but this clicked it all into perspective. It’s also where I fell in love with Pat Martino’s guitar, guesting on a fistful of tracks including this funky dissection of a Sun Ra tune. 
• The Gap Band, “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” (Ronnie Wilson) – Nothing gets a party moving like these classic Gap Band singles. I’ve watched this change the vibration in the air in my living room and coming out of dive bar jukeboxes in at least five states. 
• UTFO, “Beats and Rhymes” (Kid Kangol) – I love this era of early hip-hop fused with electro. Mix Master Ice moved to Columbus, and I became aware of that fact around the time I started working at Chase, so you’d hear his group’s classics at clubs a lot which led me to look into their work beyond “Roxanne, Roxanne” and I treasure that greatest hits to this day. 
• Grace Jones, “Pull Up to The Bumper” (Robbie Shakespeare) – How in the hell am I supposed to pick one Robbie Shakespeare song? With his rhythm section partner Sly Dunbar, as a bass player, as a songwriter, as a producer, crushed it for 40 years with everyone from Dennis Brown to Serge Gainsbourg, Bill Laswell to Bob Dylan, but my favorite work is still probably this fantastic run with Grace Jones. I’ve played Grace Jones on a jukebox in London and had animated conversation about her with a buttoned-up coworker and his partner outside the Wexner Center. Those records are never far from me and the bass line on this, there aren’t even words. 
• Joe Simon, “The Chokin’ Kind” (Joe Simon) – If there’s something I love as much as downtown New York’s No Wave, it’s southern soul, and there weren’t many practitioners as strong as Joe Simon. This ‘69 side written by the great Harlan Howard is example number one of the beautiful things that grow at the fertile intersection of country music and R&B. 
• Maddox Brothers and Rose, “Bring It On Down” (Don Maddox) – The unhinged, dancing on the edge records of the Maddox Brothers and Rose have always delighted me, presaging most of the rockabilly and outlaw country I gravitated to. 
• Michael Nesmith and The First National Band, “Joanne” (Michael Nesmith) – I know the post-Monkees Michael Nesmith catalog very glancingly but what I do know of it came from the intense love and advocacy of several friends around the Twangfest orbit, especially Matt Benz. These First National Band records where he invented country rock are beautiful, full of songs with a real warmth for the world and killer playing (Red Rhodes pedal steel here is a wonder). Also, early dating Anne, my pal Andy was playing a record I didn’t know but we both liked, and I walked up, read what it was off the turntable, and exclaimed “It’s Michael Nesmith! You know, from the Monkees!” And she hasn’t let me live down that incredibly extraneous second sentence ever since. 
• JD Crowe and the New South “Home Sweet Home Revisited” (JD Crowe) – JD Crowe took the Bill Monroe and Miles Davis tradition of knowing who the next great players were, setting them in a context where they can shine, and driving them to greater heights, again and again, and he did it as well as either of those bandleaders. It’s hard to believe the quintet on this 1975 classic – Jerry Douglas on dobro, Tony Rice on guitar, Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and violin, Bobby Slone on bass and fiddle, centered around Crowe’s crystalline banjo playing. 
• Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, “Here We Are” (Tommy Spurlock) – It was no surprise two of the artists who’ve made some of my favorite records of the 20^th century would team up on a record I loved this much but Old Yellow Moon was one of my favorite records of the year it came out. One of my favorite elements of both Harris and Crowell is their taste in musicians to work with – from Harris bringing Crowell into her first big solo band, to using Will Kimbrough when we saw her at Rose Music Center this past summer – and the way they build long relationships with these players. Tommy Spurlock’s pedal steel part, like a river of mercury, on this song is a prime example. 
• Barry Harris, “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” (Barry Harris) – I put this here partly because Harris has a similar cultivating quality, a sense of friendship and mentorship that goes hand in hand with one of the most gorgeous piano sounds, without being syrupy or contrived, of the 20^th century, and a similar taste for finding the core of American songs as we get into in this mellow home stretch. Still conducting zoom lessons for rock bottom prices, imparting hard-won bebop wisdom he started accumulating working with Max Roach and Miles in the ‘50s and rooming with Monk in the ‘70s. This Live at the Jazz Workshop, with maybe the best rhythm section for this kind of work, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes, started decades-long collaborations and friendships, and set the standard for what we mean when we say piano trio. 
• Nanci Griffith, “Late Night Grande Hotel” (Nanci Griffith) – Someone else it was almost impossible to pick a single song for. I only got to see her once, supporting the second Other Voices, Other Rooms, so a set heavy on Griffith as interpreter which I also love. But I really love her unsparing songwriting – which Amy Rigby touchingly alluded to when we saw her at Natalie’s Worthington the week after Griffith passed – and unafraid to eschew roots textures entirely, as on this record co-produced by Martin Van Hook from Mike and the Mechanics and Rod (“God Gave Rock and Roll to You”) Argent. My favorite mode of her is also torch songs and this is one of the best of the last 30 years. “And maybe you were thinking that you thought you knew me well, but no one ever knows the heart of anyone else. I feel like Garbo in this late night Grande Hotel ‘cause living alone is all I’ve ever done well.” 
• Raul Esparza, “Being Alive” (Stephen Sondheim) – Yeah, we’re ending with a second Sondheim. He made that much of an impression over the years. This production of Company, directed by John Doyle, was the first Sondheim I ever saw on Broadway, the first Company I ever saw live, and the first time I ever saw Raul Esparza on stage, so it made a big impression – I’m sure I did other great stuff that trip but I’d have to check my notes to remember what, and so this is the definitive version for me, of one of the great songs about dissecting the good of being alive, and why we’re built to go through it together instead of alone. Thank you all for reading this. I love you. “Someone to crowd you with love. Someone to force you to care. Someone to make you come through, who’ll always be there, as frightened as you, of being alive.”