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Digger
reviews Jimmy Webb’s new album Just
Across The River.
American
singer/songwriter Jimmy Webb was born at the very start of the
post-war period into a musical and religious family in
Oklahoma. He learned piano and accompanied his conservative
minister father and musically supportive mother as they played
their guitar and accordion in the choir at his father’s
church. Thus one of America’s greatest and most celebrated
singer/songwriters began to take shape. Influenced by his
clandestine appreciation of the emerging rock and roll coupled
with the religious and country music which surrounded him, he
started to write songs. As a white man, he was a fish out of
water at Tamla Motown but nevertheless was, for a time, one of
their most prolific songwriters. Very early in his career he
achieved big success with By The Time I Get To Phoenix and
thereafter in the later sixties followed famous associations
with The 5th Dimension, Richard Harris and the
seemingly omnipresent Glen Campbell with classic Jimmy Webb
songs – the uplifting Up Up And Away, the innovative and
haunting Macarthur’s Park and Didn’t We and the evocative
Wichita Lineman and Galveston. Almost spiritual, Webb songs
were instantly recognisable and highly memorable laced as they
often were with impressive and characteristic key, tempo and
mood changes.
Webb’s
success had come relatively early, and he was, by now,
well-known for writing songs for other people. He focused on
albums and projects in which he performed himself and
developed associations with west-coast based musicians. This
work was always highly praised and well-received by the
critics and his songs continued to be in demand by many of the
biggest names in the business, including The Everly Bros, Joe
Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Rogers, Art
Garfunkel, John Denver, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. It was
perhaps being based in LA that led him to write film scores,
numbers and soundtracks for musicals and for TV and to go down
the classical music route, much in the way that British
contemporaries John Barry and Paul McCartney did, working with
the likes of The London Symphony Orchestra.
Three
albums stood out in more recent times, Suspending Disbelief,
Ten Easy Pieces and Twilight Of The Renegades, all of which
serve to prove what a consistently good songwriter Jimmy Webb
is. In the case of Ten Easy Pieces Jimmy’s take on some of
his more famous songs provides a simple clarity to them, being
reduced as they are to the basics without the frills of the
big orchestrations and productions that we are familiar with
on ‘the originals’. The other two albums include great
‘new’ songs. Jimmy always surrounds himself with the best
musicians and technicians, some well-known ad some not
household names, which serves to do his work justice.
Jimmy
continues to write for film and TV and for other artists as
well as himself and tours regularly, often making sojourns
across to the UK. His name is mentioned in the same lists as
Bacharach, Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein, Porter and
Gershwin.
Just
Across The River
1.
'Oklahoma Nights' featuring Vince Gill
2. 'Wichita Lineman' featuring Billy Joel
3. 'If You See Me Getting Smaller' featuring Willie Nelson
4. 'Galveston' featuring Lucinda Williams
5. 'P.F. Sloan' featuring Jackson Browne
6. 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix' featuring Glen Campbell
7. 'Cowboy Hall of Fame'
8. 'Where Words End' featuring Michael McDonald
9. 'Highwayman' featuring Mark Knopfler
10. 'I Was Too Busy Loving You' featuring J.D. Souther
11. 'It Won't Bring Her Back'
12. 'Do What You Gotta Do'
13. 'All I Know' featuring Linda Ronstadt
The new Jimmy Webb album Just Across The River, whilst
including some new titles, mainly features Jimmy and a number
of his friends and associates performing duets of some of
Jimmy's most-loved and well-known songs.
For a nostalgia website such as ours, many of the songs are as
familiar to us as the face of a friend, and this could be a
curse as well as a blessing - there could be a concern
that these new renditions somehow detract from the original
recordings we know and love. Fortunately, the album delivers
in that these new interpretations don't undermine the
originals. Jimmy has sung and recorded many of his
compositions solo on a number of occasions and his
'interpretations' of his own words and lyrics are always
welcome. Far from detracting or adding little to the
'originals', it's a really interesting extra dimension to
hear other's input into these songs along with Jimmy's -
I say 'others' when I refer to an impressive array of
some of the biggest names in music. Billy Joel's
characteristically quirky and unique delivery on
Wichita Lineman is a joy and the simple and no-fuss reworking
of By the Time I
Get to
Phoenix, featuring Glen Campbell, is particularly notable as
well as inspired and quite emotional.
This is a beautiful album and not to be confused as a rehash
or a compilation of hits.
The recordings here stand up in their own right and
the handful of new songs will grow on you with each additional
hearing.
Digger
September 2010
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