Notable CDs

There’s no gainsaying Giddens’ taste, talent, or good intentions. So it’s easy to understand why T Bone Burnett would want to sink his producer chops into her renditions of these songs pedigreed by everyone from Dolly Parton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Elizabeth Cotten and Charles Aznavour. But sometimes her taste, talent, and good intentions come off a little too willful, thus dislodging Giddens from the fine line that separates “good taste” from “tastes good.” Anyone old enough to remember Joan Baez or Charlie the Tuna will understand.

Medicine

Musically, vocally, and verbally, Drew Holcomb is a little too easy to mistake for an Americana Everyman for his carefully crafted country-folk/folk-rock hybrid to detonate upon impact. Listen to him closely, however, and his Christian faith or at least its penumbra will cast his observations about love and hope, whether carnal or divine, into a relief that’s less subtle than it seems at first. The question of whether he could be doing more to make that relief sharper—or close listening easier—remains open.

In Session

The three songs comprising the first eight minutes and 44 seconds demonstrate that at 71 Lawson remains adept at choosing material to showcase the range of whichever whippersnappers happen to be in his latest Quicksilver lineup.“Roll Big River,” “Wilma Walker,” “Calling All Her Children Home”—each keeps its sentimentality in check with some of contemporary bluegrass’s most precise vocal harmonies and stringed-instrument playing. By comparison, the nine songs comprising the remaining 24:48 are merely competent—except for “Americana,” which is sappy.

Freedom Highway Complete: Recorded Live at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church

Despite the bootleg audio, it’s hard to believe that this performance took place 50 years ago, so “there” are its musical and sermonizing elements. And despite Pops Staples’ introductory admonishment that what’s about to follow is worship and not entertainment, there’s plenty of the latter, what with Phil Upchurch anchoring the rhythm section and the Staples breathing civil-rights-era life into one church-friendly song after another. Most entertaining of all: the way that Reverend Hopkins shames his flock into bringing the evening’s “love offering” to $100.

Spotlight

The Soul of Designer Records (Big Legal Mess) is a four-CD compilation of obscure black-gospel singles cut in Memphis between 1967 and 1977 by even more obscure black-gospel groups. Many of the sessions were engineered by the Sun Records alumnus Roland Janes. All of them were produced (or at least overseen) by the late half- Scandinavian, half-American-Indian enigma wrapped in a riddle known as Style Wooten. Wooten’s surname came from the family that “adopted” him and his abandoned mother. His first name he gave to himself.

Their low-budget origins notwithstanding, The Soul of Designer Records’ 101 tracks (approximately one-fifth of Designer’s output) retain an exuberantly vibrant immediacy. But it’s Wooten himself who emerges as the emerging narrative’s protagonist. First-hand reminiscences about the mysterious ways in which he worked (and lived) permeate the 13-page liner-note booklet, ultimately transforming the music from the soundtrack of a scene into the soundtrack of a life.