"Hillbilly Central" was the name of the studio
Tompall Glaser
ran after the disbandment of the
Glaser Brothers
in the mid-'70s. It was the portion of the shared assets that he earned in the fall-out and he set up camp there, continuing to record for
MGM
, turning into something like the outlaw's outlaw: the ornery renegade who ran on the fringes, providing a clubhouse with his studio --
Waylon Jennings
and
Billy Joe Shaver
cut albums there -- earning respect instead of hits.
Bear Family
chronicles this time on their two-part 2005 reissue dubbed
Hillbilly Central
, providing the first CD reissues of his classic LPs for
Polydor
. The first volume,
My Notorious Youth
, contains 1973's
Charlie
and 1974's
Take the Singer with the Song
, transitional albums that eased
Tompall
out of the
Glasers
and onto his own winding path -- quite literally so in the case of
which, according to
Colin Escott
's excellent liner notes (over the course of the two discs, they untangle a knotty past and tell a complete history), was initially billed to the
. It may have carried their name but it was surely a showcase for
, particularly his gift for worn, weary introspection and storytelling. Unlike the
albums that followed,
had a hefty dose of
originals, highlighted by the title track -- an account of a no-good bastard who leaves his family in the lurch -- the story song
"Big Jim Colson,"
"Bad Bad Cowboy,"
and its bad-time companion
"An Ode to My Notorious Youth (Barred from Every Honky Tonk)."
His covers of three
Kinky Friedman
songs -- including a terrific
"Sold American"
-- are pitch-perfect complements, as is a starkly melancholy medley of country gospel standards
"I'll Fly Away"
"I Saw the Light,"
which don't contradict the carousing as much as underscore the sadness that runs beneath them. And that's the most compelling thing about
: for outlaw country, it's surprisingly high and lonesome, a soundtrack for rumination, not parties.
The same can't quite be said of its companion here,
, although it shares the
medley, albeit in a different, expanded form.
released
Take the Singer
in the U.K. early in 1974 to capitalize on the momentum
had from his
Wembley
festival performance. As it's caught between
, his defacto debut even if it didn't bear his name, and his out-and-out first solo album
Tompall Glaser Sings the Songs of Shel Silverstein
, this is very much a transitional album containing a big chunk of
Shel
and a lot of introspective outlaw ballads reminiscent of
. The difference is, none of the sad songs come from
Glaser
's pen: he rounds up songs by
Kris Kristofferson
,
Don Williams
, and, yes,
Silverstein
-- plus the lesser-known
Jimmy Louis
Lee Emerson
-- to hit those melancholy notes. These songs don't quite have the sad swagger of those on
but the music sounds fuller, which points the way to
's late-'70s records as strongly as the creeping preponderance of humor, coming not just from
-- who has the old-timey romp
"Broken Down Momma"
-- but also the slyly funny and savage
"Texas Law Sez,"
which deserved to go much farther as a single than it did. Some of this material popped up later in the U.S. --
"Broken Down Mama"
showed up on
The Great Tompall and His Outlaw Band
in 1975 -- and this has a similar, but different, version of the
medley from
, one that tacks
"Love Lifted Me"
on the end, but by and large this is a good collection of great songs, one that holds its own with the best of
's solo work.
Finally,
added two songs to the end of this volume of
: the paper-thin and sugar-sweet unreleased AM pop confection
"Love Stoned,"
co-written by
Jim Glaser
Jimmy Payne
, and a good, plain-spoken rendition of
"Will the Circle Be Unbroken"
that was previously unreleased. It all adds up to an essential part of the Outlaw lexicon that has been buried for too long now. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine