REISSUED!!! A deluxe regular edition CD set featuring all three MICKEY NEWBURY albums—Looks Like Rain, ‘Frisco Mabel Joy, and Heaven Help the Child—along with a disc of previously unreleased demos, single tracks, and a live radio performance.
MICKEY NEWBURY was a songwriter’s songwriter at the dawning of the era of the singer-songwriter, yet he was also an unknown name on the Billboard charts. Mickey Newbury found early writing success in Nashville, enabling him to pave the way for his friends and contemporaries like Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and David Allen Coe. Even to this day, Newbury continues to influence the most championed songwriters. His songs have been recorded nearly 1400 times by more than 1000 performers including Johnny Cash, Scott Walker, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, the Box Tops, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Nick Cave. He is the only songwriter ever to have number one hits (with different songs) in the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts within the space of one year (and three of those songs were in the charts simultaneously!). But Mickey Newbury himself was by far the best interpreter of his own songs. The albums that constitute An American Trilogy—Looks Like Rain, ’Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help the Child—were recorded between 1969 and 1973 at a home studio in Madison, Tennessee. Cinderella Sound was a converted two-car garage adjacent to the house of guitarist and engineer WAYNE MOSS—but you would never know this based on the magisterial sound of these albums, which are regarded as prime works in Mickey’s recorded canon. On these records, he was backed by AREA CODE 615, a group that included some of Nashville’s nest studio cats—CHARLIE McCOY, NORBERT PUTNAM, JERRY KENNEDY, KENNETH BUTTREY, WELDON MYRICK and Wayne Moss— much the same crew who had played on Dylan’s mind-blowing run of albums from ’66 to ’69. Mickey’s admiration of these and other song-based head-trip records of the era helped shape his vision of the album as a cohesive work of art. Packaged in custom-made, hand-printed boxes produced in association with Grammy winning designer SUSAN ARCHIE. Includes an additional CD of previously unheard and unreleased songs, rarities, alternate versions and a 1970 radio session recorded for Los Angeles DJ SKIP WESHNER. Also included is a booklet with rare photos, extensive liner notes and interviews with the original musicians and friends (GUY CLARK, STEVE EARLE, LARRY JON WILSON, JAC HOLZMAN, DAVID ALLEN COE), and original texts about Newbury by WILL OLDHAM and BEN FONG-TORRES.
