VINYL REVIEWS

By Ossie Bladine

“Into the Purple Valley”

1972 / Reprise

Produced by Jim Dickinson, Van Dyke Parks and Lenny Waronker

“Into the Purple Valley” was decades in the making when it was released in 1971 as blues virtuoso Ry Cooder’s second solo album. It is a collection of 11 sundry songs that together tell the story of America in the 1930s.

“How Can You Keep On Moving” sets the tone of plight in the Depression, “Can’t stay, can’t go back, can’t migrate, so where the hell am I?” Each track is like an entry into a musical textbook, with chapters ranging from the calypso flavor of “F.D.R. in Trinidad,” the woes of losing your woman to a man with “Money Honey” and the traditional ballad of the farmer, “the man who feeds us all,” on “Taxes on the Farmer Feeds Us All.” A remake of Woodie Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man” ends the album where it began, in the depths of dustbowl despair like a telling of The Grapes of Wrath.

The musicianship showcased by Cooder is as eccentric as his taste in out of date folk tunes. He sparkles on a docile acoustic instrumental, uses a mandolin on Johnny Cash’s “Hey Porter” and twangs alongside a low horn and xylophone on “Denomination Blues.” Cooder’s remake of Leadbelly’s classic “On a Monday” is a model of virtuoso slide-guitar for any generation. For an album that was outdated before it was recorded, “Into the Purple Valley” is a treasure for fans of reworked roots music.

“Boogie with Canned Heat”

1968 / liberty Studios

Produced by Skip Taylor and Dallas Smith

From the first growling guitar lick, “Boogie With Canned Heat” is like a blues monster gnarling its teeth. The opener features Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson on the mouth harp, and a diced George Harrison-like guitar, as Bob “The Bear” Hite curses the “Evil Woman.”

Canned Heat’s third album, re-released in 2005 on CD, is as fresh sounding today as it was upon release almost 40 years ago. The quintet revives the spirit of old bluesmen and adds a personal touch of laid back boogie woogie, coming off like an alternative set of The Yardbirds’ songs with the accent on improvisation. The feature track is “On The Road Again,” the group’s first hit, which features a tingling guitar and smooth rhythm as Wilson lays down some memorable harmonica lines and classic blues lyrics: “And my dear mother left me, when I was quite young ??She said, ‘Lord, have mercy on my wicked son.”

Lead guitarist Henry “Sunflower” Vestine hits the right note at every moment, especially on “Whiskey Headed Woman #2,” a follow-up to Tommy McClennan’s 1940 song, where he runs his guitar up and down the song’s spine while Bear Brand warns, “If she don’t treat me right, I’ll send her to the promise land.” “Amphetamine Annie” features a call and response between Hite and Vestine’s electric guitar and the whole band juts in for the chorus, “Speed Kills!”

To cap off the album, “The Fried Hockey Boogie” struts through the band’s repertoire on an 11-minute jam session that spotlights the band’s balanced attack of blues rock proficiency. It’s easy to see why they were one of the best blues rockers of the ‘60s and ‘70s. As Hite’s last words on the CD state, “Don’t forget to boogie,” Canned Heat never does here.

“Boogie with Canned Heat:” produced by Dallas Smith; Released in 1968; release of CD Reissue in 2005 includes six bonus tracks originally released as singles.