THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,478) Mickey Newbury — “T Total Tommy”
Call it folk rock or call it progressive country, but call it “a great song”, “[b]ouncy on the surface with some undeniably catchy lyrics”, “[t]oo low key to be a hit but ….” (Franco, https://whatfrankislisteningto.negstar.com/americana/mickey-newbury-looks-like-rain-mercury-1969/), “folky, almost a Bob Dylan homage, with plenty nursery rhymes inserted – I guess it’s about the trials of being a poet”. (Benimal, https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/mickey-newbury/looks-like-rain.p/)
It is from the legendary country songwriter Newbury’s second LP — Looks Like Rain (the first he didn’t disown). “[T]he album is visionary. The listener is drawn into the narrator’s world. One of uncertainty, a dreamlike hallucinatory emotional landscape where heartbreak, loneliness, madness and despair exist all to the sound of wind chimes and rain.” (Franco, https://whatfrankislisteningto.negstar.com/americana/mickey-newbury-looks-like-rain-mercury-1969/) Thom Jurek writes of the album:
In sonic terms, Looks Like Rain sounds as far from the studio slickness of the “countrypolitan” machine that rock & roll was from Lawrence Welk. In fact, Newbury’s sound held more in common with Tim Buckley’s or Simon & Garfunkel’s or Fred Neil’s. But even here, comparisons fail. . . . Newbury created an album so haunting, so elegant, so full of melancholy and mystery, it sounds out of time, out of space and is as enigmatic in the 21st century as it was when it was released in 1969. The album’s sound seems to come from inside the mind of the listener, rather than from the speakers on the stereo. . . . Newbury’s stories are so vivid, and so picaresque even with their lyric economy, they feel like movies. He can move back and forth in time while changing images to suit his evolving narrative. . . . [I]t is masterfully and deliberately articulated. It is fine and accurate in its execution yet so carefully soft and spacious in its pace, it is brimming with strangeness balanced by charm; it defies any attempt at categorization or criticism. While it was regarded with nearly complete commercial disinterest in its day, it has been suitably regarded as a rare work of genius that has influenced countless songwriters in its wake.
As to Newbury, Franco tell us:
He wrote songs that were covered by Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Kenny Rogers, Andy Williams (!), Johnny Cash, Scott Walker, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, The Box Tops, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Nick Cave and others. He has been recorded over 1300 times by more than 1000 performers Musicians know and love him. . . . Newbury writes lyrics that are incredibly personal. His songs are about loss, love and life stripped bare of bravado. The songs are confessional, naked and sincere. Musically, he always seems to be trying to make sure the music reflects the lyrical content in both rhythm and structure. He is not adverse to using studio tricks or sound affects in his music if that will help create the desired mood in the lyrics. Newbury wasn’t the first person to write personal songs in country. Hank Williams made a career of it in the late 40s and early 50s. Newbury wasn’t even the only one doing in the late 1960s, Kris Kristofferson, John Hartford, Buck Owens, and others were doing the same. Newbury was, perhaps, the most fragile and wounded of the new writers but he was also, perhaps, the least wedded to country sounds even though he embraced his country music history. He brought post Dylan folky ruminations and a gentle pop sensibility to his country music. . . . He is Americana, country, singer songwriter, folk, progressive country, old timey, pop and even rock at times.
https://whatfrankislisteningto.negstar.com/americana/mickey-newbury-looks-like-rain-mercury-1969/
Kurt Wolff adds that:
Along with fellow songwriters such as Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Tom T. Hall, Mickey Newbury helped revolutionize country music in the 1960s and ’70s by bringing new, broader musical influences as well as a frank, emotional depth to the music — while at the same time never losing respect for tradition. Newbury infused his country music with haunting beauty and spiritual melancholy, creating an impressive collection of introspective, emotionally complex songs that are more spiritual cousins of the work of Leonard Cohen than that of Roy Acuff. (Newbury, in fact, calls himself a folksinger and has never toured with a band, preferring the ambience of a quiet coffeehouse.) . . . Newbury was better known as a songwriter than as a singer. Newbury recorded 15 albums over a nearly 30-year period . . . but his soft, beautiful tenor voice rarely reached the charts.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mickey-newbury-mn0000525789#biography
Kurt Wolff tells us of Newbury’s history:
[Newbury] sang in a vocal group called the Embers . . . and played and hung out in Houston’s black R&B and blues clubs, where he was nicknamed “the Little White Wolf” by Gatemouth Brown. Newbury joined the Air Force and was stationed in England. After his discharge, he turned back to music. In 1963, a friend of his landed him a writing job with Acuff-Rose, and Newbury moved to Nashville. During the next several years, he became friends with such singers as Roy Orbison, Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson, and Townes Van Zandt. . . . In 1966 Don Gibson had a Top Ten hit with Newbury’s “Funny Familiar Forgotten Feelings,” and Newbury’s writing career was off and running. A long string of hit songs followed, recorded by such artists as Kenny Rogers & the First Edition (“Just Dropped In”), Eddy Arnold (“Here Comes the Rain, Baby”), and Andy Williams (“Sweet Memories”). Newbury’s first album of his own was Harlequin Melodies for RCA in 1968 . . . an album he later detested[]. He quickly got out of his RCA contract and instead turned to a small four-track studio . . . in a converted garage (becoming, before the word “outlaw” ever became fashionable, one of the first Nashville artists to work outside the studio system). It was here that he recorded some of his best solo albums, starting with Looks Like Rain for Mercury . . . . But Mercury didn’t support the album, and so Newbury switched to Elektra in 1970. With this label, he released a string of superb albums . . . . In 1972 Newbury had a Top 30 hit with “American Trilogy,” a suite-like arrangement of “Dixie,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “All My Trials.” The song later became a major hit for Elvis Presley and a standard in his repertoire.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mickey-newbury-mn0000525789#biography
Here is Jamie Lin Wilson:
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