“Shut It Tight”
by T Bone Burnett
from Proof Through the Night
MP3 no longer available for download
4.7 MB download; 3:01 running time; lyrics)
“Hula Hoop”
by T Bone Burnett
from Proof Through the Night
MP3 no longer available for download
5.2 MB download; 3:22 running time; lyrics)
I had forgotten what an incredible album Proof Through the Night is. The songs present memorable stories revolving around the fleeting nature of the things most of us are obssessed with: beauty, fame, sex, and remembrance, to name a few. It’s a tightly-constructed record lyrically, so to vary the sonic mix Burnett pairs up with a different artist on each track: people like Mick Ronson, Peter Townshend, and Ry Cooder. Everything is captured in a phenomenal example of that big, lush, clean LA studio sound of the early ’80s.
Unfortunately, my turntable doesn’t do the sound justice. While I have a pretty decent turntable now, in 1983 I didn’t. You can still glimpse how good the record should sound, but I really really wish someone would re-release this album on CD. Perhaps since T Bone recently won a Grammy as producer of the Oh Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, there may be enough interest in him now for someone to get this album in the catalog again.
It was really hard to nail down which songs to put up for download. If I had the space, believe me I’d put the whole album up. As it happens, the two songs I chose have a personal connection in one way or another.
“Shut It Tight”—In the late ’70s and early ’80s, my brother worked for Johnny Cash, mostly as a monitor engineer. He heard this song shortly after he gave up working on the road, and said he really wanted to try to talk Johnny Cash into recording it. I don’t know if my brother ever talked to him about it, but as far as I know he never recorded it. Too bad—about the only way you could improve this song would be to have Johnny Cash sing it, and I confess every time I hear the song I try to imagine it sung with his voice. It’s not that I’m a big Johnny Cash fan, it’s just that his voice would fit so perfectly into the Appalachian arrangement of this song…. The collaborating artist on this song is Richard Thompson (and I am a huge fan of his—I’ll get some RT into this space sooner or later). Individual instruments are not credited, but I imagine the excellent mandolin work is by Thompson; though I haven’t ever heard him play mandolin before.
“Hula Hoop” is a funny, sarcastic take on the flimsiness of fame. In 1984, I saw T Bone Burnett play solo at a small club in Kansas City. Besides being an entertaining storyteller, he was very good at getting the audience involved in the show. For this song, he divided the club into left and right halves. One half sang the the "Humumumumah humumah” parts (make it really African-sounding, he said) while the other sang the swooping guitar part, “Bum bum, bum bum; bum bum, bum bum.” It was totally cool. One guy had a couple hundred people rocking.
The usual tech notes apply: this track was recorded from vinyl into Pro Tools, exported as AIFF and encoded into MP3 format using iTunes. Variable rate encoding, high quality. Blah blah blah. I did do a little EQ in Pro Tools.
Perhaps the best thing I can say about this album is that it changed my life. It still makes me think—even though I don’t always come to the same conclusions as T Bone—after all these years.
Can I just say here that, in all seriousness, some of the best songs ever have been kept in the neighborhood of three chords... an endless variation of D,C and G for instance. Simplicity at it's musical best as demonstrated by T. Bone and friends. I have always loved that 'Appalachian' sound. I'll take mandolin and fiddle over saxophone drenched R&B any day. Also, I can SO hear Johnny Cash doing 'Shut It Tight'. Hoolahoop, on the other hand, was a bit reminiscent of Joe Ely in it's content and style. Once again Pat, thanks for the tunes- I, for one, totally dig this forum :)
Aw, shucks, Chris. Thanks.
To tell the truth I'm just digitizing old records and flapping my jaws for my own entertainment, but I'm glad you like it.
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