One Track Mind: George Harrison, "Rising Sun" (2002)

NICK DERISO: That George Harrison kept recording until two months before his death at age 58 was its own blessing. After all, he hadn't put out a new album since 1987.

But you wondered what would become of Harrison's final works, since producer Jeff Lynne had decided to finish the project in his absence. After all, Lynne -- perhaps even more so than Harrison -- was prone to unsuccessfully ornate albums.

What happened was one of the best two or three records Harrison issued. It ranks right alongside his debut and the 1979 self-titled album.

Lynne -- who parlayed a 1970s Beatles obsession called ELO into a producing gig with each of the band's members in the 1980s and '90s (if you include Lennon's posthumous "Free As A Bird") -- was respectful of his passing, but familiar enough to realize that Harrison's religious fervor needed a balancing dose of the former Fab's often-overlooked charms.

So, we get -- on perhaps this record's biggest surprise, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" -- some ukelele from Harrison. (You can't be sad when someone is playing the ukelele.) It's a joy amid so much thundering emotion, and just one example of the subdued approach that permeates the "Brainwashed" CD.

This project finds its voice, however, in moments of painful stillness -- in those times when Harrison faced his final adversity. "Rising Sun" is definitive.

It started as a fine little acoustic number. But like all of Harrison's signature stuff, which is always somehow both downbeat and uplifting, this required a larger sound.

That's why Harrison was attracted, in his first solo incarnation, to Phil Spector -- who couldn't fathom a record without a few thousand violins playing along. And it's why Lynne, playing posthumous svengali, wasn't going to let this one be.

Using Harrison's initial and insistent guitar-strum beat as a platform, Lynne's production explores both the ghost of regret and the atmospheric vistas that mark the best of Harrison's -- and, yeah, Lynne's -- work.

Yet, it's clear that Lynne understands the tune's wonderous strength. He adds rumbling fiddles, but largely gets out of the way.

Harrison never flinches from what we know -- and what, more particularly, he knows -- to be true: He's a goner. Harrison plays the slide guitar with the same conviction on "Rising Sun," like there isn't much time but so much to convey. Ravaged by then with throat cancer, he retakes his place as one of his generation's most stirring spiritualists.

The larger album -- was he ever more consistent? -- also finds a way to make room for Harrison's lesser but still enjoyable pursuits, from the jokey to the precious. Credit Lynne with grasping that a smidge of each would make this Harrison album a completely realized gem.

Even so, "Rising Sun" is the "Brainwashed" CD's centerpiece, its reason for being. As driven as the tune is to start, it ends with a kind of wistful neatness, like a dream that couldn't possibly finish so well.

Lynne provided the same thing for Harrison, and it would have been special even if George hadn't become notoriously inconsistent when it came to putting out records.

Here, Harrison gracefully, quietly, lets go.

And in so doing, manages one of the most delicately executed goodbyes in memory.

"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.



Purchase: George Harrison - Brainwashed

One Track Mind: Livingston Taylor, "Grandma's Hands" (1993)

by Pico

The other day I was digging Bill Withers' gentle folk-soul masterwork from 1971, Just As I Am. A week later I still find myself occasionally warbling "Ain't No Sunshine" when there's no one else around save for my daughter and nearly sat down to write about it in this space. But then I started thinking about the song that follows it on that blessed album, "Grandma's Hands." And then I got to think of how well Liv Taylor covers this Withers original. Ah, screw it, everybody knows about "Sunshine," anyway. I gotta testify for Liv.

For those who think I'm misspelling Steve Tyler's daughter's name, Livingston Taylor is the Jimmie Vaughan of folk rock; he's plenty talented enough, but his career's been overshadowed by a superstar brother. While Jimmie has had to deal with constant comparisons to Stevie Ray, Liv has quietly toiled away in nearly complete obscurity while his older brother James became an adult contemporary icon.

From all accounts, however, LT doesn't seem to mind, as his effervescent charming persona endears him to audiences and he seems to regard his close relation to superstardom as fodder for light humor (even in song, such as the "Carolina On My Mind"-inspired "Carolina Day").

In spite of not quite being James, Liv should have been a bigger star than what he's become; the self-titled Liv from the same year as Withers' aforementioned debut is a lost classic slice of early seventies singer-songwriter heaven. His voice is somewhat reedier than JT, but in certain parts of nearly every song he sings, Liv sounds like a dead-on impersonation of him. And like Big Bro', Livingston is equally comfortable writing solid tunes, like "Get Out Of Bed", as he is covering other people's songs.

Livingston decided to cover "Grandma's Hands" for his low key gem of 1993, Good Friends, and he made a nice choice. When Withers wrote about what he cherished about his grandmother, he could have speaking for nearly every one of us; even if the specific memories he sings about aren't exactly as yours, you could still relate when he sings:

Grandma's hands
Used to hand me piece of candy
Grandma's hands
Picked me up each time I fell
Grandma's hands
Boy, they really came in handy
She'd say, "Matty don' you whip that boy
What you want to spank him for?
He didn' drop no apple core"
But I don't have Grandma anymore

If I get to Heaven I'll look for
Grandma's hands

Withers' version was already simply arranged, employing just a bluesy electric guitar, bass and drums behind his voice. But Liv decided to go all a cappella with it, and going the gospel choir route was an inspired choice as the Grandma of this song was a religious woman who "clapped in church on Sunday morning" and "played a tambourine so well." Livingston belts out the lead vocal with so much divine exhilaration you'd swear he grew up in a Southern Baptist church. At less than a minute and forty-five seconds, it sets a new record for being the shortest OTM song. Short, but oh so sweet.

Whenever a friend is grieving over the loss of their grandmother, I quote them the lyrics to "Grandma's Hands." And if I get to pass along the song itself, it's gotta be Livingston Taylor's uplifting version. You can't go home no more, as they say, but music like this can bring you back there in your mind.

Listen: Livingston Taylor "Grandma's Hands"

Purchase: Livingston Taylor "Good Friends"

"One Track Mind" is a more-or-less weekly drool over a single song selected on a whim and a short thesis on why you should be drooling over it, too.

Forgotten series: Bill Evans, The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings (1961)

NICK DERISO: The pianist, of course, got all the press. But Scott Lafaro, this tragic genius in a unique counter-melodic style, is the one who so often gets forgotten.

If you care anything about bass (rock, jazz or blues) you will find his recordings with Bill Evans at New York City's Village Vanguard ... and you will study them. LaFaro performed for just six years between 1955-61, yet he moved this instrument into a whole new place.

It's didn't hurt that LaFaro was working with the Jersey-born, Hammond, La.-schooled Evans -- who had attended Southeastern on a flute scholarship. Evans was, even then, famous for his delicate, yet dramatic contributions with Miles Davis (a stint that included the best-selling acoustic jazz album of all time, "Kind of Blue"), yet he ended up doing his most important work with LaFaro.

And, like those previous bursts of swinging radiance, this too was recorded all in one day -- though, what was once a single concert would become the foundation of two vintage releases. First came "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" (which is more heavily weighted with bass) and then "Waltz for Debby" (a ballad album, with more piano), both made with drummer Paul Motian.

Evans found, with LaFaro, an improbable relationship, one based on simulatanous composition and improv. It's both melodic and rhythmic, like two thoughts running through your mind.

Just that quickly, however, it was finished. Tens days after their two-year relationship culminated with these landmark live recordings, LaFaro was killed in an auto accident -- sending a depressed and broken Evans into a tailspin. Evans didn't perform publicly for nearly a year, and didn't make make any important records for longer still. Even then, he never reached the same astounding, and artistically sympathetic, heights with a bass player again.

In fact, after Lafaro died, I think I like Evans' duets with folks like saxman Cannonball Adderly and guitarist Jim Hall best of all.

LaFaro passed having never fronted his own record. Still, he remains one of the most important bassists of jazz's first 50 years -- if only because LaFaro was the first to move his instrument from out back.

There are -- on those albums with Evans, in particular -- the makings of a whole new sound, one based on challenge and response, from inside the larger band dynamic. LaFaro's stirring complexity was short lived, but timeless.