The eMusic Dozen: Southern Rock

Somewhere, armchair critics and befuddled Yankees are quibbling, neatly filing the first two records of Alex Chilton and Chris Bell away under "power pop." Yet, like Elvis and obvious Chilton precursor Jerry Lee Lewis, what else is Big Star's music really, released as it was on Memphis' own Ardent label (distributed through Stax, home of Otis Redding), recorded at the city's Ardent Studios by Dixie Fried auteur Jim Dickinson and named for a local supermarket chain? "Thirteen," that quintessential tale of young love, is like the sonic rendering of a William Eggleston photograph, and "The Ballad of El Goodo" is often like one shot by Eudora Welty. Chilton himself remains an idiosyncratic purveyor of hardcore blue-eyed soul at its very best.

Usually identified with the Nashville mainstream despite lack of significant airplay since 1990, the Headhunters, fronted by Doug Phelps, actually purvey a more distinctive mix of country-rock and boogie, their 1989 hit "Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine" presaging the more mainstream trend toward same (as embodied by Travis Tritt's early oeuvre). Before Brooks & Dunn's Red Dirt Road and Big & Rich's current movements, Soul was the best "new country" or "alt-country" album in years, invoking the rockabilly heyday of collaborator/muse Carl Perkins, Tejano flourishes, and the Muscle Shoals blue-eyed soul of Alabama native sons Eddie Hinton (a cover of "I Still Wanna Be Your Man" features Richard Young on vocals) and Bobby Whitlock. Truly some of the finest country-soul balladry since the '60s golden era.

Kevin Kinney is a latter-day Dixie troubadour, lyrically idiosyncratic and vocally quirky in the vein of such precursors as singer-songwriter John Prine and assorted country-blues masters. Long a cult favorite on the Southern scene (with such exalted fans as Warren Haynes), Kinney, who started out with the celebrated Drivin 'N Cryin', made his finest and most accessible record in a while with 2004's Sun Tangled Angel Revival. The hard-luck Irishman brings his weary air of sadness to bear on songs apparently inspired by the ravages of Bush America. Raging guitars and bluesy sheets of sound surround his lyrical studies of both personal pain and the demise of the once-fruitful New South. It's Techno-Bush (both puns intended) sonic animus that inspires "Madman Blues" and "This Train Don't Stop at the Millworks Anymore" equally.

It's the guitar overall that powers Southern rock (and typically "guitar armies" that characterize the genre). Of all the Second Wavers, one-man axe armada Derek Trucks, nephew of esteemed Allman Brothers Band drummer Butch, is the most anointed. To be sure, Gov't Mule's Warren Haynes is (justifiably) more famous and a triple-threat hisself, yet even Haynes has been amazed by Trucks the Younger's gift since the latter was nine and began to sit in with players throughout the Allmans' family network. The Derek Trucks Band was Trucks' first official bow on disc -- peaking with early crowd favorite "Egg 15," a seven-and-a-half minute, modal jazzy tour de force -- and, while uneven and inferior to the live act, ably demonstrates that we'll all remain mighty "skurred" of him for years to come (especially in his virtuoso swings from raga fusion to blues blended with country gospel to Latinized jazz-rock).

The semi-mysterious north Mississippi hill country with its musical traditions characterized by specific strains of African retentions -- like the drum-and-fife style of the late Otha Turner -- are given a much-deserved spotlight by the virtuoso sons of legendary producer Jim Dickinson, Luther (guitar, vocals) and Cody (drums, washboard), as well as their friends, including bassist Chris Chew and assorted spawn of bluesman R. L. Burnside. Due perhaps to the peculiar virulence of racism and entrenched poverty in Ole Miss, hill music has been overlooked while other arenas of the Deep South more committed to overt harmony have been praised. Yet the blues standards herein, from Mississippi Fred McDowell's dance floor mutha "Shake 'Em On Down" to Furry Lewis' much-covered "K.C. Jones (On the Road Again)," are anointed with some of their freshest and combustive treatment in years by these young 'uns. Long may they run!

Texas' Dixie Witch speed up two decades of Lone Star blues and highway songs to the cusp of metal. Roaring on a knife-edge, the songs on this, their second release, are salvaged from Revolver-mag oblivion by sudden bursts of Dixie-fried guitar solos worthy of sharing the stage with at least the more commercial lineage of the Marshall Tucker Band and Black Oak Arkansas. (And perhaps this is to what Dixie Witch aspires...?) If only radio formats would switch back to AOR "freeform" in time to corroborate their sound and vision. Eschewing the headbangin' tedium of their peers' version of "keepin' it hard," these boys' music is more akin to yo' Daddy's stoner rock.

The 30-plus-years veteran outfit Little Feat is truly the farthest-out Southern rock band in the genre's history. Founded and perennially inspired (posthumously) by Lowell George, a former Zappa sideman born at the foot of the Los Angeles Mountains, the group has produced some of the most enduring Dixie classics ever this side of the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Feats continue to tour year-round, releasing discs on their own Hot Tomato records and reveling with fans at their annual Jamaican getaway. Yet this live collection from St. Louis, featuring such standards as "Willin,'" "Oh Atlanta," "Dixie Chicken," and the rollickin' road classic "Feats Don't Fail Me Now," enshrines both their patented fluid blues boogie and stature as gods of the blues-rock golden era.

Kentuckian Jim James, with assorted relatives and friends, works out on long, shambolic jams in his grandparents' barn, in service to the Canuck daïmon that animates most neo-redneck rockers of a certain age: Neil Young. Former farm boy James, possessed of a high lonesome quaver and trigger-happy with the reverb, also produces music best experienced live, this disc presenting the embryonic stage of his Louisville quintet's "sheets of sound" process. Half-stepping as they do between soil verities and rock & roll glamour, My Morning Jacket seems on a mission to provide neo-classic Americana and digital spirituals for those of us who believe in "more barn!"

Better known for his rah-rah Americana and anti-outlaw culture stance today, Charlie Daniels once hobnobbed with and gave glory to the Allmans and their Southern rock bredren elite, establishing himself as a hero in the '70s with the fastest fiddle in the West. Despite an unfortunate worldview, Daniels continues to be a force, accompanied live and in studio by musicians of great caliber, his sound bridging the gap between bluegrass purism of yesteryear and rock's electric mandate. "Boogie Woogie Fiddle Country Blues" essentially sums up the character of the group's approach, with the odd disco breakdown for good measure. This hits collection would suffice for the average fan/neophyte New South scholar since it includes "The South's Gonna Do It (Again)" and the essential "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."