If any American popular songwriter is due a tribute, it’s John Hiatt. He’s been writing and recording his pithy, blues-influenced songs for some three decades, and had songs covered by dozens of more popular artists, but has never had his own commercial breakthrough. It’ll Come to You is a curious hybrid in the increasingly crowded world of tribute discs. Most of the tracks have appeared elsewhere, sometimes up to 20 years ago, although a few appear to have been cut for this disc. But it’s a decent sampler of the best Hiatt covers that have been put to wax over the years.
One of the high points is probably the best-known version of a John Hiatt song: Bonnie Raitt’s “Thing Called Love,” from her own commercial breakthrough, 1989’s Nick of Time. Others include Emmylou Harris’s etherial “Icy Blue Heart,” from Bluebird, also in 1989; and a masterful, swamp-blues take on “Feels Like Rain” by Buddy Guy. The latter might have been recorded for this collection. Not coincidentally, Raitt plays her sublime slide guitar and lends her vocals to both of these tracks; “Icy Blue Heart” also benefits from Kieran Kane’s mandolin fills.
The most appropriate juxtaposition is the back-to-back tracks by Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. Both were recorded (produced by Crowell) in the mid-’80s when these two were married and still major figures in Nashville. Crowell put this country-pop version of “She Loves the Jerk” on his 1985 Soul Searchin’ album, and the sublimely sad “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” comes from Cash’s 1987 King’s Record Shop. Both sound very ’80s, with more treble than bass, and sappy violins on “Jerk.”
I suppose the compilers of this disc had to include Eric Clapton and B.B. King’s hammy 2000 re-make of “Riding With the King,” since it’s probably the biggest-selling Hiatt song ever. If you didn’t get tired of this when it was on the radio every day, here’s your chance.
A nice surprise is Patty Griffin’s stripped-down “Take It Down,” the only track here from Hiatt’s 2000 acoustic gem, Crossing Muddy Waters.
A couple of other nice moments are the title track — one of four from Hiatt’s excellent Slow Turning which Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise give the gritty blues treatment it deserves — and “When We Ran,” from Linda Ronstadt’s 1998 We Ran, which is well matched to her powerful pipes.
The seemingly ubiquitous Buddy and Julie Miller rock out on “Paper Thin,* Nick Lowe gives the Brit-pop treatment to “She Don’t Love Nobody,” and Willie Nelson willies his way through “The Most Unoriginal Sin” — nice, but a bit overproduced. Saving the worst for last, Freddy Fender overemotes on “Across the Borderline,” backed by too many musicians and some very ’80s synthesizers.
If you’re a John Hiatt fan, you probably already have his own versions of these songs. And if you’re a fan of many of these artists, you probably already have many of these Hiatt covers as well. So it’s a little hard to say who this disc is aimed at. It’s not bad, as tributes go, but hardly essential.
(Vanguard, 2003)
