If you’ve got the classic country music jones, you can scratch that itch right here with Courtney Granger’s Beneath Still Waters. And by jones, I just might be referring to George Jones, whose influence is strong on this knockout disc of classic country covers.
I wasn’t familiar with Courtney Granger’s name, but I’ve probably heard him and maybe even seen him. He’s deeply involved in Cajun music, both personally and professionally. A member of the Balfa clan, he’s a top-notch fiddler and for nearly a decade has been playing in Cajun groups the Pine Leaf Boys and Balfa Toujours. But he obviously has a deep love for and knowledge of classic country music, and man, does he have a voice that just won’t quit!
Dirk Powell of Balfa Toujours and one of the most prominent names in American roots music, produced Beneath Still Waters, and the contributors to this album include Powell, Laurie Lewis, Alice Gerrard, Christine Balfa, Tom Rozum and Joel Savoy, among others. It makes for a tight band with splendid backing vocals, but Granger, the voice and the songs get top billing.
Most prominent are songs that were recorded by George Jones, ranging from the 1950s up into the ’70s: “Mr. Fool,” “Beneath Still Waters,” “Back In My Baby’s Arms Again,” (not to be confused with Patsy Cline’s “Back in Baby’s Arms”), and “Warm Red Wine.” Of course, these have been sung by other names big and small as well. I first heard the title track, Dallas Frazier’s “Beneath Still Waters,” from Emmylou Harris. “Warm Red Wine” has quite a provenance, written by the great Cindy Walker for Bob Wills, whose Texas Playboys recorded it, as did Ernest Tubb, before Mr. Jones made it his own. I don’t think I’d heard “Back In My Baby’s Arms Again” before, but already it feels like an old friend. Take a listen.
There’s more to classic country than George Jones, and Granger gives a nod to a couple of pioneers in bluegrass with Hazel and Alice’s “Don’t Put Her Down You Helped Put Her There,” a 1973 feminist song laying blame for the lot of downtrodden barroom girls on their male patrons. (Alice in fact is Alice Gerrard, one of this album’s backing singers.) On the familiar theme of hidden love there’s Mel Street’s 1972 hit “Lovin’ On Backstreets” on which pianist Glenn Patscha hints that he may have attended the Floyd Cramer school of ivory tickling. “And there’s the Vic Chesnutt hit “She Never Got Me Over You,” which was the last song written by the late Keith Whitley.
Granger also digs into some deep cuts like Whitley’s “Dance With Me Molly” from a 2000 compilation, Vern Gosdin’s “Baby That’s Cold” and an early album cut from Waylon Jennings, “Listen They’re Playing My Song.”
If you’re going to spend Saturday night at the honky-tonk, you’ve got to pay on Sunday, so no classic country album is complete without at least one gospel song. Granger further reveals his impeccable taste with “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today,” a Methodist hymn that’s more than a century old and that has been recorded by everyone from the Staple Singers and Sister Rosetta Tharpe to the most recent version that I know of, by Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn on their eponymous album from 2014.
Courtney makes each of these songs his own, without any grandstanding, just solid singing and playing. I’m very favorably impressed with this record, which should be in the collection of any lover of classic country music, the roots of Americana.
(Valcour, 2016)
