Sunday, February 14, 2010

Another sadly underrated artist

Gurf Morlix, "Diamonds To Dust" off his album of the same title. He's most known for being instrumental to Lucinda Williams's early success, not for his own talents. But his own talents are immense both as an individual artist and as a producer -- he produced recent albums by Slaid Cleaves, Romi Mayes, BettySoo, and Porter Davis. He has recently started getting some recognition in the Americana "alt-country" category, but expect to hear him on the radio, like, never. He's old and he ain't purty, boy howdy.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

3 comments:

  1. A song for our time. I kinda like it.

    Guy's voice sounds like he gargles razor blades.

    I have a great Thad Jones tune up today.

    Cheers!
    JzB

    ReplyDelete
  2. In a recent interview Gurf notes that his voice has dropped a bit and gotten rougher over the past couple of years. He sort of likes how it sounds now, and I think he'd like your comment :).

    Gurf's last two albums in particular -- Diamonds to Dust and Last Exit To Happyland -- are filled with excellent songwriting of this sort. But he ain't exactly a bubbly upbeat sort, which, combined with him being only a couple years shy of qualifying for Social Security, limits his appeal to only those of us who appreciate a musician's musician (he spent literally decades as a professional sideman before deciding it was time to put his own songs onto tape).

    - Badtux the Music Penguin

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gurf also produced 4 great albums for Ray Wylie Hubbard. He played some great slide on them too

    ReplyDelete

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