I’m New Here is a shock. It’s a wallop filled with big nasty beats, a wide range of sonic atmospheres, and more — sometimes unintentional — autobiographical intimacy than we’ve heard from Gil Scott-Heron than ever before. Produced by XL Recordings head Richard Russell, I’m New Here is his first record in 16 years. It is a scant 28 minutes and doesn’t need to be a second longer. It’s unlike anything he’s previously recorded, though there is metaphoric precedence in his earliest, largely spoken-word, albums. Its production pushes forcefully at the margins and Scott-Heron embraces it without a hint of nostalgia.

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Three Lobed Recordings issued a statement over the weekend that Philadelphia-based acoustic guitarist Jack Rose passed away over the weekend of a heart attack; he was 38 years old. Rose was self-taught and made a name for himself originally as the guitarist in the band Pelt in the 1990s, but eventually went his own way. Of the new brand of American acoustic guitarists, Rose was different. He had not only absorbed the styles of players such as Robbie Basho and John Fahey, as have others since the early part of the 21st century, but was obsessed with traditional ragtime, blues, country, and jazz styles from the 1920s through the early 1940s and incorporated them into a physical but fluid style on six-string, 12-string, and lap-steel guitars that also employed formal Indian classical music.

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This morning, a Google search revealed hundreds of obits for Willy DeVille from American news sources. This past Friday morning, the day after his death from pancreatic cancer in a hospital bed in New York City, there were less than a handful. All of them were in European languages. In America, Willy DeVille was a footnote to rock & roll history; known for fronting Mink DeVille, one of the early bands in the late-’70s CBGB’s era, and for a couple songs on Cabretta, the band’s debut on Capitol produced by Jack Nitzsche — most notably, the killer cover of Moon Martin’s “Cadillac Walk,” and DeVille’s own “Spanish Stroll,” one of the true groundbreaking, genre-blurring songs he composed, and a mark that set Mink DeVille apart. For the general populace, it was the crossover pop hit “Storybook Love,” and only because it appeared in the film The Princess Bride. (Never mind that it was a song from Miracle, his first solo album, produced by Mark Knopfler.)

• “Cadillac Walk”

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• “Spanish Stroll”

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• “Storybook Love”

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In Europe, however, DeVille was, and will rightfully remain, a legend for his massive talent as a songwriter, as a vocal stylist (his growls and croon are instantly recognizable and his phrasing is unlike anyone else’s in the history of rock), as a street poet who was equal parts Dion DiMucci and Jacques Brel, and as an entertainer who could captivate an audience from beginning to end. His catalog is more diverse than virtually any other modern performer. The genre span of the songs he’s written is staggering. From early rock and rhythm & blues styles, to Delta-styled blues, from Cajun music to New Orleans second line, from Latin-tinged folk to punky salseros, to elegant orchestral ballads — few people could write a love song like DeVille. He was the embodiment of rock & roll’s romance, its theater, its style, its drama, camp, and danger.

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Assorted German, French, and Dutch news outlets are reporting the passing of Willy DeVille, one of America’s true outsider rock & roll poets, at the age of 55. We will have an in-depth post from Allmusic’s Thom Jurek early next week. In the meantime, here is a feature and interview, written by Jurek, we published in May 2006, just after DeVille had released his Live in the Lowlands DVD. It was one of his last U.S. interviews — if not the last.

On a rainy, noisy New York City afternoon, rock & roll singer and perennial romantic troubadour Willy DeVille is screaming at garbage trucks out in the street beneath him: “Shut up, you noisy motherf*ckers! I’m tryin’ to do an interview here!” The sounds of chaos are everywhere around him, a Chihuahua’s yapping full bore, people are coming and going; he holds two conversations simultaneously besides the one we’re having. He’s exhaling cigarette smoke wearily yet he’s animated: “So where were we?” he says in a slightly raspy vocal register that’s not far from the one he uses on-stage, the place where he holds court and mesmerizes European crowds by the thousands; here, outside of New York and New Orleans, in the hundreds — if he’s lucky. The stage is DeVille’s kingdom — he is one of the sharpest dressers in rock & roll history, and had the refined Little Richard look long before Prince. He’s regal in pointed Italian shoes, stovepipe trousers, silk, blouse-like shirts or all colors, with scarves, hats, and canes for props, like a riverboat gambler from the last century or looking like a pirate thief from the docks of European fiction and movies. Yet he can sing like a street-corner balladeer without ever stretching it.

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Photo Credit: Sandy Jaszczak

Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings may have put Luckenbach, Texas on the map in the ’70s as a small and magical place where music, goodwill, and good vibes all flourished, but it’s another Texas legend, songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard — who along with Nelson and Jennings was one of the original triumvirate of Texas country outlaws — that has re-imagined it as a music mecca on a grand scale.

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We were deeply saddened to learn that Scottish songwriter, guitarist, and true legend John Martyn passed away early on January 29, only weeks after being awarded Great Britain’s OBE (Order of the British Empire) — not bad for a rebellious lifelong Scotsman. His website announced his death with the words: “With heavy heart and an unbearable sense of loss we must announce that John died this morning.” As of this writing, the cause of that death is unknown but it hardly matters. What does is that in place of that gruff, slurring, dark, smoky voice and stunning guitar playing completely of his own design, is the silence, the gap, the void, the damn black hole in life that he filled by singing those unbearably emotional songs of his.

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James Blood Ulmer is one of this country’s greatest musical assets. Since the early ’70s, he’s been walking a zig-zag line across jazz, funk, free improv and rock. He cut his jazz teeth with funk bands in Detroit, and then with jazzmen like Joe Henderson and Big John Patton. But it was with Ornette Coleman and his theory of harmolodic improvisation where Blood’s sound and style developed its trademark bent.

Blood cut Tales from Captain Black in 1978. It was released on the Artist House imprint and featured Coleman on alto saxophone. (The cover on the right is from the DIW Japanese CD.)

In 1980, his world-renowned critical breakthrough — and his entrance on the British charts with the title track — Are You Glad to Be in America was released on Rough Trade (and later, with a different mix, on Artist House in the US).

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Since he released the completely solo For Alto in 1968, the accepted image of Anthony Braxton has been that he is more a theoretician and art music composer than a jazz musician. Therefore, it might seem strange that Mosaic Records is giving his Complete Arista Recordings one of their fabled box set treatments. But Braxton is both — and much more. This set — as well as the original Arista recordings — were produced by Michael Cuscuna, Mosaic/Blue Note label head. The sheer scope of these recordings is staggering. What we get in this amazingly detailed collection is the weightiest argument yet for Braxton’s range and depth of field as a musical thinker and his role as a pillar of modern jazz. The individual albums — New York, Fall 1974; Five Pieces, 1975; Creative Orchestra Music, 1976; Duets, 1976; For Trio; The Montreux/Berlin Concerts; Alto Saxophone Improvisations, 1979; For Four Orchestras; For Two Pianos — showcase him in a rainbow of settings, from quintets and duets, to trios, quartets, and solo; as the leader of a big band, and as a playing conductor. The players are a who’s who of the vanguard in both America and Europe: Muhal Richard Abrams, Leroy Jenkins, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, Jerome Cooper, Leo Smith, Cecil Bridgewater, Roscoe Mitchell, George Lewis, Karl Berger, Ursula Oppens, Frederic Rzewski, Phillip Wilson, Henry Threadgill, and many more.

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