Old dogs New tricks

lindsmuse

I am wondering if these are about following trends to the bitter end rather than making good music or whether this is more about a musician / performer still loving music and wanting to be part of it no matter what!

Christopher Lee - known for acting the old Dracula and more recently, Saruman - gets into Symphonic Metal - this is some other thing he did - but he is dead serious - you can Google. Of course he brings the drama ...

=

And Johnny Cash - I don't really know his music but I think whatever it was - this is a newer version of Johnny Cash

=

AlanRatcliffe

Christopher Lee - the less said the better. Film stars wanting to be rock stars or vice versa is an old problem. Some do it well, but most are just delusional (Lee being a case in point).

Cash has always had an interesting side. Hurt is a Nine Inch Nails cover (and he does it well). But he's always been a lot deeper and more interesting than Ring of Fire or Walk the Line.

=

Lots of spoken word stuff too:

=

Gearhead

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: But he's always been a lot deeper and more interesting than Ring of Fire or Walk the Line.

...with the obvious exception of Boy Named Sue, ne?

lindsmuse

Some more info on Johnny Cash here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Tears:_Ballads_of_the_American_Indian

Our own Laurie Levine doing Ring of Fire:

=

Bob-Dubery

Cash did some great albums towards the end of his life. He wasn't a commercial proposition by then and could afford to team up with Rick Rubin and make sparse, dark records.

As Alan says, he did have another side to him. I think this is not unusual for American non-rock acts where they walk a line between art and keeping the hits rolling in and everybody understands that this is the way the game is played and nobody thinks you're being pretentious if you go one way or a commercial whore if you go the other.

A good example is Louis Armstrong who many remember for gravelly voiced hits such as "Hello Dolly" or "What a Wonderful World" which made him huge money, but who was also a ground breaking trumpeter and one of the giants of jazz music. Casual listeners who like the hits may not even be aware of the other dimension of his career.

George Benson is another. A truly superb jazz player who became a commercial hit maker with his suave vocals and personality. A work colleague of mine who fancied himself as a music connoisseur went over to Sun City in 1980-whenever to see Benson. He came back to work on Monday, I asked him how it was, he says "did you know he played guitar?".

Glen Campbell is remembered for country/easy listening hits, but he was also a top session guitarist, a temporary Beach Boy, had a day job recording demos for a publishing company and after the hits moved into movies and onto TV.

Tom Jones had a surprise career revival (in the charts, not on the live circuit where he was still a big draw) with first a Prince cover ("Kiss") and then Randy Newman's cover "You Can Keep Your Hat On".

It happens. It may happen a whole lot if managers and record companies didn't put their foot down.

Stoffeltoo

Our own Laurie Levine doing Ring of Fire:

=

Aaweh! What an extraordinary interpretation!