Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Johnny "Guitar" Watson
The Funk Anthology
Shout Factory
It’s hard to pinpoint why time has not built the reputation of Houston’s Johnny “Guitar” Watson. It’s not that Watson wasn’t influential—artists from Jimi Hendrix to Etta James gave him his due—and it wasn’t for a lack of hits. His seventies funk period, now collected in The Funk Anthology (Shout Factory), kept him camped at the top of the charts. A biting blues guitarist and a prodigious multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and composer, Watson was a mercurial artist who constantly swapped styles and labels. Unapologetically modern—nowhere more so than on these sides originally recorded for the DJM label—he shunned the factories of Stax, Motown, and P-Funk and found his own irreverent hard groove, one that played like a crossbreed of James Brown and T-Bone Walker. If you’d forgotten all about Watson, here’s a real mother for ya. J.M.
Texas Tornados
Live in Austin, TX DVD/CD
New West
The long-running PBS show Austin City Limits has begun to loosen its grip on decades of peerless archives with a series of original broadcasts on DVD and companion CDs. Notable in the latest batch is Live From Austin TX (New West), a 1990 session with the short-lived supergrouping of Freddy Fender, Flaco Jimenez, Augie Meyers, and Doug Sahm known as the Texas Tornados. The band had just released the first (and hands-down best) of their four studio albums, and the nineteen-song, nearly euphoric collection of Tex-Mex rock and roll includes generous side dishes of Sir Douglas Quintet and Fender classics. Beautifully recorded, the set is far superior to the 1998 live album chronicling the group’s somewhat listless comeback. Sahm’s sudden death in 1999 would silence the band for good, which makes this welcome addition to the Tornados canon all the more essential. J.M.
Friends of Dean Martinez
Lost Horizon
Aero
Musicians have been exploring the majesty of the electric-guitar sound almost since the instrument’s invention, but it’s only recently that a spate of instrumental rock bands has sprung forth in dedication to it. Friends of Dean Martinez (the “ez” was added at the behest of the Dean Martin estate) was ahead of the curve in this regard. Formed in Tucson in 1994 by guitarist—and, yes, Deano fan—Bill Elm, the band originally cherry-picked players from the Giant Sand/Calexico/Naked Prey triumvirate and conjured sonic landscapes alternately lounge-smooth and weather-beaten. Elm moved his operation to Austin seven years ago, and the latest edition of FODM, Lost Horizon (Aero), packs aural muscle into a set that has bolero, flamenco, and spooky cinematic flair. Unlike a lot of rock instrumentalists, Elm creates atmospheric music with real staying power. J.M.
