BROOK NO LIMITATIONS (via Mike Daley) :

Nitty-Gritty Music Straight From the Heart (Richard Brookhiser, NY Observer)

After hearing Will the Circle Be Unbroken? I was enamored of Roy Acuff, an old Nashville star who showed up for the recording session (the photos on the liner notes reveal) in a white shirt and a short necktie, and stood out-even in this group-for his passionate delivery. So I went to my neighborhood Barnes & Noble and got The Essential Roy Acuff (1936-1949), and discovered that he got a lot better as he got older. The songs recorded in the 30's were light and croony-a young man trying to charm. By the late 40's, when the album ends, the vinegar is beginning to enter his voice. By the time the long-haired West Coast boys sought him out, he had lost the capacity, or the desire, to please and is just singing. That may be the final test of good music: Older men and women can sing it. The test for Britney: Will we listen when your navel is covered?

It is perfectly understandable why masses of new and lousy music are generated. People have to try something different, and people want to make money. (And why not, since audiences have the surplus to give them?) That explains the new music. But most people have no talent, some people have some, and a few have a lot. That explains the lousy music. But in the witless clamor that is the world, there will be a few gems about life and death. Listen; they are for you.

Not content with being a terrific biographer, essayist, and now TV host, Mr. Brookhiser turns music critic, and does equally well.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 19, 2002 8:07 AM