Robert Johnson and the Reissue

The history of the record industry is one of reissues: some artists are plucked from out-of-print limbo, while others have anniversary editions of famous albums released with previous editions still being sold new in the marketplace. Predictably, recording technology has advanced in quantum leaps since the 1925 advent of electrical recording; it is further not surprising that each new incarnation of musical medium has inspired reissues of every label's most profitable material. Even the most forward-thinking executives, though, would have had a hard time even 20 years ago foreseeing the emergence of the remastering process. Advances in technology have made it possible not only digitally to excise noise once assumed totally inextricable from the source material, but even to extract detail from the grooves of weathered shellac 78s that went heretofore largely unnoticed. And perhaps most unthinkably of all to Executives of Labels Past, the process can be carried out without the investment of unworkable expense.

Robert Johnson is the unchallenged king of the reissue. His records sold well regionally during his own lifetime, and he was a much hoped-for participant in John Hammond's legendary "From Spirituals to Swing" concerts, the first to showcase black artists at Carnegie Hall. Johnson died four months before the first concert, however, and his memory languished, popularly forgotten, until the 1961 release of the Columbia compilation King of the Delta Blues Singers. The album and its 1970 companion volume deified Johnson with the folkie crowd (and by extension with rock stars, as well). Johnson posthumously shared the benefits of the blues revival - including a much-delayed, if incomplete, shedding of the "race records" label that had followed blues recordings since their inception - with many other artists, but he would come to exceed all of them in renown, due in equal parts to his remarkable talent and to the dubious Faustian myth that accompanies him to this day. The commercial success of the first CD reissue of his discography was nonetheless staggering. In 1990's Complete Recordings, Columbia had a set of 40+ songs more than half a century old that peaked at #80 on the Billboard charts and was eventually certified platinum.

Accordingly, the centenary of Johnson's birth in 2011 provided not only an ideal opportunity to show off the advances in remastering since the dawn of the millennium, but also a rare opportunity to provide a cash cow for a record label and a useful album for fans simultaneously. The Centennial Collection doesn't disappoint. The dual efforts of Steven Lasker (digital transfer) and Seth Winner (remastering) yielded results that save for minor background hiss sound ten - sometimes fifteen - years younger than they actually are. Columbia also provided much improved packaging and tracklisting over the previous release, this time placing every alternate take at the end of the CD, instead of immediately following the master. The astounding improvement in sound quality, together with these other considerations, raises hope for better reissues of other worthy contemporary discographies. Of course, few (if any) old-time jazz and blues masters share Johnson's all-consuming pull, and the likelihood of any such reissue making substantial money again seems slim. With any luck, though, as the technology continues to improve commercial risks will be undertaken in reviving Skip James, Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory, and others. The standard established by The Centennial Recordings is a worthy one in ensuring that these records continue to be esteemed for what they are: landmarks of American culture and history.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (8) The Queen Is Dead - The Smiths

[This is the third in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Internal tensions have often been known to push bands to unprecedented peaks, yet rarely has a group's musical identity rested so squarely upon the contrast between its most visible members as it did with the Smiths. Lead guitarist Johnny Marr was one of England's most accomplished studio masters, an expert at weaving dense layers of guitars into music of striking depth; frontman Morrissey was a militant vegetarian whose outspoken politics were upstaged only by his dubious (purportedly nonexistent) sexuality and endlessly dour outlook on the value of life. Over a span of five prolific years, the Smiths released four studio albums and a bevy of non-album singles. Though the latter group includes an impressive number of the best songs of the decade, the band never produced a work of more consistent quality than its third studio LP, The Queen Is Dead. By the time of its 1986 release, Marr had come to control a range as diverse as that of Jimmy Page, and was as adept at conjuring sunny pastoral scenes ("Cemetery Gates") as crafting the brooding soundscapes that had become the band's signature (with the epic title track rivaling even "How Soon Is Now" in bombastic sweep). Morrissey, too, had refined every aspect of his persona, and they're all on display: never again would he be as morose as on "I Know It's Over," as defensive as on "Bigmouth Strikes Again," or as genuinely funny as on "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" (which presumably holds the distinction of being the only lyric ever to rhyme the phrase "flatulent pain in the ass"). Despite the apparent jockeying for position of the two leads, more than anything, The Queen Is Dead marks the high water mark of collaboration between them. The Smiths had always been at their best when using the beauty of Marr's compositions as counterpoint to Morrissey's melodrama, and they employed the contrast to perfection on both the aforementioned "Cemetery Gates" and "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out," the best song of their career. The group ultimately would disband when long-standing differences between Morrissey and Marr - personal and musical - could no longer be reconciled. In retrospect, The Queen Is Dead is a remarkable document of a group that may well have understood it did not have much time left: it speaks to a period in which they were likely, if only so briefly, the greatest band in the world.