ALBUM: Jerry Williams, ‘Gone’
Gram Parsons famously described his blurring of country, rock, and soul as Cosmic American Music: born from within the national spirit, agnostic to race or genre, and belonging equally to everyone. Nowadays, however, that term is primarily applied to alt-country artists inspired by Parsons — American, yes, but not especially cosmic. A more apt use of the phrase would be to describe Texan poly-instrumentalist and genre-bender Jerry Lynn Williams, whose 1979 album, Gone, is finally getting its much-belated official release, courtesy of Real Gone Music.
Williams may have shared a similar ethos with Parsons, but his style is markedly more diverse, incorporating jazz, blues-rock, and Latin rhythms into the musical stew. (In fact, country music is the least apparent genre here; given Williams’ Texas birthright, however, elements of it are steeped in his bones). Two of the tracks on Gone are covers: one of Southern soul legend Otis Redding; the other of jazz master Horace Silver. In turn, two of Williams’ originals on the album received notable remakes: blues-rocker Bonnie Raitt tackled “Talk to Me,” while Williams’ fellow Texan Delbert McClinton scored a Top 10 pop hit with “Giving It Up for Your Love” in 1981. Despite its blend of American panmusical styles, however, Gone transcends the self-consciousness common to genre mash-ups. Williams’ cherry-picking of elements from multiple styles — soulful vocals, jazzy grooves, heavy blues-rock guitars — flows naturally from his eclectic tastes.
Despite Williams’ original yet accessible sound, memorable songs, prodigious talent, and loads of famous friends and fans — including Keith Richards, Mick Fleetwood, and George Harrison — his career as performer never quite took off. Williams’ first album came out in 1971 on CBS; it went nowhere, but at least it had the benefit of being released. Gone, recorded at the end of the decade, wasn’t so lucky. Sometime between the promotional stage and the album’s official release date, new label Warner Brothers suddenly pulled Gone for reasons that remain unclear. One rumor, recounted in Bill Bentley’s liner notes, claims that someone in his management team charged the label’s offices with a submachine gun. Warner Brothers issued a restraining order against Williams, and Gone got gone’d.
As sorry as that story would be if true, it’s more appealing than the alternative: that the label simply found Gone too difficult to market or couldn’t hear an obvious single. While Delbert McClinton proved the latter to be false — and “Philosophizer,” “Talk to Me,” and “Easy on Yourself” are equally hit-worthy — the former, unfortunately, may have been too difficult to surmount. Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, and Stevie Ray Vaughan may have become stars individually, but an artist who muddled together their styles, adding his own distinct essence — from the loping lite-reggae beat of “Gone,” to the minimalist synths and drum machine of “This Song” — would haunt a radio programmer’s nightmares. “Song for My Father,” for example, may be Horace Silver’s best-known work, but not too many pop albums would feature a cover of the samba-inflected, hard-bop composition as its centerpiece.
The label’s mishandling of Gone is particularly disappointing not only because of how great an album it is, but because of the infectious sense of joy that courses throughout. It’s rare to listen to an album where the artist not only pours his entire being into the record, but seems thrilled to do so. Despite the slightly canned quality of the production — a product of the era in which it was recorded, and of Williams’ multi-tracked contributions on each song — Gone feels more alive than most live recordings.
Much of this can be credited to Williams’ enthusiastic, omnivorous approach to music, as well as his uncanny vocals, which are soulful without falling prey to White Man’s Bluster. (No less than Eric Clapton dubbed him “my favorite white-man singer.”) He’s also aided by a topflight crew of session musicians, from drummers Jeff Porcaro (Toto, Steely Dan) and Danny Seiwell (Wings), to famed back-up singers the Waters, to Brazilian percussionist Mayuto Correa. For his version of “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember,” Williams even enlists Booker T. & the MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, who backed Otis Redding on the original recording.
After Gone’s release got scotched, Williams never released another album on a major label again. Yet McClinton’s hit version of “Giving It Up for Your Love” allowed Williams to carve out a successful career as a songwriter, for artists including Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, and Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan. His primary patron was Eric Clapton, whose frequent dips into the Jerry Williams songbook resulted in the hits “Forever Man” and “Pretending.”
Williams died in 2005, but in a sense, he’d recorded his own eulogy a quarter of a century earlier. “This Song,” the final track on Gone and the only one recorded entirely by Williams alone, has a muted quality that sets it apart from the rest of the album’s chockablock, rollicking tone. Nevertheless, its lyrics are consistent with Gone’s life-affirming and optimistic nature: “You’re strong and you can take it / You’re gonna make it my friend / With your song.”
Order your copy of Jerry Williams’ Gone now from the Real Gone Music online shop!
