Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch
Texas maverick Ely will never top his ownHonky Tonk Masquerade(1978), a seminal album that defines the best of the Lone Star school of songwriting-and-swagger. But at 60, his quavering vocal remains as urgent, skittish, and distinctive as ever, and he's still a free-flowingly eclectic writer, as capable of a sweet, affecting Cajun love song ("Little Blossom") as an erotic and insinuating blues tune ("July Blues").Happy Songs from Rattlesnake Gulchis a misleading title for this group of 10 originals and a lively cover of compatriot Butch Hancock's "Firewater," for most of Ely's protagonists carry an air of desperation, either hustling for love or money (the excellent "Jesse Justice," a tough-edged portrait of an itinerant pool shark), or gripping the windowsill of life with grimy fingertips.  Too many of the songs here ultimately disappoint--"Miss Bonnie and Mr. Clyde," one of Ely's epic outlaw ballads, is as shot full of holes as the real-life bandits, and "Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes," about the displaced victims of Katrina, fails to elicit either the outrage or the poignancy it seeks. But the hardest-working live entertainer in Texas always finds a way to charm his listener. "Sue Me Sue" wears out its refrain way too soon, yet in laying a "She's About a Mover" riff over some early Elvis rockabilly, the Lubbock Kid connects all the right musical--and emotional--dots.--Alanna Nash