| Product Summary | | Label: Telarc International Corp. | | UPC: 00089408362323 | | Release Date: 3/22/2005 | | Buy.com Sku: 63962939 | | Item#: M266DL | Format:  CD |
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| Song Listing |  |
Disc 1
| | Song Title | Sample | | 1. el Burro Song, The - (with Raul Malo) ~ Los Super Seven |  | | 2. Cupido - (with Freddy Fender/Rick Trevino) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 3. Talk to Me - (with Delbert McClinton) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 4. I'm Not That Kat (Anymore) - (with John Hiatt) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 5. My Window Faces the South - (with Lyle Lovett) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 6. Let Her Dance - (with Joe Ely) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 7. Learning the Game - (with Rodney Crowell) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 8. Song of Everything, The - (with Raul Malo) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 9. Ojitos Traidores - (with Rick Trevino) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 10. I Live the Life I Love - (with Delbert McClinton) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 11. Heard It on the X - (with Ruben Ramos) ~ Los Super Seven | | | 12. See That My Grave Is Kept Clean - (with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown) ~ Los Super Seven | |
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| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Los Super Seven: Flaco Jim?nez, Freddy Fender, Joe Ely, Raul Malo, Rick Trevino, Rub?n Ramos (vocals). | | Additional personnel: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (vocals, electric guitar); Delbert McClinton, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Rodney Crowell (vocals); Calexico. | | Los Super Seven isn't a band, per se -- it's a collective, organized by manager Dan Goodman, who comes up with a concept for each of the group's albums and assembles a band to fit. For their third album, Goodman turned to music journalist/record producer Rick Clark, whose giveaway CDs for the Oxford American journal are highly regarded in certain quarters. Inspired by ZZ Top's classic boogie rock tribute to border radio, "Heard It on the X," Clark came up with a sharp idea: a salute to the heyday of AM radio on the Texas/Mexico border, when rock & roll, blues, country, jazz, Western swing, and mariachi mixed freely. Clark and Goodman drew up a list of songs and musicians to play them, recruited two different core bands -- indie rockers Calexico and a group featuring Charlie Sexton, who also served as the third producer on this album (along with Clark and Goodman), with drummer Hunt Sales -- and then brought in a bunch of Texas-identified singers. Some -- like Raul Malo, Joe Ely, Rick Trevino, Ruben Ramos, and Freddy Fender -- were Los Super Seven veterans, while others -- John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Rodney Crowell, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown -- are new to the game. That list of musicians signals that Heard It on the X is not nearly as Latin-centric as its predecessor, Canto, which theoretically means it may play to a wider audience, but in 2005, with all this roots music and versions of songs that are 30-40 years old, it's unlikely that this will get much play outside of roots fanatics and those who long for the heyday of Musician magazine. That said, Heard It on the X is executed about as well as it could be. The song selection is expert, touching on lesser-known tunes by such Texas giants as Doug Sahm and Buddy Holly and standards by Blind Lemon Jefferson, ZZ Top, and Bob Wills, adding a few cult favorites and a new tune or two along the way. While this certainly reads like an eclectic listen on paper, in practice it flows easily, thanks to both the house bands, the professional (albeit a bit too clean) production, and the fact that the borders separating these genres are virtually nonexistent these days. There's no real cross-pollination within the grooves themselves (having Ramos sing the title track doesn't quite qualify, since it still comes across as bloozy boogie rock), the styles merely rub shoulders with each other, and since all the musicians already travel in these circles, there are no real surprises (well, apart from Hiatt's mannered vocal on "I'm Not That Kat (Anymore)," but on second thought, that's not much of a surprise, either). But surprises are overrated, particularly with so many similar albums shooting too high and missing the mark. Here, the songs are excellent, performed by the right musicians, and the result is a highly enjoyable record for anybody into any of the featured artists or songwriters. If this doesn't pack the thrill or sense of discovery that the original recordings have, mark that down to the ultimate triumph of border radio -- its influence has been so strong and so far-reaching that listeners take its innovations for granted, so an album as nonchalantly diverse as this seems like a welcome everyday occurrence. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | HEARD IT ON THE X is something of a tribute record (in spirit, at least) to the border radio stations of Mexico and Texas in the 1950s and '60s. These famed stations, whose broadcasts reached far into the United States, thanks to their 500,000-watt transmitters, played a mixture of mariachi, rock, blues, and country, that is justly celebrated here by Los Super Seven. A loose amalgam of roots-rock musicians assembled by manager/producer Dan Goodman, this incarnation of Los Super Seven features members of Calexico and ace session hands like Charlie Sexton, along with a battery of Texas musicians, including Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Delbert McClinton, Raul Malo, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. | | The album plays like a roots primer, spinning through traditional country blues (Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"), classic mariachi ("Cupido"), and '50s rock & roll balladry ("Talk to Me"). The disc even includes a ZZ Top cover--the song, also a nod to border radio, gives the project its title. The wide-ranging tracks all fit together perfectly, amounting to a fascinating case study on the musical melting pot of the American Southwest. |
Producer: Rick Clark; Dan Goodman; Charlie Sexton |
Engineer: Dave McNair |
Musical Guests | | Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown | | Rodney Crowell | | John Hiatt | | Lyle Lovett | | Delbert McClinton | | Calexico |
| | Compilation Appearances |
| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 03/22/2005 | | Original Release Date : 2005 | | Catalog ID : 83623 | | Label : Telarc Distribution | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00089408362323 |
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| | Professional Reviews | | Rolling Stone (p.72)
- "The pileup of country, norte¤o and R&B that is Texas music would not exist without border radio."Uncut (p.108)
- 4 stars out of 5 - "Here country, soul and blues get a mariachi flavoring and everything rocks fabulously." Dirty Linen (p.45)
- "Banjo player Gregory Liszt is a crisply precise picker who seems to draw inspiration from every banjo innovator from Earl Scruggs to Bela Fleck." Living Blues (p.60)
- "The music is eclectic - highlights include Ely doing a Bobby Fuller song, John Hiatt doing one by Sir Doug, Rodney Crowell doing a Buddy Holly, and Lyle Lovett doing a Bob Wills..." Mojo (Publisher)
(p.64)
- Ranked #4 in Mojo's "2005 Americana Albums Of The Year." |
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