Defining their Legacies

Any time two legendary musical groups that are at the top of their respective genres come together on a collaborative album, it’s almost a crime to not listen. Eric Clapton has made these match-ups a staple of his later career, releasing albums with B.B. King and J.J. Cale (either indicative of his desire to record with these artists or his not-so-secret admiration for men who go by initials) that were seamless in their integration. More recently, Elton John’s album with Leon Russell was named number three on Rolling Stone’s 30 Best Albums of 2010 list and got the duo another slot performing at this year’s Grammy Awards.

So it was a bit of a no-brainer to grab American Legacies (McCoury Music/Preservation Hall Recordings), the collaborative album from bluegrass legends the Del McCoury Band and New Orleans jazz hall stalwarts the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, if for no other reason than to see how it would all fit together. It is essentially the collision of two genres of music that are purely American, performed by some of the musicians who have helped define and shape what we know of each. And while what it delivers is on some level the melding of the two, what it leaves behind is a desire for more of everything.

The album gets off to an iconic start, with the ragtime of “The Band’s In Town” relating a classic blues with McCoury and co. handling the rhythm duties, leaving the “Prez Hall” band to layer in their horns accordingly. There’s a lot going on at every moment, but the introductory “Prez Hall band’s in town, they’ve come to play” sets the tone for the rest of the record. The two groups are heard taking turns providing the backbone, allowing each other the space and room to maneuver, and it’s almost this that makes some songs a simultaneously cohesive melting pot and a bipolar exercise. Rather than the whole collective chugging along in the rhythm sections, each supports its own soloists while the other takes a break. It’s as if no one wanted to step on each other’s toes, and while it’s admirable from that vantage point, at times it feels like the songs would be better on records released by each band individually.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. The old standard “A Good Gal” is a laid back interpretation, giving off the feel of rocking back and forth on a porch in the hazy and lazy South, while the juxtaposition of the New Orleans-centric “Jambalaya” with its refrain of “son of a gun, we’re having fun on the Bayou” and the old folk spiritual “I’ll Fly Away,” given an up-tempo rockabilly makeover, are great examples of the ways that this collaboration works. These tracks, and a few others such as “The Sugar Blues” and “Mullensburg Joys,” simply embody the effortless joy with which both of these groups approach their craft, reiterating through performance why they have become such leading figures in their respective fields. If nothing else, this album will send you scrambling for each band’s individual catalogues, and a study of each group’s quintessential approach to their American musical forms is a nonetheless fruitful enterprise for any music lover.