I'M A LONER -- Produced by: Denis Preston for the CBS Lansdowne series.
Cover Photo by Patrick Gwynn-Jones
FAVOURITE THINGS--Recorded Under The Personal Supervision of Denis Preston
Copyright 1965 A Landowne Recording
Photographs by Bruce Cole
Art Direction And Design by Barry Rubin Ink
Many thanks to Rocky of Relics Antiques
LINER NOTES
I've slept in your rains
And I've slept in your hails,
I've screamed out my hurt
While I've slept in your jails,
I'm a loner . .
.
THIS IS SHAWN PHILLIPS' theme song.It is also the theme of this album. And, coincidentally, the theme of his life and the identifying motif of his unquestionable artistry.
In an age when the moods and modes of fashion's passing style demand absolute conformity from their adherents, Shawn Phillips stands out as a "loner", an individualist with a highly personalized approach to folksong, ethnic music, or whatever-you-care statement of a Bob Dylan, although although there is an undeniable "family"similarity between all three--disparate though they may seem at first comparison. All three owe much inspiration to Woody Guthrie, the great Dust Bowl balladeer of the 'Thirties and first as well as foremost among creative performers in the American folk idiom. And all three are "revolutionaries",if only against their own middle-class origins. Shawn Phillips was born in Fort Worth, Texas. His father was a writer; his mother who died tragically young in 1956, a fashion model. He is a willowy, jean-trousered 22, with blond good looks which deny his part Cherokee Indian ancestry. He gives the impression of a man who has spent much of his life on horseback, though, in fact, his childhood years were spent commuting between Texas and Mexico and his adolescent ones (when he first ran away from home) working in the oil fields . . . .
It is perhaps significant that the first song he himself wrote was called Death Train and and was based upon a legend he conned from a railroad worker he hung around with "across the tracks". For whilst there is social realism and indeed satire in his songs--as witness Nobody Listens--he is, at core, a romantic.His voice has a hurtful edge--unlike the soursop quality of Dylan--and a built-in flair for dramatic effect, as evidenced in his interpretation of songs like I'm a Loner.
Most immediately outstanding to the cognoscenti,however, is the quality of his guitar playing--remarkable by every standard of his chosen metier His adoption of the twelve-string guitar at once evokes memories of Leadbelly, and, indeed, there is much of this great Negro folkster to be heard in his work--for example, I'm A Loner. At the same time, there is equally much that is highly individual and wholly admirable.Unlike many an authentic Country-&-Western artist Shawn Phillips cannot claim to have been born with a guitar in his hands. He started playing only in 1960, with early excursions into the R-&-B field. Today, by the "oonk-plonk-plonk" standards of most of his contemporaries,he is quite a virtuoso, and his accompaniments are both inventive and dramatic in emphasis--for example You've Heard My Voice and The Bells.
His repertoire is catholic in the extreme. When I asked him why he chose to include My Favorite Things in this present selection his reply was disarmingly logical . . . "Because it's a dam' good piece, that's why!"
It has been my privilege and sometimes pleasure to have worked closely in the recording studio with such artists of like genre as Josh White (in 1950), the late Big Bill Broonzy (on several occasions), Alan Lomax and Ramblin'Jack Elliott.I am sure that in time to come I will look back upon my associations with this talented young Texan with an equal glow of nostalgia and artistic satisfaction.
Liner notes by:Denis Preston
