Consumer Guide Album

Mose Allison: I'm Not Talkin': The Song Stylings of Mose Allison 1957-1971 [BGP, 2016]
This Mississippi farmboy turned US serviceman turned Louisiana State English-philosophy grad turned jazz pianist-singer-songwriter died November 15, four days past an 89th birthday that couldn't have been the happiest for a Southern progressive. His relaxed drawl and time made him Sun Records' contemporary in the South's white-man-sings-the-blues sweepstakes, plus he could write. But because he identified jazz he didn't get an all-vocal album until the 1963 Prestige comp fMose Allison Sings, soon a totem for young aesthetes like Pete Townshend and Bonnie Raitt. From a base of Prestige standards like the Who cover "Young Man's Blues" and the John Mayall-etc. cover "Parchman Farm," this fortuitously timed new selection mines his uneven late-'60s Atlantic book, which has plenty to offer--the philosophical "Jus' Like Livin'," the physiological "Your Molecular Structure," the reassuring "You Can Count on Me," the endangered "Back on the Corner," the paranoid "Foolkiller," the strategically taciturn "I'm Not Talkin'" itself. My favorite is "Western Man," which begins: "Western man had a plan / And with his gun in his hand / Free from doubt / Went right out / On the world." Pretty ominous if you know what's coming. But he managed to give it a happier ending than he lived to see. A-