Tag: outlaws

Tompall Glaser RIP

Wanted The Outlaws Country outlaw Tompall Glaser passed away this week. Glaser had a distinguished career, performing with his brothers and running a publishing company. But most of us know him for his work on the first “outlaw” country album, appropriately named Wanted! The Outlaws. The 1976 album — which also featured Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter — was a landmark album that went platinum.

One of the songs Glaser performed on the album, along with “Put Another Log on the Fire,” was “T for Texas.” Here he is performing the song in the 1980s.

Glaser also co-wrote the great song, “Streets of Baltimore,” for Bobby Bare. The song contains a lot of alt-country street cred because of the wonderful version by Gram Parsons. More recently, the song has been covered by The Little Willies. Here is a 2006 Virginia performance of the song by Ryan Adams.

T for thanks for the great music, Mr. Glaser. Rest in peace.

What is your favorite Tompall Glaser song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Jesse James Born Today in the County of Clay

    Jesse James

    “He was born one day in the County of Clay
    And he came from a solitary race.”

    On today’s date in 1847, Jesse James was born in Clay County Missouri. Within two years, his father, the Rev. Robert James, ran off and left his family behind to go to look for gold in California, never to return. Their mother Zerelda soon remarried a stepfather who was abusive to Jesse and his brother Frank, and she would later marry another stepfather.

    As a teenager in the border state of Missouri, Jesse learned to kill for the South during the Civil War, as did his brother Frank. Then the brothers went on to a life of crime. By most accounts, Jesse was not the Robin Hood hero as portrayed in the traditional “Ballad of Jesse James,” made famous by Woody Guthrie and others. But sometimes we need outlaw heroes to inspire us to fight authority. Below is a version of the song by Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band, starting with a long banjo introduction.

    Springsteen’s version of the ballad appears on We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions. Other songs that reference James include Cher’s “Just Like Jesse James” from 1988. If you wish to celebrate Jesse James’s birthday with a film, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is one of the most beautiful movies of recent years. While slow-paced at times, the movie, which stars Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, is elegiac and poetic.

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    Have a Safe New Year’s Eve (Billy the Kid Rises Again)

    Billy the Kid

    Today it was announced that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will not pardon Billy the Kid. People debated this year whether Billy the Kid should be pardoned. The debate was based on a deal that Billy allegedly had made with the territorial governor in exchange for testimony in a case.

    According to USA Today, Gov. Richardson, whose term ends at midnight tonight, said that the evidence of the deal was ambiguous, so he chose not to act on the pardon. Others on both sides debated whether or not the evidence was so ambiguous.

    The descendants of the territorial governor and of Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot and killed Billy the Kid, asserted that they were outraged that Gov. Richardson had considered the pardon. We are invested in the legacy of our families, even for things that happened more than 100 years ago.

    Nobody knows what happened in that secret meeting between Billy the Kid and the territorial governor in March 1879. But, like Tom Petty in the song “Billy the Kid,” Billy keeps getting up in our American imagination.

    Chimesfreedom has been out of town, but we will have a New Year’s Post tomorrow, so be sure to stop by again in the new year.  Thanks for your visits and comments in 2010 as this site has got off the ground, and we look forward to seeing you in 2011!

    May you continue to get up from any adversity in the new year.