Doug Collette

Los Lobos’ 2021 album Native Sons, comprised of (mostly) all cover songs (exclusively by Los Angeles-based artists), is prime evidence of how, during the course of their fifty-year-plus career, these musical emissaries from East LA have taken great pains not to repeat themselves.

Say what we might about quartets, quintets, sextets and beyond, it might be fair to say the trio is the most potent instrumental lineup of them all. Three-piece ensembles hold a special place in the annals of improvisational music (and not just in the jazz milieu: the term 'power trio'was coined in the rock realm to describe Cream

Brad Mehldau’s two latest efforts for Nonesuch Records are heady pieces of work indeed. After some digressions from his customary jazz orientation in the form of Your Mother Should Know, an album of (almost) all Beatles material, and Jacob’s Ladder, a narrative supported by covers of prog music figures including Rush, Yes and Gentle Giant, the keyboardist composer returns to works inspired by esteemed classical figures in the form of Bach and Faure.

In contrast to his often (always?) irascible peer Howlin’ Wolf (a/k/a Chester Burnett), John Lee Hooker was most amenable to collaborations. Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, Carlos Santana, and Charlie Musselwhite, among others, appeared on his 1989 album The Healer, produced by guitarist extraordinaire Roy Rogers (more about him in a later installment). Meanwhile, the boogie-blues icon himself appeared on The Healing Game, the 1997 album by one of his proteges, ‘The Belfast Cowboy’ himself, Van Morrison. In that same year, Big Head Todd and his Monsters not only covered Hooker’s “Boom Boom” (shown here in a fifty-year old rendition), but also invited the man to perform with them on the studio track thereof from their own record Beautiful World.

Given that 1977 has become one of the most highly regarded epochs in Grateful Dead history, it only makes sense that Volume 50 of Dave’s Picks is devoted to two shows from that year. After all, the concert from May 25 at The Mosque in Richmond, Virginia, was the initial exhumation from the vault for this archive series back in 2012.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is ground zero for a collaboration between Neil Young and Crazy Horse that has lasted for over a half-century. The personnel has not always been the same as on this second post-Buffalo Springfield album by the Canadian rock icon, and there have been some protracted intervals when Young has deliberately worked apart from The Horse (see Jimmy McDonough’s incisive biography Shakey for the often painful details.

Little Feat’s homage to the blues, Sam’s Place, is a natural companion piece to their collaborative venture of 2008, Join The Band. On that record, the band proffered a cross-section of material from its lengthy canon, on which it was joined by the likes of Bob Seger, Emmylou Harris, and Dave Matthews, among many others.

The recently deceased Dickey Betts did not often (or to a great extent) verbally expound upon the tragic death of Duane Allman in the fall of 1971. Instead, the surviving guitarist/songwriter/vocalist paid homage to the fallen ‘Skydog’ (a nickname courtesy of Wilson Pickett) by assuming titular leadership of the Allman Brothers in 1972 and 1973, staunchly upholding the legacy of these seminal Southern blues-rockers and shepherding them to their greatest commercial success. In direct personal terms, however, Dickey’s greatest tribute to his fallen comrade may be the naming of his son after him, and the dedication titled “Duane’s Tune” appeared a decade after the author’s offspring was born in 1978. A highlight of performances by The Dickey Betts Band (as depicted in the accompanying clip), the original recording is a notable inclusion on Pattern Disruptive, the last album by the group Dickey fronted under his own name before the fateful reunion of the Brothers, the very next year (not to mention the final solo recording of his career).

It didn’t take hindsight of over half a century to realize The Who’s Tommy (released 5/17/69), delivered all the breakthroughs the band was seeking at the time of its release. But it’s still a marvel to comprehend how the tempestuous British quartet’s live renditions of the so-called ‘rock opera’ invariably superseded the studio recordings on the double LP as originally issued.

An excellent companion piece to the comparably memorable Live in Bakersfield August 21, 1970 (Rhino, 2023) and Live At The Matrix 1967: The Original Masters (Rhino, 2023), Live at Konserthuset, Stockholm September 20, 1968 features a live radio broadcast from September 20, 1968. Capturing The Doors at one of their performing peaks, it is apposite to another stop on the same European tour with Jefferson Airplane where lead vocalist Jim Morrison missed a show.