The Late Great Townes Van Zandt

Last updated
The Late Great Townes Van Zandt
Van Zandt - The Late Great.jpg
Studio album by
Townes Van Zandt
ReleasedSeptember 1972
Recorded1972
StudioJack Clement Studios, Nashville, Tennessee
Genre Country, Folk, Blues
Length38:31
Label Poppy
Producer Jack Clement
Townes Van Zandt chronology
High, Low and In Between
(1972)		The Late Great Townes Van Zandt
(1972)		 Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas
(1977)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [1]
Pitchfork Media (8.4/10) [2]

The Late Great Townes Van Zandt is a 1972 studio album by American singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. It was the second album that he recorded in 1972, and a follow-up to High, Low and In Between .

Contents

Recording

The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt would be the singer's last studio album for the ailing Poppy Records. It was produced by Jack Clement, with Eggers telling Van Zandt biographer John Kruth in 2007, "Jack produced the basic tracks to 'No Lonesome Tune' and 'Honky Tonkin'. I cut all the basic tracks to everything else and mixed it. The strings on the 'Silver Ships of Andilar' were arranged by Bergen White, one of the few black musicians in Nashville who happened to be the top string arranger in those days." According to the book To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, Eggers had wanted to overdub drums on "Pancho and Lefty" but Van Zandt vetoed the idea.

Composition

The album includes what is Van Zandt's signature tune,[ citation needed ] the enigmatic "Pancho and Lefty", which Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard took to number one on the country charts in 1983.

Although "Pancho and Lefty" is the song most associated with Van Zandt, "If I Needed You" is his most covered composition.[ citation needed ] A lilting portrait of undying love, the song was first recorded by Doc Watson on his 1973 Grammy-winning album Then and Now and later taken to number three on the country charts by Emmylou Harris and Don Williams in 1981. The characters Loop and Lil mentioned in the song were actually a pair of parakeets that Van Zandt carried with him. In an interview on the show Nashville Now, Van Zandt insisted to Ralph Emery that he wrote the song in his sleep, dreaming the melody and writing down the words when he woke up. In the Be Here To Love Me documentary, Van Zandt's first wife Fran Petters states when he first played it for her she thought it was "the most beautiful song I'd ever heard" but it wasn't until years later that she was certain he had written it for her when Van Zandt called her in the middle of the night in 1981, long after they had parted ways, and exclaimed, "Babe, we finally made it!", a reference to the Harris/Williams duet that was riding high on the charts.

The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt includes the singer's take on two country classics: "Honky Tonkin'", originally written by Van Zandt's hero Hank Williams, and "Fraulein", which had been his father's favorite country song. Van Zandt also recorded the Guy Clark-penned "Don't Let The Sunshine Fool Ya" and co-wrote the lullaby "Heavenly Houseboat Blues" with Clark's wife Susanna. The lascivious "German Mustard (A Clapalong)" was a collaboration with guitarist Rocky Hill (formerly of the 1960s Dallas band American Blues and brother of ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill) and features a prominent slide guitar and what sounds like improvised Van Zandt lyrics. "Sad Cinderella" first appeared on Van Zandt's debut For the Sake of the Song but, like several other cuts on the album, was later rerecorded by the singer, who remained unhappy with the overproduction on his first LP.[ citation needed ] The album's closing track "Silver Ships of Andilar" is a Van Zandt epic which contains seven verses about a dying man who, out of desperation, slips a message into a bottle. Guitarist Mickey White told Van Zandt biographer John Kruth in 2007 that the mournful ballad "Snow Don't Fall" was written about Van Zandt's former girlfriend Leslie Jo Richards, who had been murdered the year before. In his 2018 memoir My Years with Townes Van Zandt: Music, Genius, and Rage, road manager Harold Eggers writes, "It was a song he would never perform live, no matter how insistent the request."

Album title & artwork

In the 2007 biography To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, the theory is put forth that the album's title was inspired by a night in 1972 when the singer "died twice in one night" on the way to the hospital after a heroin overdose, an event his former wife Fran describes in harrowing detail. However, manager and producer Kevin Eggers told Van Zandt biographer John Kruth that he conceived the album's title in the hopes that he could draw attention to Van Zandt's career with a Beatles-inspired "Paul is Dead" type hoax and goes on to lament that his client's fan base was "zip, zero, nada. Townes had no commercial success. He was a blip on the radar screen. He worked very hard at being professional and had enormous exposure, but it was like we gave a party and nobody came. I never made any money on him. Nothing happened with 'Pancho and Lefty' for ten years." Eggers also reveals to Kruth that an exasperated Jack Clement nearly had a fistfight with Charley Pride trying to get him to record "If I Needed You", something the country star refused to do. Milton Glaser, who had devised surreal covers for 2nd Right, 3rd Row for painter and folksinger Eric Von Schmidt and I'm A Stranger, Too for Chris Smither, designed Van Zandt's album cover to resemble an old-world funerary card with Gothic lettering across the top of the sleeve. The photograph itself was snapped by Steve Salmierie and features Van Zandt solemnly posing alone with his guitar in Kevin Eggers's Brooklyn Heights townhouse. The back cover features another photograph taken by Salmierie of the happily wasted singer giving the photographer the finger.

Release & reception

The Late Great Townes Van Zandt was released in 1972 and has since made several critical "best of all-time" lists. Stereophile included it as one of 94 honorable mentions that just missed their list of "The 40 Essential Albums". [3] AllMusic states, "This is the second perfect album Van Zandt cut in 1972, a complement to High, Low and In Between. Together they contain the highest points of his brilliant but erratic career. The Late Great may be a bit stronger, with classics like 'Pancho & Lefty', 'No Lonesome Tune', and 'If I Needed You', but there's not a weak track here." Amazon.com calls it "Van Zandt's perfect storm" and declares, "The Late Great, Townes Van Zandt might be his masterwork...a release that should be in every collection of great American music." John Kruth writes in To Live's To Fly that former Warner Brothers publicist Bill Bently gave Elvis Costello a cassette of Van Zandt songs to play as the musician learned how to drive and Costello "was so moved by 'Sad Cinderella' that he was said to have curbed the car and could only listen in awe" while Jack Clement marveled to Kruth that "Silver Ships of Andilar was "more like a movie than a song."

Several of the songs on The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt have been recorded by other artists, most notably "If I Needed You" and "Pancho and Lefty". "If I Needed You" has been recorded by Andrew Bird, Tom Astor, Ray Benson, Bonnie Bishop, Ginger Boatwright, Phil Cody, Dashboard Confessional, the Dead Ringer Band, Richard Dobson, Fireside, Enzo Garcia and Rhonda Harris. Emmylou Harris recorded the song as a duet with Don Williams and later with Van Zandt himself. "Pancho and Lefty" has been recorded by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Sally Barker, Johnny Bush, Pete Charles, the Cumberland Trio, Richard Dobson, Steve Earle, Cleve Francis, Dick Gaughan, Hawke, and Hoyt Axton. The Axton recording meant a lot to Van Zandt, who later recalled in an interview in Omaha Rainbow, "I learnt to finger pick from one of Hoyt Axton's records...He's always been a favorite of mine. I played with him a couple of years ago. It really blew my mind when he recorded 'Pancho and Lefty.'" "No Lonesome Tune" has been recorded by David Bavas, Saul Broudy, Guy Clark, Mark Dvorak and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. A duet of the song featuring Van Zandt and Willie Nelson can also be found on the 2001 release Texas Rain: The Texas Hill Country Recordings.

Track listing

All lyrics and music by Townes Van Zandt unless noted otherwise:

  1. "No Lonesome Tune" – 4:21
  2. "Sad Cinderella" – 4:15
  3. "German Mustard (A Clapalong)" (Van Zandt, Rocky Hill) – 2:55
  4. "Don't Let the Sunshine Fool Ya'" (Guy Clark) – 2:25
  5. "Honky Tonkin'" (Hank Williams) – 3:44
  6. "Snow Don't Fall" – 2:27
  7. "Fraulein" (Lawton Williams) – 2:42
  8. "Pancho and Lefty" – 3:40
  9. "If I Needed You" – 3:44
  10. "Silver Ships of Andilar" – 5:07
  11. "Heavenly Houseboat Blues" (Van Zandt, Susanna Clark) – 2:51

Arranged by Chuck Cochran

Release history

yearformatlabelcatalog #
1972LPPoppyPP-LA004-F
1973LPUnited ArtistsUAS 29442
1988CDDecalCD CHARLY 145
1988LPDecalLIK 49
1989CDTomato2696272
1989LPTomato2696271
1994CDRhinoR2 71242
1996CDCapitol53930B [4]
1997CDCharlyCDGR 215
2003CDTomatoTOM-2010
2003CDCharlySNAP 138 CD
2013LPOmnivore RecordingsOVLP-22
2013CDOmnivore RecordingsOVCD-22
2015LPCharlyCHARLY L 175
2015CDCharlyCHARLY F 835

Credits

Musicians

Production

Artwork

Related Research Articles

<i>Pancho & Lefty</i> (album) 1983 studio album by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson

Pancho & Lefty by Townes Van Zandt (1972) became well-known through a honky tonk album by outlaw country musicians Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, released in 1983. Original vinyl copies from 1983 give the album's title as "Poncho & Lefty" on the cover, as well as on the inner sleeve and the record label; the album's title track is similarly rendered "Poncho & Lefty" on the cover, inner sleeve, and label. Later editions correct the title to the intended "Pancho & Lefty.” They are backed by Don Markham of The Strangers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Townes Van Zandt</span> American singer-songwriter (1944–1997)

John Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter. He wrote numerous songs, such as "Pancho and Lefty", "For the Sake of the Song", "If I Needed You", "Snake Mountain Blues", "Our Mother the Mountain", "Waitin' Round to Die", and "To Live Is to Fly". His musical style has often been described as melancholic and features rich, poetic lyrics. During his early years, Van Zandt was respected for his guitar playing and fingerpicking ability.

"Pancho and Lefty", originally "Poncho and Lefty", is a song written by American country music singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Perhaps his most well-known song, Van Zandt recorded his original version of this song for his 1972 album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. The song has been recorded by several artists since its composition and performance by Van Zandt, with the Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard version selling the most copies and reaching number one on the Billboard country chart.

<i>Luxury Liner</i> (album) 1976 studio album by Emmylou Harris

Luxury Liner is the fourth studio album by American country music artist Emmylou Harris, released in 1976. The album was Harris' second successive number one country album on the Billboard charts, although, unlike the preceding Elite Hotel, there were no number one hits from this album. The highest-charting singles were the number six Chuck Berry cover "(You Never Can Tell) C'est la Vie" and the number eight "Making Believe". However, the album may be better known for including the first cover version of Townes Van Zandt's 1972 song "Pancho and Lefty", which subsequently became Van Zandt's best-known composition.

<i>Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas</i> 1977 live album by Townes Van Zandt

Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas is a double live album by Texas singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. The recording captures Van Zandt in a series of July 1973 performances in an intimate venue Old Quarter. There is a strong critical consensus that this recording is among the most exemplary of Van Zandt's career.

<i>For the Sake of the Song</i> 1968 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

For the Sake of the Song is the debut album by country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1968. The majority of the songs, including the title track, "Tecumseh Valley", "(Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria", "Waitin' Around to Die", and "Sad Cinderella", were re-recorded in more stripped-down versions for subsequent studio albums.

<i>Our Mother the Mountain</i> 1969 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

Our Mother the Mountain is the second album by country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1969. It is considered to be one of his greatest recordings and features some of his best known works, including "Be Here To Love Me", "Snake Mountain Blues" and "Our Mother The Mountain".

<i>Townes Van Zandt</i> (album) 1969 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt is the third studio album by the American singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in September 1969 by Poppy Records. It includes re-recordings of four songs from his 1968 debut album, including the first song he ever wrote, "Waitin' Around to Die".

<i>Delta Momma Blues</i> 1971 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

Delta Momma Blues is the fourth album by the country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1971. Unlike his previous albums, which were influenced by Appalachian folk and country music and recorded in Nashville, this album was blues influenced and recorded in New York City.

<i>High, Low and In Between</i> Album by Townes Van Zandt

High, Low and In Between is an album by country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1971. The album was recorded in L.A. and showcases what Van Zandt himself considered to be one of his most well written songs: "To Live Is To Fly".

<i>Flyin Shoes</i> 1978 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

Flyin' Shoes is an album released by folk/country singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt in 1978. It was his first album of original material in five years and was produced by Chips Moman.

<i>At My Window</i> (album) 1987 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

At My Window is an album released by folk/country singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt in 1987. This was Van Zandt's first studio album in the nine years that followed 1978's Flyin' Shoes, and his only studio album recorded in the 1980s.

<i>No Deeper Blue</i> 1994 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

No Deeper Blue is a 1994 studio album by American singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. This was Van Zandt's first studio album of original songs in seven years following At My Window and the last to be widely released before his death on New Year's Day 1997.

<i>Live and Obscure</i> 1987 live album by Townes Van Zandt

Live and Obscure is a live album released by folk/country singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt in 1987. It was recorded at Twelfth and Porter in Nashville, Tennessee in April 1985.

<i>Live at McCabes</i> (Townes Van Zandt album) 2001 live album by Townes Van Zandt

Live at McCabe's is a live album released by singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt in 1995. It was recorded at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California and is a limited edition. Only 2000 copies were printed.

<i>Especially for You</i> (Don Williams album) 1981 studio album by Don Williams

Especially for You is the eleventh studio album by American country music artist Don Williams. It was released in 1981. Three singles were released from the album which all reached the top ten. These were "Miracles" (#4), "If I Needed You" (#3) and "Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good" (#1). The album peaked at #5 in the U.S. and reached #109 on the Billboard 200. This album, paired with his previous album, I Believe in You, were re-released on one CD in 1989.

"If I Needed You" is a song written by Townes Van Zandt and performed on his 1972 album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. It was covered 9 years later by American country music artists Emmylou Harris and Don Williams as a duet, and was released in September 1981 as the first single from Harris' album Cimarron. The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart and #1 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada. According to Townes's business partner and producer Kevin Eggers, the song was written about his wife Anne Mittendorf Eggers.

<i>The Nashville Sessions</i> (Townes Van Zandt album) 1993 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

The Nashville Sessions is an album by American singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, recorded in 1973 but not released until 1993. The tracks were originally recorded for what would have been Van Zandt's seventh album, but was not released until twenty years later due to a dispute between producer Jack Clement and Poppy Records founder Kevin Eggers.

<i>A Far Cry from Dead</i> 1999 compilation album by Townes Van Zandt

A Far Cry from Dead is a posthumous album by Townes Van Zandt, released two years after the singer's 1997 death. It contains overdubbed instrumentation added to vocal and guitar recordings made by the late singer. It was Van Zandt's first album on a major label.

<i>Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions & Demos 1971–1972</i> 2013 studio album by Townes Van Zandt

Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions & Demos 1971–1972 is an album by Townes Van Zandt. It was released posthumously in 2013.

References

  1. ↑ "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt – Townes Van Zandt". AllMusic . Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  2. ↑ "Townes van Zandt: High, Low and in Between / The Late, Great Townes van Zandt / Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions and Demos 1971-1972". Pitchfork . 2 July 2013.
  3. ↑ Robert Baird, Richard Lehnert and Robert Levine, "40 Years of Stereophile: The 40 Essential Albums", Stereophile November, 2002 (main article, "honorable mentions")
  4. ↑ The October 1, 1996 Capitol reissue combined High, Low and In Between & The Late Great Townes Van Zandt onto a single disk.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.