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Now You Can Hear All About It Too

HARTFORD COURANT

Some people tune into beachside boom boxes for official songs of the summer (this year’s, unfortunately, might be “Because I Got High”). Some of us spend time in bookstores waiting for the Oxford American’s music issue to come out. Nicknamed “The Magazine of Good Writing,” Oxford American four years ago began issuing tasty musical discs to accompany its summer music issues.

By now, they’re handy a (and, with the $8.50 cover price of the magazine, relatively inexpensive) compendium of the vast array of rich Southern music recorded in the past century.

“Southern Sampler No. 5,” included with this year’s music issue (on newsstands until the end of the year), is a typical delight, starting with the startling Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “Jesus Is on the Mainline” and swinging its focus to Cajun, Dixieland, blues, garage rock and scratchy pre-World War II 78s.

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There’s a focus on Memphis soul, which is never a bad thing. The work presented here by Toots Hibbert and Victoria Williams is informed by Stax/Volt soul.

There’s an underlying vibe of gauzy, echoic Southern Gothic from Emmylou Harris, Jim White and, joltingly, Billy Bob Thornton, who introduces his singing style with Earl Scruggs on a version of “Ring of Fire.” Although there’s no solo track from Lucinda Williams, she shines nonetheless on a track by Kevin Gordon.

There’s nothing bad on the disc, and it whets the appetite for all the great writing about many of the artists in the magazine, which annually can be considered the most in-depth liner notes for a single disc ever.

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Yankee magazine, too, decided to jump into the fray of a regional music issue this summer. The results on its CD are limited by the offering of the company that put it together, Rounder Records.

Although the Cambridge, Mass., company is its own New England music cover story, the contemporary folk dominating the disc does a disservice to the rich variety of other kinds of music in the region. Not even the Shaker sax players on the cover are included (although there’s also a Rounder album of their work out).

Instead, it’s the usual Bill Morrissey, Cheryl Wheeler axis, with occasional highlights from Merrie Amsterberg and the Nields. There’s nothing to reflect some of the subjects in the magazines, from a New Hampshire polka king to the successes of Phish and Aerosmith (and nothing is said either about New England’s current rock successes, Godsmack and Staind).

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Catlin is rock music critic for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.

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