CD Review — Jim Ed Brown, “In Style Again”

| February 8, 2015 | Reply

JEB tossTrue country music lovers — here’s a great combination of Classic Country meets Yesterday’s and Today’s Singers. First printed in the February issue, Buddy Magazine.

Jim Ed Brown, In Style Again, Plowboy Records

Octogenarian Jim Ed Brown recently released his new, 13-song CD recently, In Style Again, the first solo album he’s recorded in more than 30 years. The title cut was co-written with Texan songwriter Austin Cunningham II and produced by Bobby Bare. The irony of this recording project is that Brown was diagnosed with lung cancer almost immediately after he began working on it. Yet, his vocals are quartz clear and filthy rich, just as when he started out in the crazy business called country music in the 1950s.

Brown, apparently not a songwriter himself, sensibly relies on his friends in the business to provide him with great songs. They did! He also relied, here, on numerous other country music icons, including Vince Gill, The Whites (Sharon and Cheryl), Helen Cornelius, and Bonnie Brown, to add dimension to his vocals. They did!

The first release from In Style Again is already at the radio stations. “When The Sun Says Hello To The Mountain” is a sweet love ballad. His sister, Bonnie Brown, sings backup on this, and, according to the liner notes, taking both her own part and the part that their other sister, Maxine, would have sung as well. “Laura,” another love song, has an Irish lilt to it. But, in general, the songs are about life as seen through the eyes of someone who has lived it. “It’s a

Jim Ed Brown, courtesy photo

Jim Ed Brown, courtesy photo

good life, blessed in so many ways. It’s a hard life, it’s been tough some days. It’s a sweet life that comes my way… It’s been a long life, I couldn’t count the days. It’s been a short life, time has slipped away.” “Older Guy” is a quasi-comic and yet convincing look at the advantages of being older and in a relationship. And there’s the romantic ballad, born of decades of love between husband and wife, “(I’d Choose) You Again.” Again, a true-love account of love in “The Last One.”

Brown and Cornelius are truly together again in the Jim Reeves classic “Don’t Let Me Cross Over.”

And humor in lyrics meshes with reality in the “Am I Still Country?” The singer lyrically explains that, though he grew up in the country, he now lives in the city, drives a luxury car, would rather play golf than hang out in a bar — well, you get the picture. “When I hear other singers say how country they are, it makes me wonder — am I still country, or have I gone too far?”

The instrumentation on In Style Again is a simple, stunning blend of steel and other guitars, fiddle, organ and piano, and drums.

In a video that Brown posted after his first chemo treatment (September 2014), he said, “I’m going to beat this little thing called cancer. See you next year!”

Mary Jane Farmer, Scene In Town

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In the music production business, including event production, booking, photography, reporting, and other such essentials, since 1980.

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