Nanci Griffith Covers:
Sonny Curtis, Tom Russell, Ralph McTell, Kate Wolf, Shel Silverstein & more!
October 30th, 2010 — 10:13 pm
Austinite singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith has long teetered on the line between country and folk, successfully selling out mid-size concert halls and finding radioplay on both Country and Folk stations nationwide. She’s well-covered in both arenas, most especially by other crossover artists, her songs finding voice in the hands and mouths of Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, Red Molly, Eliza Gilkyson and others.
But it’s telling that Griffith’s own albums and singles have never truly topped the charts in either category. The complicated web of factors which have led to a successful career that nonetheless hides just under the radar of her shooting-star peers includes both personal and professional elements. For fans and newcomers alike, then, today we offer a short overview of Griffith’s life and career, culminating in a well-deserved celebration in song.
Nanci Griffith got her start early, with a professional debut at 14 practically synchronistic with Tom Russell’s “discovery” of her at a Kerrville Folk Fest campfire. But hers was a slow rise to fame. The death of her high school boyfriend just after their high school prom surely took its toll on her early work, even as it inspired an early set of deep and wistful songs of love lost. For a short while, until her career blossomed, she taught kindergarten during the day, and hit the coffeehouses at night, biding her time until the world caught on to her talent and craft.
The national release of Once In A Very Blue Moon on Rounder Records in ’85, and her Grammy nomination for her subsequent release Last of the True Believers, seemed an indicator of star power, and an assurance that the shy, often startlingly powerful singer-songwriter was on the cusp of a life in the spotlight. But the path to fame and fortune is never straight, and life is full of curveballs. Though she finally won her first and only Grammy in 1994, Griffith’s career was slowed again in the late nineties, with two bouts of cancer keeping her off the touring trail for much of the latter part of the decade. And a notorious five-year case of writer’s block in the mid-to-late 2000s prompted no other output than a lush, overly orchestrated album of her father’s favorite torch songs which made hardly a ripple in critical circles.
Today, at 57, Griffith remains well known for several classic folk-radio staples, most especially Love at the Five and Dime, a 1986 signature song that country listeners know best as a #3 hit for Mattea, and From A Distance, a Julie Gold tune which hit #1 in the UK, and would go on to make millions for Bette Midler three years later. But even if she has never truly made more than a short-lived splash for her own performance of her own songs, she continues to merit well-deserved praise, both as a songwriter’s songwriter and interpreter of the songs of others.
Our featured artist’s voice is distinctive, a girlish alto with a gentle twang and strong vibrato that can come off as nasal and pinched even as it gains open-throated force in performance. Because of this, she often gets overlooked in my own listening habits, a lone female voice cast into in the wilderness of Dylan, Richard Thompson, and other artists whose catalogs I’m still coming to late in life as my tastes for vocal deliveries mature past sweetness and light.
And though she has a knack for subtlety when it’s warranted – my most favorite track of hers, in fact, is a solo acoustic version of Love at the Five & Dime recorded live on folk radio towards the end of the millennium – most of her catalog trends towards full-band performance, with her Blue Moon Orchestra ever at her side. It’s high-concept, high-production music, rich with contemporary country instrumentation, occasionally syrupy and poppish – a far cry from the sparse acoustic music we so often favor here – and as such, though we’ve shared a few of her songs here and there throughout our three years on the web, she’s not yet in my top twenty.
But there’s much to recommend deeper reconsideration of Griffith’s music, both to old-timers and to newcomers to the folkworld. Her ability to portray the full range of sad and weary existence just below the poverty line, especially through sweet second-person narratives of love and longing, is well worth celebrating. She is a well-known champion of collaboration, whose albums are peppered with co-write credits and studio sit-ins that show a diversity of influences and a keen eye for talent wherever she might find it, from Darius Rucker, Adam Duritz, Willie Nelson, The Chieftains, and Matthew Ryan to Nashville songwriter-to-the-stars Fred Koller and Country Music Hall of Famer Harlan Howard.
And as Wikipedia notes, she is well known for her ability to interpret the songs of others, especially her peers from both sides of the genre divide. Indeed, more than one artist owes no small part of her fame and fortune to Griffith’s coverage, a list that includes Julie Gold, Pat Alger, and ex-husband Eric Taylor among others. And notably, Griffith’s sole Grammy win, the abovementioned 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, was for Other Voices, Other Rooms, her first of two major cover compilations in tribute to her influences as a songwriter, and a folk staple that deserves prominent placement in any cover lover’s collection.
The more I listen to Griffith’s albums, especially those of the mid to late eighties period, the more I find to like, both in her originals and in her interpretation of the songs of other artists. As this is a coverblog, I’ll leave it to you to follow the thread to her own best work as an undersung singer-songwriter – but before you go off on the winding path, here’s a few favorite coversongs to whet the proverbial whistle.
- Nanci Griffith: St. Olav’s Gate (orig. Tom Russell)
(from Last of the True Believers, 1986)
- Nanci Griffith: From A Distance (orig. Julie Gold)
(from Lone Star State of Mind, 1987)
- Nanci Griffith: I Would Change My Life (orig. Robert Earl Keen)
(from Little Love Affairs, 1988)
- Nanci Griffith: From Clare To Here (orig. Ralph McTell)
- Nanci Griffith: Comin’ Down In The Rain (orig. Buddy Mondlock)
(from Other Voices, Other Rooms, 1993)
- Nanci Griffith: I Fought The Law (orig. Sonny Curtis)
(from Blue Roses From The Moons, 1994)
- Nanci Griffith: Friend of Mine (orig. Kate Wolf)
(from Treasures Left Behind: Remembering Kate Wolf, 1998)
- Nanci Griffith: I Still Miss Someone (orig. Johnny Cash)
- Nanci Griffith: Who Knows Where The Time Goes (orig. Sandy Denny)
(from Other Voices, Too: A Trip Back To Bountiful, 1998)
- Nanci Griffith: Boots of Spanish Leather [live] (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from Winter Marquee, 2002)
- Nanci Griffth: The Giving Tree (orig. Shel Silverstein)
(from Twistable, Turnable Man: A Musical Tribute to the Songs of Shel Silverstein, 2010)
- Nanci Griffith: I Hear Nevada (orig. Eric Taylor)
(from Another Rarities [bootleg], various dates)
Like her frequent collaborator, the much more famous Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith is in high demand as a back-up vocalist. Her distinctive vocals have appeared behind and alongside pop, country, and rock “greats” such as Hootie and the Blowfish, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, and The Crickets, with folk greats from John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt to Maura O’Connell, Tom Russell, The Kennedys, and Guy Clarke, and with more countryfolk artists than you or I could count on our hands and feet. Today’s bonus tracks acknowledge her work sharing coverage credits out and about in the singer-songwriter community; for a complete list of her work with other musicians, check out this comprehensive discography.
- Ramblin’ Jack Elliott w/ Emmylou Harris & Nanci Griffith: Rex’s Blues (orig. Townes Van Zandt)
(from Friends of Mine, 1998)
- The Chieftains w/ Nanci Griffith: Red Is The Rose (trad.)
(from An Irish Evening, 1992)
- John Gorka w/ Nanci Griffith: Snow Don’t Fall (orig. Townes Van Zandt)
(from Writing In The Margins, 2006)
Previously on Cover Lay Down:
- Nanci Griffith covers…
- Bob Dylan’s Boots of Spanish Leather (and other songs of shoes)
- Kate Wolf’s Across the Great Divide (and more Kate Wolf covers)
- John Prine’s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness (and more John Prine covers)
- Red Molly’s utterly gorgeous cover of Nanci Griffith’s Gulf Coast Highway, recorded live at this summer’s Falcon Ridge Folk Festival