The Daily Deep Cut

The editors at JamsBio like to think of ourselves as music fans first, not critics, and that’s the sensibility we strive for at JamsBio and that we seek in other sites as well. That’s why we’re so jazzed about Damn Fine Day, a site that each day profiles a deep album cut that’s been overlooked, but deserves a place in everybody’s collection. In the name of spreading the gospel about great music, we present “The Daily Deep Cut,” where we add our two cents about the songs featured on Damn Fine Day. Once you read our unique take, we’ll send you over to Damn Fine Day so you can stream the full track and download it if you like. Sometimes we might even suggest another deep track from the same album or present some other novel twist on what their hawking.

Cut from the same cloth as The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, the Beau Brummel’s 1968 watermark, Bradley’s Barn, is one of the first, and finest, forays into country-rock ever pressed to wax. Although the band doesn’t garner nearly as much acclaim as their contemporaries with the Nashville flu, the Beau Brummels were arguably one of the finest purveyors of the budding genre. Indeed, you can trace a direct path from Bradley’s Barn to the alt-country experiments that would follow, its influence evident in a host of records during the next thirty years.

For Bradley’s Barn, producer Lenny Waronker surrounded the Brummels with Nashville’s finest, including guitarist Jerry Reed and drummer Kenneth A. Buttre. The combination of these studio vets with the songwriting duo of Sal Valentino and Ron Elliott is a wonder, particularly on the original songs “Turn Around,” “Deep Water,” and most notably, “Cherokee Girl.” The latter is built on a rich tapestry of acoustic guitars, chiming electric guitars and a brilliant touch of Countrypolitan strings with a slight psychedelic twist. Nothing at the time (or since) sounded quite like this. The Beau Brummels called it quits soon after releasing this record of astonishing originality, sealing their fate as one of the unsung legends of folk and country rock.

I encourage you to take a listen to “Cherokee Girl” on Damn Fine Day and hear for yourself why the Beau Brummels should be mentioned in the same breath as the Byrds and the Gram Parsons.

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