It bodes well for Black & Wyatt Records that their catalog has already been anthologized. And hearing the label’s finest moments gathered together in one place casts their releases in a new, impressive light, as Always Memphis Rock & Roll, a new collection of the label’s best and brightest tracks, reveals.
Part of the revelation in hearing this new compilation, out now on both Black & Wyatt and Dresden’s Head Perfume Records, is realizing that the label can no longer be considered a “newcomer.” It’s an established voice of Memphis that’s recognized globally. Five years have passed since the Memphis Flyer’s Chris McCoy first profiled the two Memphis doctors who launched the label out of a sheer love of gritty rock-and-roll. And yet the historical sweep of the compilation goes far beyond that half-decade, as Head Perfume’s website proudly announces tracks spanning “1956-2019!”
And that’s technically true, with the lead cut being none other than Black & Wyatt’s archival release of two takes of “Steady Girl” by the Heathens, a teen band who recorded at Sam Phillips’ Memphis Recording Service in 1956 but didn’t make it onto wax at the time. Fittingly, Side B opens with Mario Monterosso’s reimagining of “Steady Girl,” also recorded in the very studio that Sam Phillips designed, 63 years later.
Those bookends are a good indication that Black & Wyatt’s heart is in the right place, a place of bacon grease and mud clods and the buzz of old amps. Indeed, hearing these cuts jump from one artist to another, one hears certain common denominators: great guitar sounds, with many varieties of crunch delivered, track by track; punchy songwriting that’s willing to dwell on the dramatic edge, from Turnstyles’ “Cut You Off” or Jack Oblivian & the Sheiks’ “Fast Friends” to Fingers Like Saturn’s “Candy’s Dead” or Tyler Keith’s “Born Again Virgin”; and a glorious preponderance of driving drums and bass. One notable exception? Ironically, a demo recorded by Jack Oblivian & the Dream Killers way back in 2000, the tough-yet-wistful “Loose Diamonds,” which sports only the sparest of snare-hits.
Better yet, for those working on their own Black & Wyatt collection at home, each track opens a potential rabbit hole, as it sends you to the albums from which these tracks are sourced. Such was the case on hearing Toy Trucks’ “Schoolbus,” which led me to marvel at that group’s Rockets Bells and Poetry LP, a power pop diamond in the rough. With Always Memphis Rock & Roll, one can discover such gems all over again.
Always Memphis Rock & Roll will be featured tonight, Friday, May 20, in Memphis Listening Lab’s SoundRoom. Albums will be available; music starts at 6:30 p.m.