Great female voices

I've seen Rhiannon's name around, but have yet to hear her. Everything T-Bone is involved with is high quality, so no surprise there. Thanks For the tip! There is a great female in T-Bone's crowd (Americana), the wife and musical partner of Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris' guitarist/bandleader, Julie Miller, also well worth giving a listen to. Her voice is a little quirky/mannered, so not for everyone, but she's a great songwriter as well.

Thanks for the reminder Jdoris. I have a Shannon McNally CD I haven't gotten to yet (I have thousands---literally---of CD's I have yet to hear). Now all I need to do is find it!

Ozzy, yep T-Bone has no audiophile sensibilities, unfortunately. My comment about him was in reference to his musical abilities, not the audio quality of the music he makes. I can't think of a single producer in Pop music who makes great music with great sound, but I have no doubt that statement will be contested shortly.

Actually, I just thought of one example of what some consider good Pop music with great sound---the Cat Stevens album Tea For The Tillerman, produced by Paul Samwell-Smith, bass player of The Yardbirds. But that was, what, forty years ago? And I have no evidence that the sound of that album was the result of Paul's efforts at achieving "great" sound, or was instead the product of Paul's engineer (I don't have the LP handy to look for his name) alone.

Another is a song on a Gordon Lightfoot early 70's LP. Walter Davies (the creator of the Last line of record care products) had a retail Hi-Fi store in the 70's, and I just happened to be making my first visit to it the day that Bill Johnson was as well, bringing with him a full ARC system to initiate Walt becoming an ARC dealer. Walt played "Me and Bobby McGee" on the system (a Thorens 125, with a Decca Blue cartridge mounted on a prototype ARC tonearm that never made it into production, an SP-3 pre-amp, and a pair of Magneplanar Tympani T-1's bi-amped with a D-75 and D-51. The year was 1972, and that was THE system to have at the time), and Bill said "Hey, that IS a good sounding record. What is that?". Walt gave him the record to take back to Minnesota with him. I've used it ever since as demo material---the sound is indeed good, and I kinda like Gordon's version of the song, of which he is the writer.

As a young audiophile (I got my first serious system at age 22), I briefly fell into the trap of playing records that made my system sound good---music in the service of sound. That is a shallow, empty experience. I quickly tired of it, and have ever since considered good sound a bonus. Superior Hi-Fi is that which deepens the listener's connection with the music played on it, even if the sound per se of the recording is not particularly good.

There is one other very special woman I believe everyone should hear---Iris Dement. I learned of her from Merle Haggard, who was raving about her at the time of her 1st or 2nd album, about twenty years ago. Her music is that great blend of singer/songwriter, hard country, bluegrass, and a little folk (not too much!). She not only has a great voice, she is also an astounding songwriter. Merle recorded her "No Time To Cry", but hers is the one to have, on her "My Life" album. Mostly acoustic, she has all the first call Nashville musicians on her records, guys like Jerry Douglas (Alison Krauss band) on dobro. For the atheists out there, let me warn you that she comes from a spiritual place (sounds Southern Baptist to me)---but then so do Buddy and Julie Miller (Julie has a couple of OOP Christian albums out there). As a bonus, her records, like many bluegrass albums, have pretty darn good sound.

Roc1444, Mary Gauthier is a recent discovery of mine, and I LOVE her! As with most great artists, her work is very personal. I gave her a listen (the Mercy Now album---fantastic!) because I saw that Buddy Miller had produced one of her albums, the one I'm next going to get.