The Buffalo News from Buffalo, New York • 82

The Buffalo Newsriday October 9 1992eti Hkb'? 1 1 Qt I'G! 1 1 OHWLUJ Country Christmas in October Garth Brooks gets the season going with a beautiful collection GARTH BROOKS Beyond the Season (Liberty CDP 7 98742 21 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS Chipmunks in Low Places (Epic AEC 53006) TRISHA YEARWOOD Hearts in Armor (MCA MCAD 10641) THE MAVERICKS rom Hell to Paradise (MCA MC AD 10544) By DAN HERBECK News Staff Reviewer I YOU STILL have any doubt about the astound ing popularity of country singer Garth Brooks it was erased a few weeks ago when he released his new album of Christmas songs This is a man who can sing in October and still sell millions Even though it came out right around the same time as a more heavily promoted new Brooks disc his the holiday album shot right up into the Top 10 on the Billboard pop music chart a pretty amazing accomplishment con sidering that just three years ago it was almost unheard of for any country album to break into the Billboard Top 50 (In fact when you add in and the there are now four Brooks discs on the Top 50 why we used the word in the first para graph) So now the serious country fan is asking is it worth it to spend $15 or more on a Garth Brooks Christmas disc? The answer: $15 is a lot of money for any disc but yond the is a wonder ful collection of songs In fact and probably in a very small minority here I like it more than The very idea of listening to Christmas songs in sunny crisp October does sound crazy but this is some of the prettiest mu sic Brooks has recorded If these Christmas songs every reviewer in America would be raving about the beautiful new music Brooks has recorded According to Liberty Re cords Brooks recorded this one during a six month period when he stayed off the road and devoted himself to being a husband father and precision ist in the studio The devotion to the music shows here in a beautiful package that includes six traditonal songs and five new ones Brooks starts off on the right foot with a spunky soulful ver sion of Tell It on the He then glides into another classic Rest Ye Merry sung in front of a soft shimmering background that sounds a little like his music on Then a rocking new tune co written by Brooks br i ITA Old Back in followed by the pretti est song on the disc by Stephanie Davis who wrote from the album With its simple acoustic gui tar backing tells the story of Maria a poor orphan girl who spends her last peso to nurse back to health a bird with a broken wing Then on Christ mas Eve she turns the bird free and it becomes the first nightingale The gentle delivery of the song reaffirms that Brooks despite all the mountains of hype getting these days is not an overrated talent (Wish we could say the same about Billy Ray Cyrus) Later a jazzy version of a rollick ing send up of Buck fun song Looked a Lot Like and a really distinctive version of riendly To give the song its unusual flavor Brooks had five of his favorite songwriters Stephanie Davis Pat Alger Larry Bastian Victoria Shaw and Tony Arata sing the parts of animals that were in the Bethlehem stable when Je sus was bom The song cycle ends with a lush version of Child Is the will be overlooked by some because Nashville churns out such a ri diculous number of mediocre Christmas albums every year But betting that as the hol idays get closer there will be a couple of hits off this wonderful disc And one more nice thing about it Brooks is do nating a portion of the profits to eed the Children a world hunger organization Rating: Well I guess the success of such artists as Brooks Cyrus and Wynonna Judd has opened the floodgates Even Alvin and the Chipmunks are doing coun try music these days I say they were doing it well mind you The squeaky singing rodents of our youth have leaped into Kiddie Coun try with a new hop on the bandwagon release called in Low Places" Despite some midly humorous 40 'or bn guest appearances by Cyrus Tammy Wynette Alan Jackson and others the music itself is ghastly repugnant ear burning There is a dissenting view My 6 year old son Chris says they good for and adds You can take his word or take mine My point is there are other good country releases out there for kids notably the soundtrack for That the movie that came out a few years back Rating: Did you catch Trisha Year wood on the Country Music Awards show last week? or my money the highlight of the show was her dramatic duet with Don Hen ley the former Eagle who has been turning up on a bunch of country releases lately There has already been one hit from second disc in and there probably will be a few more including It was disappointing to see that Yearwood write any of the songs for her new release but she did a fine job choosing the work of other songwriters Given the way she looks sings and carries herself on stage the producers of Jay Len may regret for a long time their recent dis pute with Yearwood people told Yearwood and Travis Tritt they ap pear on their show anymore be cause the two singers also want ed to appear on Arsenio Hall Rating: Of all the delightful country rock discs to come out this year none rocks any harder than the debut album from a Miami band called the Maver icks This band led by Raul Malo the son of Cuban immi grants is one worth getting excited about Hell to rocks hard but the band also does something that few coun try artists seem willing to do make statements about such is sues as political oppression child abuse and the homeless powerful voice and the stinging lead guitar work by David Lee Holt make this a band to watch Ratine: tnci i I tA Wn brief Pop music SINEAD O'CONNOR Am 1 Not Your Girl (Chrysalis 21952 2) This album is so bad the first time I heard it I ripped up the cover which featured a picture of Sinead O'Connor Imagine a punk folk' rebel singing Cry for Me Argentina" Yecch! enough to give the pope indigestion But not the only lowlight for who also offers pathetic and sappy versions of Love" Want to Be Loved by and believe it or not Bothered and This ridiculous record is a candidate for bomb of the year is no diva she even Grace Jones What next a duet with rank Sinatra? I have a better suggestion: should join Wilson Phillips They need a new voice andshe needs a new career Rating: No stars Anthony Violanti TONY BENNETT Perfectly rank (Columbia CK 52965) voice has a way of elevating saloon singing to an art form This is his exquisite tribute to rank Sinatra and Old Blue Eyes would be proud Bennett is in top form on such standards as and Day" In Day for My Baby" and a thoroughly beautiful Be Seeing This is what popular music in America is all about Are you listening Sinead Rating: A Jazz JOHN COLTRANE Retrospective: The Impulse Years (GRPImpulse discs GRD 3 1 19) If the two disc Gentle Side of John is the optimal way to introduce one of most remarkable musicians to non jazz ears this three disc anthology will have to stand for all time as the definitive explication of why Coltrane was one of the revolutionary and seminal jazz figures and why he remains a supreme cultural hero a quarter of a century after his death This even more than his records for Atlantic was the music that turned jazz upside down The Coltrane who played a Sentimental with Duke Ellington or with his own quartet have fit more strikingly inside the jazz tradition the musi cian who played the Train" Blue" and from Love Supreme" is one whom young musicians are still awestruck by as if on first encounter suddenly come upon the Grand Canyon You can quibble with the selections of course have opted for a bit more of the difficult late Coltrane and all of the title track of rather than the opening and But this is the Coltrane collection to have for the overview of a jazz revolution certainly the one to have if you're having only one Rating: Jeff Simon BETTY CARTER Not About the Melody (Verve 314 513 870 2) Now that some great and long overlooked jazz singers Abbey Lincoln and Shirley Horn hve cracked jazz best seller lists the great Betty Carter can be seen as the mold for all the sublime post Billie balladeers Who else would turn Southland" in Sleepy Time Down into a four sylla ble word in suspended animation? There is still no jazz singer who sings with such total improvisatory freedom or who better deserves to have such backup players as John Hicks Jeff Watts Christian McBride Mulgrew Miller Lewis Nash and Cyrus Chestnutt She is difficult demanding and these davs in as much iron control of her sessions as Streisand She still doesn't trust records to capture her art at gallop tempos (I think she secretly finds long Stren Vuar' I3111 even reined in a ride with Betty Carter casts a spell like little else in jazz Rating: Blues JS Donn Esmonde MUDDY WATERS Blues Sky (Epic AssociatedLegacy ZK 46172) The 1960s were not especially kind to Muddy Waters Soul music supplanted the blues as ACafaChoiCe blacks The brutal power of his voice declined with age And despite finding a new audience in the late 1960s he lost an in th! dearh producer Leonard Chess Happily Wimer Jn7v a founla new label and' in hlues rocker Johnny missino frnm wL'e The result recaptured much of the starch missing from Waters studio work the previous decade On match 1983) updalcs a number of his early classics neariy matching them in feel sound and intensity He was smart enough to use such veteran Chicago hands as drummer Willie Smith and I nianist than0somerkpraS restnct the rock star contribution to Winter who (other than some gratuitous screaming) comports himself well of the rare art'St laSt barrah was more of a blasl than an Top ten SINGLES Enough (2) Sometimes Love Just (4 "I lis) (9) When I I ook In nV Pc Ated Development (Chrysa You! PM DawneSeLafacef house Ed Die Without ALBUMS.