First Copy We Have Had In Stock Of This Pristine, Factory Sealed 1977 Embossed Cover Original. “By The Time James Talley Issued His Fourth Album For Capitol, His Sound Had Been Transformed From A Simple Fusion Of Folk, Country, And Blues To A Hotbed Of Steaming R&B, Funky New Orleans Second-Line Rhythms, Country, And Even Rock. These 11 Tracks Suggest That Talley Was Moving Honky Tonk And Folk Music Into A New Era, One That Would Explode Just A Few Years Later. But Talley Was Ahead Of His Time And Ain't It Somethin' Didn't Even Chart. Despite The Changes In Arrangement And Style, Talley's Songs Are Still About The Same People He Wrote About On His First Record: The Poor, Working Class, Day Laborers, Farmers, Factory Men And Women Just Doing Everything They Can To Make A Life For Themselves. The Only Politics In Talley's Songs Come From His Experience As A Social Worker, A Farmer, And Growing Up In Torreon. Check The Beautiful Piano Lines And Melody In "We Keep Tryin'," Where He Sings: "Me And Mattie, We Ain't Got No Influential Friends/Just Tryin To Beat Them Blues." Or The Soft, Jazzy Overtones In "Dixie Blue," With Billy Puett's Clarinet Easing The Piece In Before Randy Scruggs Slips His Banjo Into The Mix And Steve Hostak Fills In With An Electric On Top Of Josh Graves' Dobro And Jerry Shook's Acoustics. "Nine Pounds Of Hashbrowns" Is Nashville Funky Strut At Its Finest And Talley Doesn't Even Have To Stretch To Get There: "Nine Pounds Of Hashbrowns And A Rock & Roll Degree/Will Take Me Anywhere You Might Want To See," With Horns, James Brown-Style, Punching The Margins And A Pair Of Dueling Greasy Guitars Riffing Outside The Melody. The Last Two Tracks On The Set Are Talley At His Best, The Poignant Ballad "The Poets Of The West Virginia Mines" And "What Will Be There For The Children?" In The 1970s, Talley Issued Four Masterpieces In A Row.” Thom Jurek, AMG.