I can imagine Terry Callier in the early eighties. He's sitting at a blocky computer console and thinking, "What the hell am I doing here?"
The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier was just one of numerous 60's folk albums claiming to bring a "new sound" to the worn traditions of the genre. Many artists lived up to the claim. Some championed a rock and roll swagger. Others let drugs to provide an psychedelic stagger to their acoustic thrum. Callier's debut effort finds him nowhere near either camp but a bit to the left of center, dabbling in soul and jazz more than anything else.
It's easy to tell what the defining feature of The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier is meant to be. Callier's emotive vocal delivery delineates the album, a simple collection of traditional folk songs played out to Callier's guitar and a double bass accompaniment. The result is quite barefaced and, in fact, a tough listen at first listen. "It's About Time" portrays the situation in detail: Callier squeezes the melodrama out of every lyric, feigning respite from storm only to blow again with gale force gusts. All the while, the bassists, Terbour Attenborough and John Tweedle, juggle lines below rustic picking.
The trio of Attenborough, Tweedle and Callier is an odd duck. But just because it quacks doesn't mean it defies convention.
Aside from the obvious folk provided by this collection of traditional songs, Callier's jazz chord voicings bring in shades of Coltrane and his emphatic vocal presence is soul to the very core. However, there is also an astute progressiveness about the music, most noticeable with the epic "I'm a Drifter." A portrait of melancholy, "I'm a Drifter" is a reworking of a song by Travis Edmonson. It's eight minutes long. Most solo singer/guitarist material is far too monotonous to run that long but not necessarily so with Callier. Whether it's the romping basses or Callier's captivating vocals, something holds attention.
The choice to comprise the original album of six folk standards and two originals alludes to the purpose of the album: breaking a student of jazz into the blue jeans sensitivity of the folk market. Lack of original Callier material (the two originals seem to be penned by fellow Chicagoan, poet Kent Foreman) hurts the album but not irreparably. Simply put, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier provides itself as a unique and unified sound. It's built upon the honesty of the original folk tunes and Callier's soulful vocals and jazz-affected compositions.
In the early eighties, Terry Callier knew exactly what he was doing. He was supporting his family as a computer programmer because, as it was for many Chicago soul artists not named Curtis Mayfield, the whole music thing didn't work out. Some twenty years later and Terry Callier is back in the recording booth thanks to a small but devoted resurgence of interest in his talent. As far as I can divine from one album experience with the man's work, it's about time.
