IAN TYSON
All The Good ‘Uns, Vol. 2
Stony Plain 1367

www.stonyplainrecords.com
 

When Ian & Sylvia split up in the early 1970s, Ian shifted from the duo’s northern hillbilly style to become a smooth crooner of cowboy culture. After the success of his 1996 cowboy songs retrospective All the Good ‘Uns, we naturally get a sequel, All the Good ‘Uns, Vol. 2 culled from five 1999-2012 CDs: Lost Herd, Live at Longview, Songs from the Gravel Road, Raven Singer, and hoarse-voiced Yellowhead to Yellowstone and Other Love Stories.

Long ago he left behind the trad prison songs and ballads collected by the likes of Francis Child and G. Malcolm Laws to concentrate on his own writing. Oft-covered “Four Strong Winds” – the title track from I&S’s homonymous 1963 sophomore LP – remains his signature song even if he doesn’t redo it, but here “This Is My Sky” reflects “Four Strong Winds”’ fusion of bittersweet romance and connection to the natural world.

Among this retrospective’s moments of Hispanic instrumentation, “La Primera,” with its flamenco guitar backup, is written in the proud voice of a Spanish mustang brought to the New World on Cortez’s fleet: “The conquistador, Comanche and the cowboy, I carried them to glory.” “Jerry Ambler,” on the other hand, recalls beatnik rap.

As he hits age 80 in September, Ian can look back on a catalog rich with good ‘uns. Like Lost Herd, this CD ends with a quiet surprise: Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” from Wizard of Oz. Maybe as a kid growing up in the 1940s, reading Will James’s western novels, Ian imagined a ranch like his present home in Alberta as the end of his own personal rainbow.

— Bruce Sylvester