Mickey Newbury is one of those unique artists who changes your life with every song of his you hear. He is famous for his arrangement of 'An American Trilogy,' recorded by him for his 1971 release 'Frisco Mabel Joy,' even though it's Elvis Presley's 1972 version that everyone remembers...
Newbury's style is almost impossible to categorise - 'An American Trilogy,' is hardly indicative of his, overwhelmingly, devastatingly beautiful, heartbreaking songs of the inevitable losing of love.
More than a thousand artists have covered Newbury songs and his influence on near contemporaries such as Gene Clark, Kris Kristofferson and John Prine, as well as current songwriters of the calibre of Will Oldham, Ryan Adams and Steve Earle is near immeasurable.
A retrospective of his early albums has recently been reissued on St Cecelia Knows Records. If you're a fan of Townes Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen or David Ackles - and, yes, he more than deserves to be in their company - then treat yourself to the criminally underrated songbook of Mickey Newbury...
Flannery O'Connor is, quite simply, one of America's greatest writers. Later this year, some of her early drawings are to be published in book form - details of the publisher remain unclear at the moment.
The one or two teaser illustrations that have found their way on-line show similarities with her prose - highly evocative, resolutely individualistic, tenderly tragi-comic.
Here's to their publication.
Flannery O'Connor - Guardian 05/07/11
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