The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #314

#314: "Boll Weevil" (2005) - The Taylor Grocery Band



Since this week has been Oxford-Taylor Trip Week, what more serendipitous spot to drop the Taylor Grocery Band's one song on my countdown than right here, one post before I detail my family's visit to Taylor Grocery itself.


The band, of course, takes its name from the store, and the music they play perfectly captures the aura of the area, an amalgamation of blues and bluegrass, a combination of country and rock, a music they call electric catfish, which, according to the band, is "a collision of musical styles native to north Mississippi, combining the stomp of Memphis jug bands, the soul of delta R & B,the spirituality of country blues and the drive of appalachian string bands." Their description is more accurate than mine, though I'd argue with the "native to north Mississippi" line, as the Taylor Grocery Band's sound, whether purposeful or not, derives also from The Band, the Robbie Robertson musical group of "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" fame, four-fifths of whom were Canadian.

Being derivative of The Band is not necessarily a bad option, and it's quickly becoming a popular one, too...least it is 'round these parts, where roots music aficianados and troubadours sprout up quicker than Elvis sightings. Often, these folk artists (and jam bands, and country artists, and blues purists) pride themselves on their authenticity, how pure the music is. Pure poppycock to me, the theory that the more the music sounds real, the better it is. What's real music anyway? If I pull out my Casio keyboard (actually it's my son's) and plink out a Prince-esque melody, it's automatically worse than if, say, my organic-farmer/folk-musician friend pulls out his acoustic guitar and picks out a Mississippi John Hurt-style song? Well, in this case it would be, because I can't play piano and Daniel can play a guitar, and I can't sing and Daniel can, and I'm a terrible songwriter and Daniel's a good one...but still, you get my drift? No? I don't blame you. I'm awful at analogies.

Anyway, whatever my point was, the Taylor Grocery Band has, uh, nothing to do with it. Their music may sound authentically folk at one point, and phonily electric at another. From what I've seen (at the Neshoba County Fair three years ago) and heard (from their self-titled 2005 album, from whence this song hails, and their songs/videos at their MySpace site) from the band, they bring to the song whatever they think it needs, be it full drum set, electric guitar, cardboard box, or improvised-on-the-spot lyrics, even changing the song's structure around, whatever it takes to make it sound great...all of which amounts to a damning case of inauthenticity. The vulgarians! The heatherens!

Here, on the century (or more) old folk song, once recorded by the likes of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, David Frizzell, Albert Lee, Jimmy Page (!), and Brook Benton (who had the biggest pop hit out of the song--and the biggest of his career--in '61, taking it all the way up to #2 on the Billboard charts), the Taylor Grocery Band take the chestnut, put it on the washboard, and scrub it clean, ridding it of the stink and stain of staying up in the antique store too long. They slow the song down, rid it of clutter, letting it breathe again, infusing it with a lively humor already inherent in the song, humor absent from every recording I've heard. This version actually comes close to being a novelty record--not there's anything wrong with that--but the Taylor Grocery Band boys are too talented to reduce this record to being just a joke song. It's funny, yeah (my family thinks it's a hoot), but the playing is hot, and the bluegrass-meets-barbershop-quartet harmonies are smooth and cool. Their "Boll Weevil" is a below-the-Mason-Dixon-line cousin and catfish kin to those WWII-era Spike Jones joints. Like those records, it's goofy, but it sure ain't no goof. For real.