These artists are the latest exponents of the fabled other half of C&W. Their obsessions, actions, settings and especially their attitudes can only be called Western, in the spirit of Louis L'Amour and John Ford. The rich imagery and overblown yet proud sentimentality of their songs make them the spiritual successors to the songs of Bob Wills ("My music is Western music, not country music"), Montana Slim and Roy Rogers. And, like the older singers, their popularity has been confined to the Southwest, where they live and work. The difference, of course, is that this new Western music is more intellectual and the singers are in various ways more separated from, or more involved with, their subjects. They are as much songs of survival as anything. These singers—and others like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jerry Jeff Walker—have survived the honky-tonks and love affairs, but they don't know how much longer they can take it. But they can take it, and they do.

The key record here is Bobby Bare's. Never so much a songwriter as an interpreter with impeccable taste, Bare has borne the burden of Shel Silverstein-written albums for a couple of years, even though Silverstein is acceptable only in the dose found here: two songs per LP. Now, Bare has released a concept album dedicated to "the Ropers and Dopers, the Red Neck Mothers, the Cosmics, the Drinkers and Thinkers..."

Cowboys and Daddys is a literary album. Its values are almost completely nonmusical, as is true with much of this music, with its loping bass lines, strummed acoustic guitars and noodling instrumental passages. But the successful presentation of songs as powerful as Dave Hickey's "Speckled Pony" or as droll as "He's a Cowboy" allows for no distraction. Once they've got your attention, you don't miss the music. Bare's drawling, intimate singing is perfect for the material, and the production, by Bare and Bill Rice, is just spare enough.

The songs cover the full spectrum: the working cowboy's life is vividly and dispassionately delineated in "He's a Cowboy," and his sexual problems wryly viewed by Silverstein in "The Stranger." In "The Cowboy and the Poet," Tom T. Hall is shocked to hear from an old man that the meaning of life is "Faster horses/Younger women/Older whiskey/More money." Silverstein's "Chester" is retired after a glorious rodeo career—the kids idolize him, blind to his many faults. In the "Calgary Show," Dave Hickey catches someone like Chester on his way down, drawing a bull sure to throw him, and reflects that death is just the "Speckled Pony" his friend Freddy Jones is trying to ride, "Out there lyin' in the line shack dyin'/With a chair pulled up against the door." Even the only song I don't like is a masterpiece of its kind: "Up against the Wall Redneck Mother" is too "us and them" for my taste. Ray Wylie Hubbard, who wrote it, had the good sense not to include it on his album.

Hubbard's album is about as far from Bare's as you can get and still be in the same ballpark. His music is much closer to rock & roll, with much less emphasis on the lyrics. (His diction makes them impossible to hear: "You gotta mike him just right," said a friend of his, "because the words come outta that tiny space between the tip of his cowboy hat and his beard.")

Two excellent songs about playing in a band ("West Texas Country Western Dance Band" and "Belly of Texas") frame the album, which makes it all the more frustrating not to know who the players are—only some of the studio musicians are listed. With instrumental highlights like the acoustic jam on "The Lovin' of the Game," the vibes on "Jazzbo Dancer" and the rock raveup on "Belly of Texas," that's a shame.

Guy Clark is a red-hot talent at the moment. He wrote "L.A. Freeway" for Jerry Jeff Walker, Johnny Cash picked up "Texas—1947" as his latest single, and the astonishing "Desperados Waiting for a Train" is already an established Western classic. The release of Old No. 1 proves him an excellent performer too. His voice is not comfortable, but it is extraordinarily expressive and the production showcases it well.

"Texas—1947" is a piece of well-drawn nostalgia, but Clark is as much at home in the present, as in "Instant Coffee Blues":

"Morning."

"Man was I drunk," she whispered in the shower

... And she just had to go to work and he just had to go

And she knew where and he knew how to blow it off and so

They shot the breeze quite cavalier to the boilin' of the pot

And sang the Instant Coffee Blues and never fired a shot.

Occasionally, as in "Let Him Roll," Clark becomes too sentimental, but generally he maintains the delicate balance that makes his songs distinctive.

Although listening to these songs one could OD on metaphor and simile, acoustic picking, minimal tunes and sentiment, they represent a healthy direction in American popular music. (RS 207)

ED WARD