The record buyers responsible for making a Robert Johnson reissue outsell most new releases last year delivered a strong message to the recording industry. Many music fans are sick of the mechanistic fluff they've been fed and are turning to roots music in the absence of a mainstream alternative. The industry has responded with a flood of reissues, but Elektra's American Explorer Series is the...

Jimmie Dale Gilmore is a man blessed with a beautiful voice and infinite patience. "If I can't see where to go/I'll stay lost in silence till I know," he sings with tender determination in "Where Is Love Now?" And although Gilmore didn't write the song – it was composed by the singer/songwriter Sam Phillips – he invests it with a naked, serene honesty that characterizes not only the rest...

Jimmie Dale Gilmore's 1991 album After Awhile was quite literally the work of a lifetime, collecting songs written over a span of 20 years by a reedy-voiced Texan equally influenced by the sounds of country, folk and early rock & roll. Recorded as part of Elektra's American Explorer series, the album collected enough raves to win the middle-aged maverick a contract of his own, and some worried...