Alex Taylor
Dinnertime
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Alex Taylor, a great, gregarious and good person, has been carrying a bit of extra weight, even for him, this past year and a half. As one who emerged on the tail end of the Taylor family scam, he has had no choice but to suffer the bad thoughts and ignorant assumptions of those prepared to dismiss him on those grounds alone. His first album, With Friends and Neighbors, while a perfectly competent and honest piece of work, was insufficiently distinctive to put such hostile thoughts to rest. His second, Dinnertime, ought to take care of that score handily. Unlike the rest of the family, Taylor's own true love is rock and blues. He doesn't write much and he avoids the introspection
Read More of brothers James and Livingston, preferring to use music to blast through rather than to tunnel in on his problems. In the past year he has distinguished himself touring with a fine group of rockers under the direction of Chuck Leavell on keyboards. Most of the people heard in that group are on this album, augmented by some help from the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio crew (the album was recorded there) plus some players from the Macon studios of Capricorn records. The whole thing is directed by Macon's excellent young engineer and producer, Johnny Sandlin, who put the emphasis in this album on relaxed performances, solid arrangements, and warm feeling. For the most part he has succeeded admirably. The album is evenly split between blues and non-blues, with side one favoring the tunes and side two the rockers. Oddly, while Taylor generally does best with rock-blues in live performance, there is something unsatisfying about the blues side. His "Who Will the Next Fool Be," the best of the lot, shows just how forcefully and extrovertedly he can drive a song home–again, in contrast to the rest of the family–but "Who's Been Talkin'" and "From a Buick Six" despite good arrangements, are just not different or personal enough to justify the space they occupy on the album. These are the kinds of things that work great live and were probably great in the studio, but don't quite carry over into the grooves. So it is the more tuneful things on side one that show both Taylor and producer Sandlin off best. Taylor has an almost gingerly touch with a melody; he can wrap his tongue around a lyric until you aren't sure just how or when he is going to let it go. On Jesse Winshester's "Payday," he rips off a virtuoso performance, supported by one of the album's best band arrangements, and interrupted only briefly by an equally virtuoso double guitar lead by Jim Nalls. Drummer Billy Stewart shines as well. Randy Newman's "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield" is given a thoroughly imaginative reworking, with Alex playing with the lyrics over some interestingly expressive percussive work by Stewart and fine guitar, again by Nalls. Runs a little long though. The two most satisfying cuts are Taylor versions of Stephen Stills' "Four Days Gone" and Sc
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