T BONE BURNETT

Born: John Henry Burnett; St. Louis, Missouri, 14 January 1948

Genre: Country, Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: The Criminal under My Own Hat (1992) (as a performer); O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) (as a producer)

TBone Burnett's career began in the 1960s where he carved out a stylistically eclectic career as an offbeat musical handyman. His career shifted more to producing and, in the 1990s and 2000s, his creative touch enabled music's biggest names to enjoy tremendous recording success. Burnett is a much respected and well-liked figure within the music industry and is the driving force behind a revived fascination for bluegrass music in the new millennium.

John Henry Burnett received the nickname "T Bone" when he was five years old while growing up in Fort Worth, Texas. After high school, Burnett tried college but quit to run his own recording studio in Fort Worth. He also performed in various blues bands before relocating to Los Angeles, California, where he recorded his debut album, The B-52 Band and the Fabulous Skylarks (1972). That same year he hooked up and toured with the folk rock duo, Delaney and Bonnie. In 1975 Bob Dylan hired him to play guitar on his Rolling Thunder Review Tour. When the tour ended, he joined forces with tour mates, guitarist/singer Steve Soles and the multitalented David Mansfield, to form the Alpha Band. Alpha Band recorded three critically acclaimed but only marginally successful albums before they broke up. Burnett began a solo career and released six albums in the 1980s, again scoring high marks with the critics but failing to achieve commercial success.

Burnett is a keen songwriter whose music wavers between a Texas-inflected country folk and British-styled pop rock. His lyrics are often political in nature and can be heavy-handedly moralistic at times. Burnett is unusual in contemporary music for unabashedly proclaiming his Christian beliefs. Yet many of his songs harangue fundamentalist preachers and conservative politicians, furthering his multifaceted image and "everyman" appeal. After his 1992 release, The Criminal under My Own Hat (1992), Burnett began to focus more of his energy on producing other artists' albums.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Burnett's work as a producer/engineer gained momentum and his strong sense of artistic integrity made him a favorite of many artists as he produced albums for Los Lobos, Leo Kottke, Marshall Crenshaw, Elvis Costello, the legendary Roy Orbison, and other top performers. He also served as musical director for the televised concert tribute to Roy Orbison A Black and White Night (1989), which featured numerous stars as special guests, including Bruce Spring-steen and Elvis Costello. Burnett produced The Turning (1987) for Christian singer Leslie Phillips, which helped Phillips make inroads into secular pop music. Burnett and Phillips (who changed her name to Sam Phillips) married, and Burnett went on to produce all of her later efforts into the 1990s.

Except to the cultlike followers of his recording career, Burnett remained largely unknown into the 1990s. However, music industry insiders considered Burnett a major force. He continued to produce successful work, most notably albums for Counting Crows, the Wallflowers, k.d. lang, Tony Bennett, and Gillian Welch. Although he has produced more than seventy albums, it was the Grammy Award–winning soundtrack, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), that brought Burnett special notoriety.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? features Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch, Ralph Stanley, and others performing traditional country and bluegrass songs, many from the 1930s and before. The album sold more than 6 million copies and started a bluegrass revival of sorts in the United States. It also scored a 2001 Grammy Award for Album of the Year and gave Burnett a 2001 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year.

In 2002 Burnett used the same idea for the soundtrack to the film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). He spent considerable time combing Louisiana's rural locales in search of authentic Cajun blues and traditional pieces. The album is a mixture of soft jazz and Cajun-influenced southern songs. It features performances by Bob Dylan, Lauryn Hill, Tony Bennett, and Ray Charles, among others.

After a nearly ten-year hiatus from songwriting, Burnett started composing music for the theater, specifically Sam Shepard's play, The Late Henry Moss (2000). Burnett remains a throwback to an era when the music industry was about the music, and not the stardom.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

The B-52 Band and the Fabulous Skylarks (UNI, 1972); Truth Decay (Takoma, 1980); Trap Door (Warner Bros., 1982); Proof through the Night (Warner Bros., 1983); Behind the Trap Door EP (Demon, 1984); T Bone Burnett (MCA, 1986); The Talking Animals (Columbia, 1988); The Criminal under My Own Hat (Columbia, 1992). With the Alpha Band: The Alpha Band (Arista, 1976); Spark in the Dark (Arista, 1977); The Statue Makers of Hollywood (Arista, 1978). As producer: Delbert and Glen (Atlantic, 1971); Time Step (Chrysalis, 1983); How Will the Wolf Survive? (Warner Bros., 1985); Downtown (Warner Bros., 1985); King of America (Columbia, 1986); In Dreams (Virgin, 1987); Cruel Inventions (Virgin, 1991); August and Everything After (DGC, 1993); Dart to the Heart (Columbia, 1994); Revival (Almo Sounds, 1996); A Wonderful World (Sony, 2002). Soundtracks: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Universal, 2000); Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Sony, 2002).

donald lowe