Various Choctaw Ridge - The Fables Of The American South 1968-1973 (CD)

(Ace Records) 24 tracks

Choctaw Ridge explores a new country sound that emerged in the late '60s in the wake of Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe," a shocking number-one hit in 1967. When singers like Gentry, Jimmy Webb, Michael Nesmith and Lee Hazlewood moved from the South to Los Angeles to get a foothold in the music business, they weren't part of Nashville's in-crowd and struck out in a new direction.

'Ode To Billie Joe' was the tip of the iceberg, and its success helped a whole slew of singers and storytellers break through over the next three or four years. Some of the tracks on this collection bear the stamp of that song more clearly than others: Sammi Smith's moody "Saunders' Ferry Lane" had a similar mysterious lyric, and Henson Cargill's "Four Shades Of Love" is a portmanteau, with one (or possibly two) of the theoretically romantic situations ending in death.

Suddenly, Southern character sketches became much more rounded - women didn't have to stay home or be berated in the office, and darkness wasn't just found at the bottom of a bottle. Storytelling is the link between all the songs in this collection. There are cautionary tales about what can happen to someone who sets out for the bright lights and doesn't make it, ending up in the hands of "Mr. Walker" (Billie Joe Spears) or on the "Back Side Of Dallas" (Jeannie C. Reilly) or on a corpse slab in the case of the songwriter with the "Fabulous Body And Smile" (Robert Charles Griggs). And there are stories of wanting to go home - Nat Stuckey's 'What Am I Doing In LA?" and Charlie Rich's "Feel Like Going Home" - and others of Ed Bruce and Lee Hazlewood knowing that home is no longer their home.

The track list and detailed accompanying commentaries were compiled by Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) and Martin Green (Smashing, The Sound Gallery), who have been collecting these records for decades.

The voices are sonorous and comprehensible, and the productions contain the best that pop had to offer in the late '60s and early '70s. Before the split between slick, pop-conscious Nashville and hedonistic "outlaws" turned the spotlight back inward, this was a golden era for evocative, inclusive and progressive country music. It began on June third, another sleepy, dusty day in the Delta.