POP MUSIC REVIEW : Elvis Would Have Sung to Crowell’s Beat

“If Elvis were alive, he’d be recording Rodney’s songs,” one enthusiastic observer suggested during Rodney Crowell’s show at the Roxy on Wednesday. That statement could even be amended to “Elvis in prime form” without being hyperbole. Crowell’s songs--which run the gamut of the Presley range, from rock to honky-tonk to soul--are that good.

But the King wasn’t missed that much Wednesday, as Crowell and his versatile band, the Dixie Pearls (“They’re rare and they’re cultured,” explained the singer), did a fine job with Crowell’s material and even threw in a few songs Elvis really did sing to boot.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Though the Houston native is a naturally engaging performer with aw-shucks sex appeal aplenty, he is no flashy showman. But the potential audience for the material he showcased at the Roxy and on his terrific new “Diamonds & Dirt” LP, from the frisky rock of “I Know You’re Married” to the sentimental-yet-not-maudlin love ballad “After All This Time,” is as wide as Elvis was when he died.

Which just points out how much rock radio is falling down on the job. While it is great that Crowell (like his spouse, Rosanne Cash) is finally getting his due in the country music world, there is no reason he shouldn’t be a star across the board in the rock music spectrum. Why, he and the Pearls even got some solid funk going on an encore of the Staple Singers’ “Respect Yourself.”

The same condemnation of rock radio applies to the case of opening act Darden Smith and the Big Guns, an Austin, Tex.-based acoustic trio whose literate boppa-swinga-bluesa-folka-billy once would have had at least a niche on alternative FM radio, but now is relegated to nowhere-land. If artists like Smith (who plays tonight at McCabe’s) and Crowell get typed as country because rock won’t have ‘em, then that’s rock’s loss.