The Flatlanders Resurface After 18 Years : Flatlanders, 3 Pals From West Texas, Resurface After 18 Years

Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock are singer-songwriters who displayed the raw talent in the early ‘70s to become the nucleus of a country-music revolution that might have rivaled the fabled “outlaw” movement of Willie and Waylon.

But the three pals from West Texas dealt in a folk- and blues-influenced country style that was out of place in Nashville in the pop-conscious ‘70s--and which has never really returned to favor there despite all the talk in recent years about the “new traditionalist” movement in country music.

Before Ely, Gilmore and Hancock started solo careers that led to several outstanding if commercially ignored albums, the three musicians joined together as the Flatlanders in 1972 to make an acoustic album in Nashville.

The music from those sessions lacked the sociological commentary of Gram Parsons’ earlier work with the Flying Burrito Brothers, but there was a purity of emotion in the Flatlanders’ approach that reflected some of the freshness and vision of the Burritos’ music.

However, the Flatlanders’ tracks were apparently so far from the commercial mainstream at the time that the album was only released on eight-track tape--until now.

Rounder Records has released 13 selections from the sessions in a highly recommended 35-minute CD titled “More a Legend Than a Band.”

Though Ely has enjoyed more success as a solo artist than either Hancock or Gilmore, he played a background role in the Flatlanders. Gilmore sang lead vocals and wrote three of the songs. Hancock wrote four others.

In the liner notes, Colin Escott writes, “The Flatlanders’ sound was akin to a 78 r.p.m. without the crackle and hiss--except that the lyrics were stunningly contemporary. It was a compelling juxtaposition of the old and the new.”

RAP ON: The just-released “Hip-Hop Greats: Classic Raps” doesn’t come with the colorful booklets normally found in Rhino Records compilations, but the music in the 69-minute CD includes some of the most influential works in the evolution of rap. Among them: the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “The Message,” Run-DMC’s “It’s Like That,” UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” and Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks.”