Good evening, and welcome to Mixed Bag, and this is George Graham. In the hour that we have, it’s something that we have been doing now for a long time, the annual Graham Awards for 2024. [cheesy fanfare] There are a lot of retrospectives, taking stock and general assessments of this past, turbulent year, full of misfortune in many different ways. And it’s an excuse for people to try to look at the brighter side of things with awards. And this is definitely one of them, and a remarkably insignificant one at that.
This past May, Mixed Bag marked it’s 50th anniversary on WVIA as a daily program, and I was looking back over my drawers full of handwritten playlists and I found that the first instance of the Graham Awards on the program was at the end of 1976, so this represents the 49th edition of the Graham Awards. To put it in perspective, it was just before the late Jimmy Carter was about to take office as President.
In past years, I tended to pontificate about the state of pop music, but more recently,, as the generations pass, the music we play on Mixed Bag, and the commercial pop music scene are on virtually different planets. We did feature Billy Eilish’s 2024 album on the program, but that’s about as far as it got. But I like to think, that with all the great original music artists who are making outside of the commercial pop mainstream or TikTok, there is a lot for us to explore and share with you.
As I have noted previously, with the pop music scene being overwhelmingly dominated by streaming, thus essentially eliminating people’s record libraries, or having it subject to the whims of the streaming services, music seems to have a lot less permanence. And it also has greatly diminished what artists earn from their music, without the physical record sales. But the ability for anyone to create music in their bedrooms on their laptop and distribute it independently has essentially eliminated the role of record companies. They were often bad, not providing an outlet for creative music, but the record labels also served as a gatekeeper, tending to filter out the really bad music. So the amount of really bad music available on the web has grown astronomically. In my position as a radio programmer, I often get 100 e-mails a day from music promoters hired by independent artists, with many of them each linking to as many as 10 separate digital albums, EPs and singles. It’s pretty overwhelming, but I try my best to find interesting music that has the potential to last, which we present to you on our new releases segments. And from the sheer volume of music being created, there is bound to be some gems, and there are indeed. We have been presenting our Best of the Year series on Mixed Bag for the last couple of weeks, and tonight I condense it down to my top ten. [another cheesy fanfare]
So here we go. This I have ranked these, more or less, in order of preference, but I think that any of these ten recordings is worthwhile.
10. Ryan David Green: Off and Running. A fine guitar player with a mostly instrumental album, but with some very appealing folky original songs.
9. Dana Cooper: The Ghost of Tucumcari. Singer-songwriter Dana Cooper is a real veteran of the music scene. He released his first album in 1973. The Ghost of Tucumacri is his 32nd, and he always manages to come up with intelligent, thoughtful songs that are appealing and melodic.
8. Lizz Wright: Shadow. Jazz influenced vocalist Lizz Wright has made a career of doing inviting, often sultry versions of other folks’ music. Her new album has more of that, but most of it consists of new original songs.
7. Sam Redmore: Modulate. British DJ and producer Redmore creates an album of first rate, funky, often retro original music that is more than just for the dance floor.
6. Gillian Welch & David Rawlings: Woodland. Previously just under Gillian Welch’s name, the veteran neo-folk songwriting duo create their first new album of original music in 11 years, and it was worth the wait.
5. American Patchwork Quartet: American Patchwork Quartet. A fascinating mix of acoustic folk, country, old-timey, Celtic, with an traditonal Indian influenced vocalist.
4. Duke Robillard: Roll With Me. Veteran bluesman, guitarist, and founder of Roomful of Blues serves up another great collection of music drawing on the influence of early rhythm & blues of the 1940s through the 1960s. He gives it a lot energy and makes it swing.
3. AO Music: Otherness. This is a fascinating world music group who create their own musical culture, mixing exotic influences, and even making up their own language for the lyrics. It’s very engaging and appealing.
2. Béla Fleck: Rhapsody in Blue. The banjo virtuoso never seems to run out of ideas for taking his banjo to places no banjo has gone before. This time, he did several versions of the George Gershwin classic Rhapsody in Blue both in the orchestral setting, and also doing variations such as Rhapsody in Bluegrass and Rhapsody in Blues. It’s typically brilliant.
1. Shemekia Copeland: Blame It on Eve. Arguably one of the best blues singers of her generation, she serves up powerful songs that have a lot of say about the state of the world, as well as a little humor, with performances that shows her to be a force of nature.
And there you have it, the Graham Awards, good for no more than the time it takes to mention them on the air. Later on, we’ll have another long-running tradition, the annual music obituaries for the year.
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