I’ve got nothing much, and we’re woefully behind on the CDs, so guess what? If you don’t like this you should come over and do some grading for me so I can do something more fun, that’s what.

We are 13 albums behind in the Re-Listening project. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my CDs in the car, and in the order (more or less) in which I acquired them. More or less because all of them are in CD books. Remember those? And I recently discovered that I got two of the books out of order. None of this matters.

This is the second time I’ve written about Memory Dean in the Re-Listening project. The first time was in 2022, which was just at the beginning of this silly exercise. It hasn’t been a regular feature here, but it has been fun. Memory Dean, their independent album that they were selling out of the back of their trunk in 1993. The obscure “In My Father’s House There Are Many Mansions” album was half studio production and half live shows. And, in truth, was probably originally a cassette. I got it because a college buddy of mine knew the band, introduced me and gave me that one in the rare disc trade. Memory Dean is a group from Georgia, where my buddy was from, so he could get more copies. He liked a CD I had that really only had one good song on it, by a band that was local to me, a band who’s name I can’t even remember, so we swapped.

In 1997, “So Complicated” came out, their third release, their first as a full band, having added a rhythm section. And they were finally on a small, independent label, Capricorn Records, originally out of Macon, but by then a Warner Brothers imprint running in Nashville. Somewhere around that time I picked it up.

Here’s the title track, which, on the basis of this driving power, they released as a single.

That’s much different than what Memory Dean had sounded like for years in all the little venues across the Southland. It was too guys and two guitars and some good times and singalongs. And there’s some of that on “So Complicated,” too. The problem, for us, is that almost nothing from this album is online. Go figure.

But here’s a demo of track six, which probably should have been the lead off track for all that it signaled about this record.

Despite the new direction, there are some re-orchestrated versions of stuff that had been on their first two releases. “Ghost,” for instance, came out on their previous effort, and it’s in the classic format.

The only thing missing is the Bubba Riff.

Similarly, “Dying to Live” made it on here, too. And it’s a better title than anything else.

Their last release, according to Discogs, was 2001, which is about right. They still played, and then they played sporadically. From what I can tell it was probably special appearances or venues with historical or otherwise convenient ties. It looks like they haven’t played together since 2021. Shame, really. They had a good niche and a fanbase to go with it.

Then there’s this other, even better niche. I don’t recall when I got this, but it was probably in a bargain bin, and it was an absolute steal. When I got it, I probably thought something like “Everyone needs a little Otis.” My apologies for not clearly remembering my inner dialog from more than a quarter of a century ago. I’d like to distract you from that failing with Mr. Dock of the Bay himself.

That’s straight out of the Stax catalog, and there’s nothing wrong with that. This album comes to us from 1968, is still timeless and remains one of the best records ever pressed into any format. Otis Redding’s seventh studio album, and one of the many many posthumously released titles. The last stuff he laid down for this were recorded two days before the plane crash that killed him in December of 1967.

A lot of the tracks collected here some B-sides or things that, by now, are well known to us. “Glory of Love” was basically a standard, and it became a top 20 hit in 1968, four decades into its life here, but I did not know, until just this moment, that Redding had a video for this one, and it is almost 60 years old now. And, aside from a little problem of warbly tape degradation that was sneaking into this before it was digitized, I might prefer this version.

The guy just looks so effortlessly cool there, that even back then in what have to some of the earliest days of what we think of now as a music video, there’s just two shots. I assume the cutaway in the middle is to cover a lip syncing flub.

The Huckle-Buck came to us from Tin Pan Alley (and so I really am curious about the song selection here now) and this is what a crossover hit sounded like after it had crossed back and forth a few times since the 1940s.

Here’s the original, which topped the R&B charts for 14 weeks, if you want to get really historical. And if you hear rock ‘n’ roll here, from 1949, you’re not the only one.

Proving once again that I need someone to create the living breathing flow chart of music, what a site to see that would be. (Music history of the 20th century would be, probably, my fourth interesting area to study, if I could keep all of it straight in my head, or if someone developed that chart. I imagine it like a family tree.)

Speaking of sites to see, this song and the dance craze that came with it mainstreamed enough to make it onto The Honeymooners.

The Tin Pan Alley aspect of the song comes in with the lyrics, of course. Roy Milton sang it first, and he drove the song to the number five spot on the R&B charts.

Frank Sinatra did it soon after and could only push it to 10.

But you wanted a blues standard, I heard you say? Otis Redding is your man. Here he’s got a post World War I vaudeville-style piece that has aged remarkably well, for now being more than a century old.

Remember, I said I got this because I figured everyone needed a little Otis Redding. But what you get out of this album is an education. There’s music from all over the country and spanning three or four decades of the best American art forms, 11 tracks in all, and 10 of them are spectacular. It closes with one of Redding’s own B-sides, a soul-infused blues track that probably is due a remaster, but only so you can study every integral part of the thing.

Wikipedia tells us that “Ole Man Trouble” helped Redding capture the growing white blues/soul market. No citation was needed. Every time this song, or anything on this album plays, I feel like there’s a new sense of discovery going on between my ears. It’s not an ole man trouble, but a young man’s appreciation.

It will never not surprise me to remember that he died before this record was released, and he was just 26 years old.

And that’s 1,200 words on music you weren’t expecting today, but if you made it this far I know you found something you enjoyed. Go enjoy it again.