Touring T Bone: A personal playlist primer

By Lloyd Sachs

It's well neigh impossible these days to come across a mention of T Bone Burnett that doesn't begin with "great" or "visionary" or "legendary." No argument here. Unlike so many 

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of the artists hoisted in today's 24-hour Twitter cycle – how about that reissue by the great Milli Vanilli? – Burnett fully deserves the encomiums.

But it's not just as a record producer – the role for which he is best known – that the Texas native deserves to be considered in such rarified terms. To gaze back at his 40-plus years in the business is to be amazed not only by all the breakthrough albums that bear his signature, but also all his achievements as a singer and songwriter in his own right, as a sound artist and soundtrack auteur, as a theater composer and curator for projects big and small. As I proclaim in my book, T Bone Burnett: A Life in Pursuit, "record producer" can no more contain Burnett than "film director" could Orson Welles.

Can I get an "icon"?

It is fascinating to consider the different roles this man of many dimensions has played – and the contradictory sides of his personality that have frequently defined those roles. In calling attention to his multiple identities as an artist and individual, the chapter titles of A Life in Pursuit provide a great template for a playlist of songs he has recorded, produced or programmed. Feel free to hit shuffle. As someone raised on Texas blues, Burnett would take that as a compliment.

"Street in Paris" – Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit and Greenhill (from the chapter Sound Citizen): Written by young Burnett, who produced it at his own Sound City studio in Fort Worth, this melodramatic art-rock oddity by an ad hoc, fake-named band of young locals sounds like a psychedelic hangover from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy's infamous T Bone production "Paralyzed." Featured on The Unwritten Works of Geoffrey, Etc., a 1968 release regarded by some as a cult classic.

"We Have All Got a Past" – J. Henry Burnett (from The Outsider): On his first album, The B-52s and the Fabulous Skylarks, recorded in Los Angeles with a bunch of Texas homeboys, Burnett engaged in a full spectrum of styles. This rollicking, gospel-driven tune reflects his debt to the Leon Russell/Mad Dogs and Englishman school of blue-eyed soul.