Black Cadillac

I grabbed Rosanne Cash's latest record - Black Cadillac - day before yesterday. I've given it about one and a half listens, but some songs three times. I know this is not enough time to evaluate a record, but I like to get the first impression down & then see how it changes.


I have never owned any of her stuff, although I did hear a great interview with her on PRI's "Fresh Air" a while back. Her voice does not immediately grab me - there is nothing wrong with it, it just is one of those "put you on your ass" voices. The first two songs struck me as overproduced - not that they have a bunch of effects, but they don't feel raw. Of course, that could be an indicator of the kind of mood I'm in as much as anything. The 4th song, Burn Down this Town, was the first to grab me with its slow groove blues a'la Smokestack Lightning.

The lyrics of track 7 - The World Unseen - interrupted my zoned out peace riding the train home from work:

IÂ’m the sparrow on the roof
IÂ’m the list of everyone I have to lose
IÂ’m the rainbow in the dirt
I am who I was and how much I can hurt

I picked this up on kind of a whim. It has been heralded as a great account of mourning, loss, and longing as Rosanne has dealt with the loss of her father, mother, and step-mother, all within 18 or so months of each other.

I hoped it would help me deal with the loss of my Grandma Bette, who passed away on Saturday. She was a good woman; wife, mother, grandmother. She hung tough in the States while my Pops was in the Mediterranean duringing WW II. She joined him in Germany for reconstruction after the war, where they had my dad. She was a master of Scrabble. Ever since Pops died a year and a half ago, she has been ready to go. My dad happened to be visiting her for the week, which is all you can really ask. I guess whenever anyone dies, you will regret not spendinging more time with them and you will wonder how much more they could have shared with you and enriched your life.

This is a picture of her & Pops in Germany in about 1948: