Buzz Cason at 3rd & Lindsley 1/30/14 at 7pm
Nashville Scene Critics Pick by Jewly Hight
There are a million and one different reasons you could’ve, would’ve and should’ve heard Buzz Cason’s name. I mean, he’s been knocking around the music business since he was a high school kid in Inglewood in the ’50s, at which time he put together one of the first rock ’n’ roll outfits in town — The Casuals — who wound up backing a rockabilly-era Brenda Lee. Cason also co-produced The Crickets with Leon Russell, and co-wrote Ronny and the Daytonas’ surf-pop hit “Sandy,” and perhaps most famously, partnered with Mac Gayden on Robert Knight’s Motown-styled soul smash “Everlasting Love.” And that limited list gets us only to 1967. In the decades since, he’s done loads more notable producing, songwriting, song publishing, backup singing and studio-building, including the exalted space now known as Blackbird. And that’s to say nothing of solo albums like late-’70s sets Buzz and Caught Up in a Dream, and his new one on Plowboy Records. Titled Troubadour Heart, it’s the work of a Southern-steeped rock ’n’ roll classicist who still has a knack for nailing the feel without breaking a sweat. His gospelly shuffle “Going Back to Alabama,” for one, has a down-home insouciance that just can’t be forced or faked
—Jewly Hight
