MICKEY NEWBURY was a songwriter’s songwriter at the dawning of the era of the singer-songwriter, yet he was also an unknown name on the Billboard charts. Mickey Newbury found early writing success in Nashville, enabling him to pave the way for his friends and contemporaries like Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and David Allen Coe. Even to this day, Newbury continues to influence the most championed songwriters. His songs have been recorded nearly 1400 times by more than 1000 performers including Johnny Cash, Scott Walker, Ray Charles, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, the Box Tops, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Nick Cave. He is the only songwriter ever to have number one hits (with different songs) in the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts within the space of one year (and three of those songs were in the charts simultaneously!). But Mickey Newbury himself was by far the best interpreter of his own songs.
MICKEY NEWBURY’s ’Frisco Mabel Joy was produced back at Cinderella Sound, newly upgraded from eight to sixteen tracks. Drawing on a larger cast of musicians (dubbed by Mickey “The Nashphilharmonic”), The Newbury Universe expanded, adding clusters of steel and electric guitar overdubs to create expansive orchestral crescendos for his delicately constructed guitar-and-vocal compositions. e album’s opening track was perhaps its most arresting: “An American Trilogy,” combined “Dixie,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “All My Trials” into a searing medley that spoke to the political crisis in the country while standing simultaneously as a personal American ode. It became his most-covered composition, and his own version cracked the Top-40 singles chart.
