Out Of The Shadows: Meet Jay Bolotin

This is the man who started it all. Not One Buck Records,obviously, not the idea of at some point doing a music blog, but he started indirectly a staple of this site, the All Pearls, No Swine series. I was listening to High Country Snow, an underrated album by the equally underrated Dan Fogelberg who will feature on these pages in the future, and "Go Down Easy", one of my favorites of the album, came on. For some reason I decided to investigate its writer, a certain Jay Bolotin I had never heard of before. Having found some scarce information on him, I looked up his music on Youtube, which was featured on a channel dealing in relatively obscure music from the 1970s which led me down a rabbit hole of new suggestions that kept popping up which led to me stockpiling a bunch of underheard and underappreciated music from the 70s which led to the creation of the first volumes of All Pearls, No Swine. Thanks, Jay.

So, Jay Bolotin. Southern songwriter who recorded his debut (and for the longest time, only) album in 1970 that sold jack and shit, went to Nashville and cut demos in search for another record deal that never materialized and then - despite the admiration of colleagues like Kris Kristofferson or Merle Haggard - vanished from the music scene altogether, instead making a career in visual arts as a notable sculptor and became famous for his woodcuts. He also went back to (local) stages, this time for theater and opera productions, as well as experimental films that featured animated versions of his woodcuts  (sample below: Paradise Of Fools). But his music career lay dormant for the longest time. He got startled when hearing Fogelberg's hit version of his song, not knowing who had covered it or that it was a hit. Turns out people had been trying to find him to give him his check for his royalties, but since he left the music industry entirely, they had trouble locating him. When they did, they sent him a check, Bolotin was...surprised. "I thought it would be, you know, like $12 or something. But if you add several zeroes to that...it was astounding". Bolotin had recorded the song as a demo, with the then unknown Fogelberg hanging around in the studio and both men helping each other out with harmonies and guitar playing. Turns out that Fogelberg kept a tape, then dusted off the song more than a decade later for his country album et voilà, unbeknowst to him, here's Jay Bolotin, hit writer. 

It's interesting to compare Bolotin's version of the song to Fogelberg's. The latter's version is all smooth and tenderness, trending towards adult contemporary and is essentially eintirely built on sentimentality. Bolotin's original, entitled "It's Hard To Go Down Easy", is much more matter of fact, and denies itself the sentimentality that Fogelberg's version thrives on. Both versions are great, but very different. Bolotin's music from between 1970 and 1975 has traces of Leonard Cohen to it, but Bolotin never falls into slavish imitation. There is also undeniably a touch of Southern gothic to some of the songs here. Which went with Bolotin's look, a bearded mountain man with a bit of a mysterious air about him. 

The compilation of the day, which should serve as an introduction for those who don't know him and as a handy playlist for those that do, is exclusively focused on the years 1970 to 1975, for good reason. His belated sophomore effort, Shadows Of A Beast from 2006, released a cool 36 years after his debut, has Bolotin turned into Tom Waits in the meantime, rumbling old testament-style through a bunch of songs that - at least to my ears - don't fit in at all with his music from the 1970s.

And now, let the man take it from here. Ladies (what ladies?) and Gentlemen, Jay Bolotin. 

Further reading:

The Times Catch Up With Jay Bolotin - Paste Magazine