Barefoot Jerry - Barefoot Jerry's Grocery (Monument, 1976)

Ask people to name their favorite Southern Rock group from the 1970s, and you might get get answers like the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, or maybe even Black Oak Arkansas. Inquire as to whether they are familiar with Barefoot Jerry, and you're likely to get a response such as "Who?" As with other bands that have utilized a personal name for their collective identity, the uninitiated sometimes think Barefoot Jerry is an actual person. Such a misperception shouldn't necessarily be held against them since the lack of any hit singles rendered this aggregation fairly obscure in spite of their relatively prolific recorded output.

PUBLICITY PHOTO (L TO R): MAC GAYDEN, WAYNE
MOSS, JOHN HARRIS & KENNY BUTTREY

Barefoot Jerry emerged from the ashes of Area Code 615, a supergroup of sorts that was comprised of veteran Nashville studio musicians including Wayne Moss and Mac Gayden (multi-instrumentalists who were primarily guitarists) as well as drummer Kenny Buttrey among many others. In addition to providing instrumental support for established country artists at recording sessions throughout the 1960s, various members of the aforementioned triumvirate expanded their horizons by working with performers who operated outside of the Music City system, most notably Bob Dylan and Mike Nesmith. Area Code 615 was an ahead-of-its time country rock group that lasted only long enough to make two LPs. Barefoot Jerry came into existence when Moss, Gayden, and Buttrey parted ways with other members of that first outfit and recruited keyboardist John Harris to complete the lineup for their new project, which began to take shape while they woodshedded in a remote area of the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. As legend has it, they named themselves after the owner of their rented cabin, the fiddle-playing proprietor of a nearby general store. The band proceeded to record six albums between 1971 and 1978 with varying lineups, although Moss was the one constant. He remains very musically active in Nashville to this day and has essentially adopted the name of Barefoot Jerry as his performing alter ego. Barefoot Jerry's Grocery, a two-fer set released by Monument in 1976, repackages their first two and best records, Southern Delight (originally issued by Capitol in 1971) and their eponymous second album (originally issued by Warner Brothers in 1972).

ORIGINAL ALBUM COVERS FOR SOUTHERN DELIGHT & BAREFOOT JERRY

Southern Delight is an absolute tour de force and remains the finest thing that the group ever did. Displaying an astonishing blend of influences - country (duh), rock, psych, progressive, gospel, and soul to name just a few - the material on Barefoot Jerry's debut merges Southern sensibilities with countercultural philosophies, convincingly demonstrating that the two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the lyrics of many of the songs focus on tearing down the region's negative stereotypes or touting the positive effects of mind-altering drugs - and sometimes both (e.g. "Proud to be a redneck from the sticks. We don't have to be so doggone mean. Just grow a batch of Tennessee green, then we'll be just good ole country hicks."). Moss often assumes bass-playing duties on their initial effort, making Gayden's breathtaking fretwork the instrumental center attraction, especially when he's utilizing his signature slide wah-wah technique. Buttrey's drumming is about as rock-solid as you can get, while Harris's keyboard work provides nicely complementary background textures. "Hospitality Song" (featuring memorable lines such as "Light up the pipe, pass it around. Take off your boots, we're just a-pickin' around. We don't care what state you come from, we don't care what state your mind is in.") sets the tone for this extraordinary LP and covers an amazing amount of musical territory in just under five minutes. "I'm Proud to Be a Redneck" and "Smokies" serve as eloquent statements of regional pride, with the ingeniously-titled "Quit While You're a Head" providing listeners with a warning about the dangers of taking too much LSD ("The fields are full of vegetables who took their trippin' just a bit too far."). "Blood Is Not the Answer" and the mostly-instrumental "That's OK, He'll Be Your Brother Someday" express themes of peace and human fellowship that are the very antithesis of the Ku Klux Klan mentality that too many people associate with all Southern white people. "Haunting," "ethereal," "epic," and "spiritual" are the best words I can come up with to describe respectively "Come to Me Tonight," "Finishing Touches," "The Minstrel Is Free at Last," and the brief interpretation of the gospel standard "Nobody Knows." To reiterate, Southern Delight is an absolutely incredible listening experience and an artistic statement that was never again to be repeated.


Gayden and Buttrey left the band before the recording sessions for the followup and were replaced with guitarist Russ Hicks and drummer Kenny Malone. While good in its own right, Barefoot Jerry still comes off as decidedly inferior compared to its predecessor. Gayden is especially conspicuous by his absence, and the listener quickly realizes how integral his contributions were to the unparalleled sound captured on Southern Delight. While his departure allows Moss a greater opportunity to highlight his own considerable guitar chops, it also means that Harris's dated-sounding synths are brought too much to the fore on awkwardly proggish tracks like "Castle Rock" and "Ebenezer." "One Woman," an ode to the ideal Southern female, thankfully returns the band to a more organic, country-derived sound. The lyrics of the musically similar "In God We Trust" take the white settlers-conquerors of North America and their hypocritical brand of Christianity to task for their religious rationalizations that served to justify their treatment of the continent's natives and the overexploitation of its natural resources. The message in the clever "Message" is that the song contains no message at all: "And it ain't for your mind that we are playing. It's just music for the body and the soul." On the atmospheric "Friends" and the traditional "Little Maggie," Barefoot Jerry manages to strike a perfect balance in the utilization of Harris's electronic keyboards, which nicely enhance the performances instead of overwhelming them. The Hank Garland-like "Snuff Queen" and the twangy "Fish 'N Tits" are brief instrumentals that respectively allow Hicks and Moss to indulge in a bit of guitar flash, while the mellow "Warm" and the soothing "Ain't It Nice in Here" feature surprisingly effective acoustic-guitar-and-synthesizer arrangements and are about as good as progressive country rock gets.

Southern Delight (1971)
1. Hospitality Song
2. I'm Proud to Be a Redneck
3. Smokies
4. Quit While You're a Head
5. Blood Is Not the Answer
6. Come to Me Tonight
7. Finishing Touches
8. The Minstrel Is Free at Last
9. Nobody Knows
10. That's OK, He'll Be Your Brother Someday

Barefoot Jerry (1972)
11. Castle Rock
12. One Woman
13. In God We Trust
14. Message
15. Friends
16. Snuff Queen
17. Little Maggie
18. Warm
19. Fish 'N Tits
20. Ain't It Nice in Here
21. Ebenezer