My Music Monday

You might know Sam Phillips. You might not.

You might know of her and not know it - but I suppose that is possible of so many people.

Phillips (not to be confused with Sun Record and Elvis discoverer, Sam Phillips) was a Christian singer who went secular a few decades ago. I discovered her via Morty back in 1990 (?) with a song of hers "Now I Can't Find the Door".

The song, and disk (well, cassette!), was produced by her then husband T Bone Burnette. You might know him from producing such music as O Brother Where Art Thou and I Walk the Line soundtracks, the Alison Krauss & Robert Plant album, as well as disks from Nat'le Merchant, Gillian Welch and a number of others that you have heard of.

Coming off of her second (non-religious) album Martinis & Bikinis, "I Need Love" was great pop with a good underlying message. Well, at least one for me.  "I need love / Not some sentimental prison / I need g-d / Not the political church". 

That may have said more for her move away from her previous musical genre than anything.

Her disks are good, but M&B was the best of them - in my opinion.

She never made too big of waves in the radio or sales world, but is still self-releasing music via her website, mostly one song at a time. She's even collected some of those stray songs and compiled them into one disk.  I haven't taken the bait as of yet.

Here is how you may have heard her, and not of her.  For anyone watching the Gilmore Girls, Phillips did the incidental music, the la-la-las.  Her album sales might not be healthy, but residuals from repeats and DVD sales should keep her eating above the Ramen noodle levels for quite a few years to come.