Chris Whitley passed away in November 2005. He was a tremendous performer and singer. According to his tribute web site:
Chris made 12 albums, ranging from raw-boned folk-rock to lush electro-blues, had the thread of intense emotion and constant invention running through them.
Chris's hit debut LP, Living With the Law, came out on Columbia in 1991. His final album, Soft Dangerous Shores, came out in June 2005 via Messenger Records, the independent label he worked with most. The discs now seem like spiritual/aesthetic book-ends. Both mix roots-rock grit with heat-haze atmospherics and were produced/engineered by Malcolm Burn. If his beloved debut still contains some of his best-known songs, Soft Dangerous Shores has the elusive intertwining of organic and synthetic that Chris often held as an ideal.
Christopher Becker Whitley was born Aug. 31, 1960, in Houston, to a restless, artistic couple: His mother was a sculptress and painter; his father worked as an art director in a series of advertising jobs. As a family, they traveled through the Southwest, with many of the images the young boy absorbed finding their way later into songs. He once described his parents' music taste as formed "by race radio in the South." The real deal — Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf — seeped into their son's soul, eventually leading to Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix.
I have recently been introduced to his songs and they are beautiful.
