Old Dogs Learn New Tricks From Young Dogs

Recently, there have been a handful of veteran musicians who have gotten help from some contemporaries and because of it, have had their careers ignited once again. These people had not lost talent in their age. They had just lost their audience. The people who listened to their music twenty and thirty years ago are no longer in the position to buy tickets to shows, so like any other business, they recreated themselves to make their product applicable.

Here a few classics who called on the help of contemporary musicians:

Loretta Lynn's 2004 album Van Lear Rose was produced by legendary rocker Jack White of The White Stripes and a thousand other projects. For this album, White brought in members of his then band The Raconteurs and gave the timeless Lynn a little alt-country twist. This album won Loretta Lynn two Grammys, one for Best Country Album and one for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. During recording, Lynn was 72 and White was 28.

Mavis Staples has had her last two albums produced by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. With her being from a gospel/soul background and Tweedy with interests in alt-country and rock, this collaboration might be as weird as Lynn/White, but just like that pair Staples and Tweedy turned out to be a pretty good team. Just like White, Tweedy played most of the instruments or had the majority of influence on how the album was going to sound. But what stayed true was the soul. On these two albums, Mavis Staples has turned some covers and some Tweedy tunes into classic sounding soul tunes with a time warp and her raw voice. Now one of singers of "The Weight" on The Band's The Last Waltz is back to a full tour schedule singing to a whole new audience.

Next are two male artists who have not left their old tunes but now share them with some contemporary artists breathing new life into the songs and the artists.

Lionel Richie did not just flip age groups but genres as well. The man that made such #1's as "All Night Long" and "Dancing on the Ceiling" took us for a spin on 2012's Tuskegee. This album was a remake of 13 of his most popular hits, but on each one he involved a country stars, both old and new to sing with him like Tim McGraw, Kenny Rogers, Darius Rucker, and Blake Shelton. By doing this he was reaching a different audience and exploring the musical composition of these songs written long ago. This was Richie's first number one album since 1986. It was a learning experience on both ends.

This last example (and my personal favorite) is the most recent addition to this list. John Fogerty, the frontman of Creedence Clearwater Revival and later of solo fame, recently released Wrote a Song for Everyone an album where he and the artists he worked with really turned some classic CCR tunes to make some really interesting tracks. He worked with some peers as well as some artists that would call Fogerty an influence. That includes Foo Fighters, Dawes, Miranda Lambert, Zac Brown Band, and Brad Paisley. What makes Fogerty's album different than Richie's is that what was once a CCR song has now been bent to fit a different genre, but that genre is hardly repeated by another song on the album. Foo Fighters are going to bring something entirely different to the table than say Zac Brown Band. I highly recommend this album as a retrospective and diverse look at CCR, the band, and John Fogerty, the man.

Some people might say the musicians are bored and just want to make some money. Some stubborn people might just say that doing these kinds of collaborations disgraces their original work. But those people just have their head in the sand. What came out of Lynn, Staples, Richie, and Fogerty is something they had never done before. Working with these artists did not shrink their importance at all. Lynn, Staples, Richie, and Fogerty grew in these experiences and so can we now that White, Tweedy, and countless others have translated their beautiful voices and sound into our worlds. Collaboration does not stop at genre and never in time.