Digital Roundup 1/18/2016

As we ease into 2016, so do we ease into adding new items to our digital catalog, which is why this week’s Digital Roundup only offers a single entry. Fortunately, it’s an entry from someone whose name is already well-familiar to music fans, not only for his solo work but also for his songwriting contributions to the careers of the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt as well as his vocal contributions to material by folks like Christopher Cross, Roy Orbison, and James Taylor.

J. D. Souther, John David Souther(Expanded Edition)

: Souther’s self-titled album was also his debut album, and while it wasn’t the smash success that he might’ve hoped it would be, don’t judge its contents by the fact that it only bubbled under the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. The moment you start listening to John David Souther, you’ll hear the twang that was all the rage in the early ‘70s, and as you keep listening, you’ll also hear “How Long,” a song that proved the timelessness of Souther’s material when the Eagles recorded it for their 2007 album, Long Road Out of Eden. Unfortunately, the song failed to find an audience when Souther released it as a single himself, but it’s just one of several should’ve-been country-rock classics on the album, along with “The Fast One,” “Kite Woman,” and “Run Like a Thief.” In the wake of the album’s release, David Geffen swayed Souther to join forces with Chris Hillman and Richie Furay to form the appropriately-named Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and it would take four years and two albums for him to make his way back to a solo career to release his sophomore album, 1976’s Black Rose, but John David Souther shows that he was on the right track from the very beginning.