Windham Hill Presents: Pure - John Gorka CD

Personnel: John Gorka (vocals, guitar); Roy Rogers (slide guitar); Todd Phillips (acoustic bass); Robbie Magruder (drums); John Jennings (percussion); Kathy Mattea, Nanci Griffith, Shawn Colvin (background vocals).
This best-of collects some of the 1990s recordings of John Gorka, one of New Jersey's lesser-known musical exports, an expert guitarist and evocative singer whose smart, odd, deeply felt songs conjure images of Richard Thompson and whose voice recalls a smoother Gordon Lightfoot. In a set that veers from the arcane to the pastoral, the mysterious "Jack's Crows" shows Gorka's more esoteric side, while "I Saw a Stranger With Your Hair" evokes the heartbreak of irretrievable loss.
Pure John Gorka, like the other titles in Windham Hill/Legacy's straightforward Pure series, aims at a distillation of its subject's career and gets it to-the-point right. Here you'll find all the underappreciated folkie's favorites -- "I Saw a Stranger with Your Hair," "When She Kisses Me," "Looking Forward" -- plus lesser-known meditations on sensitivity and vulnerability such as "The Ballad of Jamie Bee" and "Silence." As might be expected with any collection of Gorka's songs, a major selling point of this disc is its collaborators -- Gorka boasts a lot of great and supportive musical friends; among them Lucy Kaplansky, Shawn Colvin, Cliff Eberhardt, and Jennifer Kimball. ~ Tammy La Gorce