It was the Talk of the Town in this week’s New Yorker that first allerted me to the new Janet Reno executed-produced compilation Song of America, though a few internet searches have since directed me to many other articles addressing the collection. The release of the 50-track recording this Tuesday is a development that can only be described as remarkably interesting. Move over John “Let the Eagle Soar” Ashcroft–there’s a new, old Attorney General who loves music about America. And here we were thinking that Ms. Reno was at the peak of powers during her famous Dance Party on SNL! Not only does Ms. Reno have the kind of ability to laugh at herself that has long been sought after in vain by politicians from Al Gore to Hillary Clinton, but apparently she also has pretty legit taste in music. I give her credit not because such trendy names as Devendra Banhart and Andrew Bird appear on the compilation but because of her idea for set–artists, old and new, performing songs about our nation. As Nick Paumgarten makes clear in his piece for Talk of the Town, Reno has an understanding of the rich and important relationship between American’s history and its vernacular music. If that weren’t enough, though, her hyperbolic enthusiasm for one Virginia Patterson Hensley is the coup de grace. “I think Patsy Cline was a genius,” she told Paumgarten. “I just wonder what the world would’ve been like if Patsy Cline had lived.” I fall to pieces.
