In Brief

*** James Talley, “Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home,” Cimarron. Talley is a country-minded artist whose underdog, blue-collar sensibility two decades ago conveyed such character and detail that he reminded you of Merle Haggard as a writer and Willie Nelson as a singer--qualities that should have made him a star. But his albums--notably 1975’s “Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love”--were too stark for country radio, and Talley eventually turned to real estate as a career. The Oklahoma native, however, never lost his touch for music, as this collection on his own label demonstrates. The acoustic 21-track work, featuring such Guthrie tunes as “This Land Is Your Land” and “Do-Re-Mi,” is an ideal companion piece to “Mermaid Avenue,” the much-admired 1998 album in which Billy Bragg and Wilco put music to some of Guthrie’s lyrics and poems. Talley takes liberties with Guthrie’s words in a few places, but he never loses track of the folk legend’s spirit. The album can be purchased through Talley’s Web site: https://www.jamestalley.com.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless noted.