Despite countless critical accolades and even a 1998 Oscar nomination for his song “Miss Misery” (used on the “Good Will Hunting” soundtrack), Elliott Smith sold relatively few records over the course of his too-brief career, much of it spent on small, independent labels. But just about everyone who bought one of those records had his heart broken by the singer-songwriter’s 2003 death at age 34 (a suspected suicide, though the case remains open).
Still, Smith’s fans remain as dedicated as ever, continuing to debate and appreciate the man’s music as if he never went away. And in one sense, Smith — or at least his music — never did. A year after his death, a posthumous “final” album, “From a Basement on the Hill,” arrived on shelves, and a double-disc collection of unreleased material, “New Moon” (Kill Rock Stars), appeared this month.
“He was really an amazing writer and craftsman who worked really hard,” recalls longtime friend and producer Larry Crane of Smith’s prolific recording habits. “By the time people started noticing, around the time of ‘Miss Misery,’ he had been writing music for 20 years, maybe more. Just writing and writing and writing.”
Culled and curated by Crane, at the behest of Smith’s estate, the excellent “New Moon” (which includes lost treasures such as an early version of “Miss Misery”) at once expands and extends Smith’s legacy while also raising questions as to how a relatively modestly popular cult act should be handled after the fact.
One need only look at acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Tupac Shakur or Kurt Cobain to see the damage and confusion done by unscrupulous business decisions. On the one hand, those artists continue to sell millions of records. On the other hand, endless lawsuits, redundant reissue campaigns and bottom-of-the-barrel vault scraping have tainted their respective — and considerable — legacies.
Crane didn’t want to see something similar happen to Elliott Smith, so he was very careful to be as minimally invasive as possible to the trove of unreleased material he unearthed.
“When someone passes away, there are any number of ways that their output can be molested,” Crane says. “There are so many horrible things you can do these days that would have been in bad taste.”
“If anything, the estate has been very careful to not appear to be after money, or trying to profit off of it in some horrible way, or to look creepy about it. That’s not their intention, by any means.” Indeed, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of “New Moon” goes to Outside In, a Portland, Ore., charity for homeless youth.
In the best of cases, trawling through the vaults for unreleased material can prolong even a veteran act such as Johnny Cash’s creative and popular renewal. In the case of cult folk singer Nick Drake, the not-yet-released rarities collection “Family Tree” bolsters a very limited three-album catalog that largely went overlooked, yet in an open letter to her late brother, Drake’s sister Gabriella is clearly conflicted (see sidebar).
Mary Guibert, mother of singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley and keeper of his estate, feels similarly conflicted about handling her late son’s archives. “The motherly part of me, the part that takes this very personally, wants to be even more protective,” she says, “but that’s not very reasonable or the best use of the legacy.”
Crane, for his part, is glad he could help the songs on “New Moon” see release, but he harbors no illusions as to where they fall in Smith’s oeuvre.
“More collections of music or boxed sets, they kind of help a little bit,” Crane concedes. “Fans love them, and they get a little more media attention here and there. But I’m not sure those are as powerful as just keeping the entire catalog in print.”
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[other posthumous collections]Not all posthumous archive releases are blatant money grabs. Here are a handful of recent collections — each completed or compiled after the artist’s death — that got it right.
MORPHINE
“The Night” (Rykodisc, 2000): By most accounts, singer/bassist Mark Sandman had finished most of his work on this swan song by the time of his 1999 death at age 46 , but his bandmates had the good taste to see his vision through the next year.
JOE STRUMMER
“Streetcore” (Epitaph, 2003 ): The final album from the late Clash singer, “Streetcore,” completed by his bandmates after his 2002 death, shows Strummer at age 50 near the top of his solo game.
JOHNNY CASH
“My Mother’s Hymn Book” (Lost Highway, 2004) and “Personal File” (Legacy, 2006): No collection of kitchy covers, the stunning “My Mother’s Hymn Book” finds a subdued Cash (1932-2003) — from the era of producer Rick Rubin, with just guitar as accompaniment — performing his favorite hymns. The double-disc ’70s-era “Personal File,” culled from the vaults, is just as good.
J. DILLA
“The Shining” (BBE, 2006): Compared with what’s been done with the unreleased works of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac, the family of hip-hop producer Jay Dee (1974-2006) deserves a lot of credit for putting the tasteful finishing touches on “The Shining.”
NICK DRAKE
“Family Tree” (Tsunami, 2007): British folk singer Nick Drake released just a mere three albums in his lifetime (1948-1974). “I am endorsing the publication of an album that I am not at all sure you would have sanctioned,” writes sister Gabriella in an open letter to her late brother.
“I hope that, in the circumstances, you could have given ‘Family Tree’ your blessing. Or if not, that you could have at least looked on with that wry smile of yours, and realized that it has come about as a result of the gradual fulfilling of your prophecy: ‘And now we rise, and we are everywhere.’ ” Those words come from Drake’s song “From the Morning.” They also adorn his gravestone.
— Joshua Klein
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ctc-arts@tribune.com.
