John Mellencamp: No Better Than This

"It’s his first album for Rounder Records, the independent roots label, and it is, on the surface, a marked departure from his other recordings, a spare folk-blues record that bears little resemblance to the arena-friendly rock that carried him to stardom. The album is drenched in historical significance. The songs, performed by Mellencamp and a small band, were recorded in mono, on a nineteen-fifties Ampex 601 portable machine. Even more notable is where they were recorded: Mellencamp committed his new compositions to tape at three landmark locations—Sun Studios, in Memphis, where Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others helped invent rock and roll in the mid-fifties; the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, one of the oldest African-American congregations in the United States; and the Gunter Hotel, in San Antonio, where Don Law recorded the Delta blues legend Robert Johnson in 1936" (Ben Greenman, "Pop Notes: Cougar Town," New Yorker, 8/16-23/10, p. 18).

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