Name: X-Ray Eyes by Marshall Chapman in Live at the Belgium Rhythm & Blues Festival
Duration: 5 min 46 s
Description: Marshall and the Love Slaves, performing live at the 2003 Belgium Rhythm and Blues Festival. Never before released!

Marshall & the Love Slaves, performing live at the 2003 Belgium Rhythm & Blues Festival. Never before released!

The Love Slaves: Tim Krekel, lead guitar; Jackie Streets, bass; Danny Flowers, lead guitar; and Lynn Williams, drums.

Live at the Belgium Rhythm & Blues Festival

Blues Stay Away From Me

Mozambique / University Of Bourbon Street

Mozambique

“He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands” (Traditional) is the first song I remember singing as a child. I was eight years old. It was a big hit on the radio by an English singer named Laurie London. It’s one of those songs you know the minute you hear it. Anyway, this was Spartanburg, South Carolina. TB and LeNoir Thackston lived next door to us. LeNoir was my great aunt. Her oldest son, Barry, was in the Air Force stationed in Texas. Whenever Barry would be home on leave, all the kids in the neighborhood would go crazy. That’s because Barry loved children. (Children can always tell when adults love them.) He even had nicknames for us. His nickname for me was “Cookie.” Harriette Elmore who lived across the street was “Monkey.” Barry knew I loved to sing, so he would encourage me. “Hey Cookie!” he’d shout out. “Sing that song about ‘He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands’.” So I’d start singing it in my little eight-year-old voice. And Barry would get so happy, his happiness just pulled that song right out of me.

When we first tracked this album, another song was the closer. But it just didn’t seem quite right. So for days and days I thought about a replacement. Then it hit me that a gospel song might be the ticket. I considered “I Shall Not Be Moved.” But then I remembered “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” 

The day we recorded this was the day of the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. I was driving to the studio in East Nashville, and when I saw all the flags at half mast, I had to pull over to the side of the road. There I jotted down notes for the recitation that you hear at the end of this recording. I had no idea how prophetic it would become.

He's Got The Whole World In His Hands

Like everybody else in America, I first heard Elvis singing this on the radio in 1956. That January, my mother threw a big birthday party for me. I didn’t know half the kids who came, but they all arrived bearing gifts, which was kind of embarrassing, as the only gift I wanted was the one from my mother—a 78 rpm of Elvis singing “Hound Dog.” The B-side was “Don’t Be Cruel.” Naturally, I opened my mother’s gift first. Then I politely opened all the other gifts until there was a big pile of presents in our entrance hall. After the party was over, I dutifully began taking all the gifts up to my bedroom. But when I got to the 78, I discovered with horror that it had broken under the weight of all the other gifts. I was inconsolable. My poor mother rushed back to the store to get a replacement, but by the time she got there, they were out of 78s. So she got a 45 rpm. Same deal. “Hound Dog” backed by “Don’t Be Cruel.” But I wasn’t buying it. “It’s not the same!” I wailed. “The hole’s too big!”

Forty years later, I sang this at a Vin Scelsa songwriter showcase at the Bottom Line in NYC. At one point, Vin asked us each to sing a song we didn’t write. One we wished we had written. So when it came my turn, I sang “Don’t Be Cruel.” I don’t remember ever learning this song. It’s like I was born knowing it.

Songs I Can't Live Without

Don't Be Cruel

I first heard this song on the album Chet Baker Sings. The album belonged to my aforementioned boyfriend, Dave Hickey. The year was 1976. We were on the floor of his apartment. What can I say, other than we were madly in love. Fast forward forty-three years. Spring of 2019. I spent three weeks trying to learn how to play this song on my guitar. And I’d still be trying to figure it out, had Will Kimbrough not turned me onto All-guitar-chords.com.

I Fall In Love Too Easily

Marshall and the Love Slaves, performing live at the 2003 Belgium Rhythm and Blues Festival. Never before released!

X-Ray Eyes

Goodbye Forever

I Love Everybody

Tulsa Time

Sugar

Just to Torture Myself

16 Betty's Bein Bad

Blaze of Glory

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Marshall Chapman has been making records for longer than most of today’s indie rockers have been alive. Songs I Can’t Live Without is her 14th release, her eighth on TallGirl Records.

Recording an album of classics had always been on Chapman’s bucket list. “The songs I write have always been so personal,” Chapman says. “I needed a break. I was getting tired of living myself into a corner, just so I could write myself out.” 

Songs I Can’t Live Without begins with Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song,” which Chapman sings for the first time while recording it, and ends with “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” the first song she remembers singing as a child. In between are classics by Otis Blackwell, Goffin/King, J.J. Cale, Bob Seger, and even Chet Baker. 

Her songs have been recorded by everyone from Emmylou Harris and Joe Cocker to Irma Thomas and Jimmy Buffett. (Click here for a complete list.)

In 2010, Chapman landing her first movie role, playing Gwyneth Paltrow’s road manager in Country Strong. While filming the movie, her musical Good Ol’ Girls (adapted from the fiction of Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, featuring songs by Matraca Berg and Marshall) opened off-Broadway. That fall, Chapman simultaneously released a book (They Came to Nashville) and CD (Big Lonesome). They Came to Nashville was nominated for the 2011 SIBA Book Award for nonfiction, and the Philadelphia Inquirer named Big Lonesome “Best Country/Roots Album of 2010.”

Of her three rockin’ albums for Epic, the Al Kooper-produced Jaded Virgin was voted Record of the Year (1978) by Stereo Review. Her album, It’s About Time… (Island, 1995), recorded live at the Tennessee State Prison for Women, drew rave reviews from Time, USA Today and the Village Voice.

Marshall’s first book, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (St. Martin’s Press) was a SIBA bestseller, 2004 SIBA Book Award finalist, and one of three finalists for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. The book is now in its third printing.

Her second book, They Came To Nashville (Vanderbilt University Press/Country Music Hall of Fame)is based on interviews with music icons Chapman has known since her 1967  arrival over the last 50years. She asks Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Miranda Lambert and others the same first question: what was your first night in Nashville like? And from then on, each interview is spontaneous, soulful, revealing, and unique.

Marshall is a contributing editor to Garden & Gun and Nashville Arts Magazine. She has also written for The Oxford American, Southern Living, W, Performing Songwriter, and The Bob Edwards Show (Sirius/XM). But music, she says, “is my first and last love.”

X-Ray Eyes

Marshall Chapman

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