An Album a Day: Artist Heirs

Featuring Santana, Sinatra, Simon, and others

My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.

This week’s theme is “artist heirs,” meaning we are listening to albums by artists whose parents or grandparents were also artists. The only rule here is that the heir (i.e., child or grandchild) could not be more famous than the progenitor.

I should warn you that this was probably the worst batch of albums that we’ve heard, which was a good reminder that nepotism is probably less of a thing in music than you think. Yes, if your dad is Carlos Santana, it’s probably easier to get a record deal. But stardom cannot be inherited unless you have the chops.

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#8 Harper Simon by Harper Simon (2010 - Son of Paul Simon)

When I heard the opening track on Harper Simon’s debut album, I was worried. The dreary “All to God” might be the worst song we’ve heard so far on this album quest. Luckily, the rest of the album wasn’t that bad.

Harper Simon has some of the lyrical gifts of his father. I couldn’t really get into the record because there was something slightly off-putting about the singer-songwriter’s voice, which is odd because it is reminiscent of his father’s. If anything, this album was an illustration of the particularities of voice.

#7 Seven Year Ache by Rosanne Cash (1981 - Daughter of Johnny Cash)

This pick was inspired by my recent trip to Nashville, upon which I saw a Rosanne Cash exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame. That exhibit gave me high hopes for this album, her popular breakthrough. I was grossly disappointed.

Seven Year Ache has some stuff going for it. Cash’s band rips and her two compositions—“Seven Year Ache” and “Blue Moon with Heartache”—are probably the strongest on the record. That said, I didn’t find Cash’s voice that compelling and thought many of the other song selections were subpar. Here for example, is the first verse on track four, “What Kinda Girl?”: “What kinda girl am I really am? / I like some turkey but I don’t eat lamb / No sweet potato but I do like ham / What kinda girl am I really am?”

The most interesting thing I learned about this record is that it was one of 52 albums released with something called “Extended Copy Protection,” a digital rights management scheme rolled out with select Sony CDs in 2005. The problem? This software had significant security vulnerabilities. Sony eventually had to recall all the CDs.

#6 Keyboard City by Salvador Santana (2009 - Son of Carlos Santana)

As the name of this album suggests, there are lots of keyboards on this record. And I’m happy about that. Salvador Santana is quite good on the keys. His bandmates are good on their respective instruments too. This album is stacked with great grooves. Things fall apart when the vocals come in, though. Most lyrics are platitudes that you might find on signage available to purchase at a Home Goods.

#5 South of Reality by The Claypool Lennon Delirium (2019 - Son of John Lennon)

What do you get when you bring together Sean Ono Lennon and Les Claypool, the bassist from Primus? A proggy, psychedelic album with lots of bass. I am generally averse to anything that veers too far into prog rock territory, but Lennon and Claypool have a sense of humor that makes these songs a bit more palatable.

#4 Tal Bachman by Tal Bachman (1999 - Son of Randy Bachman)

Tal Bachman deserved all the radio play that he got with “She’s So High,” the lead single from his self-titled debut record. That song’s got a chorus for the ages. The rest of the record fails to match the quality of “She’s So High,” but it does have some nice moments. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine notes in his review of the record:

Living up to the legend of Randy Bachman might not be as overwhelming as living up to the legacy of John Lennon, but Tal Bachman does something neither Julian nor Sean Lennon did—he made a debut album that has nothing to do whatsoever with his father’s music.

#3 Chroma by Mt. Eddy (2017 - Son of Billie Joe Armstrong)

One thing that was off-putting about many of these records is that these heirs were often working in a similar genre to their parents. Rosanne Cash makes country music. Harper Simon lives in the singer-songwriter world. If my parent were a famous musician, and I was trying my hand at the family trade, I think I’d choose to work in a genre that wasn’t reminiscent of how my forebears established themselves. Unlike many on this list, Mt. Eddy agreed with me.

Mt. Eddy is fronted by Jakob Armstrong, the son of punk legend Billie Joe Armstrong. I won’t pretend that Jakob wasn’t influenced by Billie Joe. Mt. Eddy’s Chroma is a guitar-based rock album. But instead of living in the punk universe, Chroma is more indebted to Stokes-adjacent indie rock of the 2000s and 2010s. While Jakob does not know his way around a riff like his father, he can indeed right a big chorus.

#2 Nancy & Lee by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood (1968 - Daughter of Frank Sinatra)

Few characters fascinate me more than Lee Hazlewood. After making his name as the producer of the spacey guitar maestro Duane Eddy, he carved out a unique career making what some have dubbed “cowboy psychedelia.” A 2007 article described it as “a genre of one.” It goes on, “No one else has ever sounded quite like [Hazlewood].”

Nancy Sinatra was probably Hazlewood’s greatest muse. Along with writing and producing her signature song, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” Hazlewood made three albums with Frank’s daughter, the first of which—the aptly named Nancy & Lee—is delightful.

Neither Nancy Sinatra nor Lee Hazlewood is a great singer. But their voices work oddly well together. They breathe new life into classics, like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “Jackson.” They get playful on pieces, like “Greenwich Village Folk Song Salesman.” They even rip your heart out on others, like “Elusive Dreams.”

But what makes Nancy & Lee special is when they lean into that signature psychedelic cowboy sound. Recordings like “Summer Wine” and “Some Velvet Morning” are like nothing you’ve ever heard, the duet partners making you feel like you’re a character in an old western set somewhere in the future.

#1 Come Away With Me by Norah Jones (2002 - Daughter of Ravi Shankar)

This is the album that we were least sure of. That unsureness had nothing to do with the quality of the record, though. Comes Away With Me is worth every one of the 27 million copies that it sold. But we stipulated that to fit this theme, the child couldn’t be more famous than their parent. Was Norah Jones more notable than Ravi Shankar?

We decided no. Though Jones has sold a gazillion records, her father won numerous awards on his way to becoming one of the most important Indian musicians in history. That’s no knock on Norah Jones, though. Ken and I were in agreement that Come Away With Me was our favorite record this week. And it’s a quiet, jazzy record, Jones’s voice barely rising above a whisper. But Jones is a serviceable singer, her song choices are excellent, and her band breathes life into each of those choices.

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