THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 2, 2020 |A
for a dystopian Japanese anime
film. He’s offered original song-
writing, and shown electric-guitar
prowess on those adventurous for-
ays, but the through story has
been his rich, Kentucky-accented
voice and vocal artistry. Mr. Simp-
son’s singing has never sounded
more built for the job than on this
new album, which revisits songs
from across his entire career, rein-
terpreted as bluegrass.
These are not songs simply exe-
cuted on acoustic instruments and
labeled “bluegrass.” Bluegrass’s
musical dynamics, band interac-
tions, vocal stretches and harmo-
nies are here, as is such serious
genre talent as Sierra Hull (mando-
lin), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Scott
Vestal (banjo), Mike Bub (bass) and
Tim O’Brien (guitar). The 20 songs
are culled from the three Simpson
solo albums of 2013-16 and the
four records that the artist intro-
duced as leader of the alternative-
country rock band Sunday Valley
from 2004 to 2012.
“A Little Light” appeared on the
“Metamodern Sounds in Country
Music” LP as a clap-along, oompah
number about staying “on theFROM TOP: SEMI SONG; HENRY DILTZW
ith their work lives
disrupted by the
pandemic, roots-
music makers have
been exploring
their existing song
catalogs for use in new ways. Two
collections due out in physical
form on Dec. 11 (and currently
available digitally) demonstrate
how backward glances can result
in releases that are much more
than placeholders.Sturgill Simpson, “Cuttin’ Grass
Vol. 1 (The Butcher Shoppe Ses-
sions)”(High Top Mountain/Thirty
Tigers)
In the seven years since his first
solo album, “High Top Mountain,”
Sturgill Simpson has become for
many a modern musical hero—for
his brash defiance of mainstream
country sound and subject norms,
disregard for genre boundaries,
and bold experimentation. He’s
served up 1970s-style Outlaw
Country honky tonk; cerebral psy-
chedelia; lullabies for a newborn
son; and a hard-rock soundtrackBYBARRYMAZORject of biological or inherited guilt,
a can of moral worms has been
opened and ought to be addressed
a little more responsibly than Ms.
Olson does here. It’s not the only
hole in the story, either.
Given how early the illicit-in-
semination angle of Fortier’s his-
tory is revealed, viewers will sus-
pect that even worse is to come,
and they will be right. But that
doesn’t mean those same viewers
might not have other questions.
Fortier claimed he was just trying
to help the women who came to
him at the Las Vegas hospital he
established in the early ’60s. (The
source of the recordings of Fort-
ier’s voice is not identified.) But
the specifics of the women’s prob-
lems are never revealed. Were
their husbands sterile? It’s not dis-
cussed. Equally unclear is how
women who were examined by
Fortier with no intention of having
children became pregnant, includ-
ing one of his daughters. There are
many allegations of sexual abuse,
but rape does not seem to be
among them, although Ms. Olson
is so discreet that one is not en-
tirely sure.
As discussed by Dr. Silver and
another colleague, Harrison Sheld,
it was routine for medical stu-
dents, decades ago, to donate to
sperm banks for, as Dr. Silver re-
calls, “$50 a sample.” Both doctors
entertain the idea that they them-
selves might have unknown prog-
eny out in the world whom they’ve
never met, and how that would
make them feel. “Another little
me? How could you not love that?”
says Dr. Silver, apparently unaware
of what movie he’s in.Baby God
Wednesday, 9 p.m., HBO‘THE POSTMODERNPrometheus”
might have been the title of direc-
tor Hannah Olson’s documentary
“Baby God,” considering that its
subject was a Frankenstein of fer-
tility medicine: Quincy Fortier,
who practiced gynecology and ob-
stetrics in Las Vegas for decades
and used his own sperm to im-
pregnate an untold number of
women without their knowledge
or consent. What was he think-
ing? As he died in 2006, it’s im-
possible for Ms. Olson to tell us
exactly. But he certainly never an-
ticipated Ancestry.com. Or that
one of the scores of children he
fathered would grow up to be a
police investigator.
Wendi Babst, whom Ms. Olson
follows through what is an un-
avoidably sordid but captivating
story, needed something to do af-
ter she retired in 2016 from her
decades-long career in law en-
forcement in suburban Portland,
Ore. So she got an Ancestry DNA
kit. The payoff was a surrealist’s
casino jackpot, and a family tree
that looked like a forest: Half-sib-
lings by the dozens, all linked by
the name Fortier. She decided to
dig, and what she came up with
was not entirely surprising: Her
biological father had been subject
to legal scrutiny and lawsuits be-
fore, with cases settled out of
court and nondisclosure agree-
ments in place. “He never lost his
license,” she says. “He died amember in good standing” of the
Nevada medical community.
A couple of other members of
that community are on hand to
provide some perspective on what
medicine was like in Las Vegas in
the ’60s, where the population was
“70-75% female,” according to
Frank Silver, and the doctors were
few. Dr. Silver estimates he himself
performed 5,000 deliveries over the
course of his career. Dr. Fortier was
no doubt responsible for delivering
a comparable number of babies,
some of whom, unbeknown to the
mothers, were his own children.
Ms. Olson doesn’t wander into
the legal weeds with her explora-
tion of Fortier, or speculate much
about who or what medical author-
ity might have curbed the doctor’s
genetic crime spree. She’s more in-
terested in what the knowledge of
their paternity has done to his
children. “Those who don’t share
DNA with their parents don’t know
who they are,” says one. “They
have the feeling they’re not just
different but somehow wrong.”
Ms. Babst takes it further. “The
monster,” she says, referring to
Fortier, “is living inside me.” The
nature-nurture debate certainly
gets a working over in “Baby
God”—Brad Gulko, the virtual mir-
ror image of his bio-father, is also
a medical researcher, and the im-
plication is that his professional
life was genetically foretold. But
once Ms. Babst broaches the sub-TELEVISION REVIEW| JOHN ANDERSON
Horrid History, Hidden
In a Family Tree
HBO
Cathy Holm with her daughter WendiARTS IN REVIEW
straight and narrow.” Here it’s a
gospel rave-up powered by a cir-
cular banjo figure. “Turtles All the
Way Down,” a roots-rock spiritual
treatise that describes experience
with “marijuana, LSD, psilocybin
and DMT,” takes Mr. Simpson to
the potent, upper register peak of
bluegrass vocalizing here; the lyric
remains far from traditional. “Sit-
ting Here Without You,” from the
“High Top Mountain” record, had
been the sort of rhythmic honky
tonk number that led to Waylon
Jennings comparisons; now the
words are clipped and sung brief
as banjo notes. It works. “Some-
times Wine,” a regionally popular
Sunday Valley number, turns from
near punk rock into a fiddle-
driven hoedown.“Alternative country” may still
be as good an overall term as any
for Mr. Simpson’s music. But do
not be surprised if this collection
comes to be considered one of the
best bluegrass albums of the year.Gillian Welch, “Boots No. 2: The
Lost Songs”(Acony)
It’s been nearly a quarter-cen-
tury since roots-music stylist Gil-
lian Welch and instrumentalist mu-
sical partner David Rawlings burst
onto the emerging Americana
scene with the 1996 album “Re-
vival.” The duo’s favored tone—
markedly laid back and world
weary—has influenced newcomers
to the field ever since. Ms. Welch’s
songs have been recorded by ev-
eryone from folk’s Joan Baez topop’s Tom Jones, country’s
Miranda Lambert and bluegrass’s
Dailey & Vincent. But she’s been
far from prolific as a recording art-
ist herself—just five albums in 24
years; none in the past nine. Her
songs and performances have
added up to a continuing, evolving
conversation with longstanding
roots-music styles.
Not only the pandemic but the
tornado that hit near Ms. Welch
and Mr. Rawlings’s East Nashville,
Tenn., recording studio in March
have led to this sharing of some
40 previously unheard songs that
were composed and recorded over
one weekend back in December
2002 to fulfill a publishing con-
tract. This dramatic increase in the
duo’s available creations, which
were on tapes retrieved from the
water-logged studio after the 2020
storm, arrives as a surprising
bounty for fans.
The breakneck pace of writing
and recording—the lyrics culled
from Ms. Welch’s notebooks, the
tunes generally devised by Mr. Raw-
lings over those very few days—
yielded a set of relatively short
songs that make their points and get
out, most often as two-minute turns
on old-time country sounds, country
blues and gospel included. That con-
versation with traditional material
becomes a central part
of how these record-
ings work—right down
to the song titles, in a
number of cases. “Val-
ley of Tears,” “Wanted
Man,” “Sin City,”
“Peace in the Valley”
and “Make Me a Pallet
on Your Floor” are all
very familiar titles to
followers of American
roots music, but the
songs that carry them
here are new ones, cog-
nizant of the oldies.
Where the Flying Bur-
rito Brothers’ country
“Sin City” included
Gram Parsons’s cele-
brated reference to
having “green mohair
suits,” the new song
moves along lazily,
with a blues tinge, and
refers to having “two
hundred dollars and a
pair of mohair slacks.”
You can almost hear
the wheels turning.
The numbers are at once off-the-
cuff and knowing. They’ve been
programmed not in the order they
popped up, but with consideration
for the listener, ordered into three
involving albums released since the
summer and now gathered to-
gether, accompanied by a book of
lyrics, chords and apropos photos.
It’s a pleasure to hear from artists
saturated in their sources and their
own shared musical approach, able
to toss these songs off, and coming
up with material that, circum-
stances aside, proves to be a wel-
come and worthy addition to their
recorded catalog.Mr. Mazor reviews country and
roots music for the JournalSturgill Simpson, left; David
Rawlings and Gillian Welch, belowMUSIC REVIEW
Roots-Music
Retrospection
Two singer-songwriters find rich rewards
in revisiting their catalogs