A seasoned traveller through the rock & roll landscape, Stuart Colman has reached for the gazetteer and unfurled his road map to identify a multitude of stop-offs around the USA and south of the border into Mexico. Every location has been celebrated in song by a fascinating diversity of rock & roll, R&B and country artists. For The Promised Land, the producer and former BBC Radio 1 presenter brings together 50 recordings by artists both familiar (Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Drifters, Charlie Rich) and obscure, but unified by the quality of their performances.
Apart from a classic song written and recorded by Chuck Berry, “The Promised Land” is a Biblical reference, a 19th Century novel by the Polish author Władysław Reymont, a networked radio show on NPR, a gospel album by The Del McCoury Band, and an environmentally-themed movie starring Matt Damon. Above all else, “The Promised Land” is an all-embracing term ostensibly used to describe the nation that gave birth to the musical observance known as Rock & Roll.
Those intriguingly-named cities, towns and territories, somehow conjured up a far more exotic way of life to the municipal boroughs and prosaic pastures that most of us dwelt in. Now, with the aid of a map and a compass, we can trace some of the romantic routes and regions that our American cousins so thoughtfully captured in song. So whether you are firing up the Chevy, or comfortably installed in your armchair, prepare for a journey through the heartland of rock & roll.