The presence of Roxy Gordon—Texan, American Indian poet, writer, activist, journalist, and musician in the most rudimentary sense—was unique and unmatched, sadly unknown to a lot of the mainstream. The distinct, sharp, reedy drawl that hovered over his recordings and performances gave them a ragged, pretense-free tone. The vast majority of Native American recordings that people do get wind of are often relegated to, say, the Smithsonian Folkways label, or cheeseball Putumayo releases, so the complexity of what Gordon did wasn’t so easily tag-worthy to most folksy ethno-documentarians.

While some Native sounds/influences do filter into his recordings, he remarkably held a stylistic musical mirror up to white American and European culture as much as his own, with astounding cross-pollinating results. Crazy Horse Neuer Died, released in 1988 on Peter O’Brien’s fledgling Sunstorm label, is a pastiche of varied, low-tech sonic backdrops providing Gordon with a palette for his songs and poems. His intonations could be said to evoke the likes of