The first of four sons born to Ganyinurra (Daisy) and Nyambi (Terry) Yunupingu, he was born in Galiwin'ku, Elcho Island in 1971,[6] situated off the coast of Arnhem Land in northern Australia, about 530 kilometres east of Darwin. He was from the Gumatj clan of the Yolngu and his mother was from the Galpu nation. He was born blind, never learned Braille and did not have a guide dog or use a white cane, and was said to be acutely shy. When he was four years old, he learned how to play a toy piano and an accordion by teaching himself. A year later he began to play a guitar; despite being a left-hander, he played a right-handed guitar, holding it "upside down", which he would continue to do throughout his career.
Though much of Alvin's solo output, along with what he shares with & the Guilty Men, is strong, I rank this album as his strongest effort.
From an RYM review by Grampus that I adopt:
Alvin's music is timeless. A traditional storyteller in the style of Johnny Cash with the same type of rich lived-in voice, Alvin's songs are populated with the kind of characters that have become staples of the country rock genre. The girl who flees an abusive family for a life dancing on tables and drifting from one bad relationship to another ("Abilene"). The lonesome divorced border guard patrolling the mountains and stumbling across the frozen bodies of illegal immigrants ("California Snow"). The dupe left rotting in jail after being tricked into murdering his lover's husband ("Mary Brown"). The drunken veteran so traumatized by past events he loses everything except the memory of his buddy lying dead in the jungles of Vietnam ("1968"). ["Folks say he 's a hero, but he'll tell you he ain't / He left the hero in the jungle back in 1968."] 'The guy trapped by his smalltown existence remembering his youthful wanderlust and writing a letter he'll never send to his old girlfriend who managed to escape ("From A Kitchen Table").
My fourth RB album, thanks in part to rickb (Hey, wait! Is this you?), and to Ojai Sam, who gifted it to me out of his largesse (Did I spell that right?).