British guitar pioneer Derek Bailey’s spoken word tapes have been the stuff of legend among his followers for years. Bailey would make cassette tapes of himself, talking and playing guitar, and send them to friends as letters. Some said he would send one to anyone who wrote to him. Whoever had one, in any event, no doubt prized it.

Occasional spoken tracks have shown up on record since the early 1970s, but Bailey really went public with his audio letters a few years back with the cdr Chats, released on his Incus Records. The letters to Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser and others were charming and witty, displaying a different side of the enigmatic improviser. The Appleyard File followed, a strange piece of yarn recited again by Bailey from behind the 6-string.

Poetry and Playing is the next logical step in Bailey’s turn as orator, with the texts supplied by three writers - Steve Dalachinsky, Lyn Hajinian and Peter Riley - rather than from off his own cuff. Of the three, Dalachinsky’s ruminations on life as a building superintendent work best aloud. His phrases are short and simple, easier to follow against the busy, percussive guitar. Bailey doesn’t accompany himself exactly – he’s no Oscar to his own Ella – and the levels are fairly even between the vocal and guitar mikes. Elsewhere, the guitar blisters and $2 words can be hard to absorb. On Hajinian’s “from Writing is an Aid to Memory,” for example, Bailey matter-of-factly delivers lines a reader would go over several times at least: “Sometimes beauty turns my attention by endeavor / where action is beyond praise / and courage is so increased by the time / as if the two were an arithmetical thing and could increase.”

Ultimately the project makes for a strange addition to Bailey’s burgeoning catalogue. It’s well done, but the emotive impetus naturally isn’t the same as when the words he’s speaking are his own.