Jimmy Edwards - Love Bug Crawl

Jimmy Edwards - Love Bug Crawl
Bear Family BCD16621

Track listing: Love Bug Crawl / Do That Again / Love Bug Crawl / My Honey / Your Love Is A Good Love / Golden Ruby Blue / Live And Let Live / Rosie Lee / Honey Lovin' / Sorry I Lied / What Do You Want From Me / The Way To My Heart / Recipe Of Love / Wedding Band / Silver Slippers / Favor For A Friend / The Way To My Heart / Wedding Band.

As Phil will no doubt confirm, I haven’t exactly got the biggest singles collection in the world. About 150 probably, but it’s the quality not the quantity that counts. Among my stash are two Jimmy Edwards singles, Love Bug Crawl and Your Love Is A Good Love.

The legend of Jimmy Edwards revolves around his hit record, Love Bug Crawl which is a stunning rocker by anyone’s standards. Nothing on this collection quite matches it, but that’s not to say that it can be dismissed. It’s got some great soft rock moments and as with all Bear Family releases, it comes with a detailed booklet and the best possible sound. Edwards has been totally overlooked on the reissue front, making this even more important for fans.

He was born James Wiley Bullinton in Mississippi, but was working in the General Motors Buick plant in Flint, Michigan when he first cut Love Bug Crawl in 1957. It was issued on the local Wednesday label before getting picked up by Mercury. Bear Family give us both the original and the re-recorded version from later in the year. Everyone must know and love the Mercury cut, and all of you will love the original as well. It’s a bit more basic but still goes like the clappers and shows Edwards had already cracked the vocal hiccups.

Two more Mercury singles failed to chart despite My Honey and Do That Again being mighty fine records. RCA took a chance with him but they too couldn’t get him on the hit parade. The pick of the RCA tracks is Your Love Is A Good Love, a near perfect pop rocker with it’s LBC intro and backing vocals. It’s very much of the 1959 Nashville sound. The flip, A Favour For A Friend is a spoken word ballad that features Chet Atkins at his jazziest. Live And Let Live has a Marty Robbins feel.

There’s a couple of unreleased numbers to round things off, the pop rockers, Recipe Of Love and Sorry I Lied. This CD is recommended to anyone who can take their rock ‘n’ roll on the softer side – just don’t expect a platter full of Love Bug Crawl rockabilly boppers.

Don Gibson

Can white men sing da blooze, can Nashville sing da blooze?
I like artist you can`t pigeonhole, Jerry Lee rocks but he honky tonks with panache too, Charlie Rich went from jazzy infelcted rockin blues to countrypolitan and then there's his Nashville equivalent Don Gibson, an awesome song writer who penned classic after classic and with Chet and the A team cut some of the finest of the fine in RCA studio B off Broadway in music city. Here's a few clips of the great man in action with some of his best songs, there's some cool later clips on the tube of you with a duet with ole Chet, a Porter Wagoner show with Don doing the Jimmie Skinner classic Doin My Time (so beloved by Mr Cash).

I first heard Don doing Sea Of Heartbreak (no live clips one here , sob!) on Radio Lux and I thought it was a new Elvis 45, it`s the one countryish song I wish El had covered in that golden 60 -62 period where he did everything from Neopolitan opera thru Chuck Wills and Lowell Fulsom. Later I got some Don on the old Country Guitar VA series of eps that RCA put out in the UK and eventually a Best Of Don Gibson lp which had 12 stone cut gems on it, and in those days there would be weeks if not months between pocket money purchases and it got played to death in Casa Flip, even my dad who didn't dig the beat grew fond of the Donster by persistent osmosis from my lil ole red n cream Dansette and I was even allowed to play it on the family Radiogram in the living room, moving mam n dad`s Frankie Laine and Doris day back to the dark n dusty cupboard underneath.

Watch out for the equally great (and equally tragis) Hank Garland in his prime.

Flip

Don Gibson (and Gene Sloan)- Lonesome Number One

Don Gibson (and Hank Garland)- Its Been A Blue Blue Day

Don Gibson - Oh Lonesome Me

Grady Martin tribute

Just months after the death of Chet Atkins, the world of country music suffered another massive loss when legendary session guitarist Grady Martin passed away this week aged 72. One of the most important musicians of the pioneering era of the 50's and 60's, Martin appears to have suffered a heart attack at his home.Martin was born on a farm near Chappel Hill in Marshall County, Tennessee, the youngest of four children. He spent many childhood hours listening to music on the families battery-operated Zenith radio, and soon developed a love for country music and the Grand Ole Opry which the family listened to every weekend. Young Grady began playing the fiddle and guitar and by his teens was playing in local bands and sitting in with visiting bands. At fifteen he was heard by Big Jeff Bess who persuaded Grady's parents to let him move to Nashville to play with his band Big Jeff and the Radio Playboys. Two years later he joined Paul Howard's Arkansas Cotton Pickers and then became a founder member of Little Jimmy Dicken's Country Boys. By now he had retired his fiddle and was becoming known as one of the town's top guitarists. He worked the Opry and played with the Bailes Brothers, Curley Fox and Texas Ruby.He took over the lead of Red Foley's band and as well as the Opry they played the Ozark Jubilee. It was with Foley that Martin played on his first big seller, Chattanooga Shoe-Shine Boy. During the session he formed a long time partnership with Decca's Paul Cohen and their influential Nashville producer, Owen Bradley. The next two decades were when Martin made his name and built up an unprecedented reputation. Although he recorded with his Slewfoot Five for Decca it was his session work where he excelled.He started working with Johnny Horton and the late 50's saw him at the peak of his craft on such Horton classics as Honky Tonk Man, I'm A One Woman Man, I'm Coming Home and The Woman I Need. It was Martin who suggested at one Horton session that Harold Bradley play a banjo on When It's Springtime In Alaska (It's Forty Below). It was a master stroke which completely changed the song's make-up and set a trend for such historic folk songs - Horton repeated the idea for his million-seller, Battle Of New Orleans. He was respected as a versatile and inventive guitarist and the full range of playing he used when working with Brenda Lee summed it up, whether it be his rockabilly boogie playing on Bigelow 6-200, or his fills on the poppier material like Let's Jump The Brromstick or My Baby Likes Western Guys.The first Grammy ever awarded for a country song was Marty Robbins brilliant western ballad, El Paso, but only a fool would suggest the song would have been half as good without Grady Martin's fluent Tex-Mex picking. It was a high point in both men's illustrious careers. When they worked together a year later (1960), history was again made when Martin's malfunctioning amplifier caused a distorted sound, known from that day forward as fuzztone.He worked thousands of sessions and amongst the artists Martin backed were; Johnny Burnette, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Flatt & Scruggs, Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Baez, JJ Cale, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and Roy Orbison.In the 70's he worked extensively with Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn and produced the country-rockers Brush Arbor. After a brief spell with Jerry Reed he became a member of the Willie Nelson Family troupe, touring the world from 1980 to 1994 and working on such studio sessions as On The Road Again and Always On My Mind. He retired and spent his time back in Marshall County. He became the first recipient of the Nashville Music Association's Masters Award in 1983 and was awarded a Chetty last year during Chet Atkins' Musician Days festivities in Nashville. Married three times, Martin left behind ten children, seven grandchildren, one great-grandchild and an enormous body of guitar solos that helped change the face of popular music. As Bob Moore told the Tennessean newspaper, "I think he's the single greatest guitar player we've had here in Nashville".