Don Woody - You're Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Don Woody - You're Barking Up The Wrong Tree
Bear Family BCD-17137

Track listing: You're Barking Up The Wrong Tree; Bird-Dog; Make Like A Rock And Roll; Morse Code; Hula Hula Girl; A Lesson In Love; Red Blooded American; Not I; A Lesson In Love; Bigelow 6-200 (Brenda Lee); The Rope (Billy Eustis)

I gotta be honest here and tell you that I’m reviewing a mate’s copy, as I wasn’t sure that I could justify the fifteen quid for an eleven song CD. I know that with Bear Family you get the whole package but the reality is that there’s only half a dozen songs here I hadn’t got.

Don Woody was one of those figures so revered in the rockabilly world. He had a couple of singles released to no acclaim back in the day, before getting discovered in Europe a couple of decades later. Woody came to our attention when he Decca quartet were highlights of the great 1975 album, “Rare Rockabilly” on MCA. That quartet, You're Barking Up The Wrong Tree, Bird-Dog, Make Like A Rock And Roll and Morse Code were cut on December 21st 1956 in Nashville with Grady Martin almost dominating proceedings. The first two were issued as a Decca single whilst surprisingly, the other two remained in the can until the MCA album. All four are rockabilly in it’s purest form and everyone of them could grace any compilation album. For what it’s worth, my favourite is the hypnotic Morse Code.

The next stage in his career could well have been the end stage but for a revival two decades and four thousand miles away. The Atco single, Not I backed with Red Blooded American was new on me, and probably for most fans. There a definite easy rock feel to Red Blooded and the verses reminded me of the Jimmy Edwards CD I reviewed last week.

From a demo session in early 1958 we get two songs, a charming enough Hula Hula Girl and A Lesson In Love which is no great shakes. The set is rounded off with two songs written by Don Woody. Surely everyone reading this has got Brenda Lee’s great Bigelow 6-200 whilst Billy Eustis’ The Rope is less known. It’s a western style story song that is better than Eustis. He’s okay but if someone like Johnny Cash or Marty Robbins would have cut it, it would have been excellent.

So to nitty gritty. Does it give enough value for money in these hard times. For me, no. The best ones are the four Decca’s and Brenda’s Bigelow. However, if you collect everything on Bear Family and have been living on Mars and haven’t heard Morse Code and co, go for it, it’s great stuff.

Don Gibson - Don Rocks (Bear Family BCD 16991)

Don Gibson was an amazing songwriter who had a string of hits for RCA in the late 50’s and early 60’s. He bridged the gap between country and rock ‘n’ roll and although he sat with one and a half of his ass cheeks on the hillbilly side, he still had a flair for rockabilly. By no stretch of the imagination can he be called a rockabilly singer but there was a definite edge to his music. Not dissimilar to Roy Orbison, he excelled at taking the Nashville Sound outside the Music City city limits. It was too pop to be Charlie Feathers but it was also too rockin’ to put him on Bill Monroe’s Christmas card list.

Bear Family have served Don well over the years with the box-set treatment and the fabulous single CD, A Legend In My Time. As befits the title, and the series, this new one concentrates on the up-tempo sides and it’s stunning, from the music in the grooves to the packaging and sound quality. It covers the RCA years from 1957 to 1967 but doesn’t run chronologically, something that helps the CD run so smoothly.

The CD kicks of in cracking style with a trio of corkers. Sweet Sweet Girl is so beloved by us rockers thanks to Warren Smith’s great version, but Don’s is equally great. I’m sure everyone here is familiar with the big guns like Oh Lonesome Me, Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles and Blue Blue Day.

It shows the quality of the material he was producing in his prime for 1961’s I Sat Back And Let It Happen go unreleased for over twenty years. Where do you stop with the superlatives? Listen to Lonesome Number One – beautiful picking fromm Grady Martin, and great interplay with Cramer and the Jordannaires.

Sea of Heartbreak is one of those perfect pop songs with Floyd Cramer tinkling away as the Nashville A Team lay down a bouncy support for Don’s wonderful vocals. From April ’61, I just wish Bob Moore or one of those boys had persuaded Elvis to have a crack at it - you just know it would have been a killer, it was tailor made for the early 60’s Elvis treatment.

Of the covers, I thought his cover of Brook Benton’s Hurtin’ Inside was spot on and the gospel workout on Martha Carson’s Satisfied also works well. Hank Snow’s Movin’ On is slightly spoilt by the backing singers but the chicken picking guitar just about saves the day. Campdown Races is another that is perhaps not up to the standard of the rest. I love the funky arrangement of What’s The Reason I’m Not Pleasing You.

Basically, I could go on raving about this release but I’m sure you get my drift already. This is another stunning release from the king of the reissue market. Buy this with complete confidence, its another to Bear Family release that’ll you’ll need to keep close to the CD changer.

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".