Rockin' Song of the Week No.88 - Webb Pierce

Webb Pierce – Walking The Dog
Decca 9-28834



Today I was supposed to be going down to South Wales to watch Crazy Cavan play their annual hometown gig. A shitload of snow left the roads closed and with no gritters and no salt I was left in mid Wales with nothing to do but walk the dog. As fate would have it, Phil has just phoned to say the gig is sold out, so we wouldn’t have got in anyway. Mind you, if it’s the same PA as last time we could’ve listened from the car park.

So I was walking Charlie, and it made me think of Webb. The honky tonk stomp, from the pens of Cliff Grimsley and Tex Grimsley was cut at the Castle Studio in Nashville on July 30th 1953. Producer Owen Bradley gave Webb a strong, beaty backing that helped take some of the focus from Webb’s sometimes strained vocals.

Webb sang, I'm walking the dog and I'm paintin' the town, well, I walked the dog, but I didn’t get to paint the town. I’m sure Cav is though.

Various: Good Rockin' Tonight - Red Hot Rockabilly
Fantastic Voyage - B002BANBV2

I’ve just been sent a review copy of the latest in a long line of rockabilly box sets and have to say it one of the finest compilations you could dream up. Compiled by renowned rockabilly Lucky Parker, 'Good Rockin Tonight-Red Hot Rockabilly' is a 3CD 75 track set including much sought after tracks from the likes of Sun, Decca, Capitol, Columbia, Mercury, RCA and Brunswick labels.

Fantastic Voyage was launched this February, a subsidiary of Future Noise Music which itself only came into being in January. The labels will feature releases of r&b, soul, blues, jazz and rock 'n' roll to punk, electronica and rock. A new imprint, Year Zero will be launched in September, dealing with the punk era onwards.
As I said, there’s been no end of rockabilly compilations taking advantage of the 50 year copyright ruling, but Good Rockin' Tonight - Red Hot Rockabilly, is one of the best. We get the full variety of the genre from the uptempo hillbilly side to the flat-out high-octane rockabilly blasters. They all come from the prime-time period of rockabilly, 1954 to 1958.

From the country side of things we get such classics as Ferlin Huskey’s Slow Down Brother, Webb Pierce’s Teenage Boogie, the Farmers Boys’ Cool Down Mame and Brenda Lee’s Little Jonah. From the dance-floor stomping market we get such shot-in-the-arm rockers as Ray Harris’ Come On Little Mama and Jack Earls’ Slow Down. There’s a whole slew of tracks that have gone on to become classics in the last few decades – Cast Iron Arm, Sixteen Chicks, Bop-A-Lena, and one of my all-time favourites, Love Bug Crawl b Jimmy Edwards (uuumm, what a thrill).

Sun records always looms large on compilations like this and here we get to bop to Warren Smith’s Miss Froggie, Sonny Burgess’ We Wanna Boogie and Hayden Thompson’s Love My Baby and a dozen or so other essentials.


Towards the end of the second CD you get two examples of backing vocals – they’re fine on the late-great Janis Martin’s Alright Baby but spoil Bob Luman’s Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache (the undubbed version would have fit the bill much better).

My two heroes, Jerry Lee and Elvis are well represented with not a dud between them. In actual fact there’s only one dud here, Billy Lee Riley’s over-rated Baby Please Don’t Go. I adore Billy and am saddened to here of his continued illness, but this song isn’t in the same league as the likes of Trouble Bound, Pearly Lee and countless others.

This is a must have item for new fans and for established rockers it’s a great collection to leave in the car to brighten up any journey. 74 classics out of 75 is a five star release in anyone’s book. Released this week, file under Essential.

Webb Pierce - High Geared Daddy (Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight)

Bear Family's Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight series seems tailor made for guys like me whose main love is rockabilly, but also have the good grace to enjoy their country music, especially of the uptempo variety. I like a good country ballad, but can't stand a singer just whining away. If anyone is going to fit that category, it's Webb Pierce. I find most of his ballads hard to digest but love the hillbilly boogie he was so good at. That makes this CD an absolute treat, with 32 performances covering his golden era from 1949-'59 on Four Star, Pacemaker and Decca. What is striking is how little the music changed over such a long period. If you look at virtually any rock 'n' rollers music over such a period, you can bet it would go from either hillbilly or blues to rock 'n' roll back to country, blues or soul. About the only thing that changed with Webb was the introduction of poppier backing vocals for a brief period in the late 50's. On a couple of these tracks he comes over like Marty Robbins or Sonny James.

Webb owned the country charts during the 50', amassing an astonishing 96 hit singles, more than half of which went into the top 10 including thirteen number 1's. There's reason he did so well is because his beat was so damn infectious, an must have sounded great on every hillbilly jukebox from the Dairy Queen's to the boozy honky tonk bar-rooms. The biggies are here like Honky Tonk Song, Tupelo County Jail, In the Jailhouse Now and I Ain't Never, but there's also some great moments with less heard numbers like I'm Tired and later version of New Panhandle Rag. From the earlier days the highlights have to be a trio of songs that will surely be on the big jukebox when we get to hillbilly heaven, Hayride Boogie, Drifting Texas Sand and California Blues. Hayride Boogie was adapted half a decade later as Teenage Boogie and rightly awarded cult status.

The boogie is relentless throughout - it's a white man's Lightnin' Hopkins or John Lee Hooker. This is a stunning release that rockers and hicks alike can buy with confidence.