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Post by berkley on Feb 6, 2019 2:40:23 GMT -5
As a metal fan, I know there'll always be debates about what is metal, who is metal, etc. (Some argue Deep Purple are a metal band, others argue they aren't). As a fan of early / proto metal & Deep Purple, I dunno what else you would call this from 1970 Deep Purple were one of my first "favourite bands" when I was a young kid, before I got into buying my own records and so on. It was based at first on hearing Strange Kind of Woman and then Highway Star on the radio - even though wikipedia says the latter was never released as a single, it seemed to get a lot of play on our local AM station one summer. Maybe one of the djs liked it or something. It was one of those songs I'd run to turn up the volume when I heard it.
With all this Buddy Holly talk, I should ask - does anyone has a recommendation for a good collection or box set that covers his career?
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 6, 2019 8:02:34 GMT -5
He also has another post-death LP titled 'Holly In the Hills' that has some early pre-rock stuff with Bob Montgomery, and from when he was alive That'll Be The Day on Decca (U.S.). Oh yeah, I know the Holly in the Hills album. It's a nice record, which shows much more of Holly's country roots than a lot of the posthumously released stuff that appeared in the '60s. My Dad (who was a big Buddy Holly fan and basically responsible for getting me into him) had the That'll Be the Day album too. I still have his old vinyl copy and a CD reissue of it too. What I love about the That'll Be the Day album -- with the exception of the dire cover of "You Are My One Desire", in which Decca tried to turn Holly into a middle-of-the-road crooner -- is that, having been recorded for prior to the Crickets signing with Coral/Brunswick, this is the sound of Holly before he had the edges smoothed off by Norman Petty and found fame. There's lots of cool tracks on the album that highlight the Crickets' early rhythm & blues sound, such as "Blue Days, Black Nights", "Love Me", "Midnight Shift" and an early version of "That'll Be the Day" (which lacks the distinctive intro of the hit single version). But the standout track on that album for me is the kick-ass rockabilly rave up of "Rock Around with Ollie Vee"... With all this Buddy Holly talk, I should ask - does anyone has a recommendation for a good collection or box set that covers his career? As far as I'm concerned, the Gold Standard of single disc Buddy Holly compilations is 1978's Buddy Holly Lives: 20 Golden Greats. It presents 20 of Holly's biggest hits in roughly chronological order by release date, with nice sound, and is all killer, no filler. However, I'm not sure if it's in print anymore. Used copies of the LP or CD should be easy enough to find for cheap on eBay though, I would think. There's also a mid-'80s CD compilation that was mastered by Steve Hoffman called From the Original Master Tapes, which is supposed to boast really good sound. Again though, I'm pretty sure this is out of print and, due to Hoffman's involvement, likely commands fairly steep prices in the used market. But really there are loads and loads of compilations of Holly's material that have been put out over the years. Looking at Amazon, I see that there's a fair few recent releases such as this, this, and this to choose from. In terms of box sets, the sprawling The Complete Buddy Holly Story nine LP box set from the mid-70s, which basically collects pretty much everything Holly recorded, is excellent. The boutique record label Hip-O Records issued a similarly all-inclusive collection of Holly's entire recorded oeuvre for the CD age in 2009, with the Not Fade Away: The Complete Studio Recordings And More box set. Unfortunately, both of these are out of print now and command pretty high prices on the used market.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2019 10:40:58 GMT -5
Buddy was one of the few non-country acts that my Dad would still listen to as he grew older. Dad was born in 1937 so he came of age at the birth of rock & roll. And he was a big fan of Buddy and also of the Sun stable of artists (in particular Johnny Cash). As time went on he gravitated to country music, but he would still listen to Buddy, Johnny's Sun work, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. I come by my love of early rock & roll naturally.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 6, 2019 12:24:15 GMT -5
Buddy was one of the few non-country acts that my Dad would still listen to as he grew older. Dad was born in 1937 so he came of age at the birth of rock & roll. And he was a big fan of Buddy and also of the Sun stable of artists (in particular Johnny Cash). As time went on he gravitated to country music, but he would still listen to Buddy, Johnny's Sun work, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. I come by my love of early rock & roll naturally. I love Johnny Cash's Sun Records stuff a lot (and fair bit of his later Columbia work too). I also really like Elvis's Sun era output, and, in fact, I consider that to be the "real Elvis". His early RCA recordings from 1956 to around 1958 are also pretty good, although I have no time for the syrupy, maudlin ballads he seemed so fond of recording, such as "Love Me Tender" or "Old Shep", for example. But, I dunno...to my ears, even by the time of his debut album in 1956, Elvis was beginning to sound a little bit like of a parody of himself. That only intensified, of course, as the '50s became the '60s and on into the '70s. There's something vital and primal about Elvis's Sun recordings that his RCA stuff lacked IMHO. I also like Carl Perkins' Sun stuff a whole lot and, although I'm not much of a Jerry Lee Lewis fan, he cut some great records for the label, such as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire". Fats Domino I like fine, although I only really know the big hits like "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame". Chuck Berry is amazing. The rock 'n' roll singles he released on Chess -- 12-bar masterpieces of sly wit, automobiles, and thinly-veiled sexual innuendo -- are one of the cornerstones of popular music as we know it today.
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Post by beccabear67 on Feb 6, 2019 12:38:14 GMT -5
With all this Buddy Holly talk, I should ask - does anyone has a recommendation for a good collection or box set that covers his career?
This 2CD set titled The Buddy Holly Collection has a really lavish and thick booklet, and it covers from earliest to the 'finished after his death' tracks that are among his best creations even though finished by the Fireballs group and Norman Petty in Clovis... All killer, no filler as they say. I don't think it's rare or super valuable.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2019 12:52:33 GMT -5
I've been looking at albums released in 1969 (1959 also...hmmm...what's the pattern) and I noted that Merle Haggard released four albums in '69. And not just any four albums. Every one of them is just a super high quality album. Two albums of new stuff, one tribute to Jimmie Rodgers and a live album. The live album is Okie From Muskogee, which I consider to be the most important live country album not done by Johnny Cash. I think it gets a bit of a bad rap because of the fallout from the song (which a whole lot of people didn't understand). The first side of the album is solid gold, and if there is any complaint it's that the second is a bit of a let-down from the hit singles that we get on side one (and a surprisingly good featured vocal from bassist Gene Price). '69 was an amazing year for live country albums with this one, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, and Buck Owens In London. Haggard's tribute to Jimmie Rodgers Same Train, a Different Time is simply amazing. Haggard updates the songs appropriately and provides context and narration between tracks. I'm not sure it's possible to overstate Rodgers' influence on Haggard, on country music and on American music in general. He was the first country superstar. And this album is a great tribute. Pride in What I Am is an interesting album. I think it can be strongly argued that Haggard was a bit more of a "singles" artist than an "album" artist. The only real stand-out single on this one is "I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am". But the album cuts here are significantly better than usual and there isn't a real dog in the bunch. The album also continues a modest trend to a bit more of a folk oriented sound that was evident in The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde. What really stands out is just the general strength of the material. While it isn't overwhelming it is just consistently very good. A Portrait of Merle Haggard is just a hit machine. The album gave us "Silver Wings," "Hungry Eyes," and, most importantly, "Workin' Man's Blues." Beyond that the deeper cuts on the album are universally strong and diverse, with strong honky-tonk cuts, a great cover of the George Jones classic "She Thinks I Still Care" and brass-filled version of Hank Cochran's "Montego Bay." Just about as good as you'd get from Nashville at the time. I'm trying to think if it's possible one person/band could release four albums that are that strong in one calendar year. I'll add that my Dad had (and I still have his copies) pretty much every album Hag put out in the 60s. Those album covers give me a huge nostalgia rush.
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Post by beccabear67 on Feb 6, 2019 12:55:28 GMT -5
My Dad (who was a big Buddy Holly fan and basically responsible for getting me into him) had the That'll Be the Day album too. I still have his old vinyl copy and a CD reissue of it too. What I love about the That'll Be the Day album -- with the exception of the dire cover of "You Are My One Desire", in which Decca tried to turn Holly into a middle-of-the-road crooner -- is that, having been recorded for prior to the Crickets signing with Coral/Brunswick, this is the sound of Holly before he had the edges smoothed off by Norman Petty and found fame. There's lots of cool tracks on the album that highlight the Crickets' early rhythm & blues sound, such as "Blue Days, Black Nights", "Love Me", "Midnight Shift" and an early version of "That'll Be the Day" (which lacks the distinctive intro of the hit single version). But the standout track on that album for me is the kick-ass rockabilly rave up of "Rock Around with Ollie Vee"... Off the top of my head I like the one with saxophone, Modern Don Juan most, and Annie's Been Working On the Midnight Shift. I have a CD a specialist label in England, Roller Coaster, put together for the early Sonny Curtis Buddy & The Crickets stuff. Fats D. had a lot of great songs actually, you could easily fill a single CD and still miss a couple worthy Imperial recordings. So I would say around 40 songs I'd want from the late '40s into the '60s. Hey La Bas, The Big Beat, I Wanna Walk You Home, The Fat Man, Valley Of Tears, Let The Four Winds Blow, My Blue Heaven, I could go on... have a 2LP set from the '70s with a nice book in the center written by Greg Shaw and there's still some things not on it I have scattered among other releases. But it does get a bit samey sounding at times for listening to just Fats. I'm crazy about The Everly Brothers as well, they were friends with Buddy and his death really affected Don a lot. Practically everything done at Sun is worth checking out; from the early blues recorded there by B.B. King, Ike Turner and Howling Wolf up to Charlie Rich on the Phillips International label (with Carl Perkins, Billy Lee Riley and even Roy Orbison inbetween). They've been putting out things that were never even released because that Sun sound is so huge. Comparing it to another Memphis label of the time Bullet which was no slouch you can measure what a giant Sam Phillips label and studio was. I love sharing about this stuff, I'm obviously very steeped in music and can still get excited about it... so many great artists and so much amazing music!!!
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Post by beccabear67 on Feb 6, 2019 13:05:35 GMT -5
I've been looking at albums released in 1969 (1959 also...hmmm...what's the pattern) and I noted that Merle Haggard released four albums in '69. And not just any four albums. Every one of them is just a super high quality album. Two albums of new stuff, one tribute to Jimmie Rodgers and a live album. I'm trying to think if it's possible one person/band could release four albums that are that strong in one calendar year. I'll add that my Dad had (and I still have his copies) pretty much every album Hag put out in the 60s. Those album covers give me a huge nostalgia rush. Merle is a giant for sure. That was a big year for him. My Dad had two of them (he was always more a Waylon guy though). Speaking of Nostalgia, Dads and 1969 (well almost, this record was released in December 1968)... The Everly Brothers' Roots album is a masterpiece incorporating parts from their old Kentucky radio show with their guitarist father Ike. There are really well done covers of Merle Haggard's Mama Tried and Sing me Back Home, Jimmie Rodgers' T For Texas, as well as contemporary material like Glen Campbell's Less Of Me. Here's the back cover...
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2019 13:13:51 GMT -5
Buddy was one of the few non-country acts that my Dad would still listen to as he grew older. Dad was born in 1937 so he came of age at the birth of rock & roll. And he was a big fan of Buddy and also of the Sun stable of artists (in particular Johnny Cash). As time went on he gravitated to country music, but he would still listen to Buddy, Johnny's Sun work, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. I come by my love of early rock & roll naturally. I love Johnny Cash's Sun Records stuff a lot (and fair bit of his later Columbia work too). I also really like Elvis's Sun era output, and, in fact, I consider that to be the "real Elvis". His early RCA recordings from 1956 to around 1958 are also pretty good, although I have no time for the syrupy, maudlin ballads he seemed so fond of recording, such as "Love Me Tender" or "Old Shep", for example. But, I dunno...to my ears, even by the time of his debut album in 1956, Elvis was beginning to sound a little bit like of a parody of himself. That only intensified, of course, as the '50s became the '60s and on into the '70s. There's something vital and primal about Elvis's Sun recordings that his RCA stuff lacked IMHO. I also like Carl Perkins' Sun stuff a whole lot and, although I'm not much of a Jerry Lee Lewis fan, he cut some great records for the label, such as "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Great Balls of Fire". Fats Domino I like fine, although I only really know the big hits like "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That a Shame". Chuck Berry is amazing. The rock 'n' roll singles he released on Chess -- 12-bar masterpieces of sly wit, automobiles, and thinly-veiled sexual innuendo -- are one of the cornerstone of popular music as we know it today. I'm not a big Elvis fan for a number of reasons. Part of it may be that both my parents actively disliked him, so I didn't grow up listening to him. I can see why he was popular but to me he pales in comparison to a ton of his contemporaries. Chuck Berry is the true King of Rock & Roll. That is all. I'm a pretty big fan of Carl Perkins. It's pretty amazing to look at the number of bands, even current bands, that cite him as an influence. He's a continuing huge influence in Alt-Country/Americana circles. I like Jerry Lee. Part of the issue may be that his career got somewhat derailed by the scandal of his marriage. He later came back and did some pretty good country stuff in the mid 70s. Fats Domino: I encourage you to dig deeper into. Because it opens up this whole world of New Orleans Rock & Roll/Crescent City Soul that comes out of Dave Bartholomew's writing/production in Cosimo Matassa's recording studio. Fats, Bartholomew, Smiley Lewis, The Spiders, Roy Brown...there's a world of music there that most people have forgotten or never knew about in the first place.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 6, 2019 13:19:17 GMT -5
I've been looking at albums released in 1969 (1959 also...hmmm...what's the pattern) and I noted that Merle Haggard released four albums in '69. And not just any four albums. Every one of them is just a super high quality album. Two albums of new stuff, one tribute to Jimmie Rodgers and a live album. I'm trying to think if it's possible one person/band could release four albums that are that strong in one calendar year. I'll add that my Dad had (and I still have his copies) pretty much every album Hag put out in the 60s. Those album covers give me a huge nostalgia rush. Merle is a giant for sure. That was a big year for him. My Dad had two of them (he was always more a Waylon guy though). Speaking of Nostalgia, Dads and 1969 (well almost, this record was released in December 1968)... The Everly Brothers' Roots album is a masterpiece incorporating parts from their old Kentucky radio show with their guitarist father Ike. There are really well done covers of Merle Haggard's Mama Tried and Sing me Back Home, Jimmie Rodgers' T For Texas, as well as contemporary material like Glen Campbell's Less Of Me. Here's the back cover... Dwight Yoakam was talking about The Everly Brothers and about this album a little while back on his "Greater Bakersfield" show that is on Sirius. It's a great show, but I tend to miss it because I usually only listen in the car. This reminds me that I need to give this album a listen. So thank you.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 6, 2019 20:22:52 GMT -5
I love sharing about this stuff, I'm obviously very steeped in music and can still get excited about it... so many great artists and so much amazing music!!! Yeah, me too. I'm a total music obsessive and love nattering about it. The majority of my close friends are musicians and/or big music fans, so I'm lucky in that I get to jaw about it a lot in my day-to-day life. But it's nice to chat music here with you folks too. Speaking of Nostalgia, Dads and 1969 (well almost, this record was released in December 1968)... The Everly Brothers' Roots album is a masterpiece incorporating parts from their old Kentucky radio show with their guitarist father Ike. This reminds me that I need to give this album a listen. So thank you. Yeah, my Dad was also a big, big Everlys fan, and, as with Buddy Holly, that's how I got introduced to their stuff when I was a nipper.
Roots is a great album, but so too are the two country-rock albums that followed it in 1972 and 1973: Stories We Could Tell and Pass the Chicken & Listen. Those two albums are very much in the smooth, early '70s country-rock tradition of the Eagles, Michael Nesmith and the First National Band, and Rick Nelson & the Stone Canyon Band, but the material is uniformly strong and the brothers' harmonies have never sounded sweeter. Also of note, if you like the Everly's more country oriented stuff, is the album The Everly Brothers Sing Great Country Hits... This album was released in 1963 and features the boys doing some excellent versions of country classics, such as Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me", Hank Locklin's "Send Me the Pillow You Dream On", and a version of Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" that rivals the original, in terms of tugging at your heart strings. Seriously! Check it out...the harmonies on this are as pure as Appalachian Mountain air and just painfully beautiful... Actually, being the know-it-all "muso anorak" I am, The Everly Brothers Sing Great Country Hits is an album that I politely cough and point to whenever I hear anyone talking about how Gram Parsons or The Byrds created country-rock. I mean, here's an established rock 'n' roll act doing a country music album in 1963, some four or five years before The International Submarine Band's Safe at Home or The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo. This is, by definition, a country-rock album. And I say that as a nutzoid Byrds fan! Similarly, the Everlys were recording proto-folk-rock a good 6 or 7 years before The Animals' "The House of the Rising Sun" or The Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man", with their second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us.
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Post by beccabear67 on Feb 6, 2019 22:19:19 GMT -5
And the Evs themselves are in a tradition of singing brothers like the Blue Sky Boys, The Stanley Brothers, the Maddox Brothers (and Rose), and The Louvin Brothers. I have to give some props to Elvis though in the country-rock category besides his "hillbilly boogie" and rockabilly he cut numbers like Lonesome Cowboy and Tryin' To get To You circa 1955-56, and a bopping Blue Moon Of Kentucky a couple years before that. Also, before Bill Haley & the Comets there was Bill Haley & The Saddlemen! To me the official birth of country rock though has to be with Buck Owens. he played on some gene Vincent recordings in the '50s and wanted a sound like that as part of his Buckaroos which started in the late '50s. While based in Tacoma future Ventures fender guitar ace Nokie Edwards was a founding Buckaroo, and it wasn't until Don Rich came in that he was really replaced. Keep the train a'rollin' I say!
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 7, 2019 16:25:20 GMT -5
The whole Bakersfield Sound is something I could do with investigating more thoroughly. I have a Merle Haggard "Best of" LP and a few Buck Owens tracks on a compilation or two, but that's about it as far as the big names go. I have some of Clarence White, Gosdin Brothers, and Gene Parsons/Gib Gilbeau stuff that came out of the Bakersfield scene, just because I'm a bit of a Byrds completist. But I need to listen to more.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 7, 2019 16:57:31 GMT -5
The whole Bakersfield Sound is something I could do with investigating more thoroughly. I have a Merle Haggard "Best of" LP and a few Buck Owens tracks on a compilation or two, but that's about it as far as the big names go. I have some of Clarence White, Gosdin Brothers, and Gene Parsons/Gib Gilbeau stuff that came out of the Bakersfield scene, just because I'm a bit of a Byrds completist. But I need to listen to more. If I get a bit of time I'll try to put together a Bakersfield playlist for you.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Feb 7, 2019 18:14:07 GMT -5
The whole Bakersfield Sound is something I could do with investigating more thoroughly. I have a Merle Haggard "Best of" LP and a few Buck Owens tracks on a compilation or two, but that's about it as far as the big names go. I have some of Clarence White, Gosdin Brothers, and Gene Parsons/Gib Gilbeau stuff that came out of the Bakersfield scene, just because I'm a bit of a Byrds completist. But I need to listen to more. If I get a bit of time I'll try to put together a Bakersfield playlist for you. That'd be awesome!
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