Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
Dave Penny‘s opening observation in the liner notes to Doin’ The Tennessee Wig Walk — the 26-song compilation taken from Bonnie Lou‘s King years — reminds me of Roy Lanham‘s similar quandary of being too jazz for country and vice versa: Too pop to be embraced by the country community
The steel guitar, it needs to be said, was the “special sauce” in early country music of the 1940s and ‘50s. From the soaring glissando and celestial, ringing harmonics to the scorching, breakneck single-note runs and big stacked chords, whose warm, electrified sound (uniquely) spanned the audio spectrum, the steel
The Pleasant Valley Boys were considered country music’s first “A Team” of session players, whose services were highly sought by two of the top country artists in Nashville between 1947 and 1948 at the very dawn of that city’s ascendance as one of the world’s great recording capitals. When you
Keith Murphy & the Daze would help King Records expand its popular reach into the emerging “psychedelic” rock market (following the previous year’s foray into Jamaican ska via Prince Buster). May of 1968 would find the release of King’s first “psych” 45 [as noted previously in “Rare & Unissued King“]
From the liner notes of the Ace CD compilation, King Rockabilly: Delbert Barker was born on a farm in Frenchberg, Kentucky on 3 December 1932 and moved to Middletown, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1943. During his teens, he began participating in amateur talent contests and eventually gained sufficient confidence to turn
Thanks to Dave Sax, whose liner notes from King Hillbilly Bop ‘n’ Boogie provide the back story on Louis Innis, a member of the “dream band” at King Records who had cut his first tune with the label in late 1947. Prior to joining King, Innis had been a member
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