Disc of the day
The Meters - The Meters
Kings of Nawlins "fonk" go it alone. Cue incurable itch in sacroiliac.
Features Disc of the day
Various
Sun Record Company: 50 Golden Years 1952-2002
(Fabulus/Sanctuary)
8-CD, 50th Anniversary collection incorporating two tracks culled from El Pelve's 1953 demos.
"I even made her forget about old Elvis / Now I'm the only one she calls her pelvis." So yelped Rudy Jiminez Grayzell, on a motorvatin' 1957 slice of Sun rockabilly entitled, simply, Judy. Ah, rock'n'roll dreams. When Sam Phillips bought that radiator shop at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis Tennessee in 1949 and set up the Memphis Recording Service he'd promised, famously, to "record anything-anywhere-anytime." He also said that Sun would be a place "where the soul of man never dies." There were success stories: Cash, Perkins, Orbison, Jerry Lee, Charlie Rich - all present and correct here with cuts that range from the necessary (I Walk The Line, Blue Suede Shoes, Great Balls Of Fire) to the oddball (Jerry Lee's Ubangi Stomp). And though Elvis is represented by just two tracks - My Happiness and That's When Your Heartaches Begin from his July 1953 demos - his ghost haunts all eight CDs.
The pre-Elvis cuts on CD 1 showcase some of the mongrel Memphis blues and country that Phillips championed and Elvis learned from (Junior Parker, the Prisonaires, Rufus Thomas) but chiefly, this is a collection that showcases hopeful truck-tanned dreamers like Hayden Thompson, Mack Vickery and Jack Earls, working-class guys taking unpaid leave from dead-end 9-5s, loading up their rig and driving in from Florida/Oklahoma/anywhere/nowhere to make it in this new frontier of rock'n'roll. Like any metaphorical push to the west, any gold rush, there were to be more paupers than millionaires. But it's the oddities and the failures that prove the highpoints of this glorious 190-track collection: the pouting, pomaded rockabilly hopefuls, who, in straining ever harder for the prize, came up with a hoodlum mix of sex, speed and upright bass that Elvis and RCA never dreamed of.
Witness Warren Smith's threatening retread of Slim Harpo's Got Love If You Want It, the frog-growl bolero-swing of Macy Skipper's Bop Pills, and the froth-flecked insanity of Tupelo construction worker Jimmy Wages' Miss Pearl. There are hundreds of others here, Billy Riley, Sonny Burgess, Billy Emerson, unheard, well-known, all just as good, and that's before you've even made it to the wailing nitro-powered blues and mournful country on Disc 6. What with Stuart Colman's 72-page booklet, covering the background stories of each artist - lonesome death, alcoholism, shotgun suicides, car-crashes all figure - and the label's directionless post-'50s flounder, a Sun label retrospective can't help but come with a black border. But, as Sam Phillips promised, the souls live on. A box of wailing souls, then... go on, open it up.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 05/05/2009
Further Listening
Elvis Presley – The Sun Sessions(RCA Victor, 1976)
Various – The Specialty Story (Specialty, 1994)
The Cramps – Off the Bone (Illegal, 1983)
Previous Disc of the day
-
The Meters - The Meters
Kings of Nawlins "fonk" go it alone. Cue incurable itch in sacroiliac.
6:00 AM GMT 06/11/2009
-
Blur - Blur
Sun sets on Damon Albarn's Little England. "Look inside America," he urges. "She's alright."
6:00 AM GMT 05/11/2009
-
The Congos - Heart Of The Congos
Roots reggae's Lee Perry-produced Pet Sounds!
6:00 AM GMT 04/11/2009
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Comments
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Bloody fantastic set this. Amazing music throughout and wonderful imaginative packaging. The ultimate Sun Records set.
The only slight downer is the lack of anything by the Memphis Flash, except for those two acetates due to RCA reusing to give anything up. If only it could have could have been three years later...
Well done Andrew and Ross.
Posted by Alexander Meerkat at 1:56 PM GMT 05/05/2009 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Bloody fantastic set this. Amazing music throughout and wonderful imaginative packaging. The ultimate Sun Records set.
The only slight downer is the lack of anything by the Memphis Flash, except for those two acetates due to RCA reusing to give anything up. If only it could have been three years later...
Well done Andrew and Ross.
Posted by Alexander Meerkat at 1:57 PM GMT 05/05/2009 Report Abuse
Reply to this post
Comment on this post