Search - Jimmie Davis, Rosalie Allen, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys :: Golden Greats: Greatest Country Hits

Many of country's early big hits, hard to find and common

Bradley Olson | Bemidji, MN United States | 12/31/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you are a casual fan of vintage country music or you are a diehard collector, this compilation is a must buy for you as on 3 CDs you get, with generally excellent sound, 72 of the biggest hits on the country charts from the 1940s-1951. The price is excellent and among the more commonly available tracks such as Bouquet of Roses by Eddy Arnold, Bing & The Andrews Sisters's Pistol Packin' Mama, the Al Dexter tracks, the Hank Williams tracks, Sons of The Pioneers's Cool Water, Shame On You by Spade Cooley, etc. you will get many hard to find gems including Blues Stay Away With Me by the Owen Bradley Quintet (a #7 hit in 1950 and Owen would later become the A&R of Decca), Kenny Roberts's only 2 top 10 hits: Choc'late Ice Cream Cone and I Never See Maggie Alone, Is It Too Late Now and Bang Bang by Jimmie Davis, No Letter Today by Ted Daffan, Bill Boyd's Shame On You, and especially Life Gits Tee-jus, Don't It by Carson Robison among others. These hard to find gems and the great sound are worth the admission of this budget 3 CD set although there are no liner notes."

Another Very Nice Country Package From Disky Of Holland

Bradley Olson | 10/16/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This box set from Disky of Holland, covering Country Music of the 1940s and early 1950s, makes a great companion collection to their 8-CD box-set "50 Years Of Country" which runs from 1949 to 1999. If you're a Country fan you can't go wrong, although the sound quality on the 8-CD set is significantly better than this release (it isn't horrible by any means). Neither contains liner notes nor discography of the contents.



Six of the tracks were, technically speaking, not "hits" in the accepted sense of the word, i.e., having made any national charts, primarily because they preceded the introduction of the forerunner of the Country charts in 1944, initially called the Most Played Juke Box Folk Records. These are: Disc 1 - Track 2; Disc 2 - Tracks 8, 16 and 20; Disc 3 - Tracks 2, 10 and 15. Note also that Track 20 in Disc 2 is not Choc'late Ice Cream Cone by Kenny Roberts, but rather an unidentified tune whose opening line is "You've waited too long to say you're sorry, Now I've found somebody new."



Also Track 14 on Disc 2 is not Have I Told You Lately That I Love You by Gene Autry, but rather Gene's version of Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, a # 14 Pop in 1942, two years before the Country charts came into being. Also, Track 24 in Disc 2 is the right song, but the artist is Zeke Manners - not Zeke Clements. In Disc 2, Track 10 is not Jimmy Davis doing Bang Bang, but rather Tex Ritter performing Sing, Cowboy, Sing. And finally, Track 15 in Disc 3 is not Red Foley's Never Trust A Woman but, instead, Jimmie Davis, the one-time Governor of Louisiana (twice) performing a song he wrote, You Are My Sunshine, which was several years before the Country charts.



Those are the errors in this set which need to be made clear to prevent someone from purchasing a copy expecting to see one or more of those missing tunes. But as for the rest, there are no less than 25 # 1 hits, many of which also crossed over to the Pop charts: Disc 1 - Tracks 1, 3,4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22 and 24: Disc 2 - Tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 17: Disc 3 - Tracks 9, 19, and 20. Another 10 were # 2 hits, again many of them also scoring on the Pop charts: Disc 1 - Tracks 5, 12 and 19: Disc 2 - Tracks 3, 9, 23 and 24: Disc 3 - Tracks 11, 14 and 17. The rest were all somewhere in the Top 10.



So, all things considered, a solid collection of the best of the early days of the Country charts which, with the addition of an information booklet, would have become a 5-star set even with the mistakes mentioned."