All You Ever Wanted By Leroy Pullins - And More, Much More
05/23/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Carl Leroy Pullins, born in Elgin Illinois on November 12, 1940, may have had voice training by fellow C&W recording artist Billy Edd Wheeler (Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out Back), but he sounded uncannily like Roger Miller.
So much so that, when he released I'm A Nut (# 18 Country/# 57 Billboard Pop Hot 100) in June 1966 on Kapp 758, most everyone thought they were hearing yet another Roger Miller tune to go along with the thirteen hits he had registered since late 1960, among them Dang Me, Chug-A-Lug, and Do-Wacka-Do which all contained the same sort of nonsensical lyrics.
But it didn't take long for the listening audience to learn that this was not Roger and, as was the case with Ral Donner and his Elvis sound-a-like voice, the public clearly preferred the original. So, whereas Roger would go on to post another 29 hits to 1986, and be inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1995 (three years after his untimely death), for Leroy Pullins that would be his one brief moment of chart glory.
One thing you can say about Bear Family of Germany, they are certainly willing to release CDs of some of the most obscure artists to have ever turned out records in the 1950s and 1960s, and when they do, the sound is always excellent and the packaging first rate. In this volume, which also includes the flip to his one hit, Knee Deep, they go much much deeper into the Leroy Pullins catalogue than would any North American distributor."