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Molly O'Day fan in Tennessee

Steve Daugherty | Hixson, Tennessee United States | 05/14/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Often called "the female Hank Williams," Molly O'Day is over-looked in country music. This is a great collection, with liner notes from her husband (who was her singing partner professionally). This stuff is so real and raw that it will bring you to tears. When Fred Rose hired Hank Williams as a writer, Molly O'Day was who Hank was hired to write for. Some of Hank's later hits were covers of Molly's songs. This is great stuff."

Molly Remains a Mystery

C. Hicks | Concord, NC United States | 07/02/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a pricey volume. Bear Family gives the listener everything Molly O'Day recorded for Columbia with excellent sound reproduction; but Ivan Tribe's 27 page essay (with rare photos) raises more questions than it answers. Above all, who was Molly O'Day? We get an extensive overview of her career, but apart from oblique references to her religious faith we still don't know what made her tick.That aside, it's her penetrating voice that makes this a worthy collection to own. Molly embodied the elusive Appalachian soul; she was the forerunner and template for artists like Loretta Lynn. Her plaintive, throaty voice exuded conviction and, above all, authenticity. This record also demonstrates the uneasy merging of styles that occured in Southern Appalachia following WWII. On tracks like "Poor Ellen Smith" and "Coming Down from God" Molly unleashes a feverish clawhammer banjo barrage, harkening back to the Old-Time music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But "Singing Waterfall" and "I Don't Care if Tomorrow Never Comes" reflect the emergent honky-tonk style of country music (the Dobro, which was just beginning to impact country music, is prominent throughout). In between are spurious hints of proto-bluegrass. But the unifying theme throughout these 36 tracks is Molly's unswerving Christian faith. It was the unresolved tension between faith and show business, we are told, that ultimately led her to choose an early retirement from country music.The listener will be left to project his or her own imagination onto Molly O'Day, a shape-shifting artist whose voice still reaches into the soul and shakes it."

Great / same CD as import

Brian D. Hackert | Peterborough, NH | 10/08/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Great folk and country music, some of the best ever made. This CD is the same as the Bear Family 2-disc import, so go there for the song listing and other information."