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Warren Smith Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD)

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1-CD with 32-page booklet, 31 tracks. Playing time approx. 76 mns. Classic indeed! Here are all... more

Warren Smith: Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD)

1-CD with 32-page booklet, 31 tracks. Playing time approx. 76 mns.

Classic indeed! Here are all of Warren Smith's Sun recordings. Some of the best country music and stompin'est rockabilly from the Fifties. You want classics Check out Ubangi Stomp, Rock'n'Roll Ruby,
I'd Rather Be Safe Than Sorry, So Long I'm Gone, Black Jack David, A Red Cadillac And A Black Mustache, Miss Froggie, and 24 others. We've rounded out the set with two previously unissued recordings and photos from Warren's family album.

he irony of being voted among the Most Promising New Artists of 1960 was probably not lost on Warren Smith, who had been beating his head against the wall, trying to get a decent break for the previous five years. He chose a mythic place to start and -for a while- it looked as though Smith would follow some of his illustrious labelmates and become a household name. He had the looks, the talent, the will to succeed and was indisputably in the right place at the right time. However, for most of his affiliation with Sun Records, Warren Smith's career represented more promise than fulfilment.

By his own account, Smith was born in Humphreys Co., Mississippi near Yazoo City on February 7, 1933, although it is probable that he lopped a year off his age and was actually born in 1932. His parents, Ioda and Willie War-ren Smith, divorced when he was young; his mother stayed in the Louise-Greenwood area and his father went to Lexington, Mississippi to work as a truck driver. Smith was brought up by his grandparents near Louise where they farmed and operated a small country store.

He went into the Air Force in 1950 after a spell as a machinist. Stationed in San Antonio, Texas he took up the guitar to while away the evenings. By the time of his discharge, he was fairly determined to make a career out of music. It certainly represented a more attractive option than most of the others open to a poor white Mississip-pi boy with little formal education. With music on his mind, Smith headed for the bright lights of Memphis and the brighter lights of West Memphis, Arkansas...

Article properties: Warren Smith: Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD)

  • Interpret: Warren Smith

  • Album titlle: Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD)

  • Genre Rock'n'Roll

  • Label Bear Family Records

  • Preiscode AH
  • Artikelart CD

  • EAN: 4000127155146

  • weight in Kg 0.115
Smith, Warren - Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD) CD 1
01 Rock 'n' Roll Ruby Warren Smith
02 I'd Rather Be Safe Than Sorry Warren Smith
03 Rock 'n' Roll Ruby Warren Smith
04 Black Jack David Warren Smith
05 Ubangi Stomp Warren Smith
06 The Darkest Cloud Warren Smith
07 So Long I'm Gone Warren Smith
08 So Long I'm Gone Warren Smith
09 Who Took My Baby Warren Smith
10 I Couldn't Take The Chance Warren Smith
11 So Long I'm Gone Warren Smith
12 Miss Froggie Warren Smith
13 Red Cadillac And A Black Mustache Warren Smith
14 Stop The World Warren Smith
15 I Fell In Love Warren Smith
16 Got Love If You Want It Warren Smith
17 Old Lonesome Feeling (incomplete) Warren Smith
18 Tell Me Who Warren Smith
19 Tonight Will Be The Last Night Warren Smith
20 Dear John Warren Smith
21 Hank Snow Medley Warren Smith
22 Do I Love You Warren Smith
23 Uranium Rock Warren Smith
24 Goodbye Mr. Love Warren Smith
25 Uranium Rock Warren Smith
26 Sweet, Sweet Girl Warren Smith
27 Goodbye Mr. Love Warren Smith
28 Sweet, Sweet Girl Warren Smith
29 Dear John Warren Smith
30 I Like Your Kind Of Love Warren Smith
31 My Hanging Day Warren Smith
Warren Smith  CD with 20-Page Booklet BCD 15495 AH - EAN: 4000127154958  When... more
"Warren Smith"

Warren Smith 
CD with 20-Page Booklet
BCD 15495 AH - EAN: 4000127154958 

When Warren Smith left Sun Records in 1959 he was, by his own account, a frustrated hillbilly singer. Nearly twenty years later he recalled "I had only three or four months to go on my Sun contract so I went to Sam Phillips and said, 'Let me cut some country. I'll still keep doing the rock stuff.' But Sam said 'No country!' so I just waited until my contract was up and then signed with Liberty."

Although the sentiments are no doubt correct, the chronology is a little more complicated. Like Roy Orbison before him, Warren Smith had labored under Sam Phillips' dictum that Sun produce innovative hybrid rock & roll records. Generations of rockabilly fans may appreciate classics like Rock And Roll Ruby, Ubangi Stomp, Got Love If You Want It and Miss Froggie, but to an ole country boy like Warren, these sides were cause for vague uneasiness. They were basically black music and, while he and his sideman brought an undeniable white southern feel to them, the whole exercise seemed somehow unnatural.

Warren Smith's soul was in country music. Shortly before his death in 1980, Warren told journalist Adam Komorowski, "What I really wanted to do all my life was to cut something you could call country." Warren's country side had surfaced sporadically, as if by compromise, on the flipsides of his Sun releases, yielding gems like I'd Rather Be Safe Than Sorry, Black Jack David or Goodbye Mr. Love. Freed, finally, from the yoke of his oppressive Sun contract, Warren was drawn to Liberty Records after a short, abortive stint at Warner Brothers; it was there his desire to be a country singer would be indulged in a big way.

Liberty was entering the country music sweepstakes in earnest. Essentially a pop label since its inception in 1955, Liberty enjoyed great success with David Seville and his endless parade of Chipmunk novelty records. By 1959, however, Liberty was moving beyond the Chipmunks, Julie London, Patience and Prudence and Eddie Cochran. Liberty president Al Bennett was intent on entering the emerging marketplace for the Nashville sound. Their nascent country roster featured such writers turned vocalists as Hank Cochran and Willie Nelson. Fresh from a prestigious contract with the Sun label but plainly disenchanted with the experience, Warren Smith was ripe for the picking. Joe Allison, Liberty's liaison with the country folks, signed Warren Smith with the assurance that he would finally be free to be a country singer.

Warren Smith and his wife Doris had left the South and moved to California in 1959. The family had been living in Mississippi, first in Greenwood with Warren's family, and later in Jackson. Rockabilly was suffering a lingering death and bookings were scarce. The horizon looked far brighter on the west coast and it was time to move on. Doris recalls, "Warren signed with Warner Brothers Records before we went out. He hoped something would come of it but nothing happened. It was pretty disappointing. He continued to appear in clubs out there and tried to get his career going again."

The Smiths, with one child and another on the way, settled in Sherman Oaks, not far from where another Sun alumnus, Johnny Cash, lived with his wife Vivian. "We spent a lot of time with Johnny and Vivian. They were among the few people in the music business that Warren Smith shared with me. He generally kept music very separate from his family."

Soon after Warren Smith arrived in California, Johnny Cash offered Warren Smith a spot on his show. Cash was working steadily and it would have meant a regular income, not to mention wide exposure for his music, but Warren Smith declined the offer. Doris recalls, "I guess it was pride. Warren Smith was sure he could be a star and have his own show. He wasn't willing to play second fiddle for anybody, which is how he saw Johnny's offer. Carl Perkins said yes to the same deal and toured with Cash for years, during good times and bad. I always felt Johnny was trying to bring his old friends together, trying to help them, those that hadn't been as fortunate as he was."

By the start of the 1960s, several things had happened to the Nashville Sound. It had become an undeniable force in the record industry. Its influence had spread far beyond music and, indeed, beyond Nashville itself. Country music had moved uptown into respectability, but that move had come at a price. The second thing that happened to the Nashville Sound, whether recorded in Tennessee or on the West Coast, was that it was becoming a staid formula. Producers like Chet Atkins may have been turning out chart successes, but their productions were often stultifying: routine four bar band intros, vocals smoothed over by the Anita Kerr Singers, Floyd Cramer's omnipresent piano figure, and regimented guitar breaks. A small group of composers and pickers all but had the town sewn up. Little wonder individuality was a rare commodity. Records were selling in unprecedented quantities, but the arrangements were slipping into mainstream banality. Nashville bubblegum music was evolving.

Things were hardly better on the West Coast. In the capable hands of producers Joe Allison and Johnny Western, every attempt was being made to reproduce mainstream Nashville music. As Johnny Western recalled with pride, "We were the first ones to produce the Nashville sound out of Hollywood. We could take a pop studio and produce country music. Our pickers were first rate. Our drummer, Muddy Berry, was the Buddy Harman of L.A. Jim Pierce was as good a pianist as Floyd Cramer." Allison's credibility was especially high as he had just written one of the biggest country-pop crossover songs of all time, He'll Have To Go.

It was in this climate that Warren Smith's career with Liberty Records was born. This is not to excuse or apologize for Warren Smith's records, but merely to set the context in which he worked. By the standards of the day, Warren Smith made some very country records. They featured prominent twin fiddles and steel guitar, and boasted just a single harmony vocal rather than a pop chorus. Warren Smith made some undeniably fine recordings during this period. His credentials as a first rate country singer were firmly established and his records found the marketplace they deserved. With the critical distance of nearly 30 years, there is an undeniable sameness to these productions, but the fault for what is the weakest here lies beyond Warren Smith. It is the sound of formula country music of the early '60s that weighs things down.

Warren Smith enjoyed chart success almost immediately after signing with Liberty Records. His first single I Don't Believe I'll Fall In Love Today went to # 5 on the Billboard charts in the fall of 1960. Ironically, the flipside Cave In was the target of promotional efforts when the single was released, but its more conventional flipside soon took over airplay and garnered all the attention. 

I Don't Believe was a showpiece for everybody on the session, from Warren's smooth baritone, to Ralph Mooney's seamless steel picking, to the twin fiddles of Bobby Bruce and Harold Hensley. If the notion of an instant classic has any meaning to country music, then this song truly qualifies. It is hard to imagine the song becoming dated, as Barbara Mandrell's subsequent hit version strongly attests. The vocal harmony provided by Ray Sanders, a Liberty artist in his own right, set the pattern for virtually all of Warren Smith's Liberty recordings. Only the arrangement's walking bass line and marching tempo allow music archaeologists to date the proceedings as '60s country. On the flipside, Smith delivered an impassioned vocal as he told in a surprisingly upbeat manner the perils of being trapped underground. Both, the tempo and vocal style, here as close as Warren Smith came while at Liberty to reviving his rockabilly days. Ned Miller's composition Cave In must have been one of the more bizarre competitors for the country charts in 1960, ultimately yielding to the broader appeal of its flipside.

Warren Smith's next recordings for Liberty again struck paydirt on the country charts. Odds And Ends, Bits And Pieces, another Harlan Howard song, reached # 7 on the country charts early the following year. This track showed that Warren Smith was one of the few artists carrying on the legacy of Ray Price's stylings from the previous decade. (Ironically, Price himself was soon to leave his best work behind for the fortunes and excesses of Nashville overproduction).

On the strength of two successive chart entries, Warren Smith began work on his first L.P. This was a big event for Smith, who had by now enjoyed nearly ten single releases without seeing his face on an album cover. The results were worth waiting for: 'The First Country Collection Of Warren Smith' featured a flatteringly handsome color portrait of the singer, with laudatory rear cover notes by Johnny Western.

The track selection leaned heavily toward other folks' music, as Warren Smith reprised hits from a range of the day's most visible stars including Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Charlie Walker, Sonny James, Eddy Arnold, Rose Maddox, Don Gibson and former label mate Johnny Cash. As producer Johnny Western observed, "That's the way albums were made in those days. One or two of the artist's singles, and as many familiar titles as possible." True to form, the lead tracks on sides 1 and 2 were the hit sides of Warren's two Liberty singles to date, whereas everything else was drawn from the general country charts.

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Tracklist
Smith, Warren - Classic Recordings 1956-1959 (CD) CD 1
01 Rock 'n' Roll Ruby
02 I'd Rather Be Safe Than Sorry
03 Rock 'n' Roll Ruby
04 Black Jack David
05 Ubangi Stomp
06 The Darkest Cloud
07 So Long I'm Gone
08 So Long I'm Gone
09 Who Took My Baby
10 I Couldn't Take The Chance
11 So Long I'm Gone
12 Miss Froggie
13 Red Cadillac And A Black Mustache
14 Stop The World
15 I Fell In Love
16 Got Love If You Want It
17 Old Lonesome Feeling (incomplete)
18 Tell Me Who
19 Tonight Will Be The Last Night
20 Dear John
21 Hank Snow Medley
22 Do I Love You
23 Uranium Rock
24 Goodbye Mr. Love
25 Uranium Rock
26 Sweet, Sweet Girl
27 Goodbye Mr. Love
28 Sweet, Sweet Girl
29 Dear John
30 I Like Your Kind Of Love
31 My Hanging Day