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Editorial Reviews

In Bear Family's atypically exhaustive fashion, the label has gone to the vaults to track down all of Marty Robbins' pre-rock & roll sides from 1953 ("It's a Long Ride") and 1954 ("Call Me Up"), as well as four bluesed-out cuts from that year that remained shelved until after his death in 1982, to the 1955-1957 rockabilly material. There are 19 cuts here, and they are sequenced according to rock & roll aesthetic rather than chronologically. And this makes sense, as "It's a Long Long Ride" is as much a honky tonk and Western swing tune as it is a rockabilly number. What makes it rock & roll at all is the shivering, reckless energy in the vocal -- something uncommon in a Robbins recording of any stripe. "Pain and Misery" from the long-lost session is a rollin' and strollin' blues with bent guitar strings and a solid rock & roll shuffle. But when Robbins recut "That's All Right Mama" a mere six months after Elvis in 1955, the wheels were off. And that's what spills from this compilation, the skipping, driving country rockabilly from 1955 and 1956 in tracks like "Pretty Mama," "Long Tall Sally," "I Can't Quit," "Knee Deep in the Blues," "Tennessee Toddy," and "Mister Teardrop," among others. Robbins' delivery could hold a tune on the rails, even when it threatened to roll off with his deeply emotive yet silvery croon that would sound insincere coming from anybody else. This is a stellar collection of 19 tracks with nary a weak one in the bunch. Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

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