Wayne Hancock

Within the twanged echo of Americana troubadour Wayne's inimitable phrasing can be heard (and must be respected) his decades of zig-zagging across our glorious land, spreading common-folks' musics as only he can. On his tour bus as we speak. One of the greats.

Video: "Lonesome Whistle" (live 2026)

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Billy Barton

Billy's from-up-in-the-hills compositions were waxed by Opry-caliber personages, including Ferlin Husky, Red Sovine, Rose Maddox, and Ernest Tubb. But much of that transpired later; first came this jitter-howl number that probably sideswiped jukes into alleys.

Video: "Crazy Lover"

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Mickey Keller & the Spitfires

Million Dollar Shack   EP

(Tessy Records)

This four-rollick Hillbilly jackrabbit wax circulates at 45 rpm, and keepin' up is gladsome recreation. Elbows-flying buck-dancers can be forgiven for thinking these poultry-pluckers are from back up in the Ozarks, but truth to tell, the drummerless three hang hats in Hannover. Cover art by Marcel Bontempi.

Recommended: "Gone Baby Gone," "My Suzy Jane," "Sneaky Pete," "I'm Ready"

Videos: "Gone Baby Gone" (live 2023)   "My Suzy Jane" (live 2022)   "I'm Ready" (features both trio footage and scenes from b/w teens B-film.)

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Be Be's Records

Bear Family

Rockin' All Life Long

Mickey and band played the 2025 Massen Dirt Track festival, in Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf

Cash O'Riley

Booze, Lust, Lies & Heartache...Revisited   digital

(Rumble Road Records)

Initially issued in 2002, Cash's Booze again populates earways, now in fresh incarnation. Good ol' hayseed romping mashed into chipper with  outlawism and razor-ready Blues; what exits demands discernment. Select passages recall glorious half-moment before hillbilly heels were kicked up toward what local hands would term Rockabilly. Every love-lucky, back-country buck carries a homestyle dolly's curling b&w snap in his britches' bib pocket.

(All proceeds from digital sales go directly to worthy cause "Hobohemian" Cash.)

Recommended: "Send Along," "Big City Queen," "Everytime You Walk," "The Last Time," "I'll Be Gone," "I May Have," "Make You Cry," "Enough Beer"

Videos: "Big City Queen"   "Everytime You Walk"   "The Last Time"   "Enough Beer"

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Red-Hot Dynamos

They may cruise Italian strade, but the RHDs purvey old-ways Nashville tunery with all the realness of Robert's regulars. And their digital shufflers are fine as frog hair. But as the numbers here presented illustrate, it's high time a physical, full-length record could be grabbed from shelves. And I mean everywhere.

Videos: "Moonshiner's Run"   "Excuse Me"

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Back in the Day, 1982

Various artists

Rarest Rockabilly & Hillbilly Boogie

(Ace)

In 1971, at 12 years old, I spent a weekend with a paternal uncle and his family. They lived in one of Iowa's tiny rural towns.

I was from a city. So for me, country life was a different reality. Sunday meant all-day fundamentalist church, punctuated at noon by a houseful gathering. A table was loaded down with hot dogs, cold meats, breads, pop and potato salad. A spirited throng gathered, still dressed in church-going finery.

Roaming the rooms, I found a black-and-white 8x10 stashed on a bookshelf. It was a posed publicity shot that depicted a Country Western-type combo complete with stand up bass, acoustic, electric and steel guitars. They sported de rigueur cowboy attire: big hats, neckerchiefs, boots.

I didn't know the photo's vintage, nor did I recognize anyone featured. (Some distant family members, perhaps -- ones who'd once dreamed vainly of celebrity - or regional somebodies long forgotten?)

In future years, I came to understand that real Country and Rock'n'Roll sprang from the same real-folks well.

Names of men whose rustic rollickings are here anthologized may be similarly unfamiliar, but their contributions to then-emergent Rockabilly were full of skedaddle. They came down from hills, left country whistle-stops, and rose from bustling burgs to 'sing into a can.' Billboard charts and big-city radio paid them no mind. But so what? The shit-kickin' romps they committed to vinyl not only fired up future crops of leg-shakers, but will shout simple joys into slickered-up perpetuity.

Recommended: "Nuthin' but a Nuthin'" (Jimmy Stewart and his Night Hawks), "Baby Doll" (Jimmy Dale), "Don't Sweep That Dirt On Me" (Buddy Shaw), "Henpecked Daddy" (Ralph Johnson and the Hillbilly Show Boys), "Stoney Mountain Boogie" (Stoney Mountain Playboys), "My Blackbirds Are Bluebirds Now," (Sleepy Jeffers & the Davis Twins), "No More" (Buddy Shaw), "Big Black Cat" (RD Hendon & the Western Jamboree Cowboys), "It's Saturday Night" (Bill Mack)

Videos: "Nuthin' but a Nuthin'" (Jimmy Stewart and his Nighthawks)   "Don't Sweep That Dirt On Me" (Buddy Shaw)   "Stoney Mountain Boogie" (Stoney Mountain Playboys)   "It's Saturday Night" (Bill Mack)

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Buddy Shaw

Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, and Bill Mack.

Paul Burlison 1929 - 2003: Don't mourn - harmonize!   (From 2003)

Brothers and sisters:

Paul Burlison's accomplishments are perhaps more widely known than his name. Yet we cannot appropriately eulogize him without citing both.

Paul's singular impact as lead guitarist with 1950s Memphis cat music legends Johnny Burnette and the Rock'n'Roll Trio endure among the finest produced during Rockabilly's germinal seasons. 

How many covers have we all heard of Trio songs? From Robert Gordon, the Cramps, Rod Stewart, Rockats, and Stray Cats. And so very many others, both celebrated and obscure. 

How many rockin' bar bands include at least one Trio selection in their repertoires? "Rock Billy Boogie," "Train Kept-A Rollin'," "Your Baby Blue Eyes," "Honey Hush," "Rock Therapy," "Lonesome Train On a Lonesome Track." The catalog is indeed long.

Friends, that is true Rock'n'Roll significance, And Paul was a major part of it.

His seamless, dead-on merging of the Honky Tonk Country picking and Blues phrases he'd grown up with wasn't so much ahead of its time as emphatically of it, so full of changes and evolving unions as those days were.

A good idea of the respect Paul commanded in his autumn years can be got by considering musicians who joined with him for his 1997 solo CD, Train Kept A-Rollin': Mavis Staples, Fabulous Thunderbird Kim Wilson, David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, Levon Helm, and so many others.

But as wonderful as the Trio and ensuant solo efforts were, they alone don't convey the full weight of Paul's imprint on modern American music. In ways, his story is Rockabilly's own.

Paul entered the picture not long before the Great Depression, on February 4, 1929, and in Brownsville, Tennessee.  Considering the time and place, his was doubtless a hardscrabble upbringing. 

Soon after came days of national suffering. Of widespread despair, joblessness, want, and hunger. That dismal condition bonded city and country folk. But surely, already impoverished rural families suffered particularly.

In later interviews, Paul recalled a Burlison family tradition-of-necessity: As soon as a child grew old enough, they joined in the cotton-picking labor available in their region.

In life's lowest moments, we look for and appreciate causes to keep on keeping on. Paul had family and friends. And he also found salvation through the musics he heard throughout his world.

Rockabilly historian Colin Escott chronicled the Rock'n'Roll Trio's history for a 1989 Bear Family Records compilation. "I loved the Blues," Escott quoted Paul as saying. "Cotton patch Blues. That's what I listened to. I'd go all the way across town to hear that. And I'd listen to the Opry every Saturday night, 'til it went off the air."

Following stints as a Golden Gloves boxer (during which time Paul befriended Johnny and Dorsey Burnette) and khakied soldier, he found a place in the Memphis area Country scene. And it was while appearing as a regular picker on KWEM radio that Paul began blending the Hillbilly and Blues idioms he so loved.

During an early 1980s phone interview with me, Paul recalled that his instincts and ability drew the notice of a fellow KWEM performer -- local bluesman Chester Arthur Burnett, aka Howlin' Wolf.

The KWEM Country show on which Paul played was taped about an hour before Wolf's Blues program. And it wasn't long before the two jammed together on Wolf's show. Sadly, no tapes documenting the historic sessions survive.

I interviewed Paul for a Goldmine piece, published in January, 2000. Rockabilly history became actual to me in a manner I hadn't experienced before. (During our talks, he did not mention claims that guitarists other than himself appeared on certain Trio recordings. So we will not consider them, here.)

Paul recalled of the KWEM radio sessions that, such was the odious racial custom of that day, Wolf could not credit him by name on the air. 

Nor was that the only practical manifestation of racism that made impossible open musical union. Paul recounted to me that public performance together just was not feasible. Wolf was forced to enter Country bars' rear doors to hear Paul play. And Paul was likewise limited, when going to hear Wolf in Blues club settings.

It was but a short time after this that Paul allied forces with the Burlisons. And the rest is Rockabilly history.

As was observed earlier, Paul's story mirrors Rockabilly's own. I'll expand on that.

1950s America was marred by prejudices and racial divisions contrary to its ideals. Ones whose detestable effects impeded realization of noble national potential.

As a young Memphis musician, Paul knew that first hand. But such is the humanity-binding nature of art, creative souls connect despite arbitrary social dictates. Witness Paul's collaborative work with Wolf, their mutual appreciation of each others' talents, and Rockabilly's exultant, cannot-be-denied mixing of musical and cultural experiences.

Opprobrious 1950s hectors who decried emergent Rock'n'Roll as threatening to established mores were entirely correct -- and ours is a far better culture for the bold reshaping. Rock'n'Roll represented shoe-movement overthrow of earlier generations' cramped segregationism. Its world-toppling impact was indeed a refreshing and positive one.

Do not hang your heads in sorrow, then at brother Paul's passing. Be instead joyful! STRIKE UP THE BAND!

PAUL BURLISON stood in the center of that glorious 1950s upheaval and stoked it higher with electrifying soloing that JOINED! The music he created helped bring about a new and exciting American society!

No one who lived through that golden Rock'n'Roll era, or reaped its joyful reward, was unmoved by it.

The good news -- the best possible news -- is that we haven't lost Paul, or any original not standing among us, today. They live, still, as near as any record machine. And it is testament to their lasting vitality that so many who've learned lessons they taught are today carrying on in the spirit first forged through sweat, trials, and joys in unspectacular, uncelebrated surroundings. 

SO, BREAK OUT THAT OLD VINYL! CRANK THE VOLUME! NO ONE EVER REALLY LEAVES THE BUILDING! REJOICE THAT WE KNEW PAUL'S VOICE, AND THAT IT ECHOES, STILL! 

And in honor of his example, PICK UP A GUITAR! 

Videos: "Train Kept A-Rollin'" (Rock'n'Roll Trio 1956)   "We're Gonna Rock" (Paul and Los Lobos 1997)   "Memphis Blues" (Paul and Billy Burnette 1997)

The Prairie Moons

Patsy Montana's 1934 wish-upon-a-star signature, a straw-on-floor romp now geared (at times) to the melody of 1933 hit "You Gotta Be a Football Hero" (Ben Bernie & All the Lads). The combination of ace pickers and Eva's yodel-hollerin' par excellence corrals any notion hillbilly gals can't pour water out of a boot.

Video: "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart"

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North Carolina's Tremors: Primitive Plan 9 Bop

Jimmy Tremor (né Gardner), leader of North Carolina's sigogglin  hillbilly rockers the Tremors, ensured that they varied little over the course of 5 CDs. And the concept stalks yet.

The feral cats howl at the blood moon, from the red clay tobacco roads of America's lost-hick reality. They pitch runaway ruckus like gun-totin' revenuers are sneakin' through the sourwoods.

The string-tied booger men's credibility is beyond dispute. The three have torn up stages with illustrious fellow sons of the soil, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Hasil Adkins, and storied mountain dancer Jesco White.

They've knocked back audiences in both clubs and festivals, the Oneida Rockin' 50s Fest, Nashville Boogie, and Heavy Rebel Weekender numbered among the latter.

The trio was even inducted into the Hillbilly Hall Of Fame. An introductory HHoF post described them as "Hillbilly rock stars" whose "back story includes both zombiefication and alien abduction."

Jimmy now relates that the combo is working up fresh compositions. Before those loom for appreciation, appraisal of previous years' successes is appropriate.

1 - SCOURGE OF THE SOUTH

The debut disc doesn't wipe its feet or cover its coughs. It aptly portrays their helter-skelter personality, and is a rumbustious howdy-hi to Big Beat disciples who hunger for crudely crazed Rebel Sounds. 

Jimmy's manic picking is unerring. It summons a spasmodically jerking regiment of vintage Americana melodies, at once familiar and freshly inebriating.

Besides being gotta-buy wax, Scourge of the South blasted defiant notice that the South was rising again - this time, from beneath soil.

2 - URANIUM ROCK  ep

Venerated sides that Warren Smith and Mack Vickery set loose in days when Sam conspired on Union Ave., came in for cattywampus reanimations amongst Jimmy's own calcium-rattling screeds. 

Too, while his hiccuped yowlings remind of Hasil Adkins and Pat Buttram, they are possessed by singular strains. Jimmy's jittery stumpjumper implorings, punctuated now and again by strangled yelps and white lightning-speed treble note guitar squallings, buckdance athwart plateaus of backwoods psychosis.

The tunes veer twixt marble-orchard mausoleums and mad-doctor Strickfadenery, with insane-in-the-brain vigor. Risen Maila Nurmi and her grieving, old man husband hunt Inspector Clay, while taking care not to bump cardboard plot markers.

3 - INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN

The trio's riveting creature-bop was by this juncture loved by legions of the finger-popping undead. Sparks-shooting fervor from the B-movie beyond transmogrified backwoods hidey holes into hardwood juke joints. Rotted ghouls, already drunk as Cooter Brown, were in there like June bugs.

Drummer Stretch Armstrong and doghouse dancer Slim Perkins contrive some of the most frenetically rollicking rhythms on offer. They are crucial to the band's schizzing rocketship.

Jimmy's skewed sermons were punctuated now and again by strangled hoots, and reached dizzying heights of blood-freezing tiltedness.

4 - DEMON BOOGIE FEVER

Demon Boogie Fever careened through swerve 'n' stitch territories not found on conventional maps. The basic sound was more pronouncedly hillbilly than before. But what they did with that -- players twisted and contorted it into a strange new entity of unspeakable visage -- accounted for its wonder.

Here resounded stark and freakish hills terror. The slapped-up/stripped-down trio reveled in hectic and gruesomely-technicolored fracture, quaffing B-monster homebrew like they didn't care if it riled the Devil.

"When I was calling around to get the mechanical rights for the cover songs, I called Knox Publishing concerning 'Rock Boppin Baby," Jimmy once recalled. "The man who answered the phone said they didn't handle it there, but was curious about which song I was interested in. When I told him, he said, "That's an old song. I played on that.

"It turns out that I was talking with Roland Janes - I couldn't believe it! He seemed like a very nice, humble guy who had no idea of how extremely important his music really is."

5 - OLD FASHIONED HILLBILLY FEUD

This marks the studio debut of bassman Lowbrow Luke. He charges menu items with double bass navigations that manifest barndance bedlam. The good-time midnight special just barely stays on steel; songs never quite fly from the track, testament to the band's prowess amidst mad tempest.

The title cut and "Cabin Fever" are trademark Tremors: good-timey rampages that flip, flop, and fly off the chicken coop roof. Stretch and Lowbrow wreak assuredly frenetic rhythms that'll knock a mud hole in you and walk it dry.

(And when Jimmy dashes all 'round the fretboard during the fevered cover of "Wreck of the Old '97," you'll swear that he's lost his religion.)

Given the 5 discs considered above, the in-progress material to which Jimmy alluded needs to be in a very special class of reckless crazy. Smart money lets out with a big ol' Yee Haw!

Glenn Doran and the Truffle Valley Boys

Fancy-footed mandolin, drums, acoustic gut-boxes, banjo, and double bass collude like seasoned pals, their hatted operators in an upper Bluegrass stratum where good times splash beyond creek beds. "Pull the trigger, watch 'em roll. Now I know I'll make my goal in this pinball game that's gonna bring me fame!" declares drawling Glenn, as had countless country jacks in decades since Johnny came marching home. 

Video: "Pinball Millionaire" (Rockabilly Rave 2026)

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Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding: Pair nonpareil

Scandalously electric Rock'n'Roll was not the passing craze 1950s detractors hoped it would be. Of racially and experientially blended character, the defiantly upstart style was much more powerful than the milquetoastian societal strictures it flattened.

In its fecund youth, Rock'n'Roll spoke to and for entire swaths of under-celebrated America: the poor, blue collar workers, blacks, teenagers. Anyone who dwelt 'outside,' and intuited that the mannerly crooners blaring from 'Your Hit Parade' broadcasts weren't of them, and didn't care to be. Powdered songbirds would probably shrink from the egalitarian prospect.

During the 1970s, Punk savages essentially devised in kind. Springing up from the urban concrete, they noisily renounced the overblown and painstakingly placid rock product that relentlessly streamed from corporate radio of the day. 

Throwing off status quo bondage, they sifted through influences and admixed them with their own, newly coined rage. The fresh creature produced, turned out to reflect the same insouciant, rudely rebellious spirit previously voiced by Elvis, Jagger, et al.

Like the sounds Robert so loved -- embracing, as they did, jumping Rhythm and Blues and swinging Hillbilly Country -- he endured through flashy, annoying trends that had nothing to do with the bop that mattered to him. His music drew heavily from predecessors' patterns, but added serrated edges and interpreted them as forcibly high-spirited, in contemporary context.

Possessed of a deep baritone, he commanded both audience appreciation and, doubtless, peers' envy. A technically sublime vocalist, Robert easily located notes beyond limited fellows, sustaining them with rousing potency. His powerhouse pronouncements swelled with confident authority. 

The 1980s Rockabilly resurgence was, in considerable part, jump-started by Robert. He was and remains a top-most genre icon, of such impressive capacity as to merit mountaintop rank. 

Storied English guitar phenomenon Chris Spedding laced Robert's already outstanding offering with stylistically multifarious, sensitively nuanced six-string articulation. In his hands, songs could storm, fly, or cruise with settled serenity.

Chris cannily intercut Rockabilly, Blues, and Country enunciations with telescopically sliding Jazz chording and flabbergasting treble stings. One digs the instincts of a genuine artist, evident in every stroke.

Theirs was a remarkable, decades-long partnership that would take them to numerous recording studios and world stages. Legendary is their fuel-injected reinventing of roots-music treasures like "Red Hot," "The Way I Walk," "Rock Billy Boogie," and "Driving Wheel." They also granted new, bold being to "Hello Walls," "It's Now Or Never," "Stuck On You," "Look Who's Blue," and "Sweet Love On My Mind."

2022's Hellafied proved to be the duo's final studio collaboration. Cleopatra marketed it as both CD and blue/purple vinyl.

This was my contemporary assessment:

These tracks were put to tape in 1998 for a never-released album. Several songs did appear on Bear Family's The Lost Album Plus, issued that year.

Robert and Chris were decades beyond the need to prove themselves; the sound here is of men with much yet to offer. Material reveals a pair eager to trek beyond the confines of orthodox Rockabilly. That genre's swagger was retained, along with twangy flourishes, but set in a contemporary context.

Willingness to slip out of aesthetic constraint makes this release rewarding. As they are beyond probative burden, they are free to reap benefits from spirited arrangements.

Whether the steadily chugging "Have I the Right," the Country reclination in "Please Don't," stroller "I'll Make It Right," or the Bo Diddley-beat of "Don't Let Go," you're in the hands of masters. 

Over in the hot rod column, "Please Don't Touch," "Tell him No," and "Believe What You Say" barrel down roads like gassers. No cherry-topped cruiser has a prayer.

The energy level is so high as to seize listeners in paroxyms of happy fracture. The songcraft is solid, the execution masterful. One again marvels at the perfect pairing of Voice and Guitar. 

Robert's immense tone is richer and more sinewy than when he emerged. His presence is tremendous. And Chris flabbergasts, as always, with incomparable fretboard wizardry; he effortlessly blends airs and changes from the popular musics songbook. 

Together, the two were nonpareil.

"We were never a 50s act," Robert once told an interviewer. "We were always a contemporary band. It was never designed to be a retro act. We just played off that Rockabilly sound."

And, by the doing, created something of indispensable disposition. 

The Blue Sparks

In their instrumental restatement of the lauded Wink Troubadour's gem, three devout exponents of Gone (whose number includes an ex-Trip Daddy) acquit themselves with appropriate reverence; they present the grand ballad respectfully, honoring its simple majesty.

Video: "Crying"

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The Shake Bombs

Originals!!!   digital album

(Self-issued)

The three sporting chrome-finned coolness, in 10 compiled razorings, evidently have zero regard for studio handstand trickery. And that's a very good feature. Eschewing audio counterfeiting leaves the roadway clear for rubbery tread scars, ones that mean nitro-powered Neo-Rockabilly's on the highway market for blond, brunette, and scarlet-tressed hitchhike dolls.

Recommended: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On," "My Big Foot Gal," "Tempe Town Blues," "Saturday Sale at the Goodwill Store," "New '35," "Pretty Baby Blue," "Smoking Hot Body"

Videos: "Baby, Put Your Coffee On"   "New '35"   "Pretty Baby Blue" (live)

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The Tru-Tone Trio

Western Potluck Party   digital album

(Self-issued)

A back-country hayride, in which two guys and a gal (previously billed as the Bear Flag Trio, and adept at roping Hillbilly bounce), remind that voices raised in plain-tooled ditties animate true hearts and boots. Music-makin' dinguses are manipulated prettier than a peacock snail flyin' over a petunia patch at sunset. And the big-grin airs that bloom from them do jigs like to make folks shout, stomp, and clap hands.

Recommended: "Roomnesia," "Catawampus Romp," "Rise and Wine," "Weird Note Boogie," "Hold On Think Twice," "Rock Wren Serenade," "Roll and Rock," "Hillbilly Time Machine"

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The Honkytonk Wranglers + Jake Vaadeland

This reviewer believes fools turning deaf ears to such gently gladsome, family-and-friends musicalizing (that climaxes in Old Time Religion uprightness) can just run up an alley and holler fish. 

Video: "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)" / "I Saw the Light"

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Red-Hot Dynamos

The union of barn-party Country tunefulness and beat animation pleases no less now, than back when lanky ranch hands and lipsticked kittens went to town amid oak rafters, hay bales, and backy-spittin' dance callers.

Video "Excuse Me"

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The Shutdowners

"(You Called Me a) Dreamer"   "I'm on My Way"   digital tracks

(Self-issued)

The lockdown duration produced a gladsome wonderment: Four wranglers from far-flung German locations connected, then recorded long-distance via computers. 

I'm told drummer Lutti first proposed the collaboration. Amenable to 'joining right in there' were guitarist TinCan Semmel, singer/rhythm guitarist Smalltown Felix (who assembled distinct instrumentations into digital wholes), and bass-string negotiator Midge Van Geldern.

It was some two years later that the musicians met and clasped hands. Several live appearances ensued, and crowds dug in tower block font.

Of the online songs for which members cut their contributions remotely, the two freshest are here considered:

"The night is quiet, the stars are few / I walk the streets that we once knew," begins "(You Call Me a) Dreamer." The unhurried, plain-spoken narrator relates familiar forlornness, gently ushered forward by pleasant Country ambling. By the conclusion, though - "You call me a dreamer, but now I see / This dream was never meant for you and me" - he's resigned himself to bleak truth. For listeners, though, tuneful vivacity counters melancholy.

Issued shortly before the foregoing, "I'm on My Way" is noticeably brisker. A Luther Perkins-type, bass guitar strings, timepiece reliability maintains momentum. The heart-on-sleeve protagonist, inspired by night-before initimations, drives optimistically toward his lady love, hope of rekindling passion's flame fueling as only it can.

One nearly hopes for another lockdown.

Videos: "(You Called Me a) Dreamer"   "I'm on My Way"   "She Will Come Back" (live, 2025)

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Marshall Scott Warner

How 'Bout It   4-track digital album, 10" vinyl

(Self-issued)

Were it not for the ace-high participation of contemporary players of hepcat esteem, this scribe would wager greenbacks that these cuts had been dug up circa '55, somewheres between red-clay joints and Sam's storied Union Ave. shoebox. Hillbilly hijinx through which trad Rockbilly Boogie howls its piece. Regular-guy Marshall - he of the disarming drawl that knows every note by name - handles snare-snaps with enviable efficiency. Fast company Tony Laborie (bass), Joel Paterson, Russ "Rusty" Blake, and Graham Tichy (guitars), and Jeremy "JW" Wakefield (steel guitar) just plain set the woods on fire.

Recommended: "How 'Bout It," "Ace Up My Sleeve," "Closing Time," "Cry Baby"

Videos: "How 'Bout It"   "Closing Time"

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Bailey George and the Hit Paraders

s/t   Two-track digital single

(Cheap Thrills Records)

Any doctor examining Bailey would faint away, upon finding back-country airs ambling amidst his red and white corpuscles. It's always prizeworthy to locate someone in whose essence lie bents seemingly germinated in countless evenings well-spent in jukes and at barn soirees. In decades past, nonchalant-but-engaging Country-folk stylings like these rang out from modest clapboard houses' wood console radios. With Hoss Logan introducing. 

To paraphrase Ferlin, these sides make you feel better all over, more than anywheres else.

Recommended: "Hot as Blue Blazes," "Hello Mr. Teardrop"

Videos: New videos not available. Here are slightly previous ones: "Here, Kitty Kitty" (Bailey and the Oscillators, live)   "Truth is Out There" (Bailey and the Oscillators, live)   "Rock on the Moon" (Bailey plays all instruments.)

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