Warren Smith

Sun Records Originals: Rock'n'Roll Ruby

(Sun Label Group)

The geiger counter is going, going, gone - and not owing solely to "Uranium Rock." The flattop cats raving behind Warren (whose number, in moments, included a kid named Jerry Lee), threw out a hot-wired, hot rodded Country/Rockabilly amalgam that landed everlastingly in many-a chain-wallet compendium bearing Sam's smoking imprint. Even amidst slicked-back peers who in future years would live in high cotton, Warren put the size 10 into it like all get out.

Recommended: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby," "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache," "Do I Love You," "Uranium Rock," "I've Got Love if You Want It," "Ubangi Stomp," "I Fell in Love," "I'd Rather Be Safe than Sorry," "Who Took My Baby," "Stop the World (I'll Jump Off)," "Miss Froggie," "I Like Your Kind of Love," "Sweet, Sweet Girl," "So Long I'm Gone"

Videos: "Rock'n'Roll Ruby"   "Do I Love You"   "Who Took My Baby"   "Sweet, Sweet Girl"

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Darkside Records

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pandora

Howlin' Ramblers

Home of the Blues (Revisited)

(Sleazy Records)

The club door busted wide. In strutted Rock'n'Roll, bold and lookin' for all-night fun. (Which would entail dolls, brawls, and suds aplenty.) 

Group-penned romps built from gut-bucket jukin' (including the titular number, "Stay the Fuck Home," and "Send Me Some Lovin'"), atop which sail harmonica serenades of the finest kind, clasp brotherhood hands with 1956 Big Walter Price classic "Pack Fair and Square" (covered by J. Geils on their 1972 Full House.) Sleazy's new reissue of the Howlin' ones' self-issued 2016 maiden disc can be captured only as limited-edition vinyl. Remixed and remastered, it now features two bonus cuts.

Hours later, when lights went up and the grizzled barkeep shouted "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here!," Rock'n'Roll was still knockin' 'em back...

Recommended: "Home of the Blues," "I'm Ready if You're Willing," "Stay the Fuck Home," "Number Nine," "Pack Fair and Square," "Send Me Some Lovin'," "Takin' Care of My Home"

Videos: "Home of the Blues"   "Stay the Fuck Home"   "Pack Fair and Square"   "Send Me Some Lovin'"

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Sleazy Records

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Copasetic

VDP -Records

Bear Family

Eddie and the Afterburners

Cellar of Your Soul

(MechTocracy Records)

It's in eerie mid-range, that three malefactors ply their chord-fisted ominousness. Class this as clawed opera for evildoers. Punk and Psycho escapees from padded-wall snakepits creep amidst decaying foliage, a blood moon o'er head, as unsuspecting passersby whistle past the graveyard. Suddenly, hands seize from behind.

Recommended: "Cellar of Your Soul," "Familiar Phenomenon," "The Mausoleum." "Room 13," "Liminal Business Trip," "Demonic Invasion"

Videos: "Cellar of Your Soul" / "Familiar Phenomenn" (live   "The Mausoleum" (live)   

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BK Backflip!

"'06 Rolla"   single

(Self-issued)

Though deftly executed, tousled, roughshod Emo isn't the sole selling point for ears. Inside the music huffs an almost excruciating earnestness. One detects it in each guitar power-stroke and scratchy-throat exclamation. 

An anonymous band member related online: "'06 Rolla' was first song I ever wrote. I remember specifically finishing it in the front seat of my Corolla (RIP) while on break at work, so I decided what better way to commemorate it than to put it as the song name!"

DIY AF. Consider that a curled-lip Seal of Approval.

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The Neighborhood

Indonesian Oi! stomps loudly and proudly!

Video: "Pride Song"

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Lil' Mo & the Dynaflos

Fronted by a siren with angelic tones capacity, a trio of doo-woppers, straight from beneath some Bop Street lamp post, urge tender confederacy. Players with PHDs in hepness spin understated merriment - with saxophone piquancy - ensuring embrace.

Video: "Let's Fall in Love"

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Leroy Van Dyke: Walk On By, by chance                   

In the Summer of 2004, I worked just outside a fair near the Iowa/Illinois border. 

I chose to take my lunch break inside the Fair, one afternoon. While contemplating a hot dog vendor's wares, I heard a very familiar singing voice cut through the milling crowd's hubbub:

"If I see you, tomorrow, on some street in town / 

Pardon me, if I don't say hello..."

Well, perhaps that wasn't the exact passage I heard. But it was "Walk On By," the Leroy Van Dyke classic I'd first heard covered by Robert Gordon on his 1978 "Rock Billy Boogie" LP.

I entered a nearby large tent filled with rows of folding chairs and saw the legendary Leroy, himself. A consummate performer in fighting trim, he looked and sounded as comfortable onstage as if he were in his own living room. A broad smile creased his tanned face as he moved confidently about the stage. His band was steady and unerringly professional.

A chance brush with greatness at a fair in Iowa. What were the odds?

Never mind that that evening's arena performance by an unspectacular Nashville Pop-Country clown would probably draw many times the bodies. The trendy fools had no idea what they were missing.

Here was Leroy Van Dyke - a living connection to '60s country.

In his music, traditional backwoods airs were filtered through modern and cosmopolitan sensibilities, ones that on record incorporated lush strings and sweet background choruses, with steel guitar swipes and drawling fiddles.

Lyrics dealt in themes common to 1960s country music: Straying spouses ("Walk On By," "If A Woman Answers"), cuckolded husbands ("Anne Of A Thousand Days," "The Swing Of Things"), hard times faced by the working man ("Black Cloud").

"Touch Of The Master's Hand" offered a spoken, faith-based narrative similar to those sometimes indulged by Porter Wagoner on his television show of the same era. And, "Who's Gonna Run The Truck Stop In Tuba City" took a satirical look at marital friction.

"City-style Country music," was how the man typically described it to interviewers. And that summed it up pretty well. His original glory days fell between the late-1950s, smoothed-out Pop balladry that had followed raw rockin,' and the mid-1960s British Invasion.

Leroy, not only a singer but also a credentialed auctioneer, first saw chart success in 1956 with (aptly) "Auctioneer." In later years, "World's Most Famous Auctioneer" would become his title.

That auspicious entry brought additional reward. He was invited to become a regular on Red Foley's ABC show, Ozark Jubilee.

He again scaled the charts with 1961's "Walk On By." Together with "Auctioneer," it is today the song with which he is widely identified. It was his most commercially successful, too. It spent 19 weeks at number one. 

Such was the regard with which he was hailed by fellow musicians, that he was slated to host the 1965 Country Music Association Awards Show. Ernest Tubb was that year inducted into the Association's Hall Of Fame.

After first stumbling onto Leroy's 2004 fairground performance, I made a point of taking subsequent days' work breaks inside, to watch him perform. 

He was a master in the middle of nowhere. But his presence made nowhere a special place. And he was in his element, before an appreciative crowd that dug his specialness.