The hillbilly shuffle and the honky tonk song are still the cornerstones of real country music. Some pioneers, like Ray Price, are getting their due these days, but others, like Charlie Walker, tend to be overlooked.
The facts are these: Charlie Walker's early hits, like Who Will Buy The Wine, Pick Me Up On Your Way Down, Wild As A Wildcat, and Little Ol' Winedrinker Me are simply as good as it gets when it comes to heartbreakin', cheatin', beerhall country music and state-of-the-art hillbilly shuffles. The 154 sides represented in this five-CD collection chronicle the development of Charlie Walker's style from his earliest recordings in 1952 for Imperial Records to his classic sides for Columbia and Epic Records.
This recent release from Mayflower presents the sessions from 1969 through October 1970 generally known as Sticky Fingers Sessions (hence this collection s name) but that have songs that will end up further on in the Stones history from Exile through Goat s Head Soup.
Slettahjell's constant companion - appearing on every recording except Domestic Songs (2008) and, more often than not, on tour as well - Qvenild has long proven an ideal fit for the singer's foundational premise: taking music from a wealth of sources - Disney show tunes; jazz standards by Cole Porter, Lee Morgan and Nina Simone; contemporary fare from singer/songwriters Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits and John Hiatt; and, increasingly, original material - and playing it slow…really, really slow. But suggestions of kitsch or shtick have long been laid to rest, with Slettahjell's voice proving capable of twisting and turning the music with rare intuition; undeniably capable of broader melisma, power and range, but applying them so sparingly - so judiciously - as to create some surprisingly dramatic turns with the subtlest of gestures…