Bear Family

Frankie Miller - Blackland Farmer - The Complete Starday Recordings and More (2008) {3CD, Bear Family BCD16566CH rec 1957-1969}
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© 1957-69, 2008 Starday / Bear Family Records | BCD16566CH
Country / Honky Tonk / Rockabilly

Good-natured and unassuming, and possessing an easy, slightly raspy baritone voice that brought an everyman feel to everything he sang, Frankie Miller ought to be a household name in country circles, but he isn't, and his relative obscurity as the 21st century opens is as much a mystery as it is unforgivable. Although he recorded often, Miller's key years were with Don Pierce's Starday label out of Nashville in the late '50s and early '60s (roughly 1959 to 1963), the time period covered by this marvelous three-disc anthology from Bear Family Records.

Let's call a spade a spade. Orion is an Elvis impersonator. No more, no less. That he's a good Elvis impersonator is important, since if he wasn't, Sun probably wouldn't have tried to promote his recordings as if they were genuine Elvis material, even going to the extremes of overdubbing Orion's voices on recordings by such Sun stalwarts as Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. This doesn't make him any better, but it sure makes him fascinating, particularly because he is gifted at mimicry and these are pretty good evocations of Elvis at his peak…

Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup - A Music Man Like Nobody Ever Saw (2016) {5CD Box Set Bear Family BCD 17352 rec 1941-1962}
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© 1941-62, 2016 Bear Family Records | BCD 17352
Blues / Delta Blues / Chicago Blues / Electric Blues

In the world of music, there was never anyone quite like ARTHUR 'BIG BOY' CRUDUP. Rooted in the Mississippi Delta, his style was propulsive, melodic, original, and profoundly soulful. If he wasn’t 'The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll', as one LP proclaimed, there’s no doubt that rock ‘n’ roll owes a debt to his songs, including That’s All Right Mama, My Baby Left Me, Rock Me Mamma, So Glad You’re Mine, and Mean Ol’ Frisco Blues, as much as to his tight, swinging brand of rural blues.

Merle Haggard - Hag: The Capitol Recordings 1968-1976 - Concepts, Live & The Strangers (2008) {6CD Set Bear Family Records}
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© 1968-76, 2008 Capitol / EMI / Bear Family Records | BCD 16782 FK
Country / Bakersfield Sound / Honky Tonk / Folk Rock / Progressive Country / Traditional Country / Western Swing Revival

Twelve years after they released their first Merle Haggard box, The Untamed Hawk, Bear Family delivered the sequel, Hag: The Studio Recordings 1969-1976. This picks up where The Untamed Hawk left off, which is more of a musical dividing point than it initially seems. If The Untamed Hawk caught Haggard as he was reaching full flight, Hag captures him in his prime, as every single he released reached the Country Top Ten – often capturing the number one slot – and as he sometimes crossed over into the pop Top 40. Hag was without a doubt the biggest star in country music but the remarkable thing about his reign at the top was that he never played it safe.

The Bailes Brothers - Standing Somewhere In The Shadows: The Legendary King Sessions 1953, Plus (2012) {Bear Family BCD17133AH}
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© 1953, 2012 King / Gusto / Bear Family Records | BCD 17133 AH
Country / Old-time Music / Gospel / Classic Hillbilly / Bluegrass

The Bailes Brothers' recording career stretched over quite a few years and several labels after they made their first discs in 1945, and included two separate stints for King. The first, a brief one consisting of a couple dozen recordings done in Nashville in the last half of 1946, are thoroughly documented on Bear Family's companion CD to this collection, Remember Me: The Legendary King Sessions 1946. By the time they came back to King in 1953, the act was fading a bit, not having recorded since 1947 (Johnnie Bailes did a stint in prison in the intervening years). For their 1953 King sessions, the ever-changing Bailes Brothers lineup featured just two brothers, guitarist/lead singer Walter and mandolinist/tenor vocalist Johnnie, backed by Lambert Arend on steel guitar and Big Tiny Smith on bass.

This comprehensive Bear Family audiotheque is dedicated to the mid-Sixties German Beat music boom. A total of 30 installments with 20 to 30 titles per CD, all remastered for the best possible sound quality. The author, Hans-Jürgen Klitsch, has written the hugely informative booklets for our CDs. Please note that all liner notes are in German language. Another Bear Family exclusive!

Edna McGriff - Start Movin' In My Direction: The Bell Recordings, Plus 1954-1959 (2012) {Bear Family BCD 17276 AH}
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© 1954-59, 2012 Bear Family Records | BCD 17276 AH
R&B / Jazz / Vocal / Pop

1-CD-Album Digipak (4-plated) with 44-page booklet, 29 tracks, playing time approx. 75 mns. The forgotten recordings of Edna McGriff a Fifties R&B star! Few ever reissued on CD, most unheard since the 1950s! Includes fabulous R&B versions of pop songs like The Fool, Born To Be With You, Freight Train, and I Enjoy Being A Girl with the cream of New York's R&B session men! First full-length biography by R&B scholar Bill Dahl.

Jerry Lee Lewis - At Sun Records: The Collected Works - "What the Hell Else Do You Need?" (2015) {18CD Box Set Bear Family}
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© 2015 Bear Family Records | BCD 17254 RL
Rock & Roll / Country / Rhythm & Blues / Rockabilly / Honky Tonk

Sam Phillips didn't record anybody else the way he recorded Jerry Lee Lewis. With other artists, he pushed and prodded, taking his time to discover the qualities that made them uniquely human, but with Jerry Lee, he just turned the tape on and let the Killer rip. There was no need to sculpt because Lewis arrived at Sun Studios fully formed, ready to lean back and play anything that crossed his mind. Over the course of seven years, that's more or less how things were run at Sun: Lewis would sit at the piano and play, singing songs that were brought to him and songs that crossed his mind, and Sam never stopped rolling the tape.

Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs - Flatt & Scruggs 1964-1969, plus (1995) {6CD Set, Bear Family BCD15879FI}
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© 1964-69, 1995 Bear Family Records | BCD 15879 FI
Country / Bluegrass / Traditional Bluegrass / Country-Pop

Here's the conclusion of our complete Flatt & Scruggs retrospective. It takes us through the period of their greatest success in the 1960s, leading to the break-up. They were taking bluegrass music into places it had never been, and cutting some brilliant and innovative music along the way. The core of this set is 12 albums including the 'Strictly Instrumental' set with Doc Watson, the live Vanderbilt Concert, and 'The Story Of Bonnie & Clyde.' This set is rounded out with a Gordon Terry square-dance album on which Flatt & Scruggs are the back-up musicians, and on which the calls have been omitted.

Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant - Flamin' Guitars (1997) {4CD Set Bear Family BCD 15956 rec 1949-62}
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© 1949-62, 1997 Bear Family Records | BCD 15956
Country / Jazz / Americana / Western Swing

Perhaps the most difficult thing in writing about a box set like this is how to convey in words – few or many – the magic, wonder, and intimidating musicianship that is contained on these recordings. Over four CDs, the seeds, roots, branches, and trees of a musical partnership were formed and lived out on the public stage, and remain all but unknown to those who were not country music fans during the era. While one Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant compilation has appeared on Razor & Tie, as a single disc it only begins to offer the legend of this pair of musical innovators.