Side A - Jesus Hits Lile The Atom Bomb (vocals by Milton Beasley & Miller Louther)
Side B - Mississippi Boogie (vocals by Milton Beasley)
Red pleasant and the Southern Serenaders were one helluva hillbilly swing outfit back in the day but both these tunes are elevated due to top vocals by Milton & Miller on the Atom Bomb side and also some tasty red hot boogie guitar. America was in a state of panic over the Atomic Bomb around this time so by tapping into their fear and then telling them that the lord will come when the bomb hits was pure marketing genius!!!
The Mississippi Boogie side is also hot, hot, hot .......like boogie Red hot! that guitar and steel is just marvelous and at times near perfect! again great vocals by Milton Beasley. This is a record that ticks every box........every time you spin it!
Jimmy Cox along with Don Mason really turn it up to eleven on this scorcher on the Blue Ribbon label out of Illinois!
What you get here on the A side is pretty much what you'd expect from this label and year, top quality country where everything is in its place and it just sounds like perfection to me! sublime Guitar by Mr Mason , lovely smooth vovals by Jimmy and some weepy steel and boy it just sounds so purty!
Dave couldn't go wrong with this doozy! Western Swing Country boogie was in good hands with Dave and the Hayride Gang in 1951, Tulsa Baby is one of those toe tapping records that just swings with class from the first groove to the very last, top Fresno musicians and a tune that stays in your head for hours, this my friends is a right lil' belter!
I have been after this record for a few years now and finally got one for a great price.
These are two great tunes, in the old days you would have called this a double A side and it is, a proper great record.
Hamtramck Mama is pure Hillbilly bop and you get all the great harmony vocals you would expect from George & Leslie York, plus the fantastic acoustic pickin' guitar that hits you right where it should, genius on all levels.
Then you flip the monster over and you get the tale of infidelity with a strange girl from Highland Park who eventually lets in her husband to give him a good hiding.
Two fantastic songs, way before their time of 1949, it sounds more like 51/52 to my ears. Perfect!
Johnnie White and his Rhythm Rangers (featuring Skeets McDonald on vocals)
Fortune Records # 145 - 1950
Side A - Mean and Evil Blues
Side B - The Tattooed Lady
Skeets McDonald and Johnnie White and his band really hit the ground running with this superb Western Swing/Hillbilly two sider. A masterpiece in writing and musicianship. For 1950 this is where Country swing & hillbilly combine to show some rockin' roots and a move towards what we today call Rockabilly, Skeets, as usual sounds quality and both songs and they both roll and swing with ease ........complete and mighty sweet!
Side A - If I Can't Have You (I Don't Want No One)
Side B - Walkin' Round In Circles
Lonely Jeff Latham would go onto release various Country/Rockabilly records as Jimmie Dawson on labels such as Rustic, Playboy & Bonanza! (even re recording of 'Walkin' Round In Circles' on Rustic Records.
What we get here is Jeff/Jimmie just starting out on his recording career and you can tell he's finding his way. Both sides are straight Country and the A side is your typical, well played, competent Country slow/mid tempo tune. The more uptempo side is the B side! Jeff/Jimmie sings just fine, decent fiddle but the Steel player does get lost a few times and hits a few sharps now and then which is kinda scary at times!
Leroy Jenkins cut quite a few side for various labels around the late 40's early 50's (Columbia, Flair & Dude) . This release on 'Talent' was his first release and was like many others he recorded were done in Dallas at Jim Beck's studio in Dallas.
At just six months old Leroy went blind and from the age of 7 was schooled in Austin Texas for the school for the blind. He was born July 28th 1921 and died Dec 18th 1990.
The A side about a wrong doing woman is mighty mighty fine and you can see why Jim Beck & Don Law got him back to record and get releases on Columbia. It's just a great record, super Steel and just perfect vocals from Mr Jenkins. The flip is good decent weepie country, played with style and competence.
Both Matrix numbers appear to be connected to the Blue Bonnet Label as BB 164/165.
Frank Hunter and his Black Mountain Boys. Rich-R-Tone Records # 1049 - 1952 Side A - Tennessee Boy. Side B - Long Time No See.
Here is a real heavy shellac killer bluegrass offering from Frank Hunter on the highly prized Rich-R-Tone label which was founded in 1946 in Johnson City, Tennessee before moving to Nashville. Tennessee boy is real nice but for me it's the flip that moves,moves,moves! just brilliant bluegrass that jumps into your very being and lifts you up up up! Long Time No See is pure magic!!
That this early bluegrass artist hailed from the tropical panhandle state is somewhat unusual for the early bluegrass crowd of the '50s, most of whom came from musical families who had lived for generations scattered around various Appalachian strongholds. This is the same area where Hunter eventually drifted to, by the early '50s, establishing the Black Mountain Boys with fiddler and vocal partner Gene Christian, a former member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. There was some serious talent lurking in the band membership that cut sides for the Rich R Tone label in the early '50s. Banjoist Pee Wee Buttrey was a wonderful player; while Junior Husky had a brilliant career as a country sessionman, thinking in big and little terms as both a bassist and a mandolinist. Other members of the group have passed into total obscurity, not even identifiable by name anymore due to the casual nature of recording session documentation.
Rich R Tone itself was a helpful connection for Hunter and his partners, even if it was just one guy with a car. As the mountain folk had known all their lives, one fellow with wheels can distribute a great deal of merchandise, whether it is the traditional white-lightning home-brewed liquor, or a newfangled gimmick called bluegrass records. Meanwhile, the Black Mountain Boys had secured a regular radio spot on WKSR out of Pulaski, TN, coming on at 5:45 a.m., with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs waiting in the wings for the 6:00 a.m. slot. The group worked together for several years following their Rich R Tone single release, "Long Time No See," appearing on the Louisiana Hayride, in a program that included country crooner Slim Whitman and old-timers Johnny and Jack but nothing even remotely resembling bluegrass. The music form was still relatively new, being created whole cloth, chord by chord, by pioneers such as Hunter. When the Black Mountain Boys called it quits, he headed back to Florida, basing himself out of Tampa, where he played some local jobs. At one point, he recorded an obscure LP entitled The Return of Frank Hunter, although it was hard to say where he had been or what he was returning to, other than further obscurity. When Rounder assembled its ambitious History of Bluegrass series, Hunter and his buddies were one of the only historic bluegrass acts the archivists were unable to supply a photograph of.
