Customer Reviews

20th Century Masters: Millennium Collection - The Best of Dave Dudley

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How tough can it be to license a 40 year old track? Well, for Mercury it was too tough, because the version of "Six Days On The Road" that is on this CD is a Re-Recording, NOT the original hit version from 1963. The 2nd song, "Cowboy Boots" is ALSO a re-recording. Nowhere on the back of the CD (or front) is this mentioned. It's not until you look at the CD booklet that it's listed. Too bad, because this is a handy sampler of Dudley's 1963-73 run at Mercury Records. All but one of his Top 10 hits from that era are on this CD. The rest of the 10 songs are the original recordings. Including 4 good ones from Tom T. Hall (one also co-written by his wife). The liner notes are 2002 up-to-date, also. Dudley is best when he channels his Truck Drivin'/Everyman persona. He's not so good at singing straight Country ballads ("Please Let Me Prove"). He sounds like Ray Price when he sings a love song. Dudley has been overlooked by the CD reissue era. This is a noble attempt to bring a Best of by him into the market. But the compilers and Mercury shouldn't mislead the record buying public. If a song is a re-recording-label it as such. What should've been a 5 star Dave Dudley Best of is therefore docked a star. By the way, the original version of "Six Days On The Road" can be found on Rhino's Billboard To Country Hits 1963.

Just to clarify the comments by the Marina, CA-based reviewer: While this CD doesn't feature the original recording of "Six Days on the Road" and "Cowboy Boots," they are the versions most of us are familiar with from country radio. They were recorded in the mid-1960s, after Dudley signed with Mercury, and were widely played throughout the 60s and 70s.

The rest of the songs on "Millennium Collection" ARE the original Mercury sides.

And, it's about time too!

The other Dudley CDs currently on the market (most issued by Sun) are pale re-recordings from the 1990s -- those are the ones you should avoid like the plague.

Inexplicably, Dudley's catalog has been out of print for years and years. One imagines his split with the Mercury label in the mid-1970s must not have been an amicable one. Because, this is the first time since then that Mercury (or its many successive corporate parents) has licensed or released a full-length collection of Dudley's prime work. (Meanwhile lesser Mercury artists like Roy Drusky have long been represented on CD.)

It is wonderful to hear "The Pool Shark," "Last Day in the Mines" and "Coming Down" in pristine digital sound.

Why not five stars? Well, like all the CDs in Universal's odd "Millennium Collection" series, what gets included and left off here is nutty. No "George of the North Woods"? "Keep on Trucking"? "Listen Betty, I'm Singing Your Song"? Crazy -- it wouldn't be such a big deal if Dudley's work was regularly reissued. But, given that is has been MORE THAN 25 YEARS since a collection of the original versions of his hits were released, it's too bad the song selection couldn't have been better. The liner notes are short on detail and long on puffery.

Although it will never happen, here's hoping a "Volume II" is released someday.

Husky-voiced country crooner Dave Dudley is frequently typecast as a one-trick pony, one of the many singers who specialized in "trucker" songs during the '60s and '70s, when the style was at its peak. Dudley's big hit was "Six Days On The Road," but as this compact collection demonstrates, he definitely had a thematic breadth (even if musically he stuck to the same basic "thwack-a-thwack" rhythmic tricks that made his work distinctive...) This 12-song CD, drawn from Dudley's Mercury years, includes tragedy ballads ("Last Day In The Mines"), gambling songs ("Pool Shark") and patriotic numbers ("What We're Fighting For"), as well as a bunch of goofy novelty tunes like "Cowboy Hat," which pokes fun at the trendier side of the country music scene. The version of "Six Days" that appears on this CD isn't the original radio hit, but it's still pretty darn good, as are the other songs on here. Dudley's best work has been out of print for decades; it's really nice to hear at least a few songs back on the stereo again!

A good collection of songs by the deepest voice in Country Music (yup, moreso than Johnny Cash). It's all here including that famous lead guitar that never leaves the top three strings! This disc will bring back memories; to me, it sounds like WWVA Wheeling on a Friday night driving through the Alleghenies. "Two Six Packs to go" and "6 Days on the Road" are the finest songs here, but every one presented here is well worth a listen, and repeated play. Great recordings and clear vocals.

This 20th Century Masters release of Dave Dudley's "best of" is far from that.His famous "Six Days..." is not the original recording as it was done earlier in /63 on another label;this is the remake.And many of his major Merc hits are missing such as "Truckers Prayer","Anything Leaving Town","Vietnam Blues","One more Mile",etc.
Dudley born in 1928 in Wisconsin has his first brush with recording success in 1959 with "Where there's a will".In early 1963 he had his biggest blockbuster hit"Six Days on the Road" with a small independent label.Later that year he was snatched up by Mercury records where he would have most of his success with some of the songs previously mentioned above.Mercury would drop Dudley in the later 70s but he continued to record and was a big draw on the concert circuit.His last big hurrah came after 9/11 when he recorded "American Trucker".In December of 2003 we lost Mr.D but his legacy lingers on.However his legacy would best be served in a more thorough compilation than this one.This CD shows an appalling lack of judgment and selection on Universals part but it unfortunately is a not an uncommon thing with these 20th Century Masters releases;some hit a bulls eye while others like this one fall far short of the mark.Mr D.deserves much better than this.