Customer Reviews

Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends And Lies (And More)

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Bobby Bare has always been able to project the feel of a "culture" I grew up in and miss terribly.

To hear him sing and listen to the words peels away 60 years and I can see, hear, feel, and even taste

and smell the total experience and of my youth. Rosalies Good Eats Cafe was in every little cowtown

railroad town and truckstop of my Wyoming. If you arent a bit older or from an older west and midwest

you probably wont know or care about what I'm talking about, but it was a harder but ever so much

more a more civil caring and less violent life.

Writer Shel Silverstein had several high-profile admirers in Nashville, notably Johnny Cash, who struck gold with "A Boy Named Sue," as well as Waylon Jennings and Bobby Bare, who each recorded about a bazillion of his songs. In 1973, the boozy, laconic Bare commissioned Silverstein to write an LP's worth of songs for what would become Lullabys, Legends And Lies, a concept album on RCA that yielded two chart-topping hits ("Marie Laveaux" and "Daddy, What If," a duet with his son, Bobby Bare, Jr.) and put Bare's then-floundering career back on an even keel.

Silverstein and Bare's partnership continued for years, and this deluxe, 2-CD reissue includes not just the Lullabys album, but over a dozen other tracks recorded in the decade that followed. The collection is one of the finer examples of the positive side of industry consolidation, since it includes a bunch of great, wonderfully offensive novelty songs recorded in the early '80s when Bobby was on Columbia. Cheerfully obnoxious tunes like "Quaaludes Again," "Tequila Sheila" and "Numbers" are really what cemented Bare's place in the outlaw pantheon, and it's great to hear them all together, better still to have them so handily placed in context, along with a couple dozen other Silverstein chestnuts. This stuff obviously isn't for everyone, but for the right folks, this will be a goldmine. Let's hope Sony-BMG keeps up the good work with these multi-label mash-ups, 'cause discs like this show the results can be pretty cool! (DJ Joe Sixpack)

The lengthy artistic collaboration between country singer Bobby Bare and author/poet/cartoonist/songwriter Shel Silverstein began in earnest with this 1973 LP. At the time, Bare had been regularly charting country hits for fifteen years, and Silverstein had found great success as a songwriter with the Irish Rovers (1968's "The Unicorn") Johnny Cash (1969's "A Boy Named Sue"), Loretta Lynn (1971's "One's on the Way"), and Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show (1972's "Sylvia's Mother"). Bare himself covered "Sylvia's Mothers" and rode it to #12 on the country chart and subsequently invited Silverstein to write him a theme album. Bare self produced the album in the Spring of 1973.

Silverstein's witty, humorous and ultimately affectionate songs found a terrific interpreter in Bare. As a singer who could be arch and coy at the same time, Bare explored both the warmth and tongue-in-cheek nature of Silverstein's works. Recorded in-studio in front of a small group of family and friends, Bare's spoken word introductions and the audience's laughter provides continuity between tall tales of Paul Bunyan, voodoo, magic, swamps, bikers and robots. The album's hits include the tale of a New Orleans voodoo queen, "Marie Lavaux," a duet with Bare's then five-year old son Bobby Jr., "Daddy What If," and a bluesy tune of brawling, "The Winner."

RCA Legacy's reissue adds a second disc that includes Bare's earlier version of "Sylvia's Mother," which isn't nearly as bombastic as the Silverstein-produced version by Dr. Hook, and a sampling from the next eight years of Bare/Silverstein collaborations on RCA and Columbia. Highlights include the children's chorus accompanying "Singin' in the Kitchen," the ironic prophesy of "Brian Hennessey," and the touchingly sad, "This Guitar Is For Sale." There are bank robberies, marriages and paroles gone awry, a eulogy, and a male chauvinist's comeuppance among songs drawn from seven different Bare albums of the '70s and '80s.

Bare's in great form throughout, spinning yarns with a smile and a hint that there's some truth to be found amid the fanciful stories. Silverstein found other singers to connect with his material, but never anyone who connected so fully or for so long as Bare. The double CD set is housed in a tri-fold digipack with a 24-page booklet that includes the original liner and song notes, a new essay by Rich Kienzle and over a dozen photos. [©2007 hyperbolium dot com]

This is a man with a voice that could make any record famous.

This album is A+++++++++

I HAVE THE ORIGINAL ALBUM ON A VYNL RECORDING ITS A GREAT ALBUM BUT NOW HAVING ON DISC I WILL WEAR IT OUT LISTENING TO IT IN THE CAR ALL THE TIME.

Just a marvelous collection on real country - not "new country" - songs without a lot of twang. Bare's deliverence of Shell Silverstein's efforts create a most enjoyable listen.

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my husband who loves the song Rosalie's Good Eats Cafe. Amazon was THE ONLY place who had the CD with this cut. Thanks Amazon