Customer Reviews

Dev'Lish Mary

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this band about a month ago for the first time in Atlanta, when they opened for the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and they were amazing!! (I was even lucky enought to meet them, and they signed my cd!) Their set was full of energy and had the audience jumping with the great mix of hot jazz and country and western swing. Elana's fiddle playing is fast and lively, and Whit's twangin' guitar is the perfect compliment. This CD, their latest, does an excellent job of capturing the essence of the live show. Even if you're not a fan of this type of music, you should find your toes tappin' to the likes of 'Dev'lish Mary' and 'Tchavolo Swing.' The band also has a few originals on the cd and they're good as well. All in all, an excellent buy from a great up-and-coming band, and well-worth the money!

After hearing the wonderful version of Sally Goodin here, that almost measures up to the version Bob Wills put on his Tiffany Transcriptions, there was no way I could live without this CD.

The Hot Club of Cow Town is a great band. Particularly on the initial records, we are seeing straight up Bob Wills music. The sound and most of the selections come from Bob Willis's great Tiffany Transcriptions of the mid 1940s. The Tiffany transcriptions were records made to be played on radio stations (back when radio stations usually did not play regular retail sold records). They were hotter, looser, and with a fuller repertoire than the recordings they were making for Columbia during these years.

The Hot Club picks up this music so well, and in such a lively spirit without being directly imitative that on some selections here I expect to hear Bob Wills, Joe Holley, or Tommy Duncan singing.

Their musical achievement is to do this with a trio. They all were veterans of large real sized Western Swing aggregations in NYC and California and Texas. They were true to life Western Swing bands, but there aren't a lot of venues that are going to pay enough money for a 7, 8. or 9 piece bands to support its members, a factor that helped Rock and Roll get rid of lots of Western Swing, Big Band swing, and R & B groups in the 1950s, a trio or foursome is just cheaper to hire than a mini orchestra.

Being an inspiring wannabe baby steps fiddler, I really in love with Elena's work on all the albums. She takes a lot of her lead from the great Joe Holley's solos and obligatos with Wills in the 40s and when he rejoined the Playboys in the early 1960s. However, Elena gets a bigger richer more musically fluent sound. She stays hot, but puts a lot of bow into her fiddling and is the apparent star of this band.

However, the real greatness here is in the rhythm section. How do they do it? Just a guitarist and bassist. You'd swear there was the usual lineup in Western Swing with a rhythm guitarist playing behind the guitar leads, a drummer, and maybe a rhythm banjo player too and maybe people in a horn or fiddle section playing rhythm riffs when they aren't playing lead. Yet, it is just a bassist and a guitar player. Their rhythm is not merely good as what Wills had during his Tiffany recordings, it is much better. This almost reaches the quality of rhythm reached on the best Western Swing recording in history, the combined work of Eldon Shamblin, Smokey Dacus, and Tommy Allsup on "For the Last Time." That's saying something.

The guest appearance of cornetist Peter Ecklund and late 1940s, early 1950s Bob Wills steel guitarist Bobby Koefert on some cuts here is wonderous.

It is simple about which Hot Club CDs to get. Buy them all! Maybe you might even get one or two extra!
Buy, em, hear em send em money

Hot Club of Cowtown is an amazing band. 3 pieces - swinging fiddle, hot guitar, and rock-steady upright bass. Part Django and part Western Swing, Hot Club of Cowtown brings it all home with arrangements including "Dev'lish Mary", "When the Bloom is on the Sage", and the classic "Stardust". The band is joined by first rate sidemen. The trumpet (used on a few songs) provides a great traditional jazz feel. If you ever get the chance to see Hot Club of Cowtown live, go to their gig by all means. The fiddle/guitar interplay on several of the songs is very nice as are many of the guitar and fiddle solos. This is music that is rarely heard on the radio, so do yourself a favor and buy this CD. Play it in your car and you'll be rollin' down the wide open road with your foot a-tappin'. Perfect for that big Route 66 roadtrip that you've been thinking about.

It's really impossible to go wrong with any of the Hot Club's CDs, but I think Dev'lish Mary still ranks as my sentimental favorite since it was the first one I bought. The sound is equal parts Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt. This album is a good mix of mid-tempo swingers (It's My Lazy Day and When the Bloom is on the Sage stand out), and barn burners (like Little Liza Jane). There's also some frenzied gypsy music thrown in for good measure. It's all played flawlessly with great energy. My personal favorite is their take on Stardust which really ranks as THE most beautiful version of this song I have ever heard.

Hot Club of Cowtown had a CD release party at the Continental Club in Austin on Sept 9, 2000 that I was lucky enough to attend while visiting Texas. Most of the material on the CD was featured in their two tight and fast moving sets and the packed house of Austin music lovers loved it. The band plays their own western swing arrangements of well-known tunes as well as original songs. Guitar, fiddle and stand up bass are all super. They earned their encore. I want more and am buying the CD today.

Now I have all three of Hot Club of Cowtown's releases. They all swing and are absolutely delightful. Real feel good music. Swingin' Stampede is my favorite and that gets five stars. Keep recording.

This trio is FANTASTIC! Were lucky enough to see and hear them this past Labor Day appearing at Rythm and Roots, in Rhode Island. Bought their latest CD (as above), and relived the pleasure all over again. So many recognisable old tunes to enjoy all over again, their talents are truly great. Have already bought their two other CD's, Swingin' Stampede (put away for a Xmas surprise), and Tall Tales, good but not AS good as Dev'lish Mary. Cant wait to hear more!

My tastes in music must be pretty eclectic. On the one hand, when listening to my stereo I tend to prefer electronica above all else these days. However, when I hear live music, some acts such as the Hot Club of Cowtown just couldn't be any better, but I don;t particularly like to sit at home listening to them on the stereo. Go figure. In any case, I've now attended three Hot Club concerts put on by Dark-Thirty Productions of Lakeside, California and all three were wonderful. As such, I bought a couple Hot Club CDs, one of which was "Dev'lis Mary."

I suppose you'd regard the songs on "Dev'lish Mary" as classics or golden oldies or something like that. When I grew up in the 50s and developed an interest in music, these songs were already considered oldies. Well, so be it. They're great songs and the Hot Club does superb renditions of them. I note that the music is classified as country on the printout of the disc, but that's very misleading. Gosh, if you have to classify it as something why not call it Western Swing or Hot Jazz. It's blatantly old fashioned music and totally out of step with modern sounds. If I had heard this music on my father's juke box when he had a small cafe/bar in smalltown North Dakota in the mid-40s, it would fit. In fact, it would have been outstanding! The crowd would have loved it!

The recording has the sparse sound of a trio with only slight additions of horns and steel guitar on a few selections. Basically, it's guitar, bass and violin. That's it, plus vocals on some selections. All performers are excellent. No, outstanding! This music can really swing and the energy is incredible! The accompanying vocals are excellent. If you ever get the chance, see this group live. You won't regret it, I guarantee. It's a tight band with an incredible chemistry and provides really fun listening and watching. The "Devlish Mary" recording is excellent, but I greatly prefer Hot Club live, and I might not enjoy this recording so much had I not seen them live. In any case, it's an outstanding and highly enjoyable CD. It really swings!

Gary Peterson

This is another phenomenal album. It has one of my favorite renditions of Devil's Dream ever recorded and is, in true HCOC fashion, a genuinely good album. The only reason I give this album four stars instead of five is that it is probably the weakest album out of the five albums they have released. That having been said, to call this album the weakest is like picking the weakest between Tony Atlas, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and early-80's Stallone... yeah, Stallone would be the weakest, but he's still lightyears tougher than the rest of the folks out there. The point of that little ramble was this: Buy the album, you will be impressed!

Fun new swing group - this album is one that will run for a while without getting tired.