Customer Reviews

The Female Elvis: Complete Recordings 1956-60

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is fine example of polished rockabilly from the 50's! Janis Martin rocks with Nashville session players like Chet Atkins (on guitar), Floyd Cramer (on Piano), Grady Martin (on guitar), Murray Harman, Jr. (drums), Bob Moore (bass),... Same musicians who were playing for Elvis. Sessions were produced by Steve Sholes, who was Elvis' producer too. Good rockabilly and nice country ballads!

Well, I just started my Rockabilly collection, and this looked like one to definitely have. I bought this with Wanda Jackson's Queen of Rockabilly CD. I am thoroughly enjoying both. Janis Martin has a very smooth voice, less edgy than Wanda Jackson's. This CD is excellent and provides some great classic Rockabilly guitar sounds, and Janis' voice is just great. I'd definitely recommend this to Rockabilly fans. I personally prefer Wanda Jackson's Rockabilly style (a little more edgy and wild) to Janis Martin's, but both are excellent examples of women who knew how to rock and roll in the 50s/60s.

This is such a great album, simular to bad girl Miss Wanda Jackson, but mellow almost like a patsy cline style, well mix em up and there you have Janis Maritn. She's absolutley great and you will not be dissapointed!
They don't say the female Elvis for nothing;)

why does every other reviewer compare Janis Martin with Wanda Jackson? Do they expect her to BE Wanda Jackson? This is a good CD of rockabilly tunes by Miss Janis Martin, who was billed as "The Female Elvis", maybe because she had most of the same RCA studio guys backing her up on these recordings. All of these songs are enjoyable, and as long as you are not expecting to hear early Wanda Jackson, you will like it!

This is a great cd, a PERFECT TEN, on a scale from one to ten. Janis swings hard, and plays great, and her voice is cool and swingin'. Janis has a nice clear diction, and is the quintessential female rockabilly singer. If you like jazz, blues or swing music, you will enjoy this cd.

I saw her recently and she has lost nothing as far as her singing and energy level is concerned. This cd gather all her classic recordings from the 50's, and unlike Wanda Jackson(as great as she is), and every other gal rockabilly philly from the era, Janis may be the only gal who didn't have a western accent, or that didn't sound liek a country singer, she sounds more liek a r&b singer(think Ruth Brown), she realyl can bop, and shows how hard she rocks and swings on numbers like Drugstore Rock'n'roll and My Boy Elvis. A great cd that needs to be in every rockabilyl fans cd colelction. ESSENTIAL listening.

That's what I thought when I got this cd, went beyond my expectations. While a lot of oldies sound outdated, Janis sounds really fresh. Hearing her you'd think she was a person of today trying to revive the rockabilly era. But she was in the original era making it more wonderful.
It's amusing she was called the female Elvis. The linear notes pointed out that she didn't even hear Elvis until two years into her career. When hearing him her reaction was I like Carl Perkins more.

Being nicknamed "the female Elvis" sure would be a hard reputation to shake. Still, worse things could happen. And make no mistake, Martin was one ripsnorting rockabilly gal, and if anything she may have outdone The King one her hardest-rockin' numbers. This excellent retrospective of her old RCA material goes a long way to explain Martin's enduring legend in the rockabilly scene, gathering together two great LPs put out by the Bear Family label in the early '80s. Great stuff! (By the way, Martin came out of retirement a few years back, and cut a few duets with Rosie Flores, which got released on the Oakland-based Hightone label.)

This is one of the best rockabilly cds that I have bought all year. Her songs are amazingly fun, upbeat and although easily arranged, full of many complicated rhythms. Martin's voice is powerful and often times full of the heart and soul that rockabilly is all about. If you like your rockabilly straight forward and full of that "get up and go" this CD is a certain MUST HAVE!!!

Janis Martin had a great voice, worked with the same Nashville musicians as The Everly Brothers and Elvis and cut simmilar material. The Female Elvis tag is really misleading as her records sound fresher and more inspired than a lot of the stuff Elvis was recording at the time. A well produced and good sounding CD.