Great Records Of The Decade: 40's Hits - Country

Great Records Of The Decade (Series) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 22, 2010)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: CURB
• ASIN: B000000CV6
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,391 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #30 in Music > Country > Instrumental
  • #40 in Music > Country > Classic Country > Bakersfield Sound
  • #65 in Music > Country > Western Swing

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Almost A Good 1940s Collection, July 29, 2007

By 

AvidOldiesCollector (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Great Records Of The Decade: 40's Hits - Country (Audio CD)

Right there on the cover of this CD are the words "The Original Recordings" which, to era music collectors like me anyway, is a signal that they are not re-done hits by the original artists. And, for the most part, that is the truth in this instance, from the rollicking Mule Train, which Tennessee Ernie took to # 1 Country and # 9 Pop in 1949, to the original version of You Are My Sunshine, penned and sung in 1940 by Jimmy Davis, legendary governor of Louisiana. Also here are the hard-to-find I Love You Because, a # 1 C&W for Leon Payne in 1949, and the 1946 Merle Travis # 1 C&W [for 14 weeks]/# 26 Pop, Divorce Me C.O.D.

And, or so I thought, Capitol's first million seller in 1947's Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! [That Cigarette] which Tex Williams took to # 1 C&W AND Pop for a combined 40 weeks in 1947, including 16 and 6 respectively at the top positions. But when you play it you'll hear the line "the other night I had me a date with the cutest little girl in these FIFTY states."

Now, unless old Tex had a crystal ball that showed him 1959 and the induction of Alaska and Hawaii as the 49th and 50th states, you have to think that the song was either re-recorded that year, OR dubbed in that one spot to override "forty-eight." Either way it is clearly NOT the complete original.

I doubt if Mike Curb even noticed the glitch when putting the CD together in 1990 and wonder if ANYONE other than me - an admitted nit-picker when it comes to such things - ever picked it up? In any event, I would still recommend it to anyone seeking out some of the top C&W tunes of that era, despite the lack of liner notes.

3.0 out of 5 stars real country, November 22, 2011

By 

Brian Maitland (Vancouver, BC, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Great Records Of The Decade: 40's Hits - Country (Audio CD)

This is the real stuff not the slickly produced modern country music and for that alone it's worth picking up. Having said that I can understand why I'm not a huge fan of country as singing out of tune and that twangy guitar sound grates after awhile.

For the non-country obsessed fan I found only Hank Thompson's "Humpty Dumpty Heart" and the classic Tex Ritter's "I Got Spurs" hold up. The rest are fine but I think most music fans would get bored after a few listens.

I was more fascinated by the "sound" they got back in the 1940s more than the actual content of the songs.