Customer Reviews

Just Rockin & Rollin

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This cd crosses many generes, however it is 1st and foremost an exellent rockabilly cd, with touches of blues, jump blues, western swing, boogie bop, r&b, rock'n'roll, jazz and swing. There is an exellent and very tight horn section on many tracks, and a heated rhythm section, complete with a driving bass, in the tradition of mid 50's rockabilly. Great vocals from this legend, who sounds pretty much the same as he did back in the 50's. This comeback cd, in fact the best document of his recorded works ever, and is among his finest recorded works as well . A fun, hard jumping rockabilly session, which is influenced by everything from Tex-Mex mariachi to Django Reinhardt and Spade Cooley. Awesome rockabilly cd.

Ronnie Dawson really came into his own on the back-end of his career. The series of records he put out in the 80s and 90s are in a class by themselves. Dawson's loose, assured singing and his great licks resonate with the years of dues paying the man put in to get to this point. On this record some songs are a little hokey (Club Wig Wam) but when you put on "You've got a long way to go" listen to the three guitars of Dawson, Eddie Angel, and Dutch rockabilly kid Tjarko Jeen bubbling along and you should get the idea. They play "Sucker for a cheap guitar" and if you're not smiling and jiggling then give it up! I saw Dawson play at a festival in Seattle. He had young Jeen with him and he was teaching him a kind of windmil thing to do when he took a solo. A little bit of stagecraft. It was a lot of fun. I wonder if Tjarko is still doing that move?

Listening to this collection brings home to you how complex rock n roll really was - despite the sneering of critics about its simplistic lyrics and sparing use of chords - and how hard it is to recreate outside its time, even by one of the great performers of that age. Ronnie Dawson's performance fulfils one of the most important - possibly the most important - criteria of a rock n roll definition: it's raucous, rollickin' good fun from start to finish. But it's a little bit blues here and a little bit country there and despite delivering it with energy levels almost indecent for a man THAT old, Ronnie never quite stitches all the elements together into one of those magic, long-lost rock n roll experiences that grabs you somewhere below the diaphragm and suspends you three feet off the floor with your legs kickin' every which way. Most, though, it lacks the brooding dark side that, manifested perhaps as as teenage yearning, perhaps as adult lasciviousness or just as plain ol' meanness, gave rock n roll its revolutionary force and visceral appeal, and which the most profane and offensive of subsequent genres have failed to approach. Even when delivering lines like, ``I wouldn't give you the smell off my feet'', Ronnie manages to sound like a nice guy, albeit a noisy one. Was he really the skinny kid with the blond crewcut who, despite his balls not having dropped, delivered Action Packed with such menace that you half expected him to come around the next corner in a Sherman tank and blow you away just for the fun of it? Quibbling aside, Ronnie is, for anyone who loves rock n roll and hates what the conservative estabishment had done to it as early as 1957, an important man doing important work - one of the few surviving treasures of a heartbreakingly brief Golden Age. The wicked sense of fun he brings to his work is, along with the aforementioned brooding underbelly, another aspect that has been long lost from popular music. I will continue to buy everything he produces, in the hope he will finally look deep into his roots and find the missing links. In the meantime, Just Rocking and Rolling? Close, but not quite.

I was spinnin this mighty wheel of steel in my cah last night & really dug the tunes but felt a bit sad too. I have had the pleasure of seeing Mr Rockin Bones himself a few times & all great shows by one of Rocka billys unsung heros. Meeting him was truly an honor as well. What a nice guy. Truly humble & very endearing to his audiences....the great ones always are (Link Wray comes to mind in that regard). I was tapping my fingers & toes but was bummed when I thought that I'd never see Ron ever...(he sadly passeed away a few yrs back from cancer). I digress. This lp (one of his last I think) just rocks from start to finish. It also features some nice geetar picking from Eddy - Los Straight Jacket- Angel & a bunch of great tunes like "Humbuggin, Just rocking & rollin, Veronica, Tired of Travelin, Sucker for a Cheap Guitar & all the tunes just rule....Thank God for recordings as we can all keep this rock n roll giants memory alive & well.

Lacking the kitsch that can spoil music, this disc is great fun. However, the producers/engineers must have thought it would be cool to make it sound like it's coming through an AM radio. It's not.

If Jerry Lee Lewis and Keith Richards had a two-headed love child, this is what he'd sound like.The real deal.