Customer Reviews

Moe & Joe: Ultimate Hits Collection

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I used to listen to albums of Moe and Joe when I was a teenager. Their songs had a lot of humor and "good old boy" type of lyrics. If you are a fan of Moe and Joe, I'd recommend the CD. They are still enjoyable and fun to listen to.

Finally the best of the Moe and Joe duets on one cd ! Great stuff! Much better than the Sony one which is mostly solo recordings by Bandy and Stampley

This is an essential collection for those who want a CD that captures all of an act's hit recordings. There are 12 songs in all...nine of them hit the country charts. The final three are just as good but the duet craze in country music has dwindled down by the mid '80s and they never charted as a result.

Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley both had successful solo recordings prior to their team-up but afterward the pair of "Moe and Joe" became tremendously popular. Their duo partnership was super hot during 1979-1981 and they had a successful reunion in 1984-1985.

For those unfamiliar, Moe was one of the many faces of honky-tonk music during the 1970's with a series of songs usually about drinking or cheating. Joe was more of a country-soul-blues singer...country singer Travis Tritt is often said to have a similar vocal style to Joe Stampley. I tend to agree...particularly on the rowdy/up-tempo songs.

Moe and Joe benefited from the Urban Cowboy fad...each singer had the macho tough-guy image that went hand-in-hand with their material. Usual publicity photo's of the two during this time were in bar rooms or holding beer cans like the picture that appears on this CD...most of it stemming from their first hit, "Just Good Ol' Boys", which created that image. That particular single hit #1. They followed it with the Top-10 "Holding The Bag" and the Top-15 Wayne Kemp composition, "Tell Ole I Ain't Here".

"Hey Joe, Hey Moe" was a Top-10 single in 1981. The song was a partial re-write of a Carl Smith hit called "Hey Joe". The song was re-written as a duet and it fit perfectly. "Honky Tonk Queen" took on the issue of cross-dressing and it hit the Top-15 in 1981 and it was their last single together for a couple of years.

They returned with "Where's the Dress?", a satirical recording spoofing Boy George and it had the two pondering whether they should start dressing like a woman if that's what it takes to be a millionaire. It became a Top-10 in 1984. They followed it with their seventh and final Top-40 single, "The Boy's Night Out". They had two more chart hits, "Daddy's Honky Tonk" and the ballad "Still On a Roll".

The remaining three songs weren't chart hits but are okay. "We've Got Our Moe-Joe Working" is basically their version of the R&B song of the same name but with the altered spelling of "Moe-Joe" instead of the slang phrase, "mojo". "Country Boys" is a declaration of pride...a song that explains that no matter what, they'll always be country boys. The CD closes with the sing-a-long "Let's Hear it For the Working Man".

All of these songs are the original recordings. A lot of times a record label will offer re-recordings of earlier hits...but each and every song on here are from their original release years: 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, and 1985.

This cd brought a lot of memories back for my boyfriend. He keeps playing it over and over. The service with Amazon was wonderful.

This is a great CD! Talk about an 8 track flashback! It has most all of their popular duos.