Customer Reviews

Molly O'Day & The Cumberland Mountain Folks

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The greatest female Country Music singer to me is and always will be Molly O'Day (born LaVerne Williamson in Pike County, Kentucky in 1923 but today more associated with West Virginia). She had the same raw voice, power and emotion that Hank Williams brought to the world; and her fans responded to her the same way.

The two careers are forever tied together. Before Hank became a recording artist, his mentor, Fred Rose, signed Williams as a writer, giving O'Day several songs to record for Columbia in December 1946. The songs were "When God Comes And Gathers His Jewels" and "Six More Miles To The Graveyard;" and "Singing Waterfall" and "I Don't Care If Tomorrow Never Comes" one year later. Hank, of course, later recorded the songs on his own.

These four songs are part of a 36-song collection on two CDs, her entire recorded output on Columbia from 1946 to 1951. Among the many other gems are "Teardrops Falling in the Snow," the self-penned "When My Times Comes To Go," and the traditional, secular song "Poor Ellen Smith." Most of the songs are religious (including everything on the final two recording sessions), but having said that's where she drew her strength, that's what she recorded.

The vocals are either Molly's or shared with her husband. She was an excellent clawhammer banjo player and guitarist and we hear both here. The Cumberland Mountain Folks band included brother `Skeets' Williamson on fiddle until the next to last recording session in June 1950. George `Speedy' Krise played dobro on the first 16 songs Molly recorded. Noted singers today, Mac Wiseman was her first bass player.

Although at the height of her popularity in 1951, Molly developed tuberculosis and a recording session the next year had to be cancelled. She did some home recordings in 1961 and 1968, but Molly never performed in public again outside of church functions. She had promised herself at age 14, at a church service which she felt she had been saved, that singing in public was seeking world fame and that it was the wrong path in life.

Molly O'Day died on cancer in December 1987. Her spirit and music live forever on this beautiful keepsake from Bear Family Records.

Often called "the female Hank Williams," Molly O'Day is over-looked in country music. This is a great collection, with liner notes from her husband (who was her singing partner professionally). This stuff is so real and raw that it will bring you to tears. When Fred Rose hired Hank Williams as a writer, Molly O'Day was who Hank was hired to write for. Some of Hank's later hits were covers of Molly's songs. This is great stuff.

This is a pricey volume. Bear Family gives the listener everything Molly O'Day recorded for Columbia with excellent sound reproduction; but Ivan Tribe's 27 page essay (with rare photos) raises more questions than it answers. Above all, who was Molly O'Day? We get an extensive overview of her career, but apart from oblique references to her religious faith we still don't know what made her tick.

That aside, it's her penetrating voice that makes this a worthy collection to own. Molly embodied the elusive Appalachian soul; she was the forerunner and template for artists like Loretta Lynn. Her plaintive, throaty voice exuded conviction and, above all, authenticity. This record also demonstrates the uneasy merging of styles that occured in Southern Appalachia following WWII. On tracks like "Poor Ellen Smith" and "Coming Down from God" Molly unleashes a feverish clawhammer banjo barrage, harkening back to the Old-Time music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But "Singing Waterfall" and "I Don't Care if Tomorrow Never Comes" reflect the emergent honky-tonk style of country music (the Dobro, which was just beginning to impact country music, is prominent throughout). In between are spurious hints of proto-bluegrass. But the unifying theme throughout these 36 tracks is Molly's unswerving Christian faith. It was the unresolved tension between faith and show business, we are told, that ultimately led her to choose an early retirement from country music.

The listener will be left to project his or her own imagination onto Molly O'Day, a shape-shifting artist whose voice still reaches into the soul and shakes it.

Great folk and country music, some of the best ever made. This CD is the same as the Bear Family 2-disc import, so go there for the song listing and other information.

Although I don't agree with the term "female Hank Williams," I am a Hank Williams fan who thinks this Molly O'Day music is great. To begin with, it's almost essential for big Hank fans to have the original recordings of the Williams compositions on this album. However, rather than the desperation and uncertainty that give many of Hank's tunes their strength and emotion, Molly O'Day sings from an optimism and religious conviction that just as sincerely represents the singer, and gives her music an equivalent power. The band is also top notch, with lots of nice dobro, and I like every song on this collection except the one which some big city studio bonehead ruined by adding a baby crying.

Just a thought. But we could forget all that gender stuff and that about who came first (Molly O'Day) and listen to this wonderful CD. It is so raw and moving you will smell the old wood stove.