Customer Reviews

Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945-1970)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Since Amazon failed to include the artists on this 2-CD set of classic R&B from Nashville, I thought I'd provide it, as well as what little I know of the artists & songs involved.

1. Nashville Jumps / Cecil Gant 2:57
2. Buzzard Pie / Green, Rudy & His Orchestra 2:43
3. Skip's Boogie / Kid King's Combo 2:56
4. L&N Special / Christine Kittrell 2:33
5. Sittin' Here Drinking / Christine Kittrell 3:31
6. Just Walkin' in the Rain / The Prisonaires 2:45
7. If You and I Could Be Sweethearts / The Varieteers 2:20
8. Baby Let's Play House / Arthur Gunter 2:46
9. Christene / Little Hank & The Rhythm Kings 2:46
10. It's Love Baby (24 Hours a Day) / Earl Gaines 2:41
11. Rollin' Stone / The Marigolds 2:55
12. You Can Make It If You Try / Gene Allison 2:10
13. Rockin' the Joint / Esquerita 2:02
14. Let's Trade a Little / Audrey Bryant 2:07
15. Say You Really Care / Roscoe Shelton 2:26
16. Somebody, Somewhere / Larry Birdsong 2:36
17. Pipe Dreams / Beck, Jimmy & His Orchestra 2:16
18. Royal Crown Hair Dressing Ad / Little Richard 0:29
Bonus Track
19. White Rose (Theme) / Earl Gaines 2:02
Bonus Track


DISC 2
1. John R Theme/Ernie's Record Mart Commercial /Monkey Doin' Woman / John Richbourg 3:13
2. Monkey Doin' Woman
3. What'd I Say / Etta James 3:17
--Cover of the Ray Charles classic. Live
4. Really, Pt. 1 / Jones, Johnny & The Imperial 7 2:13
5. Just Like Him / Frank Howard & The Commanders 2:35
6. Anna (Go to Him) / Arthur Alexander 2:50
--This song was later covered by the Beatles, and Alexander is the only person to ever have been covered by the Beatles, Stones and Bob Dylan.
7. Snap Your Fingers / Joe Henderson 3:00
8. Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean / Ruth Brown 2:58
9. Something Tells Me / Sam Baler 2:25
10. Sunny / Bobby Hebb 2:48
--Top 5 pop hit from 1967
11. I Want To (Do Everything for You) / Joe Tex 2:09

-- Later covered by 70's hard rock band Nazareth
12. Bigger and Better / The Hytones 2:24
13. Since I Met You Baby / The Avons 2:42
14. The Chokin' Kind / Joe Simon 2:42
--The original of the song covered by Joss Stone on "The Soul Seesions".
15. She Shot a Hole in My Soul / Clifford Curry 2:26
16. Gotta Get Yourself Together / Valentines 2:32
17. Soul Shake / Jo Jo Benson 2:26
--Covered later by Delaney & Bonnie
18. Reconsider Me / Johnny Adams 3:50
19. Everlasting Love / Robert Knight 2:59
--Terrific song that's been covered by Carl Carlton, U2, Gloria Estafan and, uhh, Rex Smith with Suzi Quatro. This is the original.

I read all the other reviews and realized that this album is many things to many people. I was impressed by how many people took the effort to review this great collector's item. For myself, it was a bolt out of the blue thanks to being featured on the SUNDAY MORNING TV show. When I was 14 years old (1954) I built a HEATHKIT short-wave radio. I strung 100' of copper wire from our TV antenna tower to the top of the basketball pole. All I had hoped for was to get the BBC or Radio Free Europe. What I got [instead] was Radio Free Nashville ! WLAC, Bill Allen and music I had only heard rumors of. "That kind of music" was not played on mainstream radio in those days. Word got around school that I was listening to Little Richard, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, and Jimmy Reed. I didn't get any more chicks because of it, but it put me in a very elite group of R&B listeners. Once again, AMAZON DOT COM makes regression to our childhoods possible! Thanks, you guys . . . Harrison T.

This is a a wonderful compilation. The title of my review is stolen from a NY Times review of the Night Train to Nashville that made me go out and buy it. It isn't totally true since I recognized some of the later songs but it was an eye opener. It is pretty sad that most of the country missed out on some of the greatest music of their time; especially when pap like How Much is that Doggie in the Window was being shoved down people throats.

My husband and I enjoyed listening to the CDs on a 5 hour long road trip and thoroughly enjoyed them. There was enough style changes and diverstity to keep you interested and a lot of solid artistry. The White Rose petroleum jelly ad and the Little Richard commercial are a hoot!

As to be expected, there is some really good stuff on these discs. Unfortunately, some mediocre tunes that are not that impressive crop up here and there.

While I love sixties soul on a personal note, disc one is overall the better side. The early barrellhouse boogie-woogie tunes are quite appealing and hard to sit still to. (The Louis Jordanesqe "Buzzard Pie," obviously inspired by the King Cole Trio's "Straighten Up and Fly Right" is lots of fun). The Prisonaires track is quite beautiful and Little Richard's mentor Esquirita really rocks the house, as well as the tunes by Larry Birdsong and Jimmy Peck's Orchestra.

On disc 2, Etta James rocks out with her version of "What I Say" and "Shy Guy" Douglas does some fine harmonica work. The Vocal Groups like the Avons, Valentines, Hytones, and Frank Howard are okay (as well as Arthur Alexander's original "Anna Go To Him" remembered well by Beatles fans and the lovely original version of "Everlasting Love"). But the rest of this stuff is nothing special.

The Country Music Hall of Fame is behind this collection, but they're hoping to remind folks that Nashville is "MUSIC City U.S.A.", not necessarily "Country Music City U.S.A." What you get is 35 cuts ranging from doo-wop to smooth vocals to gritty R&B shouters. Many of the cuts were taken from original 45 and 78 records but the audio restoration has been done well...they don't SOUND like vinyl transfers. Is the thesis of Nashville as R&B focal point realized here? Fairly well: I'm not about to replace Detroit, Memphis or Chicago in my mind as great locations for R&B but this set is fairly solid.

HIGHLIGHTS:
You'll probably already know Arthur `Hardrock' Gunter's "Baby Let's Play House",Arthur Alexander's "Anna (Go to Him)",Bobby Hebb's "Sunny" and Robert Knight's "Everlasting Love". Outside of those, there are plenty of lesser-knowns that make the grade: The Marigolds' rollicking doo-wop number "Rollin' Stone", Rudy Green's "Buzzard Pie" (reminiscent of `Straighten Up and Fly Right' but edgier, with the buzzard goading his intended victim to just die and get it over with), the call and response of Audrey Bryant's "Let's Trade a Little", and Larry Birdsong's ebullient "Somebody, Somewhere" on disc 1. The latter disc's high points include Joe Henderson's Nat King Cole smooth vocal on "Snap Your Fingers", a sassy "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" from Ruth Brown, Joe Tex's near Temptations sound on "I Want To", The Avons sound like long lost Shirelles on "Since I Met You Baby", and the Hytones are defiantly moving on to "Bigger and Better" things since baby's been gone.

BOTTOM LINE:
There's nothing really poor here and quite a few of these are outstanding, even outside of the hit charters. Not the best collection for soul novices but if you're already an R&B fan, you'll probably enjoy this.

3 1/2 stars

Thanks for the insights above, but one correction: the original of Chokin' Kind was Waylon Jennings, included on his 1967 Love of the Common People LP. The Joe Simon cover included here (a great, great version), was a 1969 hit, and Ii assume released in that year.

Interestingly, the song is a perfect example of just how "cross-cultural" Nashville has always been. While Simon's version has become a second tier soul standard, it was actually written by prototypical country songwriter Harlan Howard (I Fall To Pieces, Above & Beyond and dozens of other hits).

In his prime, Howard cranked out literally handfuls of songs a day, getting several at a time recorded by various country stars and lesser lights. He at some point recorded and released the song on an LP himself, though I'm not sure if it preceded Wayon's.

He died in 2002 after a long and fruitful career.

(I've got this set on order, the songs I've already heard merit the 5-star rating.)

Night Train to Nashville brings to light an era of black music and culture in Nashville that I had not been aware of. What a delight to discover this! Retracing part of Nashville's history through this wonderful music and the excellent liner notes with photos has been a broadening experience. It even prompted me to visit the site of the last remaining standing building that housed one of Nashville's black clubs that showcased this music. I was saddened to see the sign painted over but could still read "The New Era Club" under the paint. I was also able to contact one of the few remaining living artists featured on the CD.

Night Train to Nashville features mainstream hits created here by the original artists, as well as many which were covered by top rockers in the 60's and 70's. I grew up listening to these songs not realizing that the true beginnings were in Nashville. What a treasure this CD set is; a piece of history.

My friend Rich and I were sitting in a room in the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, CA, one night. Two rickety chairs and an unpainted table, faded walls and musty 1940's furniture, no phone, no TV, a perfect setting for a Tennesee williams play. We were watching freight trains roll by and cargo ships working their way up and down the Carquinez Straits. Rich said that what we needed was a bottle of cheap bourbon, two dirty glasses, and sleazy blues from a tinny crackling radio so that we could have a manly conversation along the lines of "My woman done left me, you know what I'm talkin' about?"
The songs on this set and Vol 2 would have been perfect music from our radio. The music is raw and real and great, not to mention, yes I said it, educational. Both Night Train To Nashville sets feature great session players who were busy creating the Nashville country sound while they also played great R&B. Also, young John Coltrane shows up on one track, seven years before he recorded Kind Of Blue with Miles Davis. The liner notes mention young Jimi Hendrix and his army buddy Billy Cox, who played in several Nashville club bands. The DJs were middle aged white guys who sold hair pomade, swinging soul medallions, and God knows what else. What you have here is a souvenir of a thriving and vanished integrated music scene in which both Blacks and Whites contributed because they loved music and didn't really see what race had to do with it. So buy both sets and do some time travelling. If you buy some cheap bourbon, you won't need the radio.

This great 2-disc collection covers a 25 year-period, when small and large labels utilized Nashville studios for that special sound - something a little bigger, often with incongruous back-up ("pop" vocal groups, electric sitars) that worked every time. True, sometimes the instrumentation came off a bit "assembly line" - access Ruth Brown's fun remake of "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" (love those oddball remakes!) - the guitar break is smoothly commercial, reminiscent of something like the pickin' on Elvis Presley's 1963 "Blue River", also done in Nashville.
Talking about remakes, it comes to mind that several 1950's rockers went to Nashville in the 1960's to recut their hits: the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard - perhaps a Volume 2 could feature some of these tracks.
Mr. Penniman is found here on an entertaining radio commercial for Royal Crown Hairdressing. His booming, expressive voice here breaks through any "rock and roll sells" scenario. It appears that The Quasar visited Nashville in 1964 and 1976 for remake sessions. That December, '64 session also included a fun workout of a new tune, "My Wheel's Been Slippin'" (not issued until 1974!), a Country Rock number which could only be considered album filler for the time, recorded apparently on the final day in the studio, when the driver and his vehicle needed a serious stop-off at the nearest motel. Country *and* R & B enuff for this fine collection.
The highlight of this set is undoubtedly the Prisonnaires' "Just A-Walkin' In The Rain": my first chance to hear it all the way through, and what a magnificent listen it is. All kudos to Mr. Ray, but the original surpasses the (slightly) histrionic "cover".
Johnny Adams's "Reconsider Me" is a powerful soul ballad, a vehicle for his amazing dynamics, echoing Jackie Wilson and Tom Jones in spots.
Joe Tex, of course is *the* Nashville genius, a singer-songwriter-showman, here represented by "I Want To Do Everything..."; another case-in-point for the absolute necessity of including him in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
The booklet is excellent, replete with photos, memorabilia, and very importantly, quotations from the stars.

this is a vastly entertaining 2 cd (35 track) set of r & b. many names i was familiar with (arthur gunter, esquerita, roscoe shelton, little richard (whose track here is really a commercial), etta james, arthur alexander, ruth brown, joe tex, and johnny adams), and many unfamiliar (rudy green, christine kittrell, the varieteers, audrey bryant, larry birdsong, shy guy douglas, bobby hebb, etc.....). a wide variety of styles, as well: boogie, vocal harmony groups, early rock and roll, soul, pop, and more. some fine instrumentals, too. just a very fun release that brings you back to a time and place that is gone gone gone. highly recommended.