Customer Reviews

Stompin' Singers & Western Swingers

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

 

 

"Stompin' Singers & Western Swingers" takes up where Proper's last Western Swing set, "Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys", left off.

Plenty of great toe-tapping music from the famous and not-so-famous performers of the era.

The songs are the original versions and the sound quality is just fine.

Also included is an informative booklet with facts about the songs and the artists.

As with every other box set I own from Proper, this is a tremendous value.

Not what I expected. I was hoping for lots of Western swing here but many of these songs do not qualify for that category - there is no way that some of these songs could be considered Western swing. Lots of filler. But then you come upon Wade Ray's "It's all your fault!" What a find! This is one GREAT song. Sheer perfection: great lyrics, great music, a perfect vocal, wonderful guitar and fiddle. I uploaded that one in my ipod and have been listening to it ever since. If my ipod was a jukebox, I would have spent the equivalent of this set's price in quarters for all the times I have played that song. If you love Western swing, get the Bob Wills box set. He was the king of Western swing and his band was red hot.

Over 100 western swing masterpieces, most not available elsewhere, are here for your dancing and listening enjoyment! Most of them are up-tempo and have jazzy and jivey themes with hot solos and impassioned vocals - nothing called "country" music today compares to this. If you have the previous set in the series (Cowboys, Doughboys and Playboys), you'll know how good the Proper label sets are, and this one is at least as good. There's also an informative booklet included, with pictures, which will teach you all you need to know about the music and the artists. If you have ever heard of Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Buck Owens or Asleep at the Wheel and appreciate this kind of music you simply can't go wrong here.

I found this box set a considerable disappointment. Big step down from Proper's previous superb Western Swing anthology: Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys: the Golden Age of Western Swing. A few good pieces but for most part both songs and playing are undistinguished. They might be hard to find, but perhaps there is an obvious reason for this obscurity. Also, as a previous reviewer has noted, many of songs are Western Swing only by broadest possible definition of term.

This is the fourth 4 CD set of Western Swing music Proper has put out (besides Doughboys, etc. the other two showcase Bob Wills and Milton Brown). Could be by now bottom of barrel is being scraped. In any case, the result here is ordinary music. Don't invest your money in this box set; buy Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys instead. You won't be sorry.

Don't believe everything you read here about this set being "uneven" or a case of "scraping the barrel". True, the variety of musical styles of the bands may be greater than on "Dougboys, Playboys and Cowboys" but this set IS Western Swing throughout indeed. Listeners ought to remember Western Swing went through stylistic and regional changes after WWII too so some of these artists came closer to Honky Tonk and Hillbilly Boogie yet they still were exponents of what was billed as Western Swing in those days. And though some of the music here will be familiar to collectors from other reissues that have resurrected these tunes before, a great advantage of this set is that the share of duplicates is significantly lower than on "Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys" (where a HUGE lot of the tracks looks like it had been picked straight from those vinyl reissues on the Old Timey, String, Rambler and Texas Rose labels, making that earlier set one that will offer mostly new stuff only to newbies on Western Swing). So just enjoy this set as it is intended - a complementary follow-up to the other one that will give you a nice overview of various shadings of Western swing as it evolved up to the early 50s.

Another great set from Proper, and as usual packed with information in the booklet. A real musical history lesson. But hey all you Rock-A-Billy fans be warned this is alot of early 40's swing, and boogie stuff, and you might not find it to your likin' Well worth the money and some real gems!

The Mean Eyed Cat

KNON 89.3

Dallas, Texas

Je treba spoznat korenine. Ena izmed njih je tudi kabojski swing, ki ni niti tako slab, nasprotno, mi je èedalje bolj vsèe. Zaradi navedenega, bom naroèil se veè CD-jev z navedenega podroèja. Navedena kompilacija, pa mi je vseè !!!

OK ! Lepo pozdrav Stojan Borstnar