Customer Reviews

Vol. 2 America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band

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If you've bought the original volume and want more, this will provide you with more of the same. Since their most famous songs from the period (1946 to 1951) were included on the first volume, this set makes no sense on its own, although there is no drop in quality.

It begins with New mule skinner blues, accidentally omitted from the first volume, plus another 29 tracks. Rose again sings lead on most songs, but Fred sings lead on four and Cal on two. On I'm sending daffydills, Rose, Cal and Lulu (their mother) get equal billing. Tracks 22 to 28 had not been released anywhere prior to this compilation.

People will forever debate where rock'n'roll music came from, but it seems likely that the wild music played by Rose and her brothers was one of its many roots. Enjoy it.

As the liner notes say, this family of itinerant musicians decided that farm labor was too much hard work, so they rode boxcars to California. Wearing their stage outfits, they walked up to an A&R guy who asked, "Well, who the hell are you?", and they proceeded to show him, right there in his office.

These days people with that kind of confidence end up selling self-help courses, so it's a special gift to us that The Maddox Brothers and Rose chose country music instead.

The music has been described as a mix of Texas swing, Bakersfield roadhouse, and rockabilly. I just call it some of the best hayseed party music ever made. Solid playing, spirited singing (you can't call it pretty), and help from the best sidemen in the business. My favorites are "Texas Guitar Stomp" and "South" ("Roy Nichols, play that thing!") Rose doesn't sing so much as bray and whinny, but you have to love a woman who is so delightfully uninhibited.

Anyone who's bummed out on the current state of of Gen-Y "I'm such a boneheaded loser" rock should listen up.