Customer Reviews

Wolverton Mountain: Very Best Of Claude King

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Boo hiss to the Collectables CD label. They blew it big time on this one. First of all, while the obvious hits are here, they manage to overlook some of King's finest recordings -- "Laura," "When You're 21" and "He Ain't Country" come to mind.

Fine -- no greatest hits compilation will please everyone. And the biggest hits -- "Wolverton Mountain," "Sam Hill," "The Camencheros" -- are there.

But, the real affront is the poorly written liner notes, which declare that Claude King died in 1983. In fact, he's still alive! No, he hasn't risen from the dead -- he's never passed away, only retired.

The source of this misinformation is either the now out-of-print and consistently inaccurate "Definitive Country" encyclopedia, by Barry McCloud, or the All Music Guide, both of which also consider King a dead man.

Maybe when they write out the royalty check to King's estate, they'll realize the mistake. In the meantime, here's hoping Rounder or Razor & Tie or a more credible reissuer will put out the definitive King collection....

Throughout the 1960s, Claude has placed 19 songs on the country top 40 and all 16 of the songs that peaked in the top 30 on Billboard's country charts are included in this collection. An out of print CD in the "American Originals" CD series from the early 1990s contains 10 of these songs while this will give you 6 more. The liner notes do serve Claude justice as well and they even mention what he is up to today. Not only is his only pop chart top 40 hit, Wolverton Mountain, the only great song on it but other highlights include "Tiger Woman," "Big River, Big Man," "The Comancheros," his cover of his friend Johnny Horton's "All For The Love of a Girl," his version of "Sam Hill," which was also recorded by Jimmy Dean, "The Burning of Atlanta," and others. If you want more Claude than these 16 tracks, there is a boxed set on Bear Family that contains his entire Columbia output, but for most people, this will be all the Claude King you'll ever need in your collection. I highly recommend this CD.

I am in complete concurrence with another reviewer's complaint about the minimal liner notes. But after that, I cannot agree with the sentiment expressed regarding the tunes selected by the folks at Collectables. Not this time, although I have been critical in that regard with a good many of their other releases.

First of all, during his recording career, Claude had 30 Top 100 Country singles, six of which crossed over into the Billboard Pop Hot 100 charts and two to the Adult Contemporary charts, and in this set you get EVERY ONE of his fifteen Country Top 20 hits, including his first, Big River, Big Man, which made it to # 7 Country and # 82 Billboard Pop Hot 100 in the summer of 1961, plus one that just missed, Chip 'N' Dale's Place, which peaked at # 23 in 1971.

It would have been nicer for collectors had they made it an even 20-selection CD and added That's What Makes The World Go Around [# 33 Country in 1964], The Watchman [# 32 Country in 1967], and I'll Be Your Baby Tonight # 33 Country in 1971], which then would have given us all his Top 40 hits. To round it out they could have added one of his lesser hits such as Whirlpool (Of Your Love) - a # 47 Country in 1964, Laura (What's He Got That I Ain't Got) - a # 50 in 1967, When You're Twenty-One - a # 54 in 1971, or He Ain't Country - a # 48 in 1972.

But I'm being greedy. As it is (and it IS, after all, labeled "16 Original Classics") it's a fairly comprehensive collection which includes my all-time Claude King favourite, Tiger Woman, his second-best hit after the # 1 Hot 100/# 3 AC Wolverton Mountain at # 6 Country and # 110 Billboard Hot 100 "bubble under" in 1965.

You might not get all of his hits here, but you will put a pretty good dent in your Claude King "want list." The sound quality is excellent.