Reviewed by Dave Brassington

One of my musical regrets is that I did not get to see the late Rose Maddox on one of her final UK tours when she was performing mainly in an acoustic/bluegrass style, as evidenced from some of her later Capitol recordings. Although there are no dates given to any of the 25 tracks on this interesting CD, my guess is that they stem from the late '40s, and they were all originally credited The Maddox Brothers And Sister Rose - a popular act in California. Playing a style of music which was quite upbeat and "poppy" at times, they were certainly not into sad or romantic country songs! This rather unique CD has 13 tracks with some very upbeat almost dance type music, such as "Mean And Wicked Boogie", Hank Williams' original hit "Move It On Over", and the very risqué but popular "Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down", before we then have a dozen popular gospel songs such as "I'll Fly Away", The Molly O' Day classic "Tramp On The Street" and the under-recorded "When God Dips His Love In My Heart". The writer of the sleeve notes is quite correct in saying that many of these tracks put you in mind of early Tex-Mex country and rockabilly. Personally I have to say that I don't particularly care for much of the style of music on this CD as it sounds very dated although I was surprised on how well the gospel tracks sound with the rather frenetic backing style that the Maddox Brothers were famous for. If you are into early country, boogie-woogie or western swing you may well want to investigate.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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