Louisiana's Goldband label is perhaps best known for its Cajun and R&B recordings, but also did record a good deal of hillbilly and rockabilly sides in the '50s. Twenty-six of them are on Bayou Rockabilly Cats, although when the most recognizable artists on a compilation are Al Ferrier, Hopeless Homer, and Goldband chief Eddie Shuler himself (with Eddie Shuler's All Star Reveliers), you know this is one for the specialists. Actually, much of this is not quite standard rockabilly, but country music in the process of making the transition to rockabilly. There are fiddles and steel guitars on plenty of the cuts, and the tempos are often more in the country boogie or two-step mold than they are in rock & roll. Truth be known, that makes this more interesting than many such compilations of obscure rockabilly (such as numerous ones on the Ace label itself), as the country-rockabilly bridge hasn't been documented and investigated with nearly as much depth as some other roots-of-rock genres have. (There are, for instance, appreciably more reissues of late-'40s - early-'50s R&B and jump blues on the cusp of turning into rock & roll.) In general the performers on this disc had more of a Southern swamp to their lilt, as well as some traces of Cajun rhythms (although those aren't that prevalent). There aren't major overlooked classic songs or amazing performers, but the style's done with a lot of panache and good-natured energy. It's not all hillbilly-rockabilly crossover either; some of the sides are just flat-out raw rockabilly, and Bee Arnold does piano-based work with more of an R&B flavor (even using a clarinet on "Plant You Know, Dig You Later"). Arnold's 1954 single "Way Down Under Blues," in fact, is pretty unusual for the time, and one of the earlier instances anywhere of a white musician recording in a hardcore R&B style that approached rock & roll. When Goldband records were reissued after the '50s, there were electric bass overdubs that Shuler was persuaded to use to make them sound more contemporary-sounding, to the vexation of collectors and historians that rightly prefer the originals. Those listeners will be glad to hear that this CD consists solely of the unoverdubbed original versions, marking in fact the first time the original singles have ever been reissued (although eight of the selections are not from vintage '50s 45s, but from '80s releases that contained previously unissued '50s performances). ~ Richie Unterberger