Another entry in Bear Family's excellent label by label retrospective of rockabilly's best, this one featuring 30 tracks of ground-floor boppin' billies from the stable of Mercury Records. Unlike Sun Records (and few others), there was no defined sound or production to the label's rockabilly output; masters came from Memphis, Chicago, Nashville, Houston, Fort Worth, and even New York City on this collection. Mercury never really had a strong commitment to their country division, and as rockabilly was the rhythm branch of that division, none of these records even remotely became hits.
Eddie Bond and
Roy Moss end up being the big names here, with each artists represented by four tracks each, accounting for over 25-percent of the album's content. But stellar one-offs by
Thomas Wayne ("You're the One That Done It"), Rudy Grayzell ("Let's Get Wild"),
Sleepy LaBeef ("All the Time"),
Curtis Gordon ("Draggin'"),
Billy Wallace ("That's My Reward"), the
Hi-Liters (the explosive "Dance Me to Death") make the rest of this volume equally as noteworthy. Every volume in this series is a winner for quality content, but this one ups the ante and then some. Not rockabilly's greatest, just some of its very best. Excellent liner notes and information from
Bill Millar top this stellar package.