Rose Maddox began her long career in 1937 and essentially never stopped singing until her death in 1998, constantly touring and charming audiences with a voice that could swing from sad, solemn and reverent to boisterous and lusty as a song demanded. Her peak years were in the '40s and '50s when she was a part of
the Maddox Brothers & Rose, a family group that was alternative country decades before the term had any real meaning, mixing a blend of honky tonk, hillbilly and nascent rockabilly into a rousing stew of pure American energy. In later years she gravitated more to pure bluegrass, but her exuberant honky tonk attitude was always present in everything she did. This set was recorded on September 20 and 21, 1980 with
the Vern Williams Band (the LP was released a year later on Arhoolie Records), and that attitude and verve is everywhere apparent. This is bluegrass, yes, but it is bluegrass music that hasn't divorced itself from straight hillbilly country, and
Maddox makes
Woody Guthrie's "Philadelphia Lawyer,"
Merle Travis' "Dark as a Dungeon" and genre standards like "Rocky Top" sound just a little beer-soaked (in the best sense) and it is impossible to ignore the sheer joy she gets from singing these songs. Her signature piece, "Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down," which she must have sung thousands of times, sounds here like she had just discovered the song, and it races forward with a wonderfully fresh and ragged feel. The kinetic ballad "Ashes of Love" is another clear highlight. Her work as part of
the Maddox Brothers & Rose is still the place to start, but this set proves that she never stooped to simply doing bluegrass-by-the-numbers. ~ Steve Leggett