More Marty Robbins

More Country and Country Rock

WOW! (Or should that be OMG?) This Columbia 360 original pressing has AMAZING DEMO DISC sound on many of its twelve tracks, tracks by some of the biggest names in country at the time. To hear Jimmy Dean sing Big Bad John or Marty Robbins’ do Devil Woman with this kind of Tubey Magical, tonally correct, rich, sweet, spacious sound is nothing less than a THRILL. The Analog sound of this pressing makes a mockery of even the most advanced digital playback systems, including the ones that haven’t been invented yet. I’d love to play this for Neil Young so he can see what he’s up against! Good Luck, Neil, you’re going to need it.

The sound on both sides is White Hot, practically faultless I might even go so far as to say.

The first three tracks on side one are AGAIG — As Good As It Gets! After that I stopped playing side one; the next three may be as good, may not be, but what I heard on those first three was clearly WHITE HOT STAMPER SOUND!

Ring of Fire is never as good as one expects, although it’s fine here, just not in the league with the best of side two. The next track and some that follow are KILLER though, every bit as magical as anything on side one, and that’s saying a lot.

We’ve been through dozens of Columbia and Capitol Country albums from the ’60s over the last year or two since we discovered how good the Marty Robbins titles on Columbia can sound. Most of the country albums we play have an overall distorted sound, are swimming in reverb, and come with hard, edgy, smeary vocals to boot.

To find an album with freakishly good sound such as this involves a healthy dose of pure luck. You will need to dig through an awful big pile of vinyl to uncover a gem of this quality.

And the vinyl is quiet too!

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Jimmy Dean – Big Bad John
Marion Worth – Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry)
Marty Robbins – Devil Woman
Ray Price – Pride
Carl Smith – Life For Tomorrow
Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs – The Ballad Of Jed Clampett

Side Two

Johnny Cash – Ring Of Fire
Claude King (2) – Wolverton Mountain
Lefty Frizzell – Forbidden Lovers
Stonewall Jackson – Waterloo
Little Jimmy Dickens – Running Into Memories Of You
Carl Butler – Don’t Let Me Cross Over