Cheap That'll Flat Git It 17 (Music) (Various Artists) Price

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Customer Reviews of That'll Flat Git It 17

That'll just about flat git it
(Actual rating would be 3 and a half stars) Bear Family's 17th entry in this series, this is a mostly well chosen compilation of unreleased, alternate, and unknown Sun recordings. Several of the offerings on here are anonymous demos that were found in the Sun records vaults, others are demo recordings sent in to Sun in hopes of cutting an actual rating, and the rest are either unreleased demos by Sun artists or alternate versions of Sun singles. You get 34 songs and a great booklet with super liner notes. The majority of the songs are pretty good, with a handfull of real gems. I'm especially partial to Ray Harris' propulsive version of "Greenback Dollar", Alton and Jimmy's "No More Cryin the Blues", the Charlie Rich demos, both Jerry Arnold tunes("Little Boy Blue" touches on the softer soft of rockabilly, and wouldn't be out of place on a Buddy Holly album, and "High Class Baby" though it suffers from muddy sound is worth ressurecting), Onie Wheeler's "That's All", the Johnny Cash alternate of "Big River" (practically a different song than the released version), "Jungle Queen" by Fred Prentiss, and Sonny Burgess' "Find My Baby For Me" with great backing vocals by Roy Orbison.

Remember though that some of these songs are anonymous contributions or were just stuck back in the vaults because they just didn't quite have "it." The John Tolleson demos are a case in point; did Bear Family really need to put three of his songs on this cd? One would be more than enough. Really, they are generic in every way, and I hit the skip button every time one of them cues up. His vocal stylings on "Rocky Road Blues" are particularly egregious. Yeah, this guy defintely should have remained in the vault, though he apparently did make records for other companies. Mind boggling.

By and large though, this cd is a winner. If you are just getting interested in rockabilly, this might not be the best place to start, but long time fans will enjoy this one.

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One of the best of the series...
You might think that 17 CD's later that this series would start to dry up, but this disc is incredible.

The opening track by Fred Prentiss makes it worth buying by itself. Some of these are alternative takes, ie, Slim Rhodes, Ray Harris, etc. The Warren Smith classic--Red Cadillac, offers up an alternate version with a cowbell, strange but good. Newcomer Alan Wingate sounds much like Glenn Honeycutt at times. Charlie Rich offers up a few demos including some chatter of him goofing around (making fun of the wild-crazy rockabillies). Big River by Johnny Cash is an earlier stab at the song, though Luther Perkins is far from nailing any of his parts. The last Ray Scott song is a straight acoustic demo track that sounds reminscent of Warren Smith.

All said, the Slim Rhodes tracks are probably the strongest on the collection. They are not practice takes, just different versions that are close to their respective singles, but just different enough that they would warrant a release.

Sun fans should not hesitate to buy this. It's very good.