Gene Autry That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine CD - Import

This nine-CD set is a lot more Gene Autry than any casual fan would want to hear, but it is not without its considerable rewards and surprises, and might well convert casual fans into serious listeners. All of Autry's surviving recordings, more than 200 of them, from October of 1929 until November of 1933, are included, and comprise a vast range of sounds and styles. What you get is a good, close musical look at Autry's early evolution from a Jimmie Rodgers admirer and soundalike artist with a serious bent toward blues into the unique figure that Autry ultimately became as a country & western singer; the evolution of his sound from raw, relatively unskilled recording -- almost like field recordings -- to the beginning of a sophisticated studio sound; and of his accompaniment, from his own guitar and perhaps a partner and collaborator to backing by a relatively smooth professional coterie of players.

The first set opens with a pair of hillbilly-style ballads, "My Dreaming of You" and "My Alabama Home," cut by Autry with his mentor Jimmy Long (with Frankie Marvin providing the yodel accompaniment) in October of 1929 for Victor, which sound amazingly good and offer some surprisingly complex playing on the guitar behind the harmony singing. A little later in the month, Autry was back in the studio solo cutting a mix of ballads and blues numbers that showed up very briefly on the QRS label before it disappeared. These sides, which feature him yodeling as well, represent the more familiar side of Autry's music, and there are little surprises throughout, such as his superb, extended guitar break on "My Oklahoma Home." "I'll Be Thinking of You Little Girl" is a yodel ballad with another excellent performance by Autry on guitar, backed by an uncredited steel player. These sides haven't held up nearly as well in terms of sources as the material off of the major labels represented in Autry's early output, but they are listenable despite some considerable noise, and the producers have done a great job of making them accessible to modern ears -- the notable exception on this disc is the Autry original "Yodelin' Gene," which apparently only exists in a source with serious gauges; it's been cleaned up as much as possible but still suffers from some speed variations. The next track, though, Autry's rendition of "Blue Yodel No. 5," more than makes up for those sonic deficiencies; there's still noise, but one can actually hear the action on the guitar in the Jimmie Rodgers song, and just hearing the young Autry emulating his idol is a special joy to any listener attuned to this music. Released by Columbia as a budget-priced disc backed by the bluesy Frank Luther/Carson Robison-authored "Left My Gal in the Mountains," it became one of Autry's first big hits. The joy -- or the drawback -- of this first disc is that it contains multiple versions of several songs, not from the same sessions but from recording sessions for rival labels spaced weeks and months apart, but this gives you an opportunity to hear Autry's style and approach evolve as he shifted from working in a duo to a solo act, with different accompaniments, so that you hear him redo "My Dreaming of You," "My Alabama Home," and "Stay Away from My Chicken House."

By disc two, Autry had become not only comfortable but totally professional working with the microphone, and the quality of his recordings improved immeasurably -- his control of his vocal dynamics made him seem an almost larger-than-life presence in a very subtle way on these sides, even as the simplicity of his songs and the sentiments behind them beguiles the listener on another level; and he was so good and confident on his guitar that he was, by this point, meshing beautifully and seamlessly with whatever accompaniment -- steel guitar, string band -- that he was working with. The sheer number of recordings on these sides in so short a time was also an integral part of Autry's success; early in his career, he wasn't signedNo Depression (p.99) - "[T]he audio restorations is stunning....Bringing forth the music with remarkable depth that melts away the decades."