WEBB PIERCE "The Unavailable Sides 1950-1951"

Between his first recordings for the Four Star label and his long tenure with Decca Records, Webb Pierce formed the Pacemaker label and Ark-La-Tex Publishing in partnership with Horace Logan, the emcee of the Louisiana Hayride. The story of Pierce's recordings for Pacemaker are tangled and confused, and it seems that he was recording under a pseudonym for Pacemaker while still under contract to Four Star. The Unavailable Sides 1950-1951 attempts to make some sense of this early period of Pierce's career by presenting 21 Pacemaker sides and two rare Four Star recordings credited to his then-wife Betty Jane Lewis, but featuring Pierce on duet vocals. A few tracks are instrumentals or have other vocalists, but the players are interesting: Tillman Franks, Shot Jackson, and Buddy Attaway, to name a few. There are several early recordings of songs Pierce later remade for Decca, including "In the Jailhouse Now," "California Blues," and "Drifting Texas Sand." Pierce would later re-record "Hayride Boogie" with new lyrics as "Teenage Boogie," but most of the songs are exclusive to this collection. The liner notes are full of interesting facts and make a noble effort to solve various mysteries surrounding Pierce and these sessions. The recordings are more raw and primitive than his early Decca cuts, but Unavailable Sides 1950-1951 is an important document of rare, formative recordings by the most spectacular country hitmaker of the '50s.(Greg Adams, Allmusic)

trax:
01 California Blues 02 Shuffle On Down 03 I Need You Like A Hole In The Head 04 I'm Watching The Stars 05 Steeling The Mood 06 I've Loved You Forever It Seems 07 Hawaiian Echoes 08 Have You Ever Had The Feeling? 09 Drifting Texas Sand 10 I Got Religion On A Saturday Night 11 The Last Waltz 12 In The Jailhouse 13 I Saw Your Face In The Moon 14 I'm Sitting On Top Of The World 15 Freight Train Blues 16 Poor Boy Rag 17 I've Loved, I've Laughed, I've Cried 18 Beautiful Hawaiian Shores 19 I'll Forgive And Forget 20 A Million Years From Now 21 I Heard Her Call My Name In Prayer 22 You Scared The Love Right Out Of Me 23 Hayride Boogie
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