DON WALSER & THE PURE TEXAS BAND - The Archive Series, Vol. 2

Who is the best country music vocalist working today? Well now there’s a question to spur endless debate. But of course, it’s fairly predictable which names will immediately surface — Johnny Cash, George Jones, Dwight Yoakam, Don Walser …. wait. Don who?Unfortunately, there are still too many country fans who aren’t yet in the know about the wonderful talents of Mr. Walser, who’s been playing Texas dancehalls since the late 1940s. But one listen to his music and you’ll pretty quickly figure out why fellow Austinite Mark Rubin, bassist for the Bad Livers, refers to him as “God’s Own Yodeler.” Or why Playboy called him the “Pavarotti of the plains.” Myself, I just go for the more simplistic description of “Greatest Country Singer in the World.”
Austin’s Watermelon Records has been trying to spread the gospel of Walser as well. The label got off to a fair start last year with Rolling Stone from Texas, which was produced by Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson and featured session work by numerous current and former Wheelers (it was this album that drew the rave Playboy review). However, Watermelon and Walser endured no small amount of grumbling (including from this critic) for reducing his Pure Texas Band to almost bit parts. While the album might have sounded great to Walser first-timers, many preferred him with the excellent musicians who normally back him up every night and make his sound so distinctive.
Perhaps in response to this, or just to preserve some classic country music, Watermelon has now released The Archive Series. This pair of discs reissues and remixes, in their entirety, three cassette-only albums Walser made for the tiny Sight & Sound Southwest label a few years ago. Here, in all its glory, is Walser’s crack band: twin fiddlers Howard Kalish and Jason Roberts, bassist Don Keeling, and, alternately, legendary steel players Jimmy Day and Bert Rivera.
These recordings show what has drawn Walser such a rabid cult following, ranging from Stetson-sporting rednecks to black-clad punks: Walser is a masterful singer, with a smooth, gliding-across-the-dance-floor voice that frequently rises into a pristine yodel that will raise the hair on the back of your neck and give you goosebumps. If you’re one of us ornery types that insists country music was infinitely better decades ago, Walser will take you back there with tunes like “Casting My Lasso,” “Bouquet of Roses,” “Chime Bells,” “Big Ball in Cowtown” and on and on. As Walser says, “We play Top 40 — all the top songs from 40 years ago.”
When he’s not covering the likes of Ray Price, Bob Wills et al, Walser can be pretty formidable with a pen as well. Although he hasn’t written much, his sparse output is of pretty high quality. “The John Deere Tractor Song” is especially powerful, raising the common dirt farmer to the status of folk hero in much the same way as Butch Hancock’s “Dry Land Farm.”
While much of the “alternative country” featured in this magazine is unquestionably more in touch with the traditions of country music than anything coming out of Nashville today, fans may still yet yearn for something a little more genuine than the many punks-cum-Buck Owens-fans that heavily populate the scene. If that’s the case, Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band are for you. They’re playing country like it used to be played — because he never quit playing it that way. (No Depression)trax:

01 Yodel Polka 02 Awaiting For A Train 03 Side Men 04 Two Stepping Lady 05 Love Me 06 Hill Country Waltz 07 One More Drink 08 Take Me Back To Tulsa 09 All Around Cowboy 10 Shelley's Winter Love 11 Cowpoke 12 Long Black Veil 13 Begging To You 14 Rolling Stone From Texas 15 Austin Waltz 16 Fraulein 17 Red Skin Gal

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