This is an early Bear Family CD compilation. It was issued around 1987 and the sound quality is not up to later Bear Family reissues. It was not issued as a box set but rather as three individual CDs. It has been long out of print and I had to purchase it second hand thru a dealer and pay the price when one buys a rarity. Well, in spite of the hurt to my pocket book, it was worth it. One song "Where Have All The Seasons Gone" paid the price of admission. I had been looking for that track for years. There were no monster hits from this period although "That's How I Got To Memphis" and "Come Sundown" did make the top ten. Bobby does a fantastic reading of Tom T. Hall's "Mama Bake A Pie, Daddy Kill A Chicken" and Sonny James 60s recording titled "Ask Marie". The Mercury years (1970-1972) may have been a dry period for Bobby as far as making the charts but artistically they were a very fertile period and an indication of what was yet to come on his second stint with RCA and his 80s recordings for Columbia. Hopefully, if enough of us ask for it, Bear Family will reissue these recordings as a three volume box set with better sound quality. Bobby Bare is a country legend that should not be ignored. And he still isn't in the Country Music Hall Of Fame. But that is Nashville's shame and not ours.
Bobby Bare was a significant country singer from the early sixties (when he had major American pop hits with Shame on me and Detroit city, the latter eventually becoming a UK pop hit for Tom Jones) till the early eighties but never quite achieved the status that some of his contemporaries did. Maybe it was just because Bobby was content with life generally and didn't push his career that extra bit, but the consequence is that his music is largely neglected these days.
This is one of three volumes that, between them, include everything that Bobby recorded for Mercury between 1970 and 1972, a period when Bobby recorded many songs by Billie Joe Shaver (with whom he sometimes co-wrote), Kris Kristofferson and Tom T Hall, but he generally avoided obvious songs though there are a few of those. Sadly, none of Bobby's recordings here are famous although they deserve to be.
On this volume, you can hear Bobby's versions of Sylvia's mother (a huge international hit for Dr Hook), Darby's castle (a wonderful but often overlooked song by Kris Kristofferson) and That's alright Mama (the song that secured Elvis his Sun recording contract) but the other songs here are generally not well known. Tom T Hall wrote three songs here - Pamela Brown, When love is gone and She gave her heart to Jethro. Bobby co-wrote two songs here with Billie Joe Shaver - Laying here lying in bed and Music city USA. Best of the other songs may be Take some and give some, but there are a lot of great songs here.
Bobby was one of the finest traditional country singers of the sixties and seventies. While his famous songs were mostly recorded for RCA and the rest for Columbia, there is plenty of interest in his Mercury recordings - if you can find them.
