This aptly titled reissue of 28 Bailes Brothers recordings — the total output of their Columbia sessions between 1945 and 1947 — is long overdue. The Bailes were one of the most prominent country acts of the 1940s, as members of the Grand Ole Opry and as principal founders of Shreveport’s Louisiana Hayride. They introduced a number of popular songs, such as “Dust On The Bible”, “As Long As I Live”, and “Oh So Many Years”, that endure in the repertoires of many singers today. Above all, the Bailes Brothers were great singers with powerful, emotion-laden styles.
Born near Charleston, West Virginia, the four Bailes brothers (Kyle, Johnnie, Walter and Homer) sang together in various configurations over the years. Although Kyle played bass on two of the sessions featured here, we do not hear him singing. Instead, Walter and Johnnie are heard on the first twenty songs, and Homer replaces Walter on the last eight, a consequence of the latter’s decision to begin a full-time ministry.
Each combination of voices was a powerful one, but none seemed as soulful as that fashioned by Walter and Johnnie. Walter’s reedy voice meshes beautifully with Johnnie’s pleading, soaring tenor. “Searching For A Soldier’s Grave”, one of the finest songs ever written about the consequences of war, provides a telling example of their singular intensity and ability to communicate. Walter’s compelling conviction, conveyed in both song lyrics and in singing style, clearly came from his evangelical faith, a calling that marked his lifelong tenure as a Pentecostal-style preacher. Johnnie, on the other hand, was more complicated, and his tear-laden tenor style seems not to have been grounded in a sense of religious moral fervor.
Indeed, Homer Bailes once told me that of the four brothers, two were cocksmen and two were drunks. Without specifying who fell into each category, he nevertheless noted that Johnnie had fancied himself a ladies’ man, and had gotten the brothers fired from three radio shows, in Huntington, West Virginia, Nashville, and Shreveport. The third escapade was followed by his incarceration in the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, for violation of the Mann Act. Homer was convinced that Johnnie’s passionate vocal style flowed from inner turmoil, the guilt that resulted from his sinfulness and resistance to God’s call to repent and preach.
Even though true country music is supposed to be “sincere,” some listeners may be repelled by the unbridled emotionalism that colored the Bailes Brothers’ vocal styles. Even more will find their repertoire troubling. Admittedly, “Pretty Flowers” and “Will The Angels Have A Sweetheart” may very well be the saddest country songs ever written. The pathetic expressions of self-pity and remorse found in other love songs, such as “Broken Marriage Vows”, “My Heart Echoes”, “I Guess I’ll Go On Dreaming” and “Oh So Many Years”, are nonetheless beautifully conceived and performed. Most important, they mirror the actual feelings most of us have had.
The religious songs similarly may jar the sensitivities of many of today’s listeners. Music for Walter Bailes was a form of preaching, and he filled his songs with the language, imagery and theology of protestant evangelism. He was convinced of the moral breakdown of society (as expressed in “Dust On The Bible”), the imminent second coming of Christ (as prophesied in “We’re Living In The Last Days Now”), and the certainty of judgment to be visited on a sinful world (described in “Building On The Sands”). As a person who had succumbed occasionally to the lure of the bottle, Walter could warn of “The Drunkard’s Grave” and declare his sincere belief that “Whiskey Is The Devil In Liquid Form”.
The release of this material reintroduces us to a crucial but too often ignored era of country music history, the years that immediately followed World War II. Partly rural and partly urban, the music mirrored similar transitions in the lives of southern rural people who were moving to town and trying to preserve their older worldview while coping with the pressures and frustrations of blue-collar existence. The Bailes Brothers’ sound embodied features that combined tradition and modernity, a brother-duet style of singing that dated from the 1930s, and an instrumental backing that combined both acoustic instruments and an electric steel guitar.
Thematically, their songs offered the comfort and relief of values rooted in the old country church and in the teachings of mother and dad. (They were one of the last country groups to feature “mother songs,” and on their radio shows they made constant references to Mama Bailes.)
Some listeners, then, may react to these songs merely as period pieces, or as relics of a bygone historical era. But for many of us, this CD will also function as an affectionate reminder of growing up in a changing blue-collar south, and of a time when country music was the honest and visceral expression of a people who were trying to make sense of the new world that was crowding around them.
