Connie Smith — though never a star on the level of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette — nevertheless has always been a first-class singer who deserves to be held in as high regard as her better-known peers. She has been publicly praised by Dolly Parton, and George Jones went on record in the [...]

Anyone foolish (or impatient) enough to dismiss Jerry Lee Lewis after his 1956-1963 Sun Records tenure is not only selling the man woefully short, they are also denying themselves some of the most satisfying music of his 40-plus-year career. After leaving the famed Memphis label, Lewis continued down the same path Sun’s owner Sam Phillips [...]

With all due respect to the labels that have helped to keep the recorded legacy of the original Carter Family in print during the CD era, this new release on Germany’s Bear Family label leaves them all in the dust. Here, on eleven CDs, are all 287 surviving tracks recorded between 1927 and 1941 by [...]

Imitation, they say, is the most sincere form of flattery. So while waiting for Bear Family’s upcoming Bob Wills box, western swing fans may care to gnaw on these similarly-flavored 1950-52 Capitol recordings by Ole Ras­mussen & His Nebraska Corn­huskers. Though on an initial listen these tracks may seem overly derivative of Wills (Ras­mussen’s asides [...]

The sixth and final installment in Bear Family’s Complete Sun Singles series doesn’t include any Sun records at all. The focus here, instead, is on Sun’s sister label, Phillips International, and the 48 singles it released from 1959 to its demise in 1963. Most hardcore rock ‘n’ roll fans have a pretty good fix on [...]

Three volumes remain to be released in Rounder’s exemplary reissue series of the Carter Family’s complete Victor recordings, but installment six here represents, more profoundly than any other, the Beginning of the End. As noted in previous issues of No Depression, Volumes 3 and 4 already show cracks in the Family’s foundation, with Sara Carter’s [...]