Entertainment Weekly (8/11/00, p.83) - "...These songs leap from the speakers like half-crazed, priapic cartoons..." - Rating: B+
Includes liner notes by Eddie Gorodetsky.
Rockabilly music remains one of the most primitive forms of rock & roll. From originals such as Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins at their beginnings, to more recent contenders such as Big Sandy & The Fly-Rite Boys, the Stray Cats, and the Cramps, this wild and feral music has been the let's-get-real-gone soundtrack of choice. Here Sony Legacy reaches into its vaults and comes up with some scorching sounds from rockabilly's heyday, between 1954 and 1959.
Better known figures here include Link Wray (not strictly rockabilly, although he did invent heavy-metal guitar in the'50s), the sweet and sassy brother-and-sister duo The Collins Kids, and Marty Robbins, who went on to mainstream country and pop success. It's the lesser-known performers who make this set worthwhile: the Delta blues-drenched wail of Commonwealth Jones ("Who's Been Here"), the daffy elegance of Derrell Felts ("It's a Great Big Day"), and the jiving Western swing/blues of Charlie Adams (the ribald, after-hours swaggering hillbilly-meets-uptown "Sugar Diet"). With hot guitar licks, defiant live-for-tonight attitude, and a beat that's part blues, part swing, AIN'T I'M A DOG is an instant party.