No gal made has got a shade on Sweet Georgia Brown
For Vol. 5 in this series, they apparently decided to just skip on the subtitle, presumably to get to the music all the faster (is that how it works?). And, once again, it’s a knock-out, fourteen tracks of high-energy, balls to the walls Western Swing that just puts a smile on your face and a spring in your step. It’s blowing my mind that five CDs into this series, they’re still trotting out tracks that are so good you’re surprised they didn’t put them on Volume One, but they are. Standouts include a phenomenal version of Sweet Georgia Brown, the witty country song I Had Someone Else Before I Had You, two great instrumentals called A Smooth One & Three Guitar Special, the album closer, A Little Bit of Boogie and Chinatown, a song that’s surprisingly unproblematic and also the downright fastest song so far in this series. But, once again, there’s not a bad song here and the music remains just relentlessly upbeat, good-natured and fun. I somehow forgot to mention back in my review of Vol. 3 that Wills delivered an aside that just about killed me on Milk Cow Blues; singer Tommy Duncan sings that he’s had no milk or butter since his cow’s been gone and Wills murmurs, “What is this word, ‘butter?’ I’ve never heard it before.” That will doubtless stand as his most absurd aside, but this album has a serious contender as well on A Little Bit of Boogie. The fiddle line is dancing about madly in a “solo” and Wills remarks, “You probably think that’s TWO fiddles. *dramatic pause* Well, it is.” I don’t know, I’ve rarely laughed this much listening to music; that’s worth a lot. 4 stars.
tl;dr – another dive into the archives yields another fantastic set of tracks, all good enough that they could have easily made the first disc; relentlessly brilliant, exuberant, a good time all around. 4 stars.