Who when the sun stopped shining
Showed me the silver lining
Pal of my lonely hour
I went into this, the final volume of The Tiffany Transcriptions, with some trepidation. Vol. 9, after all, finally hit the dregs, in my opinion at least. And now what’s this? “For Collectors Only?” “The McKinney Sisters?” Is this just a different musical group that also recorded for the Tiffany Company? No. Evelyn & Dean McKinney were vocalists who worked with Wills and the Playboys quite a bit and so this album is actually more songs by Wills & the Playboys, just a selection that all feature the McKinney’s on vocals. And, in something of a twist, this album ends up being right up there with those first three in terms of being the absolute best of this entire series.
This album has a wider sprawl than any of the others in this series. While those others all clocked at between thirty and forty minutes with between fourteen and sixteen tracks, this one has a whopping twenty-two tracks and clocks in at just a bit over an hour. But the album also goes in some different directions stylistically. The McKinney Sisters could do some really golden harmonizing, so that means that we’ve got some very slow ballads included here and, while those songs might have felt out of place on the previous releases in this series, they work here to add a little flavoring. Some of these have a real ache of sweet sadness that’s been totally missing in the rest of this series. I Dreamed of an Old Love Affair, When Day Is Done and Miss You are all just incredibly beautiful. But they can do the rave-ups too and bust out a yodel now and then. They are better than Tommy Duncan at the comedy songs too. Feudin’ & Fightin’ and I Want My Mama are both hilarious tracks that they just attack with real ferocity. Will There Be Any Yodeling in Heaven is, surprisingly, not a novelty track, but a slow ballad that just happens to have the funniest song title in history. Some of the standard covers really work here too. The versions of Blue Skies and Tumbling Tumbleweeds are both fantastic. Best track for my money has to be a fantastic version of Hawaiian War Chant that finds the sisters singing incredibly fast and often struggling to hold in their laughter. I’m not sure if this song is entirely unproblematic, but it’s just a real marvel and, if nothing else, an incredible technical feat. Features some great steel guitar work too. All the band members are in full flair here too with solos aplenty, so this is still recognizable as Wills & the Playboys. All in all, I’m just so glad that this series came back with a final entry that was as brilliant as this one is. It was kind of a bummer to think that this amazing series was going to go out with a couple of duds. This one wraps up with an up-tempo rendition of an affectionate song called Pal of My Lonely Hour and it feels like the perfect way to end this ten volume series of astoundingly great, tragically forgotten music. Listening through this series has been one of the most joyous musical experiences of my life and I can’t recommend it highly enough; this party is still swingin’ & rockin’ too, sure to brighten both the lonely hours and the happy ones. 4 stars.
tl;dr – final volume of this brilliant series of Western Swing is one of the best of them with a wider sprawl than the others; McKinney Sisters are a perfect addition to the Bob Wills sound. 4 stars.