With a heart that was mellow
An all-round good fellow
Was my old pal
Worries, troubles & cares
She was always willing to share
A wild kind of devil
But dead on the level
Is my gal Sal
Are we starting to get somewhat declining returns as we roll on into Vol. 7 of this archival series of Western Swing? Yeah, maybe a little. Or maybe I’m just getting used to it and not being quite as mind-blown as I was at the beginning. Anyway, on this seventh volume, I’d say there aren’t any bad songs, but also not quite as many great songs as we’ve been getting per album so far. I’d say Sweet Moments is . . . mediocre. Everything else here is good at the very worst. At the top of the heap in the vocal arena are Keep Knockin’ (But You Can’t Come In) and My Gal Sal; My Gal Sal is a really surprising song actually, a song about a platonic friendship between a man and a woman – something you still almost never hear a song about. The instrumental top of the heap are the absolutely raucous Joe’s Place, which has some great guitar work from Eldon Shamblin, and a swinging cover of Tea for Two that closes the album. So, am I gonna ding this album? No, I’m not. I suspect if you started here, you’d be pretty blown away; to the degree this album feels a little slight, it’s mainly by comparison with the other, even more brilliant albums I’ve encountered in this series so far. Taken on its own, it’s fantastic; taken as the seventh installment in a brilliant series, it’s . . . still pretty great. 4 stars.
tl;dr – seventh installment in this archival release of fantastic Western Swing is somewhat less consistently brilliant than the first six, but it’s still just a rollicking great time. 4 stars.