The Tracking Angle: Hillbilly Fever!

This article was originally published in 1996. Note: since this article was published, I think commercial country music has gone drastically downhill in quality, overall.

Volume 1: Legends of Western Swing
Rhino R2 71900/A 26108

Volume 2: Legends of Honky Tonk
R2 71901/A 26109

Volume 3: Legends of Nashville
R2 71902

Volume 4: Legends of the West Coast
R2 71903/ S21X 18273

Volume 5: Legends of Country Rock
R271904

Compilation Produced by Rich Kienzle, James Austin and Patrick Milligan
Remastered by Bob Fisher/Digital Domain

Music-depends on who you are
Sound-5-9

If you've just started listening to country music—say, oh, within the last twenty years—you might think that "country music" is the stuff you hear on the radio and The Nashville Network. Well, as Rhino's superbly re-mastered and annotated series, Hillbilly Fever! has reminded me that aside from the trappings, today's new, slicked-up country sound really doesn't have much in common with the old stuff. In fact, it would be more accurate to call what you hear on country radio today something else, like "New Country" or "Country-Pop." That's because, aside from certain elements of instrumental commonality—twanging Telecasters and Southern accents, fiddles, and omnipresent pedal steel guitars—country music circa 1996 has more in common with straight pop and the singer-songwriter styles of the Seventies than what I suppose should be called "The Real Thing."

The Real Thing, the hard country, is what you get on this five-volume anthology, with the exception of Volume Five, Legends of Country Rock (more on that later)—an excellent overview of pure country music from its near-beginnings in the early Thirties through the first budding of country-rock hybridization in the Sixties and Seventies. The artists included in the series' 90 selections are a Who's Who of country music, including Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams and His Drifting Cowboys, Lefty Frizzell, George Jones and the Jones Boys, Webb Pierce, Slim Whitman, Marty Robbins, Patsy Cline, Tex Ritter, Ferlin Husky, Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, along with landmark musical milestones such as the Sons Of The Pioneers' "Cool Water" and genre-defining moments like Johnny Bond's "Sick, Sober and Sorry." As the titles of the various volumes indicate, the series runs the gamut from the earliest Western Swing to the countrified rock of the Marshall Tucker Band. If you're a country music lover, Hillbilly Fever! will likely be the most satisfying collection of country music you've ever heard.

Or the most disliked and distasteful.

My personal reaction defines the schism. Not my reviewer reaction, which respects this anthology as a superlative sonic and musicological achievement, but my emotional one. I didn't like most of the songs on Hillbilly Fever!, finding the whiny, braying vocals, corny fiddles and old-time arrangements annoying to my sensibilities. As people, we change, but quickly forget our roots as well, and for better or worse, my musical roots lie in Cream, Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult and rockers from Zappa to Zeppelin. Until recently, I hated country music and wouldn't have anything to do with it, save for exceptions like Merle Haggard and Hank Williams (who to me have always transcended the genre).

Yet I truly love today's country music, countrypolitan slickness and all. I consider most of today's rock and pop bands and styles pathetically devoid of substance—does anybody really think bands like Smashing Pumpkins and even R.E.M. will eventually take their place in history along the likes of the Beatles and James Brown?—but find today's country music, even with all its glitz and commerciality, the last bastion of good songs with melody and meaning, well-sung and well-played.

Why should you give a sun-dried turd about what I think? Because I think my reaction may exemplify yours. Just because you like today's country music doesn't necessarily mean you're going to like this. On the other hand, if you think the stuff spewed forth by today's Nashville hats and glamour girls is a pale, watered-down, wooden-nickel counterfeit of what country music is supposed to be, then you will be absolutely, utterly ecstatic over Hillbilly Fever! And, to be fair, such a sweeping black and white generalization is somewhat oversimplistic—there are plenty of cuts on Hillbilly Fever! I did go nuts over, just as there's a lot of current country music that holds up when compared to the classics.

That said, the least successful volume in the series is the final one, Legends of Country Rock, because most of the songs are just plain lame. Neither fish nor fowl, I found the country rock genre, with few exceptions, to be the embodiment of the worst of country and rock and roll with neither of the two styles' advantages, with bland arrangements and vocal harmonies; a lack of rock's rhythmic intensity and excitement; unconvincing lyrical content and an almost complete lack of authenticity and conviction. Most of the songs on Volume 5 just don't hold up (with a few noteworthy exceptions, such as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Mr. Bojangles") and sound embarrassingly dated. As a whole, Volume 5 is out of place in comparison with the pure country sounds of the other four volumes.

Hillbilly Fever! is lovingly re-mastered and recorded. I am amazed at the quality and care with which discs from the Thirties and Forties were reproduced—many of them rival modern recordings in clarity and presence, and on even the roughest transcriptions, you'll hear no more than some slight background record noise. The discs have a good feeling of immediacy and detail, without sounding overly bright and in-your-face. Obviously, some judicious equalization and balancing was employed to give the discs an overall sonic coherence, as the tonal balances and overall character of the tracks are relatively consistent, whether stereo or mono, 78 transcription or remastered from tape. Purists may argue this approach, but I feel it works here, better than jarring transitions from rough, frequency-limited earlier tracks to wideband fidelity and back again. And enough of the individual sound quality of the tracks seems to have been preserved (I have almost none of this material on the original vinyl or shellac). Whatever processing may have been employed, there's no grain or electronic coldness getting in the way of the music; although digitized, the proceedings sound remarkably un-digital.

Encyclopedic in scope and beautifully produced, Hillbilly Fever! may be the ultimate historic country music anthology, questions of musical preference aside. At the very least, if you're a fan of today's country music and are open to hearing a healthy portion of Where It All Comes From, you should give Hillbilly Fever! your best shot.