Johnny Horton "Country Legend" (Varese Sarabande)

Johnny Horton "Country Legend" (Varese Sarabande)

Horton would etch his fame with hard-country classics like "Honky Tonk Man" and history-based hits that included "The Battle of New Orleans" and "North to Alaska." Before unleashing that run of sides on Columbia, Horton spent a few years on Mercury, and before that, he recorded these singles for the Cormac and Abbott labels in 1951 and 1952. Unlike the rockabilly-fueled style of his mid-50s work, these embryonic singles swing more lightly. There's a good helping of twang in the pedal-steel and fiddle, but with tempos that are '40s polite and vocals that are more Lefty Frizzell smooth rather than Ernest Tubb raw.

Horton wrote many of these songs of hometown joys that include family gatherings, country dances, and young romance. His first-person "Mean Mean Son of a Gun" is more of a scamp's idle boast than a delinquent's true confession, and though there are tears shed for the lost love of "It's a Long Rocky Road" Horton never plums the sort of desperate loneliness of fellow honky-tonkers like Hank Williams. Many of these songs would reappear in Horton's catalog over the years, but here they're backed by the sort of '40s-styled choruses that would wane in the '50s. Laurence Zwisohn's liners place these tracks in context with a brief career history stretching from Horton's pre-recording work to his later success on Columbia. All sixteen of these sides can be found on Bear Family's 4-disc import, "The Early Years," but this for anyone but the Horton completist, this single disc is perfect. [©2006 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]