Memphis Rockabilly King

They Say...

Review by Mark Deming, All Music Guide

There was probably no worse city in America to be a second-string rockabilly artist than Memphis, TN -- with Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Charlie Feathers, Billy Lee Riley and the rest of the Sun Records roster in town, you could have a lot of talent and still look like a piker in comparison. Eddie Bond was one of the dozens of rockabilly singers who bubbled under on the Memphis music scene in the '50s, cutting a few rare singles for Mercury before starting his own label and later enjoying some local success as a country artist, but this CD collection of 40 (!) sides Bond recorded between 1955 and 1984 proves he was more interesting than the majority of lesser-known first-era rockabillies. Bond's early Mercury andEkko sides (such as "Slip Slip Slippin' In," "Boppin' Bonnie" and "Flip Flop Mama") were frantic stuff indeed, dominated by Bond's strong but acrobatic vocals and locomotive guitar work, and if a major hit never came his way, he also never gave up on the music, still cutting solid rockabilly sides like "Juke Joint Johnny" and "Look Like a Monkey" well into the late '60s. While Bond was also recording country songs in the '60s, the tunes presented here are tough honky tonk stuff that show the man still hadn't given up the ghost, and given how much music has been crammed onto this disc, the batting average is admirably high, with nary a dog in sight. Eddie Bond was hardly the Rockabilly King of Memphis, despite what the title of this disc would lead you to believe, but he was one of the better exponents of the form and this collection captures him in solid form; vintage rockabilly obsessives will certainly want to give this a spin.