Call of the Wild

by Bruce EderWarren Smith left Sun Records in 1959 and, after a brief stay with Warner Bros., signed with Liberty Records, where he looked forward to doing country music rather than the hybrid rockabilly that Sun had him recording. With Joe Allison managing his recordings, he began making records with a smooth Nashville sound, even though they were done in Hollywood. With Johnny Western on guitar, Ralph Mooney on steel guitar, and Bobby Bruce and Harold Hensley on fiddles, he got a very refined commercial sound that yielded a few hits ("I Don't Believe I'll Fall in Love Today" made it to number five and "Odds and Ends, Bits and Pieces" got to number seven) and a superb album, The First Country Collection of Warren Smith, which featured covers of songs associated with Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Charlie Walker, Eddy Arnold, and Rose Maddox, among others, and a couple of duets with singer Shirley Collie. The music here -- Smith's complete Liberty recordings, plus his two 1966 vintage songs for the tiny Skill label -- is among the most accomplished and inspired of Smith's career, and was work he was clearly proud of. The only drawback is the conventional nature of the arrangements -- Allison and Liberty were, understandably, trying for the most commercial sound possible, and the results are a little dullish in retrospect. Smith's expression is fine, however, expressive and strong throughout (only the Skill sides are weak), and the playing, especially in the 1959-1960 sessions, is first-rate. Highlights among the later songs include "Five Minutes of the Latest Blues," "A Hundred and Sixty Pounds of Hurt," and "That's Why I Sing in a Honky Tonk." The notes, as usual, are extremely thorough, covering Smith's career in considerable detail from 1959 until his death in 1980.