Carl Rocks

This was mixed well, you will enjoy remember this is very old music but this release don't sound bad

If you wan't to transport yourself back to the late fifties early sixties the real rockin years then this is the c.d for you.

Bear Family of Germany, with their excellent sound reproduction and liner notes, have come up with a great multi-track series dealing with the originators of R&R (and its R&B and Rockabilly roots) under the generic title Rocks, featuring releases covering Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, Buddy Knox & Jimmy Bowen, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Sleepy LaBeef, Connie Francis, Brenda Lee, Bobby Darin, Wanda Jackson, Rusty York, Conway Twitty, Sonny James, Glen Glenn, Roy Hall, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Fats Domino, Dale Hawkins, Ronnie Hawkins, and Jack Scott. Each a gem.This one primarily covers the Phillips output of Carl Mann, born in Huntingdon, Tennessee on August 22, 1942 and one of the Tail-End Charlies in terms of the sub-genre known as Rockabilly. A fusion of C&W (or Hillbilly as it was once referred to), Western Swing, Boogie Woogie and R&B, it enjoyed its peak popularity from about 1954 to 1958, and when Carl first entered the fray in 1957 with his initial record for Jimmy Martin's Jaxon label, Gonna Rock And Roll Tonight/Rockin' Love (Jaxon 502), he was all of 15 years old. Both sides are here and include his band members Robbie "Tootsie" Robinson on drums, guitarists Larry Gowan and Robert Oatsvall, and fiddler Jerry Wooters.His big break came when W.S. "Fluke" Holland, once a drummer with the Carl Perkins group, took over as Mann's manager and arranged an audition with Sun Records' Sam Phillips, who signed the not-quite-18-year-old Mann to a recording contract with his Phillips subsidiary. In early 1959, even as Rockabilly was beginning to fade, he chose the unlikely tune Mona Lisa, a huge hit ballad for Nat "King" Cole in 1950, and took it to # 24 R&B and # 25 Billboard Pop Hot 100 on Phillips 3539 b/w Foolish One (both here) in June/July. A cover on MGM by the then 26 y/o Conway Twitty, also considered a Rockabilly artist at the time, wound up at # 29 Pop.Since that worked well for him, Mann went back to a Cole hit ballad for his next single, but this time Pretend (a hit in 1953) came up short at # 57 Hot 100 that November on Phillips 3546 b/w Rockin' Love, the same tune that appeared on his Jaxon release. An attempt at a Rockabilly version of Some Enchanted Evening failed miserably late that year on Phillips 3550 b/w I Can't Forget You (omitted), and in 1960, neither side of South Of The Border/I'm Coming Home could dent the charts on Phillips 3555 (both here), nor did his only Phillips album do well. Tracks from that release (Like, Mann: Carl Mann Sings) included here are: Walkin' And Thinkin', If I Ever Needed You, Island Of Love, and Baby I Don't Care, along with 7 of the his single releases to date.Two releases in 1961 also failed - a cover of The Wayward Wind b/w Born To Be Bad (not here) on Phillips 3563, and If I Could Change You (not here) b/w Ain't Got No Home on Phillips 3569. The final Phillips release in 1962, When I Grow Too Old To Dream, which dated all the way back to 1935, was another failure on Phillips 3579 b/w Mountain Dew, for which they provide only an alternate take.He resurfaced on record briefly in 1966 with Monument (Down To My Last "I Forgive You"/Serenade Of The Bells (Monument 974), and again in 1968 for Arcade (Headin' For A Heartbreak/Isn't It true (Arcade 196), but neither charted, nor are they here. The same applies to his output in 1975/76 for ABC and Dot when, trying pure Country, he had a cover of The Platters' 1958 hit, Twilight Time, just barely make the Country Top 100 at # 100 in May 1976 b/w Belly-Rubbin' Country Soul on ABC/Dot 17621.This period of his career remains impossible to find on CD. Carl was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame in 2006.