Tennessee Ernie Ford – The Ultimate Collection

For visceral, rhythmic punch, for the sheer joy of musical sound, has the C&W tradition ever produced a song more thrilling than Tennessee Ernie Fords 1950 crossover smash Shotgun Boogie?

Ford first made a name for himself with a series of classic country boogies recorded between 1949 and 1953, and Shotgun Boogie is the best of a hot bunch, now collected on Razor & Ties new two-disc set, The Ultimate Tennessee Ernie Ford Collection. Though perhaps best known for his deep, distinctive voice which fell arrestingly between the lowest baritone and the highest bass Ford actually didnt have all that great of a vocal instrument, at least not in a technical sense. He strained easily toward flat when he had to push his narrow range or when he had to hold a note at the end of a line for too long (check out the fast parts of the admittedly tough to sing The Cry Of The Wild Goose from 1950).

But on the boogies, mainly collected on the first disc of this set, those problems rarely matter. On Shotgun Boogie, as well as on smokers such as Smoky Mountain Boogie, Stack-O-Lee and Anticipation Blues, Ford gets a chance to show off his real vocal gift: an innate sense of phrasing and rhythm that did as much to soup up these early boogies as did the jaw-dropping riffs, fills and solos laid down by pedal steel player Speedy West and guitar great Jimmy Bryant.

Rhythm was Fords genius, and for proof, you need not listen any further than another of Fords crossover hits, his 1949 recording of Mule Train. The musical accompaniment here is really nothing more than a nifty little circular guitar figure and a two-note bass line. Its Fords booming voice and his insistently rhythmic phrasing clippety clop, clippety clop, clippety clop that drives this train along and makes whats really a spare arrangement sound so full, alive and propulsive.

The second disc covers Fords later ventures into pop and gospel, and while the critical consensus on this period of Fords career tends toward the dismissive, the selections here argue against such conclusions. Whether hes working with Frank Sinatra arranger Billy May on the lush ballad River Of No Return (a Top-10 country hit in 1954), or tackling a sturdy hymn as he does on his 1956 recordings of The Old Rugged Cross and Rock Of Ages, Fords music in this period is consistently strong and always brimming with sincere charm and emotion.

On the other hand, this material, no longer so focused on the beat, tended to highlight Fords vocal weaknesses. His exuberant 1954 duet with Betty Hutton of This Must Be The Place, for example, is brassy and swinging the kind of thing Louis Prima used to do with Keely Smith but compared to Huttons over-the-top performance, Ford sounds like hes having a tough time keeping up. On the great Stuart Hamblens His Hands, Ford goes for a Southern gospel feel; the results are quite beautiful yet far short of what a true master of Southern gospel soloing (say, Jake Hess or James Blackwood, or even Jack Tony) could have accomplished. In the same way, Fords hymns are always nice, but his versions of classics like Sweet Hour Of Prayer and Softly And Tenderly lack the awestruck reverence, not to mention the virtuosity, brought to them by hymn legend George Beverly Shea.

But give him a midtempo number and a rhythm-based arrangement with room to show off his knack for phrasing, and Ford could still be a world-conqueror, even in this later period of his career. His signature hit Sixteen Tons, from 1955, topped both the country and pop charts behind a swinging shuffle that must have sounded far more at home on the latter chart than the former. And with Ford singing in a solid groove where he belonged, jazzy pop numbers such as You Dont Have To Be A Baby To Cry (1955) and Thats All (1956) are every bit as wonderful as bluesy, stripped-down beauties such as Sweet Dreams (1964) and Trouble In Mind (1975, with Glenn Camp_bell on hot acoustic guitar). Cuts like these really do live up to the legend of Fords boogie classics, and Razor & Ties willingness to include his later recordings here is what truly makes this the ultimate Tennessee Ernie Ford collection.