Eddy Arnold – The Essential Eddy Arnold / Eddy Arnold & The Tennessee Plowboys – Early Recordings

Eddy Arnold ranks as the most popular performer in country music history, according to Billboard chart historian Joel Whitburn, but he is also one of its most controversial. Country traditionalists often revile Arnold as one of those most responsible for transforming country music into middle-of-the-road schlock. Arnold has certainly created enough forgettable easy-listening music over the years to make the purists’ scorn understandable, but he also has recorded a number of classic country performances that have stood the test of time.

Arnold’s background was pure country — he grew up poor on a sharecropper’s farm not far from the Appalachians in Eastern Tennessee. After getting his break by working with Pee Wee King’s Golden Cowboys, he launched his solo career as Eddy Arnold, the Tennessee Plowboy. His first recording in 1944 was the sentimental ballad, “Mommy Please Stay Home With Me”. The tale of a child dying at home alone while his mother is out having a good time sounded like an old traditional performed by the Blue Sky Boys, but it was an original co-written by Arnold.

Before long, Arnold hit his commercial and artistic stride, and his popularity in the late 1940s was unparalleled. More importantly, his recordings at the time included some of the greatest heart songs in country history: “It’s A Sin”, “I’ll Hold You In My Heart (Till I Can Hold You In My Arms)”, “Anytime”, “Bouquet Of Roses”, “Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle” and so many others still sound wonderful, and they continue to be covered by others. Don Walser, considered a model of pure country by the traditionalists, has recorded three of Arnold’s early songs.

As a vocalist, Arnold was always a smoothie, but early in his career his smoothness sounded plaintive and unaffected, unlike the more melodramatic and pseudo-sophisticated vocalizing of his later years. Like many other great country singers, the young Eddy Arnold communicated sincerity. His records were sparsely produced, featuring just rhythm guitar, bass, some fiddle and the gorgeous Hawaiian-steel playing of Little Roy Wiggins. You won’t find any extraneous strings or backing vocals.

Those early recordings have been unavailable for many years. RCA has finally released a retrospective of Arnold’s career, but The Essential Eddy Arnold hardly lives up to its title. Of the 20 songs on the CD, a mere three are from his late-’40s peak. Many of the others are ’60s re-recordings of the earlier classics, and not a single one is improved by the additional instrumentation and more sophisticated production.

It’s absurd that RCA would use those ’60s re-recordings instead of Arnold’s more popular and artistically superior hit versions. It’s not much of a surprise, however, considering the label’s abysmal record of neglecting or shoddily reissuing the great country music tucked away in its vaults.

If you’re looking for the truly essential Eddy Arnold, a good place to start would be a new Japanese compilation of his early recordings. Curiously, many of the late-’40s monster hits are missing (for a good sampling of those, try to find the classic Arnold vinyl LP, Anytime), but this collection does contain 25 excellent Arnold performances from 1944-49. You’ll find a handful of sentimental numbers in the vein of “Please Mommy” (which begins the CD), along with classic heart songs such as “Many Tears Ago”, “Chained To A Memory”, “To My Sorrow” and others more obscure but just as endearing.

As the Japanese collection demonstrates, Arnold deserves better — not only from narrow-minded traditionalists, but also from the Nashville record company that seems incapable of doing justice to his greatest work.