Ernest Tubb – The Last Sessions — All Time Greatest Hits

It’s now 20 years since Ernest Tubb began work on his last sizable body of recorded material — the First Generation label sides, 47 of them, cut between 1977 and 1981 under Pete Drake’s production. Major labels, including his own (Decca, by then turned MCA), had given up on the veteran Hall of Famer: the frustrated steel guitarist/producer Drake, believing Tubb had some good years left, started his own label mainly to record Tubb. He dcalled it First Generation because in addition to Tubb he recorded several other veteran stars (Billy Walker, Charlie Louvin, Stonewall Jackson, and others).

Tubb cut a few new songs for Drake — Justin Tubb’s “A Month Of Sundays,” Linda Hargrave’s “Half My Heart’s In Texas,” Willie Nelson’s “Sad Songs And Waltzes” (all especially appropriate to Tubb’s ilfe then). Two other new songs came from Tubb’s own pen, though not issued at the time — “One More Day” and “I Ain’t Been Right (Since You Went Wrong).” They were the first he’d written in several years, and the last that he ever would.

Most, though, of Tubb’s First Generation recordings (some in spite of his own objections, particularly if Decca versions were still available) were new versions of earlier Tubb classics. Few of these, however, were issued as straight Tubb records, but rather with overdubbed guest vocalists in various Tubb tribute packages. The first such package, The Legend And The Legacy (released to coincide with Tubb’s 65th birthday in February, 1979), was an epochal event at the time: Nashville’s first all-star salute to one of its living legends. Most guest stars overdubbed their parts while Tubb was on the road, unbeknownst to him — Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, Marty Robbins, George Jones, and others — though Tubb was let in on the secret some months before the final release, for which guest instrumentalists like Charlie Daniels, Chet Atkins, Harold Bradley, and even guest mixers got into the act.

The 20 tracks making up the original The Legend And The Legacy were so well received, critically and commercially, that Pete Drake planned another. Between 1979 and 1981 under his direction Tubb recut 19 more of his older songs, even though his voice had weakened pretty badly by the end. Guest overdubs were done for these too, but neither Tubb nor Drake lived to see the sequel released; Tubb died in 1984, and Drake in 1988. Only in 1992 did Laser Light in Los Angeles license from widow Rose Drake the whole package of duets (plus those new songs never overdubbed), pad the 47 cuts to 50 by repeating three songs, and release them in five single CDs of ten songs each and also in the five-CD box, The Legendary Ernest Tubb & Friends. About the same time, Step One Records licensed 30 of the very same duets, so the situation became what might best be described as overdub overkill.

With this new release, which like The Legend And The Legacy was timed to coincide with another important anniversary (May 3, 1997, marking the Ernest Tubb Record Shop’s 50th anniversary), Mrs. Drake has revived the First Generation label, and Tubb fans can rejoice to have all 47 songs he did for them, with no repeats this time and without a single overdub, vocal or instrumental. This is Earnest Tubb exactly as you would have heard him from the stage during those last years, singing his classics of bygone days with a Texas Troubadours band featuring Pete Mitchell on lead guitar and Lynn Owsley or Johnny “Dumplin'” Cox on steel.

Stripping away the overdubs has had a wonderfully beneficial effect on the sound quality in other ways. The mix, though still not perfect, is far superior to what hears on the overdubbed releases — or, more accurately, what one did not hear. The Laser Light box (all I have for comparison at the moment) had the steel guitar inaudible on many of the cuts, and even tuned out the electric guitar breaks on such cuts as “That Wild And Wicked Look In Your Eye” and “Try Me One More Time.” Such egregious errors are rectified here. There are no major sound problems, if you don’t mind (on most of the early cuts) having all the lead electric guitar in one speaker and all the steel guitar in the other.

This double-CD package has many other points in its favor as well. It is a bargain — at $21.98 you’re paying less than 50 cents per song. The cuts are in strict chronological order. It is attractively packaged, with two good, sharp cover photos by Hope Powell, taken during the correct period (something that even the wonderful Bear Family reissues of Tubb’s RCA-Decca years don’t always get right). The notes by Ernest Tubb Record Shop owner David McCormick are succinct and truthful, written from first-hand knowledge (not full owner then, he was managing the shops and very close to Tubb and Drake when these recordings were made).

My cavils are few and minor. I know that Mrs. Drake had full session information, and chose not to use it here — either to cut production costs or because, having already shared it with yours truly, Tubb fans can now find it in the discography section of my biography, Ernest Tubb: The Texad Troubadour (1966: Duke University Press). The subtitle, “All Time Greatest Hits,” is misleading and contradicts the main title, “The Last Sessions,” since these remakes are certainly not the 194065 Decca hit recordings. I would much prefer “Ernest Tubb: The Last Sessions, 1977-1981.” That would be truth in advertising rather than the obvious marketing ploy used instead. And for the life of me I cannot understand why Mrs. Drake chose to correct only one of the errors and inconsistencies in the song titles as rendered by Laser Lights. She changed “I’ll Always Be Glad To Take You Home” back to its proper “I’l Always Be Glad To Take You Back”; but with copyrighted song titles and record-label spellings from the Decca originals to guide her, she did not rectify such errors as “Give Me An Old Fashion Love” (should be “Two Glasses Joe”), and incredibly she butchered both names of Ernest Tubb’s idol, Jimmie Rodgers, in the subtitle “Jimmy Roger’s Last Blue Yodel.”

It’s possible that only a stickler like myself would be upset by all this. As I say, these are minor cavils. The performances, while not Tubb’s best and certainly not his “All Time Greatest Hits,” are consistently good, and give us the sound of his last years: a few good new songs, but mostly his ideas, looking back over a great career, of what his best songs were. His voice, never the crooning type, had lost little of its power to move, to entertain. I thought of Ernest Tubb when I recently came across this description by Lloyd Lewis of John A. Lomax’s voice (quoted on p. 225 of Nolan Porterfield’s outstanding new biography, Last Cavalier: The Life And Times of John A. Lomax 18671948): “the singing voice made a medium and not a goal — the singing voice which isn’t mechanically remarkable (possibly not even good) but capable of making the listener get up and go where the singer wants him to go, and feel what the singer feels.”

That’s Earnest Tubb’s vocal effectiveness in a nutshell. Tubb fans will want to have this collection, though they’ll probably have to order it exclusively from the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.