Jerry Wallace – The Best Of

Jerry Wallace had his first significant hits on the pop charts. The Nashville-sounding “Primrose Lane” went top-10 in 1959, and five years later, his considerably more charming “In The Misty Moonlight”, a Cindy Walker-penned ballad that Wallace sang in a Johnny Tillotson mode, cracked the top-20. By the ’70s, though, Wallace had gone country. And, just like Conway Twitty and so many other rock-and-pop acts of Wallace’s generation, he negotiated the transition without having to alter his music much at all. Wallace sang with a vibrato croon, something like Ray Price but with the compromised lung power of a Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, and his country hits were tricked out with string and backing choirs courtesy of arranger Bill Justis. A lot of these cuts sounded ukulele-in-a-rowboat old-fashioned even when new. But Wallace’s best numbers — “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry”, which topped the country charts in 1972, and its #2 country follow-up, “Do You Know What It’s Like To Be Lonely”, both in a moody, low-key style clearly influenced by countrypolitan-era Charlie Rich — are criminally forgotten these days and not to be missed.