Jim Reeves – The Jim Reeves Radio Show, February 25-28, 1958
Jim Reeves’ 1957 single “Four Walls”, the second genre-bending Nashville Sound hit to score with pop record buyers (after Ferlin Husky’s “Gone”), put him in a unique position that year. By fall, he was hosting The Jim Reeves Show on radio. Produced in Nashville by and distributed through ABC, it ran Mondays through Fridays from October 1957 through February 1958. This disc features the final four broadcasts.
Accompanied by Owen Bradley’s small orchestra and the Anita Kerr Singers, Reeves sang four tunes on each show, also reciting an “inspirational poem” and bantering with affable announcer David Cobb (credited with coining the term “Music City U.S.A.”). Vocally, Reeves was outstanding, whether crooning a swinging version of the ’40s pop tune “I Get The Blues When It Rains” or reprising “Four Walls” and “Am I Losing You”.
Was the show itself a breakthrough? Hardly. In 1957 Eddy Arnold and Tennessee Ernie Ford each hosted prime-time network TV shows aimed at mainstream viewers. By contrast, the Reeves show, modeled on 1940s musical radio programs, was archaic, assuring its brief lifespan. Beyond singing, Reeves, an experienced announcer himself, tried too hard to be the perfect host. His scripted banter with Cobb was stilted and dull.
Spontaneity surfaces only on the final broadcast: Reeves, irritated when Cobb introduces him as James Travis Reeves (his full name), asks — orders — the announcer to “please knock it off.” Annotator Michael Streissguth’s 1998 Reeves biography related many similar flare-ups, earning the author the wrath of a handful of Reevesphiles who deny their hero’s very human faults.
That the show was ultimately of peripheral importance to Reeves’ career is obvious by the fact Streissguth has little to say about it. While this collection may titillate Reeves’ worldwide fan base, I suspect that the label (…And More Bears, a Bear Family spin-off) can zero in on far more worthwhile radio material by Reeves and others.