Ronnie Dawson – Rockin’ Bones: The Legendary Masters

Anyone accustomed to the raunch ‘n’ growl of Ronnie Dawson’s more recent recordings is in for a bit of a shock upon first perusal of this two-CD portrait of the artist as a young man.

Kicking off with a handful of demos from 1957, Rockin’ Bones captures the Waxahachie teen sounding more in tune with greasy R&B than with the dry West Texas rockabilly of Buddy Holly (although he does preface his version of the Hank Ballard/Ruth Brown classic “It’s Love Baby” with a guitar figure similar to Holly’s “It’s Not My Fault”). On these earliest tracks, Dawson’s vocals are similar to those of another 17 year-old rocker, Ritchie Valens, in their charmingly inconsistent projection. Soon enough, though, he starts shooting straighter, more akin to the atomic-powered Larry Collins.

Once Ronnie really starts to hit his stride — right around the time of his first two 45s, “Action Packed” (1958) and the renowned title track (1959) — his sound has gone more in the direction of his pal Gene Vincent (with whom Ronnie shared a manager) and his second generation Blue Caps (“Dance To The Bop” and “Git It” era).

After this early peak, Dawson’s career took a brief detour through Philadelphia, where the Blonde Bomber met Dick Clark, who released Dawson’s next couple of records and tried to turn our hero into a squeaky-clean Bobby for his pre-pubescent “American Bandstand” audience. Thankfully, Ronnie’s reluctance to lip-synch and ol’ Dick’s own problems with the payola scandal led to a mercifully early close to Dawson’s fling with “pussy rock” (Ronnie’s words, not mine).

Dawson then did some session work, playing drums on such early-60’s hey-rock hits as “Hey Baby” and “Hey Paul”. He recorded some awesomely raw blues cuts of his own when there was still a little time left on the studio clock. The best of these, “Do Do Do” and “Jump and Run”, were released for a few seconds on Columbia, of all labels, under the pseudonym of Commonwealth Jones, then yanked when it was revealed that the singer was white!?!!

Understandably weary of being volleyed about by the industry, Dawson opted to join up with the Levee Singers, a folk revival outfit whose 1962 single of “Riders In the Sky” (still a staple in Dawson’s set) and “Everybody Clap Your Hands” ends the set on an uplifting note. Altogether, this collection is as inconsistent as the first part of Dawson’s career. It’s also just as interesting. And the story it tells — not just of Dawson, but of dozens of other local and regional heroes whose careers took similar paths — is well worth the price, which by the way, is under 20 bucks. Now you don’t have an excuse, do ya?