The sixth and final installment in Bear Family's Complete Sun Singles series doesn't include any Sun records at all. The focus here, instead, is on Sun's sister label, Phillips International, and the 48 singles it released from 1959 to its demise in 1963.
Most hardcore rock 'n' roll fans have a pretty good fix on the Sun sound by this point, but it is considerably trickier to try to describe "the Phillips International sound." Basically, although all but about 10 percent of these tracks were recorded at one of the three Sun studios that existed during the set's time frame, most have a decidedly slicker, poppier, more uptown feel than their 'cross-the-tracks cousins released on the yellow Sun label.
As a result, collectors who insist on the raw, earthy textures most associated with Sun will find little to gnaw on here, save for two excellent tracks apiece by Mack Self (hardcore C&W), Sonny Burgess (rabid rockabilly) and Frank Frost (country blues), and would be well-advised to think twice about laying down another C-note on this four-disc box.
However, for those with a sweet tooth for the oft-overlooked period between Buddy Holly's plane crash and the infinitely more graceful touchdown of the Beatles' Pan Am jet five years and four days later, there are many gems here, indeed.
Oh, sure, there are also some fairly pedestrian tracks by folks maybe a little too under the spell of the era's hitmakers (Elvis, Jackie Wilson, Connie Francis, etc.) to forge a style of their own, and there are some downright duds here, too (enough out-of-tune warbling, misogyny and second-rate exotica to make any fan of "Las Vegas Grind" blush). But it all adds charm, pacing and humanity to the set, and makes for more entertaining listening than your standard hits package does.
The best-known artists here, save for Jerry Lee Lewis (who appears under his instrumental nom de plume "The Hawk"), are Charlie Rich and Carl Mann. Rich is represented by 18 cuts, including his best ("Midnite Blues", "Who Will The Next Fool Be") and best-known ("Lonely Weekends", "Sittin' And Thinkin'") early material, although anyone interested in a deeper probe of his Sun recordings is directed to Bear Family's 1997 three-CD Lonely Weekends box.
Mann, likewise, gets 14 cuts, most notably "Mona Lisa", which Sam Phillips refused to release until Conway Twitty's identikit cover started to get some chart action, and the Rich-penned "I'm Comin' Home", which impressed Elvis Presley so much that he kicked off the "Rhythm Side" of his underrated 1961 LP Something For Everybody with a very similar take on the tune.
Speaking of Elvis, the race-mixing that began with his debut platter for Sun some seven years earlier continued at the label throughout its history -- sometimes in reverse fashion. Some of the most interesting obscurities here include black vocalists such as Freddie North working his way through an Orbisonesque ballad, and Jeb Stuart hammering away at Webb Pierce's "I Ain't Never".
The civil rights movement was still in a fairly embryonic stage at this point, and such culture-mixing was quite a brave political statement (especially in the South). If the music Sam Phillips released during this era ever loses its potency (not damn likely!), his pioneering work (intentional or not) as a cultural subversive will be his greatest contribution to history.
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