Sheb Wooley

White Lightnin' Sheb Wooley

He starred alongside Gary Cooper in 'High Noon,' alongside James Dean in 'Giant,' and alongside Clint Eastwood in 'Rawhide!'He wrote the theme tune of the long-running TV show 'Hee-Haw!'He was a country singer... and a cousin of Roger Miller, but his biggest hits, like Purple People Eater, were pop!He sang hit pop and country parodies as Ben Colder! q And he was the king of the country boogie!

It was a long, eventful career for Sheb Wooley. Alongside his other achievements, he made the first-ever indie label recordings in Nashville (one of them, Oklahoma Honky Tonk Girl is here) and was on MGM Records from the year after it's inception until the year it finished. Along the way, he scored hits in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. This collection focuses heavily on his romping, stomping up-tempo songs... mostly recorded in the 1940s and '50s. Using the cream of west coast session musicians like Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant, Wooley laid down some shack shakin' country boogies. These were songs you would have found on country jukeboxes in taverns across the west in the years before rock 'n' roll.

After the session that launched the record business in Nashville, Wooley didn't return until 1962 when he recorded the rollicking That's My Pa. Incredibly, it was his first-ever charted country hit... and a #1 country hit at that! BEAR FAMILY's 'Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight' just gets better as it goes along, and this long-overdue retrospective of Sheb Wooley's up-tempo sides is the perfect antidote to economic austerity. Good music for bad times!