Bear Family
's
One More Record Please
has a clever conceit: it's a collection of songs about records, delivered in an era when even the CD is beginning to seem like a relic.
contains 25 songs, to be exact, most dating from the '50s, mostly country, mostly relatively obscure even when they're by big-name artists, as
Willie Nelson
is represented by his first single,
"Mr. Record Man,"
and
Merle Haggard
has
"Please Mr. DJ."
Obscure is hardly a bad thing, particularly in a set like this, which is indeed targeted at listeners who have an undying fondness for the golden age of the 45 even if they were born several decades after it existed. And for those listeners,
is a bit of a blast. It contains few great songs -- indeed,
"Mr. Record Man"
is the closest -- but it has some pretty great obscurities, like
Tommy Collins
' dead-on
ET
impression on the very funny
"Ernest Tubb 78s"
;
Tom Tall
's rocking
"Stack-A-Records"
; the jumping blues of
Charles Senns
'
"Dig Me a Crazy Record"
; the spare, echoey, and silly
"Square Record"
by
Bruce Culver
; the absurd instructional novelty of
Carson Robinson
"Making a Record, Pts. 1-2"
; and
Art Gibson
's almost prophetic
"No More Records."
All of these would pepper a college radio set list quite nicely, and that's the point of the whole thing: it's a record for collectors to introduce to other collectors. Either you get it or you don't, and if you do, there's no way you'll be disappointed in this. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine