Hank Thompson ,well.....a tiny maybe..but taking Hank SNOW over Hank
Williams is beyond my comprehension... (I'm not sure we rally need to Rank
the Hanks at this late date anyway!)
I start out pretty much agreeing with Joe Gracey on this one...Mr. Snow, to
my ear, has one of the less soulful and sometimes plain duller SINGING
styles of major country starsk--but still somehow you can't let those
records go.
I'd coincidentally just picked up that Essential Hank Snow disc Don
described earlier, about a week ago, to update what I'd had (an import disc
with the hits and some ol' tapes., The "Essential" offers sound that's
very good, besides a better selection of cuts than most discs in that odd
series--and this is the interesting thing to me. Snow has these great
SONGS...some he wrote, more he surely had a role in selecting, and the
records are infectious anyway--with Atkins and anybody else at work on 'em
at RCA, that whole apparatus, yes, they make some really good records out
of the stuff.
After a while, you start to feel some real affection for the often
comically-imitated Snow nasality...you just give in. I think they're good
records made by a singer with some real limitations. (Ever heard Elvis do
his Snow on the Million Dollar Quartet session? Affectionate--but funny.)
Barry
>I for one can only attribute Hank Snow's success to the power of the
>Opry apparatus to foist mediocre talent on people for 'way too many
>years.
>
>>--
>Joe Gracey
