Rose Maddox With The Vern Williams Band - This Is Rose Maddox

Along with her contemporary Molly O’Day, West Coast-based Rose Maddox was one of the trailblazing women’s voices in country music. Her lengthy career in music began in 1937 when, accompanied by her equally talented quintet of brothers, she began broadcasting over a radio station in Modesto, California; and it only ended 51 years later, with her death in 1998. By then, her whiskey-soaked blend of hillbilly, honky tonk and seminal rockabilly had been embraced by the Americana and folk music worlds as well. The lively bluegrass idiom was also a natural offshoot for her energetic style, and this CD reissue of a 1981 album was actually her second stab at it, after Capitol had released a Sings Bluegrass LP in 1962. Whether covering hits such as Woody Guthrie’s Philadelphia Lawyer or Merle Travis’ Dark As A Dungeon, revisiting a couple of originals (including her signature Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down) or making genre standards Foggy Mountain Top and Dream Of The Miner’s Child her own, Maddox absorbingly sings like there’s no tomorrow with her top-notch band striking a perfect balance between solo accents and sparkling unison playing.