Margie Singleton - Pledging My Love
Bear Family
BCD 17302 AH
Margie Singleton is one of the long-forgotten country-pop singers of the 1950s and 1960s. Though she recorded prolifically for more than 25 years on a variety of labels including Starday. Mercury and Ashley, she only scored one top 10 hit, Keeping Up With the Joneses, a 1964 duet with Faron Young. As well as duets with Young, George Jones and her second husband, Leon Ashley, Margie was also an in-demand session singer and appeared on literally hundreds of recordings including Leroy Van Dyke’s Walk On By, Ray Stevens’ Ahab The Arab and Joe Dowell’s Wooden Heart. Born in Louisiana in 1935 she married Shelby Singleton at 13 and after appearing for a number of years on the Louisiana Hayride, she moved to Nashville in 1960 when Shelby was appointed Mercury’s Nashville A&R manager. Though she was a distinctive singer, she remained very much in her husband’s shadow, despite dozens of recordings, which never seemed to be promoted as aggressively as they could have been.
This compilation features 30 tracks recorded in Nashville for Mercury between 1960 and 1964, with a good many being released for the very first time. Rooted very much in the then-prevalent ‘Nashville Sound’ style, this collection veers more towards pop music than country, with obvious soul and r&b flavourings apparent in songs like Chained To A Promise and She Will Break Your Heart. She covered Helen Shapiro’s UK pop hit Walking Back To Happiness, aping the British teenager’s version all the way, and also added vocals to the Tornados’ Telstar under the title Magic Star. Hardly country, neither is the mid-tempo, orchestrated Cypress Tree or the twee I Don’t Have To Look Pretty (To Stay Home And Cry). We’re given two versions of the latter, the over-dubbed single version and the original recording, which was previously unissued.
There are a handful of tracks that lean more towards straightforward country. The best are a pair of Faron Young duets—the Bill Anderson-penned No Thanks, I Just Had One and Another Woman’s Man, Another Man’s Woman—plus Only Your Shadow Knows, a song Margie co-wrote with Jerry Kennedy. She also recorded I’ll Just Walk On By, an answer song to the Leroy Van Dyke hit that she’d sung on, and a fine version of A Poor Man’s Roses, though it fails to match the superior Patsy Cline rendition.
Overall a good snapshot of what Nashville perceived as ‘country’ in the early 1960s, though to the country traditionalists of the period, this type of material was not considered ‘country’ at all. A little like the way the ‘rock-inflected country’ of today is not recognised by the ‘new traditionalists’ as country. Very little changes with the passing of time, though quite possibly today’s ‘new traditionalists’ will probably hail this collection as ‘the real thing’ when it comes to country. Ah well, life goes on. I should add that this excellently packaged release comes with a highly informative 36-page booklet.
www.bear-family.com
BCD 17302 AH
Margie Singleton is one of the long-forgotten country-pop singers of the 1950s and 1960s. Though she recorded prolifically for more than 25 years on a variety of labels including Starday. Mercury and Ashley, she only scored one top 10 hit, Keeping Up With the Joneses, a 1964 duet with Faron Young. As well as duets with Young, George Jones and her second husband, Leon Ashley, Margie was also an in-demand session singer and appeared on literally hundreds of recordings including Leroy Van Dyke’s Walk On By, Ray Stevens’ Ahab The Arab and Joe Dowell’s Wooden Heart. Born in Louisiana in 1935 she married Shelby Singleton at 13 and after appearing for a number of years on the Louisiana Hayride, she moved to Nashville in 1960 when Shelby was appointed Mercury’s Nashville A&R manager. Though she was a distinctive singer, she remained very much in her husband’s shadow, despite dozens of recordings, which never seemed to be promoted as aggressively as they could have been. This compilation features 30 tracks recorded in Nashville for Mercury between 1960 and 1964, with a good many being released for the very first time. Rooted very much in the then-prevalent ‘Nashville Sound’ style, this collection veers more towards pop music than country, with obvious soul and r&b flavourings apparent in songs like Chained To A Promise and She Will Break Your Heart. She covered Helen Shapiro’s UK pop hit Walking Back To Happiness, aping the British teenager’s version all the way, and also added vocals to the Tornados’ Telstar under the title Magic Star. Hardly country, neither is the mid-tempo, orchestrated Cypress Tree or the twee I Don’t Have To Look Pretty (To Stay Home And Cry). We’re given two versions of the latter, the over-dubbed single version and the original recording, which was previously unissued.
There are a handful of tracks that lean more towards straightforward country. The best are a pair of Faron Young duets—the Bill Anderson-penned No Thanks, I Just Had One and Another Woman’s Man, Another Man’s Woman—plus Only Your Shadow Knows, a song Margie co-wrote with Jerry Kennedy. She also recorded I’ll Just Walk On By, an answer song to the Leroy Van Dyke hit that she’d sung on, and a fine version of A Poor Man’s Roses, though it fails to match the superior Patsy Cline rendition.
Overall a good snapshot of what Nashville perceived as ‘country’ in the early 1960s, though to the country traditionalists of the period, this type of material was not considered ‘country’ at all. A little like the way the ‘rock-inflected country’ of today is not recognised by the ‘new traditionalists’ as country. Very little changes with the passing of time, though quite possibly today’s ‘new traditionalists’ will probably hail this collection as ‘the real thing’ when it comes to country. Ah well, life goes on. I should add that this excellently packaged release comes with a highly informative 36-page booklet.
www.bear-family.com