Bear Family's six-CD
Waltz Across Texas continues the label's comprehensive release of
Ernest Tubb's complete recordings. The highlights for most fans will be the dozen 1964-65 duets with Loretta Lynn, which are considered essential listening, but there's a lot more here worth owning. Tubb's vocal range had narrowed considerably in the ten years or so leading up to the 1960s, but he and producer Owen Bradley had worked out recordings that made his range sound greater than it was. For a lot of real fans, the highlights on Disc One will be the raw studio performances of cuts that were later mixed with applause for release as the fake "live" On Tour album, which might have been a cheat but did present Tubb and the band playing loose and freewheeling. Disc Three has a generally jauntier selection of material, including a dozen songs by the Texas Troubadors; its last two songs mark the beginning of the Ernest Tubb-Loretta Lynn collaborations. The quality of Tubb's music held steady even coming up on his 30th year in the recording business, mostly by virtue of his continuing to find good songs and Owen Bradley's way of recording him to the best advantage -- his voice on much of his mid-'60s output sounds like a finely aging instrument, and far more comfortable and pleasing than some of his late '50s material. Disc Five presents the balance of the early Lynn duets, as well as the title track, Tubb's last major hit. The sound throughout is state-of-the-art, and the annotated booklet is worth owning by itself, for what it tells us about the man and the band.
