Presse Archive - Bobby Bare Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus - ricentral.com
Founded in 1975, Bear Family Records of Germany has pretty much set the golden standard for box set reissues beginning with multi-LP sets in its early days and moving to compact disc with its advent as a medium in the 1980s. The latter, by virtue of being able to contain up to 80 minutes of music on a single disc, afforded Bear Family the opportunity to amass even larger and more comprehensive retrospectives on an artist or genre spanning 10-CD sets focusing on such cats as Lefty Frizell and Fats Domino or more recently a compilation chronicling the Bakersfield, California country music scene from the 1940s to ‘70s. Consider Bear Family the vault raiders who invade the tombs of record companies and grab as much as they can on an artist and turn it into a lavish box set oft-times replete with hard-cover coffee table type book containing everything you need to know about the artist and recordings contained within. The country music singer/songwriter Bobby Bare has certainly qualified for legend status thanks to early smashes like “500 Miles from Home,” “Miller’s Cave,” “Four Strong Winds,” “Streets of Baltimore,” and “Detroit City,” as well as later hits “Marie Laveau” and “Daddy, What If.” A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and a master of the country ballad, that last mentioned hit leads us into this week’s Ear Bliss focus which is the newest box set from Bear Family Records chronicling Bare’s work with the writer Shel Silverstein. Silverstein’s name is one mostly synonymous with children’s literature thanks to books like “Where The Sidewalk Ends” and “Light in the Attic.” So how does a Bobby Bare and Shel Silverstein connect? Whereas they had met prior thanks to Bare covering the hit song “Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook & His Medicine Show which just so happened to be written by Silverstein, it wasn’t until meeting again at a music industry party that would get the collaborative ball rolling. It was also lead to a friendship that would last until 1999 when Silverstein succumbed to cancer. Over the course of that friendship, Bare by his own recollection would record over 100 Silverstein compositions, many of which made it to records beginning with the hit Bare album from 1973 entirely written by Silverstein called Lullabys, Legends and Lies. It leads off the new released 8-CD LP-sized box set titled Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein Plus from Bear Family. It features some 137 songs representing six full albums including 25 previously unreleased tracks. It gets the Ear Bliss look-see this week. Let’s get to it.
Founded in 1975, Bear Family Records of Germany has pretty much set the golden standard for box set reissues beginning with multi-LP sets in its early days and moving to compact disc with its advent as a medium in the 1980s. The latter, by virtue of being able to contain up to 80 minutes of music on a single disc, afforded Bear Family the opportunity to amass even larger and more comprehensive retrospectives on an artist or genre spanning 10-CD sets focusing on such cats as Lefty Frizell and Fats Domino or more recently a compilation chronicling the Bakersfield, California country music scene from the 1940s to ‘70s. Consider Bear Family the vault raiders who invade the tombs of record companies and grab as much as they can on an artist and turn it into a lavish box set oft-times replete with hard-cover coffee table type book containing everything you need to know about the artist and recordings contained within. The country music singer/songwriter Bobby Bare has certainly qualified for legend status thanks to early smashes like “500 Miles from Home,” “Miller’s Cave,” “Four Strong Winds,” “Streets of Baltimore,” and “Detroit City,” as well as later hits “Marie Laveau” and “Daddy, What If.” A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and a master of the country ballad, that last mentioned hit leads us into this week’s Ear Bliss focus which is the newest box set from Bear Family Records chronicling Bare’s work with the writer Shel Silverstein. Silverstein’s name is one mostly synonymous with children’s literature thanks to books like “Where The Sidewalk Ends” and “Light in the Attic.” So how does a Bobby Bare and Shel Silverstein connect? Whereas they had met prior thanks to Bare covering the hit song “Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook & His Medicine Show which just so happened to be written by Silverstein, it wasn’t until meeting again at a music industry party that would get the collaborative ball rolling. It was also lead to a friendship that would last until 1999 when Silverstein succumbed to cancer. Over the course of that friendship, Bare by his own recollection would record over 100 Silverstein compositions, many of which made it to records beginning with the hit Bare album from 1973 entirely written by Silverstein called Lullabys, Legends and Lies. It leads off the new released 8-CD LP-sized box set titled Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein Plus from Bear Family. It features some 137 songs representing six full albums including 25 previously unreleased tracks. It gets the Ear Bliss look-see this week. Let’s get to it.
Presse Archive - Bobby Bare Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus - The Big Takeover
Bobby Bare – Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus (Bear Family)
Bobby Bare Shel Silverstein
10 November 2020 by Jon M. Young
A celebrated children’s book author (“Where the Sidewalk Ends”), as well as a cartoonist and playwright, the multi-dimensional Shel Silverstein probably made his biggest mark as a songwriter, with such witty hits as the Johnny Cash smash “A Boy Named Sue” and Dr. Hook’s “The Cover of Rolling Stone” to his credit. The performer most associated with his tunes, however, was the smooth country crooner Bobby Bare, who helped craft the template for the polished countrypolitan sound in the ‘60s on such smashes as “Detroit City” and “Five Hundred Miles Away from Home.”
Bare shifted gears in the early ‘70s, becoming a charter member of the outlaw movement that rejected conservative Nashville formulas and made superstars of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. From 1972 to 1983, he recorded more than a hundred of Silverstein’s inventive compositions, in the process creating the classic albums Lullabys, Legends and Lies and Down & Dirty. Offering 137 tracks (most written or co-written by Silverstein) on eight CDs, including more than two dozen previously unreleased cuts, along with a large, 128-page hardcover book, this wonderful set is a feast of irreverent humor, bracing social commentary and tender vignettes.
Among the six full or expanded albums featured in Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus are Hard Time Hungrys, a chronicle of economic struggle, and the family-oriented Singin’ in the Kitchen, while two discs of “Stray Bare Tracks” collect singles-only releases or otherwise-overlooked Silverstein songs from other projects.
On the basis of sheer bulk alone, this massive compilation could seem daunting, which is the opposite intent of the music. A supremely genial vocalist, Bare’s easygoing style brings a warm glow to gentle ballads and boozy barroom singalongs alike. Dig almost anywhere and a gem awaits! A few highlights: the toe-tapping tale of voodoo queen “Marie Laveau,” which topped the country charts in 1974; “Yard Full of Rusty Cars,” a sly, talking blues-style account of down-home hospitality; and the aching love song “When She Cries.”
Much like a great short story collection, Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus brings all manner of memorable characters to life, celebrating oddballs, losers and renegades. It’s a perfect match of brilliant composer and masterful interpreter.
Bobby Bare – Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus (Bear Family)
Bobby Bare Shel Silverstein
10 November 2020 by Jon M. Young
A celebrated children’s book author (“Where the Sidewalk Ends”), as well as a cartoonist and playwright, the multi-dimensional Shel Silverstein probably made his biggest mark as a songwriter, with such witty hits as the Johnny Cash smash “A Boy Named Sue” and Dr. Hook’s “The Cover of Rolling Stone” to his credit. The performer most associated with his tunes, however, was the smooth country crooner Bobby Bare, who helped craft the template for the polished countrypolitan sound in the ‘60s on such smashes as “Detroit City” and “Five Hundred Miles Away from Home.”
Bare shifted gears in the early ‘70s, becoming a charter member of the outlaw movement that rejected conservative Nashville formulas and made superstars of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. From 1972 to 1983, he recorded more than a hundred of Silverstein’s inventive compositions, in the process creating the classic albums Lullabys, Legends and Lies and Down & Dirty. Offering 137 tracks (most written or co-written by Silverstein) on eight CDs, including more than two dozen previously unreleased cuts, along with a large, 128-page hardcover book, this wonderful set is a feast of irreverent humor, bracing social commentary and tender vignettes.
Among the six full or expanded albums featured in Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus are Hard Time Hungrys, a chronicle of economic struggle, and the family-oriented Singin’ in the Kitchen, while two discs of “Stray Bare Tracks” collect singles-only releases or otherwise-overlooked Silverstein songs from other projects.
On the basis of sheer bulk alone, this massive compilation could seem daunting, which is the opposite intent of the music. A supremely genial vocalist, Bare’s easygoing style brings a warm glow to gentle ballads and boozy barroom singalongs alike. Dig almost anywhere and a gem awaits! A few highlights: the toe-tapping tale of voodoo queen “Marie Laveau,” which topped the country charts in 1974; “Yard Full of Rusty Cars,” a sly, talking blues-style account of down-home hospitality; and the aching love song “When She Cries.”
Much like a great short story collection, Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus brings all manner of memorable characters to life, celebrating oddballs, losers and renegades. It’s a perfect match of brilliant composer and masterful interpreter.
Bobby Bare Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus - amazon review!
Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus (8-CD Deluxe Box Set)
So, I was thrilled when I saw that the German-based reissue label Bear Family Records – which always goes “first class” on reissuing deluxe boxsets of artists who deserve, but rarely get, attention, I knew I’d learn more about the two of them. Yes,, like most reading this review, I knew Bobby Bare from basically one other recording back in the 1960s from his hit single “Detroit City” (written by Nashville writers Danny Dill and Mel Tillis) but other than the “LLandL album”, I knew little. After spending (literally) hours with this EIGHT-CD (plus 128-page hardbound Lp-size book) box I feel I know both guys. Thanks to the capacity of a CD vs. vinyl, the original two discs fit on the first CD. Then we get the follow-up album “Hard Time Hungrys (another misspelled title!) where not all, but most, are penned by Silverstein. Tracks recorded though not on the original album are added. “Singin’ in the Kitchen” – with the whole Bare family joining in gets the same treatment. A brief break in the flow of issued releases fills the next two CDs, “Stray Bare Tracks” and “More Stray Bare Tracks” before we get to “The COMPLETE Great American Saturday Night” ,and finally two albums from the 80s: “Down and Dirty” and “Drunk & Crazy” which ends with “Desperados Waiting For A Train”, the Guy Clark song made famous by the late Jerry Jeff Walker.
The book has an essay on Silverstein and a new interview with Bare plus the lyrics to all 137 songs in the set.
Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus (8-CD Deluxe Box Set)
So, I was thrilled when I saw that the German-based reissue label Bear Family Records – which always goes “first class” on reissuing deluxe boxsets of artists who deserve, but rarely get, attention, I knew I’d learn more about the two of them. Yes,, like most reading this review, I knew Bobby Bare from basically one other recording back in the 1960s from his hit single “Detroit City” (written by Nashville writers Danny Dill and Mel Tillis) but other than the “LLandL album”, I knew little. After spending (literally) hours with this EIGHT-CD (plus 128-page hardbound Lp-size book) box I feel I know both guys. Thanks to the capacity of a CD vs. vinyl, the original two discs fit on the first CD. Then we get the follow-up album “Hard Time Hungrys (another misspelled title!) where not all, but most, are penned by Silverstein. Tracks recorded though not on the original album are added. “Singin’ in the Kitchen” – with the whole Bare family joining in gets the same treatment. A brief break in the flow of issued releases fills the next two CDs, “Stray Bare Tracks” and “More Stray Bare Tracks” before we get to “The COMPLETE Great American Saturday Night” ,and finally two albums from the 80s: “Down and Dirty” and “Drunk & Crazy” which ends with “Desperados Waiting For A Train”, the Guy Clark song made famous by the late Jerry Jeff Walker.
The book has an essay on Silverstein and a new interview with Bare plus the lyrics to all 137 songs in the set.
Presse Archive - Bobby Bare Bobby Bare Sings Shel Silverstein plus - Elmore magazine
No BS, when it comes to box sets, Bear Family Records seems to set the standard. Just consider the numbers on their latest LP-sized deluxe offering: 137 tracks on 8 CDs, 6 complete albums, 25 previously unreleased masters, one 128 page hardcover book, containing interviews, tributes, photos and more photos, no selfies, but beaucoup “shelfies” (portraits by Lawson Little), along with a down-to-the-last-detail discography of sessions that ran across two decades, all of it artistically packaged and remastered beautifully so it sounds like it was recorded yesterday.
Like “sessions,” the often-repeated word in Bare’s first big 1959 hit “All American Boy,” playing on lots of sessions were always very important to Robert Joseph Bare Sr.. The music world first knew Bobby as “Bill Parsons” thanks to sloppy label copy on that Top 40 hit.There’s no sloppiness here with this outstanding Bear Family production of the now CMHOF legend’s prolific partial lives work. The bulk of it originates from one irrepressible songwriter, Shel Silverstein. Much of it is conceptual, a term that did not exist in the Music Row that cranked out standard issue LPs back then, with one or two hits and eight placeholders.
No BS, when it comes to box sets, Bear Family Records seems to set the standard. Just consider the numbers on their latest LP-sized deluxe offering: 137 tracks on 8 CDs, 6 complete albums, 25 previously unreleased masters, one 128 page hardcover book, containing interviews, tributes, photos and more photos, no selfies, but beaucoup “shelfies” (portraits by Lawson Little), along with a down-to-the-last-detail discography of sessions that ran across two decades, all of it artistically packaged and remastered beautifully so it sounds like it was recorded yesterday.
Like “sessions,” the often-repeated word in Bare’s first big 1959 hit “All American Boy,” playing on lots of sessions were always very important to Robert Joseph Bare Sr.. The music world first knew Bobby as “Bill Parsons” thanks to sloppy label copy on that Top 40 hit.There’s no sloppiness here with this outstanding Bear Family production of the now CMHOF legend’s prolific partial lives work. The bulk of it originates from one irrepressible songwriter, Shel Silverstein. Much of it is conceptual, a term that did not exist in the Music Row that cranked out standard issue LPs back then, with one or two hits and eight placeholders.