Several years after this set concludes, Jim Reeves formulated the lush blend of
country and pop music that would become known as the Nashville Sound. Given the
right song, his voice betrayed an almost embarrassing intimacy. What it took in the
end was the courage to be different, and that meant singing low and slow when eve-
ryone around him was rocking and rolling. These recordings fall more within the
country mainstream of their day, but they are among the relatively few pure country
recordings that Jim Reeves made. For that alone, they repay close attention because
we can hear all that he took from traditional country music as he moved forward.
Colin Escott, May 2014
INTRODUCTION
These introductory notes are written by
a long-in-the-tooth Jim Reeves fan of the
old school, from a personal perspective born
out of a 50 year association with his music
and memory. I am grateful to Bear Family
for allowing me the pleasure and privilege
of talking about a golden period in country
music history that passed me by and that I
was blissfully unaware of at the time.
My first introduction to JimReeves came
as a seventeen year old, fresh out of school,
who fell for the dulcet 1960 Countrypolitan
sounds of
He’ll Have To Go
, which was in the UK Pop charts at the time. I knew
nothing of folk, hillbilly, bluegrass, western swing or country and western. We
didn’t differentiate between music styles in Great Britain. If it was in the charts, it
was pop.
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