VA - Red Hot Rockabilly, Pt. 1 (1999)

Disky exists as a label of budget repackages and reissues. As a result they put out plenty of material that would have been better left to some other label. In the case of their country and rockabilly collections, they do an awesome job for the money. It's true there is little in the way of documentation or liner notes, but along with artist, title, and author necessities, they also offer label and date of release, which is valuable for folks who care about such things. Which brings us to this 30-track smokin' rockabilly compilation that includes not the usual Elvis/Jerry Lee/Carl Perkins/Johnny Cash amalgam of tracks, but Bob Luman's "Red Hot," Ricky Nelson's "Believe What You Say," Laura Lee Perkins' "Don't Wait Up," Lew Williams' "Bop Bop Ba Doo Bop," Johnny & Dorsey Burnette's "Do Baby Do," Billy Eldrige's "Let's Go," and enough others to make your head spin. If these were the only unusual tracks here, that would be worth celebrating in itself, but when the most normal cuts on a compilation like this are Eddie Cochran's "Little Lou," the Burnettes' "Boppin' Rosalie," and Roy Brown's "We're Goin' Rockin' Tonight," then you have something very special in your hands. All the material here dates from between 1956-1960, and in an unusual move, Disky even includes liner notes in this compilation to hip you to the contributions of some of the artists here like Bill Allen, the Strikes, Johnny Garner, and Perkins, among others. This thing burns from top to bottom without a weak track in the litter. Sets like this prove that rock & roll music from its inception was something raw, snotty, sexual, and dangerous, because these tracks remained that way over 40 years after they were issued.