Dave Edmunds - From Small Things: The Best Of Dave Edmunds (2004)

These 16 Columbia, Swan Song and Arista tracks take you across Dave's entire solo career: his hits I Hear You Knocking; Girls Talk (live); Almost Saturday Night , and Slipping Away plus Information; Let It Be Me , and more.

It's one of pop music's most enduring ironies: The caretakers of America's original rock and blues legacy have as often as not hailed from closer to London than to Louisiana. This 16-track collection of recordings by Welsh-born roots-rock acolyte Dave Edmunds deftly underscores the point with ever-upbeat aplomb, spanning four decades and seven record labels (the first such comprehensive anthology of his work) in the bargain. There's a remarkable 32-year gap between this album's opening cover of Rockpile cohort Nick Lowe's "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)" and Edmunds's breakthrough 1970 American hit, "I Hear You Knockin'," but his vibrant performances suggest that not only does the circle remain unbroken, it's scarcely been dented. Crucially, the rockabilly-besotted singer seldom let slavish devotion get in the way of his own considerable creative drive (the exceptions here are a Beach Boys-fetishized cover of "Do You Wanna Dance" and a precious take of the Everlys' "Let It Be Me" from the soundtracks of Porky's Revenge and Stardust, respectively). But his versions of Graham Parker's "Crawling From the Wreckage," John Fogerty's "Almost Saturday Night," and Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk" amply display Edmunds's innate ability to make a song his own. He even rises above the patent, synth-driven production of Jeff Lynne on "Information" and "Slippin' Away," turning them into unlikely rockabilly-meets-new-wave successes. --Jerry McCulley