Various Artists - Boppin' By The Bayou More Dynamite (2013)

Ace spent a good chunk of 2013 boppin', bouncin', and rockin' on the bayou, and their autumn release, Boppin' by the Bayou: More Dynamite, is one of the liveliest of their excavations of the vaults of Louisiana music moguls Eddie Shuler, Charles "Dago" Redlich, J.D. Miller, and Carol Rachou. Once again, this is hardly reliant on recognizable names. There is the New Orleans giant Bobby Charles, rocking & rolling with the previously unreleased "Teenagers," but that's about it. The rest of this is jumping New Orleans R&B and rock & roll recorded during the late '50s and early '60s but sitting unreleased until this 2013 collection. Think Fats Domino, Smiley Lewis, anybody associated with Dave Bartholomew and, yes, the sly Charles, and that's the baseline for this collection: cheerful, big-boned swagger accentuated by loose yet precise rhythms and robust vocals. Sometimes, the proceedings swing so hard they get stuck in the murk of the bayou -- there are a few cuts, like Johnny Jano's "Oh Baby, Where Can My Baby Be" that have pure blues power, while Burnell Martin's "Burnell's Boogie" ratchets up the zydeco -- and these keep the album stuck in the bayou, leaving the outright rockabilly lifts by Dayward Penny and Rocket Morgan (as shameless an Elvis imitator as you'll ever hear) as blasts of accent color. But that's the fun of the collection: these are the aftershocks of the first blast of rock & roll, when all manners of bluesman, soul shouters, greasers, and backwood hicks tried their hand at boogie and even if they didn't write a memorable song, they had an appealing sound.