Juke Box Pearls: Meet the Pearls

Liner Note Author: Martin Hawkins.
Illustrator: R.A. Andreas.
Photographer: R.A. Andreas.
Bear Family's 2012 compilation Meet the Pearls kicks off with "Two Hoops and a Holler," where Jean Shepard rightly complains "if a woman does one little thing, she's not worth two hoops and a holler," that "if she's drink or smokes or tells a joke, she's the lowest thing in town," thereby giving a theme not just to this 25-track disc but to the label's Juke Box Pearls series, of which this is a sampler. Here, Bear Family round up the wild, wild women of the '50s and early '60s, the country singers and rockabilly queens who acted tough and strong long before the revolution Loretta Lynn ushered in in the late '60s. Loretta is heard here with her early single "Heartaches Meet Mr. Blues," but nothing here sounds like "Fist City" or "The Pill," it's all country boogie, ballads in the style of Patsy Cline, a bit of rockabilly and straight-up honky tonk, delivered either as barroom weepers or shuffles. The intent is to re-create a roadhouse jukebox from the '50s, one filled with familiar sounds but new tunes, and Bear Family succeeds: Meet the Pearls overspills with rocking little tunes, songs that prove that a woman can drink, smoke, tell a joke, and sing just as well as any man can. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine