20 Best Hits

by

Faron Young

Edit

Simmer down now, people, this is an eight-dollar and ninety-eight cent CD, not the dang Bear Family. Let's look at what you get: Twenty songs. Right there, you should be thanking your lucky stars at this price, but there's more. Yes, the ends are clipped off of a few songs, and yes there's some surprising applause at the end of at least one that also gets abruptly cut off, but let me tell you something, there is some mighty fine music on this thing. You all know "Hello Walls" but Faron also will give you chills with "When Two Worlds Collide," "Are You Sincere," "Walk Tall," and "Satisfied Mind." I looked at the big Capital years collection and even the Bear Family monster, and these cuts aren't on there. Maybe you find them inferior, but I picked this thing up on cassette a bunch of years ago at the Ernest Tubb record store on Broadway in Nashville, not knowing diddly about Faron Young other than he's namechecked in a song by Prefab Sprout, and I've been playing it ever since. Since then, I've got a whole new appreciation of honky tonk and got a good dose the other night with Wanda Jackson and that other Rockabilly Filly, Rosie Flores. Let me tell you, at the price, this is a steal. Yes, it's imperfect and maybe even made on the cheap, but I love the music and, for me, that is enough. A corrective four stars.