Jimmie Dale Gilmore: Come on Back

Jimmie Dale Gilmore Come on Back Rounder 3193

Jimmie Dale Gilmore's late father, Brian Gilmore was a Texas guitarist who loved playing country music. Jimmie recorded the 13 classic country songs on Come on Back as a way of paying tribute to a father who passed on an appreciation for great songs and a love of playing music for its own sake. Jimmie, whose naturally country voice almost sounds like a cross between Hank Williams and Willie Nelson, draws songs from the first four decades or so of commercially recorded country music. On a couple of songs, Jimmie Rodgers' "Standin' on the Corner (Blue Yodel No. 9)" and the Carter Family's "Jimmie Brown the Newsboy," Jimmie goes right back to the birth of the country music industry. On others, including Hank Williams' "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive," Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On" and Johnny Cash's "Train of Love," he gets right back to the essence of honky-tonk music. My favorite song in the set is a countrified version of "Gotta Travel On," the end-of-the-summer folk standard that's been recorded by dozens of artists from the Weavers to Bob Dylan. Gilmore closes the album with a poignant rendition of "Peace in the Valley," which his father identified as his favorite song just a few days before he died.

Joe Ely, one of Gilmore's partners in the legendary Flatlanders, produced the album and arranged the songs for Gilmore's voice and a tight studio band that included Ely, Gilmore and Robbie Gjersoe on guitars, Gary Herman on bass, fiddler Eamon McLoughlon and drummer Chris Searles. From a son to a father, this album is a touching tribute. For the rest of us, it's a great country album.

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