"America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band" The Maddox Brothers & Rose were America's most colorful hillbilly band all right, and not just because they wore snazzy sequined Western suits that screamed louder than a blast of TNT. Everything The Maddox Brothers did was at the top of their lungs, from sister Rose's effectively braying twang and tittering, high-pitched asides to the brothers' nuclear-charged postwar fusion of boogie-woogie, Western swing, and California honky-tonk. Most colorful of all was the group's aesthetic--unabashed emotionalism on a poignant gospel ballad such as "When I Lay My Burden Down" alternating with broad comedy displayed on covers of "Milk Cow Blues" and "Honky Tonkin'." "Got a hillbilly band called Maddox and Rose ... [and] they play a boogie-woogie that'll wiggle your toes," Rose guffaws on "George's Playhouse Boogie." Never has such a colorful self-description been so accurate. --David Cantwell

Customer Review from Amazon

Reviewer: Michael Carley This is easily the best Maddox album out there. The Arhoolie collection is some of their best hits and covers dance hall boogie, western swing, California country (the roots of the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard), cowboy themes and just about any other kind of music being played at the time. One warning: track 12, which is supposed to be "New Muleskinner Blues" is actually "I Want to Live and Love". This means that "Live and Love" actually plays twice, since it is also track 27. You may not mind because it's one of the best songs on the disc. Arhoolie makes up for the error by including "New Muleskinner Blues" as the first track of Volume 2 in this series, which is almost as good.