Mel Street / Country Soul

Mel Street has that classic country honky tonk sound and this is a must have CD for all Mel Street fans. It's about cheatin and lost loves. Mel, George Jones and Johnny Paycheck are as good as you get for this sound and Mel is just as good as George and Johnny. Buy it and enjoy the fiddles and steel guitars and Mel's classic country voice. As for the luckyole sun review, if you don't like Mel, why did you buy his CD and then pan it. Nobody from New York, New York understands country music anyway.

I have looked a long time for this song and was glad I found it here.i met Mel street and he sung this song to my mother when it frist came out.thank you am very happy.

WOW! Forget the hits that are contained on this two fer cd (even though they are good). Play ANY song written by the great Mel Street (especially "My Friend the Jukebox"), and you will be in honky tonk heaven!! OUTSTANDING steel guitar and fiddle playing on almost all of these great songs. A must have if you love good ole country music from the 60's and 70's.

This cd contained the song "If I had a cheatin heart". I have been looking for 32 years for a recording of this song .I was hoping to get it as a cd and I did.It sounds like the old country that I grew up with.I must say that I enjoy it very much.The buying experiance at amazon is also very easy and straight foward.I recomend this service for all music purchases.Especially the hard to find.GB>>>>>>>>>>>

Greatest Purchase That I Have Ever Made In My Life!

Please!! This Cd twofer is an absolute piece of 70s country gold. Dont let this one gat away.Poker records please reissue more of Mels original albums.

Great

Until this release, anything and everything available on Mel Street was just haphazard collections of hits or non-hits, cheaply presented in sparse, cut-rate packaging and offering hit-or-miss sound quality and scant insight into the "artist", and little in the way of clues as to the context or provenance of the recordings. This UK import disc hits that heretofore barren landscape as nothing less than an opening salvo in an audacious campaign to reimagine and reinvigorate the legacy of this perennially-misperceived personage, and accords a modicum of justice to the Street canon by furnishing two complete, long out-of-print Mel Street albums, in their entirety, replete with some unusual and revealing photographs and an illuminating, newly penned, extensively researched, deeply personal, original essay on the man, his life and ultimate demise by Street acolyte and reissue producer Tony Rounce.The consummate vulgarian, Street was celebrated for his untrammeled tawdriness, parlaying an oafish countenance and an unctuous intonation into a high-precision vehicle, tautly tuned and crisply calibrated to conjure and capture the symbiotic sleaziness that constitutes such a haunting but vital hallmark that inhabits even the most mundane of this material and imbues it with an immediacy that compels even recalcitrant listeners to take notice. Street, it was stated, "could sing the telephone book and make it reek." (What the consistently well-lubricated Street could do with the Yellow Pages is an engrossing anecdote in its own right--which decorum dictates be deferred for demarcation at a more discreet denouement.)While this platter possesses a paucity of performances that became hits of any sort, it houses a generous endowment of the lugubrious leitmotif that earned Street the sobriquet "The Man Who Made Conway Twitty Puke." Songs like the bathetic "Barbara, Don't Let Me Be the Last To Know" and the insipid "This Lady In My Bed" amply fill that bill. But it also contains a few out-of-left-field gems like achingly perverse "Virginia, How Far Will You Go?". The music, such as it is, augmented by the provocatively bizarre photographs, lovingly reproduced from the rare, original album jackets and inserts, showcasing a bloated, preternaturally disheveled and slovenly Street, sporting what appears to be a furry, somnolent varmint camped out atop his skull but may be a merely reflective of an attempt at follicular augmentation, and with a pronounced penchant for leaving his clothes unbuttoned and "letting it all hang out," can't help but raise the question: "Is this guy for real, or is this all a goof?"If Street was, in fact, a parodist/comedian he pulled it off with aplomb, though few caught onto the joke.Like any Street recording, this is music for blowing out your brains by, which, by dint or design, is what King Melvin remains most renowned for. London-based Cherry Red Records are to be saluted for having the temerity to reintroduce this long-neglected, albeit inspired epitomization of its oeuvre to a new generation of afficianados and others with the wit and wherewithal to wallow in these wellsprings.

great singer

In many respects Mel Street filled the tabloids idea of a Country Singer. A hard drinking, trouble seeking rootless individual; eventually ending his life with a single gunshot. No doubt the material he recorded and wrote confirmed this superficial view.Sure, Mel suffered form clinical depression, he drank, and he could be a difficult man when in the grip of these twin devils. Incredibly he also produced some of the best, most intense, and simply great Country music ever recorded.Looking at his smiling photos on the CD you would not guess what lay behind the image, but these two LPs from Polydor, now on CD for the first time, catch Mel at the peak of his talent. Fortunately, the recordings are quality, the material worthy of the man. Just check the Nashville talent supplying songs, Mel himself, Bob McDill, Ben Peters etc, etc.Note that his two most famous songs are not on this CD, Borrowed Angel and Loving on Back Streets belong to an earlier time, so look out one of the Best of cheapies. Mel recorded for many small labels, usually they folded soon after he left the building, but on Polydor and Mercury he was with majors, and the results show.Take this opportunity to own some real Country music produced by an artist who never accepted just how good he was. Songs of life, of the long nights, of wandering eyes and heartbreak. Its all here.

Mel Street was a troubled soul but a great country singer, whose recording breakthrough came when he was in his late thirties. Signing for Polydoor in 1977, he recorded two albums for them before transferring to the same company's Mercury label in 1978. Those two Polydor albums make their CD debut on this twofer.Mel's music was hardcore traditional country with prominent steel guitars, which were beginning to fall out of favor with the major Nashville labels in 1977 when these albums were released. Nevertheless, Mel had four country hits from these two albums, these being Barbara don't let me be the last to know, Close enough for lonesome (both top twenty), If I had a cheating heart (top ten) and Shady rest (top thirty). Looking at the credits, Mel wrote some of his own songs but made plenty of use of other songwriters, most notably Bob McDill.We will never know how long Mel's success would have continued had he lived, but he certainly recorded some great country music during the seventies. For those who enjoy traditional country music with prominent steel guitars, Mel Street is definitely worth a listen. This album and 20 Greatest Hits (which covers his earlier music) contain all the essentials between them.

Great music from the 70's, if his life had gone a different way he could have been a star for many years

only discovered mel after his sad death , had one of the two lps on here , so was over the moon to get this cd ,if you like solid country buy it soon