Search - Nashville Teens :: Tobacco Road

Underrated band -forgotten gem

ingemar.goransson.linghem@telia.com | Sweden | 09/29/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Nashville Teens grow out of british rock`n'roll in the early sixties and became one of the most underrated of the uk-bands. Only two hits, the hard-hitting version of John De Loudermilk song Tobacco Road and the follow-up Google Eye. the rest made just little of traces. This collection cover most of their Decca recordings plus the late Parlophonesingle Ella James. all of their recordings are hard to come by today. This cd includes the only-us LP and the Decca issued 45's. Here is very broad collection of semi-hard-rock and good 60's pop. Nashville Teens stands up very good still after nearly 40 years after the first recordings were made. The only fault of this cd is that none of the very hard to find out-takes that New World Label issued in the early 70's are included. I also miss the very rare 45 that they did together with Carl Perkins in 1963 I think. But you can't get evrything even if you would like that. The sound-quality is good as always from Reportiare label. Highly recommendely - a must for everyone who's even slightly interested in uk-invasion bands!"

Not in their Teens, or from Nashville

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 12/07/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Musically they were easily the equals of contemporaries such as the Animals and Manfred Mann, but despite the massive success of their version of John D Loudermilk's Tobacco Road (in turn inspired by the Erskine Caldwell novel), they never seemed to excite the star-making machine in the same way, and are now remembered almost entirely for that one hit, despite the success of its follow-up Google Eye and other Top 40 hits. They were the band of choice to play behind visiting rock and rollers such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but perhaps the Mods and Rockers wars placed them too firmly in the Rockers camp at a time when Mods may have had the greater buying power and influence.

An appearance in bizarre teen movie Gonks Go Beat failed to enhance their charisma quotient either, and their name, a tribute to the music capital of the world, falsely labelled them in the minds of the teenage market as saccharine country wannabes, not helped by the fact that the band were in no way Teens but in their mid-twenties at the time.

Their showcase album of 1965, Tobacco Road, demonstrated their forceful sound and versatility and featured both sides of all their first three Decca singles (including the storming T.N.T.) as well as Bo Diddley's Mona, Mose Allison's Parchman Farm and Don Gibson's Hurtin' Inside. On Chris Kenner's I Like It Like That they mishear the lyric and repeatedly sing, "Come on, let me show you were I sat", as if giving a guided tour of an old classroom. How Deep Is The Ocean? and La Bamba seem slightly odd choices and may have been learned from a 1963 single by Shel Naylor.

On this admirable Repertoire definitive re-issue a further thirteen tracks from singles, plus their contribution to Gonks Go Beat (Poor Boy), are included. What'cha Gonna Do? was the B-side to This Little Bird, whose non-inclusion is a major omission, it making some headway in the charts until being beaten off by Marianne Faithfull's version of the same John D Loudermilk song. Similarly, Upside Down has been selected in preference to its Top 50 A-side The Hard Way. The Biggest Night Of Her Life shows them tackling a Randy Newman song in a slight change of direction in 1967. Their striking version of All Along The Watchtower probably just pre-dates Jimi Hendrix's 1968 masterpiece and includes a driving guitar phrase borrowed from the Animals (whom Barrie Jenkins from the Teens was shortly to join).

The most recent track, from 1971, is Roy Wood's Ella James (their first single for Parlophone, and the only stereo track on the CD), which the Move also recorded the same year, but the album closes with its B-side, Tennessee Woman, a bit of an oddity as the same recording had crept out the year before on Parlophone as the B-side of The Train Keeps Rolling by the so-called Arizona Swamp Company"

Were The Nashville Teens One Hit Wonders?

03/05/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This set was given as a gift to fill a hole in my British Invasion collection. I was pleased to add Tobacco Road and Find My Way Back Home to that collection. Both were played on the radio in the sixties and one was a huge hit. I was not familiar with a lot of the other songs. I suppose you would need to be a rabid Teens fan to know them all. Many were likeable tunes and others were not. This set is definately for Nashville Teens diehards. Tobacco Road remains one of the highlights of the British Invasion. Hearing this collection explains why their USA chart life was short."