Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper & The Clinch Mountain Clan – The Very Best Of
What we’ve got here, above all, is a return into circulation of hits and key records by of one of the biggest voices ever to come out of a singing country girl — hillbilly division. Belter Wilma Lee Cooper and fiddler husband Stoney sang and played almost every sort of old-time and new-fangled country for nearly 20 years, mostly on radio, before these best-known of their records hit on Hickory in the 1950s to early ’60s.
With their fiddle and banjo, plus the dobro and bass of their band joining in, they’re often thought of as a bluegrass act, and there’s fine pickin’ to be found amidst this music — but if they are a bluegrass band, it’s one with electric guitar leads and big pounding drums, one that just as often delivers hard traditional country and near-rockabilly.
Their biggest hits are outside any specific genre — upbeat, shouting numbers that sound like an invasion is underway by a Salvation Army squadron: “There’s A Big Wheel” by Don Gibson; “This Old House” after Rosemary Clooney, no less’ a version of Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special”; and a blood-chilling “Wreck On The Highway.”
Wilma Lee’s singing is never more traditional, and country, than when she turns to new gospel numbers, amply represented in a secondary role here. But the hits and famous religious songs are only part of a collection that rightly includes old-time country takes on Hank Williams tunes that owe a bit to earlier Molly O’Day versions, or a rousing Rose Maddox-like “Philadelphia Lawyer”.
With surprises added, including the Everly Brothers-like Bryants ballad “Johnny, My Love” and the virtual rockabilly of “I Want To Be Loved”, the hillbilly versatility of this important act is nailed, on a disc that makes a fine re-introduction even from just one of many labels on which the Coopers appeared.