Narvel Felts

Narvel Felts, like many country music hit-makers of the '70s, caught the rockin' pneumonia in the '50s and recorded prodigiously in that genre before repairing to Nashville's Music Row. Did You Tell Me is one of two anthologies Bear Family has compiled to round up most of Felts' rock & roll recordings. The other, Memphis Days, contains Felts' indie label recordings from the early '60s, while Did You Tell Me reissues the cream of his rock & roll crop: the Sun, Mercury, Pink and MGM sides from the '50s. None of Felts' Sun recordings were issued when he cut them in 1957, but they have subsequently become a feature on rockabilly compilations the world over. "My Babe" and "Cry, Baby, Cry," in particular, are prime slices of Sun rockabilly, and Felts would go on to record a toned-down version of "Cry, Baby, Cry" and several other songs from his Sun sessions for Mercury later that year. Felts' Mercury recordings are more slick and controlled; some make use of a vocal chorus, and all are more suitable fare for teenagers at a sock hop than greasers at a juke joint. When the Mercury efforts failed to catch on with record buyers, Felts moved to the small Pink label where he made his finest recordings of the '50s, including his only national hit from the period, a cover of the Drifters' R&B hit "Honey Love." The Pink sides have more of a rockabilly flavor than the Mercury recordings, but rockabilly was no longer selling, so Felts' 1960 session for MGM (unreleased until now) found him warbling ballads to the strains of a string section. Over half of the material on Did You Tell Me went unreleased in its day, but the overall quality is higher than might be expected of an exercise in vault-clearing. ~ Greg Adams, All Music Guide