Bill Nettles put his name in the record books with "Hadacol Boogie," a celebration of the notorious patent medicine that was popular in Southern "dry" counties because of its 12-percent alcohol content. "Hadacol Boogie" reached the country Top Ten in 1949 and inspired a sequel, "Hadacol Bounce," that failed to repeat its predecessor's success. The anthology
Hadacol Boogie collects two-dozen of
Nettles' Mercury, Imperial, and Bullet sides from the late '40s and early '50s, most of which are novelty boogies and hokum blues numbers similar to the music of
Leon Chappel (whose song "Do Right Daddy"
Nettles covers.) Boogies were still commercially viable circa 1949, but
Nettles' preoccupation with high-falutin' mamas and the like was a bit of a throwback. In pursuit of a follow-up hit to "Hadacol Boogie,"
Nettles not only issued an inferior competing version of
Wayne Raney's "Why Don't You Haul Off and Love Me" in 1949, but composed the answer song "I Hauled Off and Loved Her." He never recaptured the momentum of his lone novelty hit, though, and retired in the late '50s.
Hadacol Boogie also includes several recordings by Danny Dedman, the guitarist in
Nettles'
Dixie Blue Boys, on which
Nettles and the band provide instrumental support. Jasmine Records often drains the life out of their vinyl transfers with CEDAR noise reduction tools, which is occasionally an issue with
Hadacol Boogie. The disc's sound quality is more than acceptable overall, but the surface noise on some tracks was digitally scrubbed at the expense of high-end frequencies, resulting in a muffled, flat sound. Nevertheless, the appearance of a
Bill Nettles anthology of any sort is to be applauded.