Malcolm Yelvington had the good fortune to meet
Sam Phillips just as the latter was starting to get truly ambitious with his Sun Records label. He had the bad fortune, however, to cut his debut for Sun just one record after
Elvis Presley's "That's All Right," and also to have been born in 1918 -- that put him a little on the old side as rock & roll started sweeping the airwaves. The 28 sides here, representing
Yelvington's work on both Sun and
the Bihari Brothers' competing Meteor label (cut under an alias), demonstrate the bind that
Yelvington found himself in -- he and his band could play rockabilly with the best of them, maybe not with the exact youthful edge that
Elvis brought to the music, but it was still solid rock & roll. But his rockabilly was just a little too much hillbilly (and country) and not enough rock & roll for the audience they were aiming at in 1954-1955. And it's clear that
Yelvington's heart is really in the country ballads "Mr. Blues" and "First and Last Love," rather than the bouncy, rocking "Yakety Yak" and the pounding "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" (his actual Sun debut). But that was then, when the target audience was under 21 and busy living in the moment -- heard today, this is all first-rate music, whatever genre
Yelvington is working in, and the playing on "Did I Ask You to Stay" also shows off some superb playing by
the Star Rhythm Boys, his backing band. As usual with Bear Family Records, the sound, the annotation, and the session information are the best available, and the listening, in this instance, is highly rewarding.
Yelvington was never able to cash in on the rock & roll boom, but found success in music 30 years later as one of the originals if not one of its stars, and in doing so became a star belatedly in Europe. This is where it all started, and it's a bracing account of a talent that took too long to be appreciated properly.