Release Date: 31 May 2019
Label: Jasmine Records
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 604988371826
Description
In the 1950s Oklahoma-born Jean Shepard blazed a train for women in Country music like few others before her. In her teens she organised her own all-female hillbilly band, which brought her to the attention of 1950s country superstar Hank Thompson, who took her under his wing and helped Jean get the record deal that led to the recordings featured in this Jasmine CD and more than 100 others.
Jean sung the kind of songs that most of her peers were too afraid to try. Songs of infidelity, divorce, payback, female empowerment and more. Songs that told men to shape up or ship out. Songs that reflected her own forthright personality, even though she did not actually live the life she sung about.
Jean and her contemporary Rose Maddox, who can also be heard on Jasmine, made it easier for the generation of artists who followed them (e.g. Wanda Jackson, Patsy Cline) to gain broader acceptance and not to be regarded as being in any way inferior to their male counterparts.
Remastered as always from the finest available sources, this great collection contains all of Jean's important 45s from the 1950s and early 1960s, including all of her Billboard Country chart hits of the period. Among the tracks you will find some of the very best recordings of their time, and indeed of all time. It might be stretching it a bit to say that without Jean Shepard there would have been no Taylor Swift, but the latter's emancipated musical outlook has its roots in the songs Jean sang over half a century earlier.
Tracklisting
Tommy Hunt
Kay Barry / Maureen Evans
Buddy Holly & The Crickets
Johnnie Ray
Eddie Cochran
Various Artists
Billie Holiday
Charlie Applewhite
Jean Shepard
Jean Shepard
Jean Shepard
Jean Shepard
