His Complete King Recordings

Don’t be fooled by this slim anthology’s short run time; the eight tracks that comprise Charlie Feathers’ His Complete King Recordings represent a vast treasure trove for lovers of American music. These recordings are thrilling artifacts from rock ‘n’ roll’s primordial beginnings and are surely as important and at least as inspired as Elvis’ Sun Sessions or Chuck Berry’s early Chess sides. After cutting a string of sides for Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun label and composing Elvis’ “I Forgot To Remember To Forget,” Feathers moved on to cut sides for the small rockabilly label Meteor and the influential R&B imprint King, which made him the label mate of R&B luminaries like Bill Doggett, Little Willie John, and James Brown. It may come as a surprise that the effortlessly swinging, peerlessly assured hillbilly rhythms of tunes like “One Hand Loose” and “Bottle to the Baby” share the same DNA as R&B numbers like Doggett’s “Honky Tonk” and Little Willie John’s “Fever,” but on these recordings Feathers managed to tap into a rich central vein of American musical traditions and the result is some of the most wildly inspired American roots music ever recorded.