Nobody's Darlin' But Mine

Jimmie Davis' music is a strange mix of sentimentality and double-entendre, serious devotional songs juxtaposed with utterly raunchy (and playful) blues and novelty tunes. This five-CD box consists of Davis' sides for Doggone, Victor and American Decca between July 1928 and December 9, 1937. Few performers, especially in pre-war country music, could have juggled the range of repertory here for very long without offending someone and killing a chunk of their careers; instead, Davis used his music to get to the Louisiana governor's mansion twice, once in 1944 and again in 1960. Disc one opens with Davis' earliest sides for Victor in 1929, which were heavily influenced by the work of Jimmie Rodgers. Disc one ends with Davis' four 1928 sides for Doggone. The sides show serious wear and surface noise, but their main drawback is that Davis is trying to sound like Bing Crosby as he covers a quartet of then-contemporary hits. Disc two opens with a trio of hobo songs. In content and delivery, Davis' blues sound uncannily like contemporaries such as Furry Lewis, especially on this session, where most of what follows the hobo material is straight blues or novelty tunes with a risque edge. Disc three opens with a pair of the most sexually explicit songs never to make the cut on any "risque blues" collection. The pairing of pieces like this with sentimental numbers is downright mind-boggling, yet Davis pulled it off. Discs four and five comprise the first three years of his career with Decca Records, which produced his biggest hit of the early '30s, "Nobody's Darlin' but Mine." The booklet isn't as full or detailed as one might wish, and it's sad to know that some session information on these 1920s and '30s numbers is lost to fading memories.