Early Years Part 1: Too Busy Cryin The Blues 55-57

One of Country Music's truly great guitarists and songwriters, Jerry Reed had been around for many years before he finally achieved crossover mainstream success in the 1970s and 80s. But among those in the know he'd been revered for his picking skills since the mid-1950s, having played on countless sessions, while he'd also cut plenty of Hillbilly, Rockabilly, and Country records under his own steam. The first of two compilations in a brief "mini-series" anthologising Jerry's early career, chronologically, this set features twenty-two of his own sides, two of him moonlighting with an instro combo and eight as a session guitarist. Many of these early 45s are highly-prized collectors' artefacts, and a lot of Jerry's fans consider these to be among his finest work. This is the first time that this body of work has been thus assembled, and several of these tracks are hard to find elsewhere on CD.