Good Ole Dave

Dave Edmunds : Get Out of Denver

[Purchase]

With Get It, released in April of 1977, Dave Edmunds kicks into a high gear he would sustain with the help of former Brinsely Schwarz bassist Nick Lowe over three straight albums of straight-forward, rockabilly rooted music. Eventually Edmunds and Lowe would form a rocking band called Rockpile, which would play on both of their solo albums before releasing its own debut.

"We had a great time," recalls Edmunds about his Rockpile days with Lowe. "It was a party band for four years and we never took it seriously, and that seemed to come over onstage. We had a terrific goodwill from the American audiences, the record industry, the radio, and everyone seemed to love us. I still get asked about it today. But we only got together just to do a few gigs in London because we didn’t have anything else to do at the time."

Recorded for Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label,  Get It, like many of Edmunds classic albums, is made up mostly of covers. That's something Robert Christgau pointed out in his B+ review:

 In which Edmunds convenes the Monmouth Rockabilly Seminar, featuring source material both standard (Hank Williams, Otis Blackwell, Arthur Crudup) and arcane (Rodgers and Hart), recent research by Bob Seger and Graham Parker, and new monographs from Nicholas Lowe and Edmunds himself. Great stuff, although studious detachment don't necessarily do it proud.

Dave is another musician who contributes frequently to his Facebook page. You'll find links to his most recent interviews, in which he calmly answers the same questions over and over again about song Bruce Springsteen gave him ,"From Small Things (Big Thing One Day Come)", and the success of The Stray Cats whom he first produced.