Bandleader and fiddle player Spade Cooley, the self-styled “King Of Western Swing”, was a notoriously colourful character who worked in western movies with Roy Rogers before leading one of the biggest country orchestras of its kind, attracting massive audiences to his shows in Los Angeles. He became popular on radio television and racked up a string of hits in the mid-‘40s until popular tastes changed and his career declined in the early ‘50s. This great-value 54-track 2-CD set comprises selected A and B sides from his releases on the Okeh, Columbia, RCA and Decca labels during this period, representing about half of his entire recorded output in this time. It includes his most famous recording, the No. 1 country hit “Shame On You” along with his other Top 10 country hits “A Pair of Broken Hearts”, “I've Taken All I'm Gonna Take From You”, “Detour”, “You Can’t Break My Heart” and “Crazy ‘Cause I Love You”, many of them featuring his long-time star vocalist Tex Williams and including one notable recording with Dinah Shore. Along with Bob Wills, Spade Cooley was among the best-known and most popular exponents of Western Swing, and this highly entertaining anthology will underline exactly why.
