V/A – Juvenile Delinquents – The San Records Story
Bear Family BAF 14036
Gone, Gone, Gone – Don Wade / Juvenile Delinquent – Ronnie Allen / Loving On My Mind – David Barnes and The Hearts / River Of Love – Ronnie Allen / Forever Yours – Don Wade / The Best Of Me – Ronnie Alen / Oh Love – Don Wade / High School Love – Ronnie Allen / I Can’t Stand It Anymore – David Barnes and The Hearts / Gonna Get My Baby – Ronnie Allen / Bust Head Gin – Don Wade / This Love Of Ours – Ronnie Allen
Harold Tidwell and Curly Sanders founded the small label San records in the second half of the 1950s. The label’s record legacy is relatively small, with six known singles and perhaps a seventh missing, but it is interesting enough that Bear Family took care to reissue all the sides on this 10″ disc. And what a good idea did they have!
1959 saw the release of the label’s first two singles: Gone Gone Gone/Bust Head Gin (San 206) and Forever Yours/Oh Love (San 207). They are credited to Don Wade, which is a pseudonym for Tidwell. Gone Gone Gone is raw and wild Rockabilly with a sparkling and dazzling guitar solo. On the flip side, Bust Head Gin is a superb dragging blues. The San 207 is just as successful with a perfect cover of Carl Perkins’ Forever Young, to which Wade gives some Presleyesque accents, and an excellent Rockabilly (Oh Love).
The label’s next three singles were dedicated to Ronnie Allen. The first (San 208) uses the same formula by combining a rocker (Juvenile Delinquent) with a ballad (River of Love, written by Allen’s mother). The emphasis is on percussion, with an omnipresent cymbal and a bongo player who completes the line-up, giving the whole a certain originality. By Allen’s own admission, the titles that formed the following two singles were more polished. The group is augmented by the addition of backing vocals (two women and a man). The San 209 sounds like a transition with High School Love, a more than correct rocker, and This Love Of Ours, a mid-paced jiver. Allen’s third and final single for the Gonna label Get My Baby/The Best Of Me (San 300), released in 1961, shows an even more marked orientation towards rock’n’roll tinged with teen-pop, notably due to the omnipresence of vocal backings. The Best Of Me, the more interesting of the two titles, is a ballad that allows Allen to express himself vocally with more subtlety.
The label then went on hiatus, partly because of the tragic news story that affected Tidwell (detailed at length in the rich booklet that accompanies the disc). Finally, in 1967, San 302 (San 301 seems missing or was not released) was released by David Barnes and the Hearts (probably another pseudonym of Tidwell). Loving On My Mind is an excellent country rock with twangy guitar coupled with I Cant Stand It Anymore, a plaintive hillbilly which is reminiscent of Charlie Feathers.
As we have said, the disc is supplemented by a detailed booklet, including rare photos and interviews with Ronnie Allen and Glen Hamilton, a close friend of Tidwell.
Lovers of rarity and beautiful objects will not hesitate to grab this disc, limited to 500 copies.
Buy it here.
Fred “Virgil” Turgis
