While better known as an actor thanks to his immortal role as television's bumbling Gomer Pyle, Jim Nabors also enjoyed a successful career as an easy listening balladeer. Born June 12, 1930, in Sylacauga, Alabama, he graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in business administration, but later found himself working in TV as an apprentice editor; at much the same time, he also pursued a career as a cabaret singer.

Bang, Bang introduced a hard rocker whose eclecticism was both impressive and unnervingly inconsistent. The covers of "Season of the Witch" and "Summertime Blues" are overlong and dated, but the frenetic version of Cher's "Bang, Bang" is inspired, and the rendition of Gene Pitney's "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" shows his poppier roots. Over half of the material was penned by Reid, and while these compositions are sometimes generic, late-'60s hard rockers, he also shows a facility for Donavonesque folk-rock "("Sweater"") and impressive soul-rock vocalizing ("When I Get Home"). Originally not released in the U.K., it's ironically only available now as a U.K. import.

Stonewall Jackson was one of the most popular country stars of the early '60s, scoring a string of Top Ten country hits and becoming a fixture at the Grand Ole Opry with a pleading voice that seemed to reflect his hard, often abusive upbringing on a south Georgia dirt farm. He was named after the Confederate general Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, to whom he was related according to family legend. When he was ten he traded his bike for a guitar and began making up songs. Some of his later hits, such as "Don't Be Angry," were written very early in his creative life. Jackson began singing professionally in the mid-'50s, moving to Nashville in 1956.

This is one great record, not only as a showcase for Hank Cochran's writing, which is a given, but also for Cochran as an interpreter of others' songs included is his debut Monument single, a rendition of Merle Haggard's "All of Me Belongs to You," which is as fine a performance as he brings to his own material. The mix of sounds on the album is a little bit odd, owing to the fact that the contents are derived from two rounds of sessions several years apart the early sides, from 1962-1963, are ballads done in a romantic countrypolitan manner for the Monument sub-label Gaylord Records, whilst the later sides from 1966 are set in a harder, more rocking honky tonk mode.

Penny Nichols's debut album is not a major singer/songwriter statement, but neither is it as mundane as many such also-ran LPs of the late '60s. She has a nice, pleasant strong voice, if not one of great distinction. There might be more folk-rock than anything else to her songs, but there are also a good amount of pop smarts to her melodies. There's also a fair amount of pop acumen to the modest but effective production, including contributions from guitar aces Vincent Bell, Bruce Langhorne, and Al Gorgoni.

The "Songbird of the South," vocalist Kate Smith was one of the most popular stars of the pre-World War II era; she remains best remembered for her definitive version of the patriotic anthem "God Bless America," which became a hit on no less than three separate occasions. Born Kathryn Elizabeth Smith in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 1907, she initially trained to be a nurse but began singing professionally during the early 1920s, soon relocating to New York to pursue roles in vaudeville and on Broadway, where she appeared in Honeymoon Lane in 1926. The owner of a thunderous contralto, Smith signed to Columbia in 1927, debuting with "One Sweet Letter From You," backed by Red Nichols' Charleston Chasers. In 1931 she began hosting her own radio show; its theme song, "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain," subsequently became her first major hit, selling some 19 million copies.

Carl was a straight shooter, no nonsense Country Singer,Entertainer and businessman, he led a very conventional life, pretty much void of so many of the trials,tribulations and problems of so many with careers in the entertainment business. He is the type one things of when using the moniker "True Country Gentleman". Carl Smith's singing has a truly timeless quality,and his old songs still have true meaning today. These are the songs included on this album.

Hank Snow isn't generally thought of as a spoken word artist, but the Singing Ranger did dabble in dramatic readings during the course of a recording career that spanned four decades; Snow recorded the album Old Doc Brown and Other Narrations in 1955, and cut his best-known spoken album, Tales of the Yukon, in 1968. Proud Canadian Snow doubtless felt an affinity for the narrative poems of Robert William Service, who earned international fame for his rough-hewn but often sentimental tales of men in the Northern territories, and here Snow recites seven of Service's works (along with "The Face on the Barroom Floor," often attributed to Service but actually penned by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy), accompanied by minimal, unobtrusive musical backings.