Tommy Hill - Get Ready Baby (CD)

All Music Guide

There's good news and bad news for people thinking of buying Get Ready Baby. The bad news is that the ten songs (two of them in two versions each) on this 20 CD run a total of 18 minutes and change, which is outrageous given the price. The good news is that this is really good rockabilly, a little too midtempo at times, but well played and sung by a guy who otherwise spent his whole career doing mainstream country music. In June of 1958, Tommy Hill and some friends got drunk one night and went into the studio to cut these ten tracks, which were promptly forgotten. The sound is occasionally a little more country than pure rockabilly, but the energy and the beat are all there (with D.J. Fontana on drums, how could they not be?), as Hill, Leo Jackson, and Hank Garland rock out on the guitars and Ace Cannon shows surprising restraint on the sax. This is solid Texas rockabilly, in the style of Buddy Holly.

- Bruce Eder, All Music Guide