Wynn Stewart The Bakersfield Pioneer: Complete Releases 1954-62

Wynn Stewart was one of the singers, guitarists and songwriters who originated and developed the Bakersfield sound of country music in that Californian town during the 1950s, where many émigrés from Oklahoma and the southern states had settled, and is cited by many as having been a significant influence on contemporaries like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard who were associated with Bakersfield movement. As a teenager, he moved with his parents, who were sharecroppers, from Missouri to California in 1948, and took up music at high school, making his first records for the small Intro label, a subsidiary of Aladdin, in 1954. This 2-CD collection comprises just about all his releases on singles and albums from this era, including A & B sides of his singles on the Intro, Capitol, Jackpot and Challenge labels, along with bonus tracks from compilation albums that came out during these years. It includes his country hits from these years "Waltz Of The Angels", the No. 5 "Wishful Thinking", "Big, Big Love" and "Another Day, Another Dollar". It features duet releases with country singer Jan Howard, and a number of songs by the fine country songwriter Harlan Howard, who was a close associate. He went on to enjoy further success in later years, and this collection is an entertaining introduction to his early career, and an insight into the roots of the Bakersfield phenomenon.