Sonny Curtis

Album Review

Sonny Curtis was already an established veteran of the music business when he cut his first vocal album, The First of Sonny Curtis, for Snuff Garrett's Viva label in 1968 (he had made an instrumental album, Beatle Hits Flamenco Guitar Style, in 1964). Gone was the Buddy Holly sound that Curtis perfected during his tenure with the Crickets; in its place was Sonny Curtis the country singer/songwriter, who had already enjoyed substantial success penning hit songs for other artists. The album is essentially a Sonny Curtis songbook, featuring his interpretations of original compositions that became hits for others: the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law," Brian Hyland's "Holiday for Clowns," and Waylon Jennings' "Destiny's Child," to name a few. His wistful rendition of "Walk Right Back," a hit for the Everly Brothers, casts the song in an entirely new light, more forlorn than insistent. "My Way of Life" and "I Wanna Go Bummin' Around" gave Curtis his first solo hits and launched him a moderately successful career as a country hitmaker that endured for the next two decades. Curtis' style, heavy on strummed acoustic guitars and gentle rhythms, is akin to Waylon Jennings' Folk-Country album and Glen Campbell's country-pop balladry, but his double-tracked vocal harmonies, particularly on "A Fool Never Learns," briefly flash back to his Crickets past.