Never deliberately flashy, Don Gibson had an unerring ability to take complex emotions and turn them into deceptively simple-sounding songs, and as any songwriter knows, that's far from an easy trick to pull off, but Gibson did it time and time again. Unassuming to a fault, his best songs like "Sweet Dreams" (a hit initially for Faron Young in 1955 but ultimately defined a few years later by Patsy Cline's version), "Oh Lonesome Me" (slowed down, a key track on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album), and "I Can't Stop ...
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Never deliberately flashy, Don Gibson had an unerring ability to take complex emotions and turn them into deceptively simple-sounding songs, and as any songwriter knows, that's far from an easy trick to pull off, but Gibson did it time and time again. Unassuming to a fault, his best songs like "Sweet Dreams" (a hit initially for Faron Young in 1955 but ultimately defined a few years later by Patsy Cline's version), "Oh Lonesome Me" (slowed down, a key track on Neil Young's After the Gold Rush album), and "I Can't Stop Loving You" (covered by countless artists, but most notably by Ray Charles) are models of graceful construction (amazingly, the latter two songs were written by Gibson in a trailer park on the exact same afternoon). Of these, only 1958's "Oh Lonesome Me" is absent from this generous and interesting set that collects several Gibson hits recorded between 1956 and 1974 and adds four bonus tracks each by Gibson's early groups the Sons of the Soil (1949) and Don Gibson & His King Cotton Kingfolks (1950). ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi
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