Various Artists
You Are There
Shanachie 622

www.shanachie.com
 

Back in the previous century’s videocassette era, Shanachie put out a series of early-1950s live performances by country acts (including Chet Atkins, Ernest Tubb and Marty Robbins) that had been excellently filmed by Al Gannaway. Most of the 29 songs on the hour-long You Are There are his technicolor shootings (though the notes are minimal), and date from 1952 to 1954. Strong camerawork zeroes in on singers’ faces, pickers’ fingers and square dancers’ feet.

A solemn Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys do “You’ll Find Her Name Written There,” “Little Georgia Rose” and four other songs. As for the legendary Louvin Brothers, older sibling Ira looks like he’s enjoying himself despite his reputation for a troubled soul. Do his sermonettes amid “Love Thy Neighbor” substitute for the preaching career he never pursued? The Louvins’ one other song on the DVD is their classic minidrama of romantic uncertainty “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby.”

Lonzo & Oscar seem like forerunners of the Smothers Brothers. June Carter shows her madcap comic bent. Stringbean’s low-slung pants that start almost at his knees precede recent youth fashion (though his long shirt keeps him respectable). And long before his Hee Haw years, Grandpa Jones sports a handlebar mustache so thick you wonder if it’s real.

Closing out the DVD are four black-and-white Hank Williams films from assorted sources. Regardless of his physical condition and emotional state, he always shone in the recording studio. On stage, he wasn’t always so consistent. On these selections, he’s absolutely magnetic.

— Bruce Sylvester