The Armstrong Twins – Mandolin Boogie / ArhoolieCD-9046

Description

CD 9046

Floyd Armstrong – vocals and guitar; Lloyd Armstrong – vocals and mandolin; “Oscar” Billy Hughes – fiddle; Zane Beck – dobro on *; Monte Avery – Bass on *
Stars of radio records and TV the Armstrong Twins performed on the Louisiana Hayride KXLA Pasadena CA Cliffie Stone’s Dinner Bell Round Up and his legendary TV show “Town Hall Party.”
Arhoolie re-issues for the first time on CD the sound of their Classic Country Brother Duets featuring their first recordings from the late forties – early fifties and their reunion session for Arhoolie in 1979.

1. Mandolin Boogie
2. Three Miles South of Cash
3. Mother’s Only Sleeping
4. Mandolin Rag
5. Sparkling Blue Eyes
6. Beetle With The Boogie Woogie Beat
7. Address From Heaven
8. Alabama Baby
9. It’s Never Too Late
10. Arkansas Special
11. Eight Thirty Blues
12. Silver Haired Daddy of Mine
13. Just A Country Boy
14. Greenback Dollar
15. Old Three Room Shack
16. Why Not Confess
17. Beautiful Brown Eyes

REVIEW

“Lloyd was the one blazing like a supernova on mandolin; Floyd his mirror image stoked a guitar hard.  Other than that it’s down to fingerprints in order to distinguish the Armstrong Twins especially since their voices rarely separated by more than a tick at any time.  It was their voices symmetrically interwoven in harmony which earned them a slot in the vanguard of brotherly country duos along with the Delmores Louvins and Everlys.  Beginning in the 1930s radio waves from Little Rock beamed their clean-cut sound.  These records then followed.  How listeners must have thrilled to hear two wildmen just a pickin’ and a grinnin’ until one blinked on ‘Mandolin Rag’ and ‘Arkansas Special.’  Or swooned to poetic visions of love in ‘Sparkling Blue Eyes.’  That sentimental innocence was shattered by ‘Alabama Baby ’ an amorous fire-ball that also broke their standard two-man configuration with some Bob Wills-style woozy fiddlin’.  And proto-rockabilly could just have well taken the hopped-up energy of ‘Mandolin Boogie’ or ‘Beetle with the Boogie Woogie Beat’ as raw material.

That was all in the late 40s.  A valuable reunion in 1979 however reinstates their hillbilly majesty with plenty of twang content retained in ‘Greenback Dollar’ and a Dobro-spruced jolt of ‘Eight Thirty Blues.’ Whether hitting the boogie hard or cooing like turtle doves the carbon-copy Armstrong Twins made music as sweet and pure as Arkansas mountain air.”

– Dennis Rozanski Baltimore Blues Society BluesRag