CCMusic.com

• Track Listing

One of the few R&B artists of the 50s and 60s to have ever written a successful (and brilliant) novel about the music business - "The Day The Music Died", under his birth name of Joseph C Smith - Sonny Knight epitomised the Los Angeles R&B scene of 70 years ago with his mellow tunes and cool vocals. Although he only ever had one chart hit of note in the 1950s - the much covered 'Confidential' - his influence of a generation of young R&B artists is undeniable. And even now he's beloved of the East Los Angeles 'lowrider' music scene, particularly when an 'Oldies But Goodies' dance is in session. Sonny released a couple of dozen singles in a career that spanned just the one dozen years or so, mostly label hopping with some frequency and often from record to record. This is not a reflection on their quality which - as you will hear from Jasmine's new collection of as many as we could fit onto one CD - is uniformly high. Ballads and downtempo were Sonny's chief stock in trade, but he was equally adept at making rock 'n' roll - 'Jail Bird', 'Keep A Walking' and 'Teenage Party' for example, not to mention the big Jamaican 50s sound system favourite 'But Officer', a tongue in cheek discourse on the Los Angeles Police Department's attitude to errant drivers. It is, however, for 'Confidential' and his other timeless classic 'Dedicated To You' that Sonny the singer-songwriter will always be best remembered, and anyone unfamiliar with the rest of his repertoire will find plenty more where they came from here. This is the first time Sonny's music has been anthologised on CD in more than thirty years, and the first time it has been digitally anthologised this extensively. Jasmine is sure that Sonny's Oldie But Goodies will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in vintage Rhythm And Blues as it moved towards the early soul years.