Claude King - Wolverton Mountain - 16 Original Classics (Reissue) (1999)

Claude King is remembered for the story song "Wolverton Mountain," which topped the country charts for nine weeks in 1962 and crossed over to the pop Top Ten, but his recording career spanned three decades and 30 country hits. Columbia saw King as a replacement for his friend, the late Johnny Horton, so his early hits like "Big River, Big Man" and "The Comancheros" are similar in production and tone to Horton's historical recordings. "The Burning of Atlanta," the hit most blatantly in the Horton style, caused some controversy by declaring during a time of civil rights agitation that "the South's gonna rise again." King enjoyed only two other Top Ten hits, "Tiger Woman" and "All for the Love of a Girl," but he was a consistent artist with an appealing and subtly distinct style that could just as easily accommodate the country-pop bubblegum of "Catch a Little Raindrop." Columbia's own Claude King anthology, American Originals, has been deleted, and 16 Original Classics, with four additional hits, is its superior replacement.