The Ace label is usually pretty good about configuring CD reissues so as to sensibly augment original LPs or collect material from the same era together. In this case, though, things get a bit messy; in order to straighten out the situation, a few introductory sentences are required that might have been better spent jumping right into talking about the music. Fact one: in 1958, Combo Records issued a
Joe Houston LP called
Rockin' at the Drive-In built around late-'50s singles. Fact two: in 1984, Ace issued a 14-track LP, also called
Rockin' at the Drive-In, that had almost the same track listing as the original 1958 issue, replacing "Ninya" with the previously unissued "Houston Shuffle." Fact three: in 2004, Ace issued a 24-track CD, also called
Rockin' at the Drive-In, whose first 14 tracks had (with one exception) the same song titles as the one on their 1984 vinyl LP with the same title, the final ten songs culled from assorted 1957-1961 Combo singles and other rarities. Fact four: the first 14 tracks, however, are not identical to the 14 tracks on the 1984 vinyl edition, as five of the songs are replaced by previously unissued alternate versions of those same songs, and "Drag Race" is replaced by an entirely different song, the previously unissued "Boom (Take 3)." Head starting to hurt yet? It should, and while the liner notes point out that the "original" versions of the cuts that have been replaced by alternates are included on the Ace various-artists compilation Honk! Honk! Honk!, not everyone's going to want to buy that CD as well as this one. Fact five, and the most important one, if you've digested all the discographical minutiae above: although this is good house-rockin' 1950s sax-driven instrumental (for the most part) rock & roll/R&B, it's neither terribly varied, nor as good as two other compilations of
Houston recordings, Blows Crazy! (which gathers recordings he cut for Modern spanning the early '50s to the early '60s) and Cornbread and Cabbage Greens (which has material from the early to mid-'50s recorded for labels other than Modern or Combo). For one thing, it's missing his best-known song, "All Night Long," though it does have a kind of lame variation of it, "Cha-Cha All Night Long." For another, its concentration on a slightly later period means it captures a point at which
Houston had pretty much settled into repeating a certain formulaic groove, as good as that groove could be. For the record, the ten bonus cuts include a previously unissued alternate take of "Curfew," a previously unreleased track, "Deep Freeze," and a full-length, six-minute version of "Joe's Blues." ~ Richie Unterberger