RAMBLER RECORDS 549

CURLEY MONEY and the Rolling Ramblers

Mar 56 (BMI clearance 6th Apr 56)

45-549-A - Playing The Game

(Curley Money)    (Starrite BMI)

45-549-B - Why Must I Cry

(Curley Money / Ruth Sanders)    (Starrite BMI)
RAMBLER RECORDS 549
Columbus, GA

Unlike many of the artists in the Starday Custom series, Curley was quite a prolific artist, though this seems to be his only Starday pressing. Curley was born Robert Earnest Money in Halesburg, Alabama in March 1925, the youngest of eight children. Money was naturally musical and learned to play the fiddle early in life, followed by the guitar. He soon found music not only a pleasure but a way of making some much-needed income on the side, and in his teens he was playing locally at barn dances. He moved to Columbus in 1942 (age 17) and whilst labouring in the cotton mills, formed the Rhythm Ramblers - playing over WGBA and doing some TV appearances along with a string of one nighters across the state. By 1956, his ambition fuelled by years of gigs and radio, he formed RAMBLER Records which mainly released his own work. Later on he was forced to changed the label name to MONEY Records. As Colin Escott wrote in his sleeve notes for the Flat Git It Series: "...One of the artists he had signed in 1957 was Lee Mitchell, whom Money was apparently pushing with Sam Phillips at SUN, when he brought him to Memphis, sometime in the year after. He left behind a recording of his own, “Chain Gang Charlie,” that didn’t get heard by anyone until over three decades later, when it was found in the SUN vaults, but showed Curley Money doing perfectly respectable, even pretty hot rockabilly for a guy who was past 30 at a time when this music was still new. Money’s forays into rock & roll didn’t last, though his label did, into 1965, with 42 releases to its credit be- fore he closed it down that year…". Quite a few of his Rambler Record releases were pressed by RCA. The A side is a nice country bouncer, with guitar, steel guitar and sawing fiddles. Flip is a waltzy-little number. In 2003, Money was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He passed away later that year, at the age of 78.(MC / Bear Family CD 16210 - That’ll Flat Git It Vol. 14 - notes by Colin Escott)

Label Shots: Phil Tricker

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