As good and successful as she was, Brenda Lee has often been underrated by rock historians. In part that's because plenty of people don't realize just how much straight-ahead rock she recorded in her early years, especially as her biggest hits tended to be more pop-country-flavored ballads. The 28-track anthology Queen of Rock 'n' Roll is a handy primer to set the record straight, focusing on her most rock-oriented sides from 1956-1964. This isn't, it should be admitted, a Brenda Lee best-of; you really need some of those pop and ballad hits, many of which were quite fine, to get a fully rounded portrait of the singer at her best. But this is still very good, even if it's light on familiar hits ("Dum Dum," "Sweet Nothin's," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "That's All You Gotta Do," and "Is It True" are the only ones here) and there isn't much truly searing rockabilly. Cuts from her early career in the mid- to late '50s like "Bigelow 6-200," "Dynamite," and "Rock the Bop" do rock pretty hard, though, and if some of the midtempo numbers are more sedate, her vocals could still border on the raunchy, as "That's All You Gotta Do" proved. There's not much here postdating 1961, but one of those tracks, "Is It True" -- produced in Britain by Mickie Most, with Jimmy Page on guitar -- is one of her very greatest. Of special interest is its U.K.-only B-side, a good cover of "What'd I Say" that makes its first appearance on CD with this reissue. ~ Richie Unterberger
Professional Reviews
Q (Magazine) (p.138) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[She] possessed an almost freakishly mighty rasp that made her among the more credible female rock'n'rollers and a huge star during the early '60s..."
Record Collector (magazine) (pp.85-86) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "There's some restraint to her reading of Ray Charles' 'Talkin' 'Bout You,' but it's still a ferocious sound to come from such a small -- and young -- woman."
