*** Ronnie Dawson

MORE BAD HABITS

(Yep Roc)

What's that guitar rumble, that sound like an old Chrysler chugging through a 40-year-long tunnel? It's the opening chords of "Good at Being Bad," track one on the new CD from leather-tough rocker Ronnie Dawson. Decades after the Blonde Bomber won the amateur talent contest at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, Dawson's still playing fierce, brittle Fender guitar and exuberantly sing-talking some lighthearted lyrics about chicks, cars, food, and drink. Even if he doesn't cotton to the word, Dawson is a hard-luck "rockabilly" legend who found out a few years ago that a new bunch of fans in the UK had been digging his old stuff. He then recorded a few CDs for the British label No Hit Records and is now back at it full strength stateside.

Recorded last year in Cape Elizabeth, Maine (birthplace of John Ford), More Bad Habits is the very first stereo recording in all of Dawson's years (60 of 'em come August). But that doesn't change his fevered, twanging attack on such original numbers as "Rippin' and a-Roarin'," "Waxahachie Drag Race," and "Rockin' Country Cat," stripped-down, reverb-laden sounds true to the roots of a man who came up alongside Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee.

-- Bill Kisliuk