1. Last Date
2. Fancy Pants
3. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
4. San Antonio Rose
5. Flip Flop And Bop
6. Your Last Goodbye
7. Corrine Corrina
8. Drow In My Own Tears
9. I Need You Now
10. On The Rebound
11. Georgia On My Mind
12. Lovesick Blues
13. Chattanooga Choo Choo
14. Losers Weepers
15. Java
16. Shrum
17. (These Are) The Young Years
18. All Keyed Up
19. Stood Up
20. What'd I Say
The Essential Floyd Cramer
- Audio CD: 0 pages (1995-08-01)
- Publisher: RCA
- Label: RCA
- Studio: RCA
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 12 reviews
- Sales Rank in Music: #19555
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: the essential floyd cramer 2008-01-24
Comment: just what i wanted and as it was a gift also what the recipient wanted
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: "Anywhere-anytime, always FLOYD" (stars are not enough) 2007-12-24
Comment: This CD is flows like a stream of pure crystal-clear water, it's out of Time/Space.You can play it anytime,as front or beautiful back ground everchanging music...just brings joy&hapiness.
Original good quality recordings,all stereo excluded "Flip Flop and Bop" but good quality anyway.
At first instance I would have prefered all more uniform mellow songs just like Owen stated in his review but no, this is much better.Young kids just love it also as background music home or in the car. I made my own compilation of the mellow songs combining(5)FC CD's but I tend to play this CD more,it's just happier.
One last comment...Floyd is UNIQUE, he does not play a piano he plays HIS PIANO!
Ciao,
Franco
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: It IS Skimpy 2007-07-30
Comment: I have to agree with the observation that this CD leans towards the skimpy side, perhaps not for exactly the same reasons as stated by another reviewer, but nevertheless wanting in one respect.
The hit 78 rpm and then 45 rpm single is what made stars out of recording artists back then, and Floyd Cramer had 11 of them on the Billboard Hot 100 between his first in 1958 [Flip Flop And Bop - # 87] and his last in early 1963 [Java - # 49]. Two of those 11 hits crossed over to the R&B and Country charts, and from 1967 to 1980 he added four more to the Adult Contemporary [AC] charts, two of which also crossed to the Country listings [one of those, Stood Up, is here]. In 1977 he also had a # 67 Country with the old Cascades hit, Rhythm Of The Rain, in conjunction with The Keyboard Kick Band.
What we do not get in this "essential" volume, in terms of hit singles are: Hang On [the flip of Your Last Goodbye and a # 95 in 1961]; Let's Go [the B-side to Chatanooga Choo Choo and # 90 in 1962]; Hot Pepper [# 63 in 1962]; Java [# 49 in 1963]; By The Time I Get To Phoenix [# 32 AC in 1968]; Theme From Two-Twenty-Two [# 39 AC in 1970]; Dallas [# 32 Country/# 34 AC in 1980; and the above-mentioned Rhythm Of The Rain.
Also, in the excellent five pages of liner notes written by Colin Escott (which also contains a complete discography of the contents except for chart performances), we learn that, in addition to backing everyone from Elvis to Jim Reeves to Hank Locklin to Don Gibson to The Browns - to name just a few - he also recorded Fancy Pants with backing by The Louisiana Hayride Band way back in 1953 for the Abbott label and it too charted at # 28 on the Pop listings. Including that in this essential CD would have been a nice touch, but instead we get a 1958 RCA re-recording.
Not that there is anything wrong with this particular rendition, but it seems to me that producer Paul Williams could have used just a little more imagination in putting this one together. including adding maybe another 5 tracks.
Floyd, who died from cancer on New Year's Eve 1997, was at last inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2003.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: San Antonio Rose, Last Date 2007-03-09
Comment: This songs you cannot buy in Europe. Good to find them here
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Good Cross Section of His Early Days As a Star 2004-12-14
Comment: I don't have 40 albums by FC like one reviewer; I bet you don't either. Obsession and single-gaitedness are not my virtues. I do believe that Floyd Cramer had a wider range of knowledge about music than the possessor of so much of his work; witness THIS package of tunes. I like FC music as much as, say, Michael Jackson's mother who was treated by her son to a private FC concert once. Besides "Last Date" and "On the Rebound", Floyd's version of "Java" preceded Al Hirt's version into the market. There are two Hank Williams, Sr. tunes, one from Texas Playboy Bob Wills, two from the (ahem) eclectic Ray Charles (three if you count "Georgia on My Mind", written and first performed by Hoagy Carmichael), and "Corinne, Corinna", a song associated with Ray Peterson of "Tell Laura I Love Her Fame" and blues shouter Big Joe Turner before that and even back to Bo Chatmon in the 1930s before that. (Oddly the same song is on Eric Clapton's "Blues" album as "Alberta, Alberta"; what does HE know?). Anyway, I was there. This is a good representation of Floyd's songs and proves FC was not just a bohunk Nashville piano player. Like most us, he appreciated diverse music, no matter how he may have pandered to the single-gaited who only knew his country music. We lost Floyd to cancer in 1997, but he left us a lot of good music--from MANY sources. Enjoy.
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