I’m currently listening to a two-disc set of Gene Vincent that includes his first two albums. I got this somewhat recently, so I’ve listened to it only one other time. But I was surprised to find “Up a Lazy River” on it. The only other version of “Up a Lazy River” I know is by the Mills Brothers, who have a very different style than Gene Vincent and early rock and roll in general.
I’m not going to compare the two versions because I think that sort of comparison is pretty useless. But what I think is interesting is that - of the two versions of “Up a Lazy River” that I have - I’m actually more familiar with the older version - the one by the Mills Brothers. Most of the music in my collection is not contemporary, and I’ve found different artists at different times, so I don’t often have any true grasp of the chronology involved. I might know that one version of a song is older than an-other version, but I still might think of a more recent version first just because I heard that version first. But with “Up a Lazy River,” the version I think of first is actually the older version. The one by the Mills Brothers is from 1941, and the one by Gene Vincent is from 1956.
