At Abbey Road 1963-1966 [CD]

Though the truth be told, no one could beat the Beatles at what they did, they themselves wouldn't have beaten the other Merseybeat groups who gave life to those types of songs the Beatles might have flubbed on. Outstanding as they were, the Beatles' particular performing style didn't match what was needed in certain musical situations.

I like the Beatles better than probably any other pop-rock band I've ever heard, and as well as any of the later 'visionary' bands from the late 60's and beyond. Sure I'm still enough in awe of them that I feel somewhat weird about even attempting to review one of their albums. That's because I myself cannot stand knee-jerk, marbles-in-the-mouth journalist/critics, and can't tolerate the thought of me becoming one of them. The very idea is nauseating.

This one top 10 reviewer didn't say one good thing about BJK yet gave the CD a rating of 4 stars. This strikes me as being mightily confused, like maybe while he was mentally composing his text he was simultaneously mooning himself in the mirror.

Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas first big stateside single, "Little Children" (Doc Pomus), wasn't a Lennon-McCartney tune. But it's the one that sounds the most like the Beatles, with the twanging guitar chords and the close harmonies, which coincidentally also sound like one of the Beatles' forebears and heroes, the Everly Brothers. Sure, the story portrayed by the lyrics is a little cutesy, but the Beatles themselves hadn't started evolving out of their teen idol phase, and the absolutely incredible early Rolling Stones singles didn't start denting the U. S. charts until 2-3 months later.

[The Stones' began to split open the music world in mid-late summer with their rollicking remake of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away", followed closely and passionately by one of rock's greatest underrated songs ["Tell Me"]. They then proceeded to stun listeners even more with a groundbreaking song - "It's All Over Now"]. That one later formed the basis of at least two new styles, acid rock and hard rock. (My 14-year old psyche was barely ready for the honest, tough but tuneful sound of "Tell Me", but somehow I quickly fessed up and loved it entirely. It still took years for me to totally come to terms with "It's All Over Now", but after all, it was light years ahead of its time.)

Though the early Beatles were sugar coated compared with early Stones, the undeniable passion of their earliest singles prepared us for the rawer power of "Tell Me", the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun", as well as the early Kinks and Zombies singles. For me, everything else hard and heavy kind of progressed easily from this, until the first time I heard "Purple Haze" booming through the dorm room walls, propelled from out of my neighbor's 4 x 3½ foot speakers. That was more or less the third and final rock revolution (at least for me).]

But I digress mightily.

"Bad to Me" (Lennon-McCartney) Billy J's second big U. S. hit, was more in the grain of songs like "P. S. I Love You". But it was a little lightweight for Lennon and Harrison to wrap themselves around. One reviewer stated that Garry Lewis and the Playboys founded their sound on things like it. Even if this is accurate (which I doubt) Lewis and Company sanitized their own sound by eliminating the twang and therefore most if not all of its character. As I stated before, BJK & the D's sounded a whole lot more like a Merseybeat version of the Everly Brothers than like GL & the P's. That Mersey bounce, heard frequently in the mid-to-quick tempo tunes of Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, Gerry and the Pacemakers, as well as the Searchers, at the time served them (and us!) very well. No matter how you slice it, Merseybeat does not map to Garry Lewis's unsyncopated, proto-bubblegum yum.

"Trains and Boats and Plains" (Bacharach and David) awhile before Dionne Warwick's version. Kramer's rather low-key but full voice, mixed with the Dakotas trademark twangy guitar, and orchestral strings, and as is [more often than not] usual for him - no backup singers. The way he gets the Mersey bounce into a slow ballad takes good breath control - very tricky to pull of, and he does it soulfully. On this song he's smoother sounding than a Johnny Cash or Marty Robbins . . . same vocal range, somewhat similar timbre . . . different singing style.

The really nice thing about this collection is that it contains all BJK's singles that I remember from the radio, even when he/they were foundering ("It's Gotta Last Forever"). I never heard his/their first single [until I got their greatest hit collection in the 80's] as the Beatles own superior version quickly and completely eclipsed it ("Do You Want to Know a Secret?"). And it's tough to gauge whether Chad and Jeremy's version of "From a Window" is better, though I think so (Ch & J's two-part harmonies maybe give them the edge).

And Billy J's voice on "I'll Keep you Satisfied" sounds a little bit like a bop version of someone like Matt Monro, or even a less grainy version of Rick Nelson. All in all, his voice is in no way lightweight. But his emergence was ill timed - a year and a half or three before - he might have gone gold all over the place.