Early Girls, Volume 4

This impressive collection of recordings by female singers, laid down in the late fifties and early sixties, is the fourth volume in the series. It seemed for a long time that there would only be three volumes but I'm glad that the record label extended the series. With Brenda Lee (Dum dum), Doris Day (Secret love), Rosemary Clooney (This old house), Little Eva (Keep your hands off my baby) and Nancy Wilson (You don't know how glad I am), there are plenty of big names here although this compilation will mainly appeal to those looking for more obscure material.

Other famous songs include Sincerely (McGuire sisters), Sad movies (Sue Thompson), Paper roses (Anita Bryant) and Tammy (Debbie Reynolds). Of course, many people now associate Paper roses with Marie Osmond who had a major international hit with her cover of it in the seventies. Of the others, A walking miracle (The Essex) became an international hit in the seventies for Limmie and the family cooking while Gonna get along without you now (Patience and Prudence) was also an American hit for Teresa Brewer in the fifties and a British hit for Viola Wills in the seventies. Another song that may sound familiar is He'll have to stay (Jeanne Black), which is a riposte to Jim Reeves who sang He'll have to go.

You are likely to recognize the Teddy Bears, represented here by an obscure song (Oh why) rather than their classic song (To know him is to love him) which didn't feature in any of the earlier volumes either. You might also recognize one or two other names such as the Cookies and Lavern Baker but most of the other tracks are by long-forgotten one-hit wonders. As with the earlier volumes, it's great to find these songs available again.

If you are interested in female singers of the era and you're looking for less obvious material, you should check this out.

Here, in the fourth installment of their highly regarded "Early Girls" series of rock's golden-age girl and girl-group compilations, Ace extends their reach beyond the mostly teenager-oriented recordings of previous volumes. Sharing the digital domain with to-be-expected artists such as Brenda Lee, the Cookies and Tracey Dey are stalwarts of the more adult-oriented performers of the day as represented by Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney and Nancy Wilson. While one may argue they are misplaced in this compilation series, Ace is reminding us that, as their tunes were strong contenders within the top-100 of the period and they would not be going away quietly as many of their male counterparts did, they were indeed part and parcel of the female presence in the early days of rock and roll.

So, here in this eclectic gathering we are presented "Secret Love" from Doris Day, "This Ole House" by Rosemary Clooney and Nancy Wilson's "How Glad I Am". But the focus here is still on the teenage market and the performers that aimed directly at that upcoming wave in the music world. A few of the quickly recognized big hits are here, represented by Annette's "Tall Paul", Sue Thompson's "Sad Movies" and the Cookies' "Don't Say Nothin' Bad About My Baby". Refreshingly, represented are a few artists that had monster hits, though the tunes selected here include some lesser-known one such as the Essex' "A Walkin' Miracle" follow-up to "Easier Said Than Done" and Little Eva's "Keep Your Hands off My Baby" riding the tailwind of her massive hit "Locomotion". What really piques the interest here however, is Ace's exceptional track record of bringing to the digital domain tracks that have seldom, if ever, seen the light of digital day. And there are many - "Oh Why" from the Teddy Bears of "To Know Him Is to Love Him" fame, Annie Laurie's "It Hurts to Be in Love", Marcy Joe with "Ronnie", "To a Soldier Boy" from the Tassels and the Toy Dolls' "Little Tin Soldier" to name a few.

With a very generous 28 tracks all told, all in top-notch sound including eight tracks in true stereo (1-3,7,8,17,19 and 22) and a phenomenally comprehensive 24-page liner notes booklet, Ace has again hit an out-of-the-park home run with this, their latest girl-group compilation. No hesitation whatsoever here in adding this to the collector's must-have list.

As I mentioned in a review of a two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl doo wop some of the songs which overlaps in this five-volume series, I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, and that was just fine, agreed), and that of my generation, the generation of '68. Naturally one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Big Joe Turner. And, of course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis, Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson, and Jerry Lee Lewis on. Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love? (good question, right). I noted there that I had not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great `girl' groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I would expand that observation here to include girls' voices generally. As there, I make some amends for that omission here.

As I also noted in that earlier review one problem with the girl groups, and now with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not "speak to me." After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy's heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in the Angels' My Boyfriend's Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers' Johnny Get Angry.

And reviewing the material in this volume gave me the same flash-back feeling I felt listening to the girl doo wop sounds. I will give similar examples of that teen boy alienation for this volume, and this approach will drive the reviews of all five of these volumes in the series. Dum Dum leaves me with no choice but to be dumb dumb;Sincerely by the McGuire Sisters,hell I would have taken insincerely but just call; Sad Movies (Make Me Cry), alone in the dark, dungeon balcony; It Hurts To Be In Love, say that again; and The Cookies Don't Say Nothin' Bad (About My Baby), I wish I could have had that choice. I might add here that as we have, with volume four, gone over one hundred songs in this series not only have we worked over, and worked over hard, the "speak to" problem but have now run up against the limits of songs worthy of mention, mention at the time or fifty years later, your choice.

So you get the idea, this stuff could not "speak to me." Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls' minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Ya, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great.

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