Bobby Vee Take Good Care Of My Baby CD

Bobby Vee is rarely counted among the premier vocalists of the Brill Building era, but in truth he made some very memorable if hopelessly slight pop records, marshaling the enormous talents of the composing team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King to ring up a series of hits in the months prior to the explosion of Beatlemania. Of the 22 tracks compiled on Take Good Care of My Baby, the title cut remains Vee's high watermark. His sole chart-topper, this Goffin/King effort remains a perfect distillation of period-puppy-love innocence with its absurdly milquetoasty lyric and sappy melody. "Punish Her" and the Gene Pitney-inspired "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" are almost as good, while the minor 1963 hit "Be True to Yourself" documents an early collaboration by the songwriting team of Hal David and Burt Bacharach. Vee's commercial fortunes fell precipitously after 1963, although he returned to the Top Five with 1967's aptly titled "Come Back When You Grow Up." The set concludes with an ill-considered medley of the Temptations' "My Girl" and Goffin/King's "Hey Girl." Whatever Vee's talents, singing R&B was clearly not among them. ~ Jason Ankeny

Two of Bobby Vee's 1962 LPs, Take Good Care of My Baby and A Bobby Vee Recording Session, were reissued by Beat Goes On for this 1999 collection. Albums from this early era can be quite interesting from a historical perspective, and though there are some inherent weaknesses -- from today's perspective -- in the formula that Vee was following, these two releases make a fascinating pairing, showing off two slightly different approaches for grafting rock & roll to teen idol-style pop. The albums are somewhat similar, but also just different enough from each other so that there's a fair amount of variety to the music. The songs from Take Good Care of My Baby have a little more muscle to them, while those from A Bobby Vee Recording Session are more polished and elaborate in their production, with less of the preceding album's occasional emphasis on electric guitar. The shadow of Buddy Holly also fell across both records, directly or indirectly, not just through the presence of one of his songs plus guitarist Tommy Alsup (on Take Good Care of My Baby) and Vee's covering of songs by the Crickets, but to some extent also in style at various moments. The 1998-vintage remastering is state of the art and captures every nuance of the vocals and accompaniment, and the annotation by Snuff Garrett is an added enhancement to the CD. ~ Bruce Eder & Jenna Woolford

2 LPs on 1 CD.Q (7/99, p.148) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Quality songs aplenty..."