Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 CD

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 songs The point's been made elsewhere, but hit radio of the 1960s wasn't only devoted to rock and soul music, as dominant as those forces were on both record sales and youth culture. You could also hear non-rock hits slip into the playlist on a more or less constant basis. Golden Age of American Popular Music: Hits with Strings and Things - Hot 100 Instrumentals has 28 such hits -- some mild, some huge -- from the decade (with a couple from the mid- to late '50s slipping in) that fit into the easy listening instrumental category. The "easy listening" label, though it's the one used more than any other, is a little deceptive. Some of these tunes are pretty forceful (though some are admittedly lush and meek), and quite a few of them borrow from aspects of rock, jazz, and even sometimes folk/country/world music in their arrangements, though at heart these are usually pretty smooth productions targeted toward an all-ages audience. Some of the biggest, and some of the best (the two are not necessarily the same) such smashes are here: Kai Winding's "More," Paul Mauriat's massive number one hit "Love Is Blue," Percy Faith's much-derided "The Theme from a Summer Place," Lawrence Welk's "Calcutta," the Village Stompers' folk-Dixieland hybrid "Washington Square," Bent Fabric's jazzy piano outing "Alley Cat," Henry Mancini's "Moon River," Acker Bilk's "Stranger on the Shore," Bill Pursell's "Our Winter Love" (with its mesmerizing low fuzzy blasts), Al Caiola's rendition of the "Bonanza" theme, Sounds Orchestral's interpretation of jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," and the Bob Crewe Generation's archetypal swinging bachelor anthem "Music to Watch Girls By." Also here are a bunch of instrumentals that didn't quite make it to the Top 20 (and sometimes charted much lower than that), though some of them are of notable fame as well, especially Walter Wanderley's effervescent bossa nova "Summer Samba (So Nice)." ~ Richie Unterberger 2009 collection, another fine installment in the excellent Golden Age Of Popular Music. This edition contains the orchestral and 'easy' instrumental hits that helped define the Golden Age of Popular Music, an era spanning, roughly 1956-67, when the US charts were brimming with an eclectic cornucopia of sounds and styles that is unlikely to be repeated in today's age corporate, socially engineered music making. 28 tracks including cuts from Kai Winding, Paul Mauriat, The Village Stompers, Al Hirt, Lawrence Welk, Acker Bilk and many others. Ace.

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 CD music The long-running series Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll from Ace has rewarded long-suffering fans of early rock and pop with a bounty of late-'50s and early-'60s songs, most of which reached the Top 40, but have been under-served by reissues since. The Eric label, with its own series Teen Time: The Young Years of Rock & Roll, picked up yet more slack with its 20-song collections of pop hits -- most of them on the rare side -- that serve the same purpose as the Ace volumes and pay similarly high dividends. The second volume of Teen Time, subtitled "I Got Rhythm," focuses on uptempo material, whether rock- or jazz-based (not all of it uptempo). It casts the net wider than Ace volumes, taking in several low chart entries, as well as a few later hits, but narrows the focus on material by including more artists with jazz-vocal tropes and ignoring R&B with only a few exceptions. Any listeners with a dedicated interest in '50s rock and pop will still find at least a few undiscovered nuggets here, like the alternately loose and tight harmonies of the Forester Sisters on the immediately enjoyable "Don't Mention My Name." None of the tracks have been overplayed (at least not since the '60s), and every one is a high-caliber production despite the novelty factor. Also appreciated is the fact that both Eric and producers Bill Buster, Tom Daly, and Mark Mathews have high standards of sound quality. ~ John Bush This second release in Eric's new oldies series makes a perfect companion to Volume 1. This volume has a more R&B and rockabilly flavor with 13 Top Twenty tracks drawn from the Roulette/Colpix/Warner Bros. vaults. And for collectors there are two songs m Liner Note Author: Greg Adams . Recording information: 1956-1967. Photographer: Joe Atlas.

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 buy CD music The 11th volume of this venerated series is split about half between out-and-out classics from rock & roll's first decade and considerably lesser-known (and usually much lower-charting) items from the same period. The benefit of this approach is that it makes available quite a few tracks that rarely get reissued, or at least rarely anthologized on all-purpose rock & roll oldies collections, while putting in enough familiar staples to avoid being tagged as a rarities collection. The drawback, of course, is that those relatively little-known singles -- all Top 100 Billboard hits to some degree or another, though seldom played on oldies stations today -- simply aren't nearly as good or memorable as the big hits with which they share space on this CD. Collectors might get frustrated by all the big hits that they already have in their collection several times over; more general fans will find the quality of the disc erratic, owing to the presence of all those obscurities. Still, there's no arguing with the first-rate status of many of the big hits here, including great smashes by LaVern Baker ("Jim Dandy"), Dion ("Ruby Baby"), Mickey & Sylvia ("Love Is Strange"), Shirley & Lee ("Let the Good Times Roll"), Jimmy Bowen ("I'm Stickin' with You"), Hank Ballard ("Finger Poppin' Time"), and Nervous Norvus ("Transfusion," a novelty so gruesome it still remains astonishing it made the Top Ten in 1956). Among the less celebrated selections, a few standouts are in or almost in the same league, like the Robins' wonderful "Smokey Joe's Cafe," Ruth Brown's "This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'," Carl Mann's late-'50s Sun Records rockabilly cut "Pretend," and Cookie & His Cupcakes' swamp pop standard "Mathilda." Much of the rest of the anthology is of a decidedly lower level, although early efforts are included by some artists who went on to much bigger fame in different contexts, like the 1956 doo wop single "(You're The) Apple of My Eye" by the Four Lovers (later to become the Four Seasons) and "White Bucks and Saddle Shoes" by Bobby Pedrick, Jr. (later to have hits as Robert John). Rob Finnis' liner notes give excellent background information about each track, and cite one of the more obscure cuts, Jimmy Dee's 1957 Top 50 hit "Henrietta," as the first record Bob Dylan ever bought. ~ Richie Unterberger- Volume 11 follows the tried and tested formula of previous releases - 30 tracks combining hits and rarities, all in the best possible sound, with in-depth sleeve notes from Rob Finnis. Ruby Baby - DION, Mathilda - COOKIE & HIS CUPCAKES, Smokey Joe's Caf‚ - THE ROBINS, Love Is Strange - MICKEY & SYLVIA and more!

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 album for sale Having run through a few hundred genuine classic hits from rock & roll's first decade in its previous volumes, the series The Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll was starting to concentrate on thematic compilations by the time of this 2008 release. This one has 30 "follow-up hits," or singles released immediately or soon after a big smash 45 by the same artist. Most follow-up hits, of course, didn't do as well as what they were following up, usually because the songs sounded too much like their predecessors and/or weren't as strong. That's true of most of the cuts here, actually, but that doesn't mean this doesn't have some good (and usually low-charting) rock & roll chart hits from 1956-1963. A good number of these were almost as good, and almost as popular, as the more famous songs they were following up, including Danny & the Juniors' "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay," Bobby Freeman's "Betty Lou Got a New Pair of Shoes," Shirley & Lee's "I Feel Good," Chuck Willis' "Betty and Dupree," Chris Montez's "Some Kinda Fun," and Dion & the Belmonts' "No One Knows." There are also some solid entries from a few bona fide rock & roll greats, even if those don't qualify as among their best recordings, like Gene Vincent's "Dance to the Bop" and Ritchie Valens' "That's My Little Suzie." You also, alas, get some numbers that were basically inferior attempts to replicate the mood of the big hit, like Mickey & Sylvia's "There Oughta Be a Law" (following "Love Is Strange"), Joe Bennett & the Sparkletones' "Penny Loafers and Bobby Socks" (following "Black Slacks"), and Bobby Day's "The Bluebird, the Buzzard and the Oriole" (following "Rockin' Robin"). Some other selections are fairly unmemorable by any standard, and only occasionally do you get items that are genuinely fine overlooked obscurities (the Cascades' harmony pop/rock ballad "Shy Girl" and Joe Jones' original version of "California Sun," later covered for a hit by the Rivieras). And some cuts are pretty derivative of other artists, as the Velvets' "Laugh" is of the Drifters, though that song does have the curiosity value of being co-written by Roy Orbison. The strong thematic core, however, makes this CD a more interesting compilation than most other anthologies of lesser-known rock & roll hits from the era, with excellent liner notes summarizing the backgrounds of the songs and performers. ~ Richie Unterberger 2008 release, an off-shoot in Ace Records' successful Golden Age Of American Rock 'N' Roll series presents 30 tracks with a common thread - all of them prevented their performers from becoming one-hit-wonders by following previous hits into the Billboard Hot 100! The vast majority of these tracks did very well indeed - better, in fact, than some of the hits that have featured in the main Golden Age series. Includes cuts from Danny & The Juniors, The Olympics, Mickey & Sylvia, Ernie K. Doe, Santo & Johnny, Gene Vincent, Ritchie Valens, Chris Montez, Dion & The Belmonts and many more.

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 CD music Like the first volume in this series, this is something of a spinoff from the concept driving Ace Records' long-running Golden Age of American Rock'n'Roll series, which branched out from rock & roll into country, novelty, and folk hits (also covering the era approximately stretching from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s). More than the first volume, however, The Golden Age of American Popular Music, Vol. 2 gathers pop hits from that era that weren't really related to rock & roll or any sort of American roots music, or only tenuously so at most. Some of these 28 tracks, nonetheless, transcended labels to make it onto rock & roll oldies stations' playlists, like Jimmie Rodgers' "Secretly," Gene McDaniels' "Chip Chip," Steve Lawrence's "Go Away Little Girl," and Nino Tempo & April Stevens' "Deep Purple." It's no accident, perhaps, that these are the biggest and best of the hits featured on this 28-track compilation, which concentrates mostly on lower-charting items -- though quite a few of these were solid Top 40 entries -- that have pretty much been forgotten, even by collectors specializing in this era of pop music. But there are still some pretty good other songs here, like Bobby Darin's "18 Yellow Roses" and Kitty Kallen's oft-covered "My Coloring Book," and some oddball selections with pretty interesting stories behind them, like actor Richard Chamberlain's "Theme from Dr. Kildare (Three Stars Will Shine Tonight)" (which actually made the Top Ten) and "Utopia" by Frank Gari (who actually wrote and recorded with Roger McGuinn shortly before McGuinn co-founded the Byrds). Much of the rest is featherweight pop, in many cases by well-known singers like the Lettermen, Anita Bryant, Ronnie Dove, Buddy Knox, Johnny Nash, Ruby & the Romantics, Brian Hyland, and producer Bob Crewe (whose "The Whiffenpoof Song" seems intended to emulate Bobby Darin's style in "Mack the Knife"). ~ Richie Unterberger 28 more high quality popular songs from the Golden Age Of Popular Music, 1956-1965, many transferred from first generation master tapes. Several are making their first CD appearance and in stereo for the very first time.Tracks of particular note among the wide-ranging selection include 'Go Away Little Girl' by Steve Lawrence, a track that defines 60s pop. This #1 hit has only been available in via mail order, but appears here for its first major CD appearance. Liner Note Author: Peter Grendysa.

Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 12 buy CD music Like the other volumes in this series, this 28-track anthology has an assortment of American rock & roll, R&B, and pop (though usually rock-oriented) records that were released in the U.K. on the London American label. The resulting strange hybrid is a grab-bag of big hits, small hits, and items that missed the charts entirely, running the gamut from classics to efforts that many would feel have been justly forgotten. In the classic category, we have such goodies as Fats Domino's "I'm Ready," Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife," Ray Charles' "I'm Moving On," the Coasters' "Charlie Brown," Bo Diddley's "Say Man," Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA," and Johnny Cash's "Luther Played the Boogie" (though the last song didn't make either the U.S. or U.K. charts as a single). There are also a bunch of cuts by significant artists like Eddie Cochran, Ruth Brown, Dee Clark, Clyde McPhatter, Neil Sedaka, Chuck Willis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and LaVern Baker that don't rank at (or sometimes near) the level of their best work. Also present are worthy instrumental hits by Duane Eddy and Johnny & the Hurricanes, as well as Jerry Keller's curious one-shot "Here Comes Summer," which was a solid hit in the U.S., but a chart-topper in the U.K. Of the obscure or relatively obscure selections, only Larry Williams' "She Said 'Yeah'" (covered in the mid-'60s by the Rolling Stones) and Della Reese's "Sermonette" are of much interest. Some of the milder, poppier tracks by non-stars make little impression whatsoever; Jimmy Clanton's "A Letter to an Angel" is a blatant reworking of Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love," and Wink Martindale's maudlin "Deck of Cards," though a huge hit, sits most uncomfortably in these surroundings. ~ Richie Unterberger 1st volume in the critically acclaimed series to cover the 1950s (1959), features 28 tracks (with only 2 tracks founds on other Ace releases). US labels that make up comp includes Chess, Sun, Atlantic, Big Top, Specialty, Jamie and others. Includes music from: Fats Domino, Delia Reese, Eddie Cochran, Bobby Darin, LaVern Baker, Johnny Cash, Coasters, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Willis, Clyde McPhatter and others Liner Note Author: Alan Warner.