Customer Reviews

Best of Doo Wop Uptempo

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Out of all the vintage Rock and Roll collections that I own, I feel this certain CD is my favorite. The songs contained in this treasure make you remember the good old days. Most of the oldies on this CD are smooth, relaxing, and make you want to just take life a bit slower. The Elegants and The Mystics both provide wonderful adaptations of time honored children's lullabies, and Randy and The Rainbows present an instant sensation, Denise, guaranteed to become one of your favorites. And who can forget Dion's wonderful tune, which makes you think of the street corner singing groups in New York City. All the famous songs are included, from Step By Step all the way to the Del Vikings. Even the liner notes are chalked full of great photos and information, about all the groups and their music. A superb collection of great songs by great artists. Superb!

... of the best uptempo songs mostly from Rhino's 4-CD box set, "The Doo Wop Box" (volume 1). If you think you like uptempo Doo Wop, but don't want to spend the money for one of Rhino's four-CD sets, this is the CD to get. For those concerned about duplication of material they already own, there are just two doo wop songs on 'Uptempo' which are not found on any CDs in Rhino's first three Doo Wop Box sets: The Volumes' "I Love You", with some remarkable, soaring falsetto work on the chorus, and The Flares' "Foot Stomping-- Pt. 1"... doo wop jive meets Army basic training, well, the marching part, anyway. The Stereos' "I Really Love You" and The Crests' "Step by Step" are on Volume 2 of the Doo Wop Box by Rhino, and the other 14 tracks on this CD are included in Volume 1 of the Doo Wop Box by Rhino. Highly recommended as a one-disc doo wop intro.

This is a great collection of 18 great doo wop songs. Every song here is a classic. I recommend this CD to all vocal group fans.

It goes without saying that doo wop worked well with rockin' tunes as well as ballads. A good mix of songs that should satisfy lovers of harmony.

The 18 songs on this single disc Rhino compilation are all prime and classic sonic relics of the doo wop era which spanned the years from roughly 1954 to 1963. Many of us were too young to have heard these songs on the radio when they were first released, but as a result of at least five bona fide rock `n' roll revivals since 1969, and the enormous popularity of George Lucas's fun summertime nostalgia film and the accompanying soundtrack, "American Graffitti", the music genre affectionately dubbed doo wop has become firmly ensconced in American popular culture as representative of simpler, slower and supposedly more innocent times. Now there are Oldies radio stations in every demographic market spinning these tunes 24/7 and what were once songs that stood slightly outside of the mainstream have, through saturation playing, become ubiquitously familiar melodies heard at wedding receptions, while grocery shopping, while undergoing root canals, and during airplane delays. These songs are everywhere, you say! Yes, but they are so good that I for one, and I'm sure there are plenty of other greasers in spirit out there, love hearing them no matter where I am or what I'm doing. Intended originally for a teen audience as music to cruise to, or dance to at sock hops and at soda shops, there is an exuberant and raw energy expressed in the vocals with their hilarious nonsensical syllables, in the jump rhythms and in the honking saxes that makes one smile and want to snap one's fingers. The combos and groups featured on "Uptempo" perfected tight vocal harmonies and took them to playfully and hitherto unheard of rhythmic heights. In these songs one can hear the roots of Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, and of course many of the `60's Motown and girl groups.

There are many doo wop compilations, but Rhino's 1989 CD, "The Best of Doo Wop Uptempo" is nearly perfect in concisely collecting the best of what made doo wop so much fun and, so essential to understanding how early rock `n' roll developed. The subjects dealt with are primarily the vagaries of love, getting a job, getting a bit of respect, and of course dancing and romancing. Bill Liebowitz's liner notes are excellently written as they give one just discovering doo wop or anyone re-discovering doo wop music a sense of the intricacies that these groups put into creating such joyous vocals and heavenly harmonies. Standout tracks for me are "Whispering Bells" by the Dell-Vikings, "Hushabye" by the Mystics, "Book of Love" by The Monotones, "Little Star" by The Elegants, and "Denise" by Randy & The Rainbows. I need to thank Robert Christgau for getting me hip to "The Best of Doo Wop Uptempo", as he included it in his "Rock Library: Before 1980" list, a best of list which apparently is available only in print (oh, the humanity!). Anyways, if you're looking to get into this great music, here is the place to do it. Served straight up and with no Wolfman Jack or Alan Freed voice overs, these are the pure timeless songs from the early days of rock n roll. So dig `em daddy-o!

Recently I got caught up, and caught up bad, in the girl group doo wop (or that is what I prefer to call it anyway) night and mentioned that I had a hard time, a really hard time, relating to girl groups. No, not that they could not doo wop with the guys, Christ, half, more than half the time, they were better than the guys. Think of those great Shirelles numbers that came exploding off the charts. No, my problem, my mostly girl-less teenage alienation, teen angst, teen guy couldn't figure out girls problem, was the lyrics of most of the songs. Songs filled with lines about longing for long gone Eddie, songs about parents forcing young love out the door when it involved the leader of the pack, or wistfulness about whether true love would survive the night, or tomorrow night. Or even such lowly concerns as the fact that one's boyfriend was back, or that one had reclaimed an old boy friend and made some other teenage girl miserable, miserable waiting at the midnight phone, still waiting maybe. You know, girlish concerns, girlish giggle concerns not fit for serious teenage boy angst ears.

Not so though with the doo wop guys, slow, or as here up-tempo. Here the reverse is true, well, somewhat true. Although many times girl-less I could relate to such lyrical problems as two-timing mamas, fickle girls trying to decide between Johnny and Jimmy, girls, conspiring, yes, conspiring, and I will provide notarized proof upon request, to break up Susie and Bobby so Laura can have a shot at the lad. Such were the treacheries of the teen life, the 1950s teen life American-style (although I suspect, without notarized proof here, that this stuff rings a bell for today's teen whatever nation, via Facebook convenience, they hail from.

That said all that is left is to figure out the stick-outs, and there are many here, some verily classics of the genre of the up-tempo doo wop night: Get A Job (first, ma says it at about twelve or thirteen, then girlfriend says it at about sixteen or seventeen so you have some dough to spend on her, then wife says it at about twenty-five or six, okay we get it, yes, get a job): The Silhouettes; Gee (great harmonics, although the lyrics are, ah, a little light), The Crows; Blue Moon (an old time Tin Pan Alley tune that cries out for this treatment, and a big old full moon to croon under), The Marcels; Little Star (wistful, guy version), The Elegants; Step By Step (sensible approach to a relationship, if you can do it, most teens just forget it), The Crests; and, Come Go With Me (yes, please do), The Del-Vikings.

Note: I have to make a special pitch for Why Do Fools Fall In Love? by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the max daddy of the bop-doo wop night and the voice that basically made it all possible for all those groups, all those big city corner boy (and girl) groups, to partake of the rock scene and some fame. When my best elementary school friend, Billie, William James Bradley, king of the neighborhood rock night and a pretty good budding rock singer, first heard this song I thought he was going to go crazy. He had us doo-wopping that thing all one summer when we were hanging out in back of the school. And guess what? That song (and a couple of others) had the girls, a couple at first, then a few more, then a bevy (nice word, right?) all coming around and getting all moony and swoony. And kept this reviewer from being girl-less, for a while anyway. Thanks, Frankie.

I enjoyed the majority of the songs. Some of them I hadn't heard before.

As with most cd's I've purchased, only about half of the songs are ones I like. In this case, there are a number of familiar old standards that make this cd worthwhile.