Customer Reviews

Early Girls Volume 3

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England's ACE Records has become the premiere reissue label in the world. They have done everything Rhino has done for years. Used top grade source tapes, excellent sound, well written and informative liner notes and top-notch song selection. And for my money, they've upped the ante. The booklet is a 20-page, full-color collection of publicity stills, handbills and notes on each artist and song. And you get 28 songs! No other label is this generous.

And these are all wonderfully chosen songs. All but one of these (Suzie Clark's "Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya") made the pop or R&B charts. There are No. 1 hits like Shelley Fabares' "Johnny Angel" and Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him." Faye Adams topped the R&B charts with the rousing "Shake a Hand," and Etta James' hit No. 2 with "At Last." And then there are other forgotten pop gems sprinkled throughout this collection, like the Chantels' highest charting hit "Look In My Eyes," and Cathy Jean and the Roommates' hit version of "Please Love Me Forever" (six years before Bobby Vinton returned it to the charts).

Unlike Rhino's Girl Group series, which focused on the early Sixties, the ACE series spans the years 1953 to 1964. So there is very little overlap between the two. In fact, only Joanie Sommer's "Johnny Get Angry" is duplicated from the Rhino series, so these two series complement each other very nicely. If you already own the two earlier volumes (or even the two volumes of the Rhino series), this latest installment is a welcome addition. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

While there are a number of quality early rock and roll girl-group compilation CD's around (Rhino and Varese Vintage), Ace really does it best. Here, in the third installment of the "Early Girls" series, Ace has presented a massive 28-track collection that includes a few very familiar tunes mixed in with a wealth of seldom-found major and minor hits from the golden age of American rock and roll. Cradled between big hits like Shelley Fabares' "Johnny Angel" and Esther Phillips' "Release Me" are gems like Margie Rayburn's "I'm Available" and Shelby Flint's "Angel On My Shoulder". Among the rarities are "He's Mine" from Alice Wonder Land and the Pixies Three's "Birthday Party".

Sound quality is excellent for many of these obscure recordings with tracks 2,4,7,9,15-17,21,22,25 and 27 in true stereo. Tracks 23 and 27 are acknowledged as coming from disc but sound clean and full. A 24-page booklet with lots of pics and background info on the tracks anthologized completes this excellent CD.

This new volume in Ace's continuing reissue series of the genre is a superb effort and worthy of collectors' and casual fans' attention.

This impressive collection of recordings by female singers, laid down between 1955 and 1964, is the third of three volumes. Few of the ladies featured here had a lot of hits. Patti Page, best remembered for Tennessee waltz but represented here by Old Cape Cod, was the most successful.

There are two American number one hits - I will follow him (Little Peggy March) and Johnny Angel (Shelley Fabares). Peggy's hit was a cover of a song recorded by Petula Clark. Other big American hits included Don't you know (Della Reese), Hurt (Timi Yuro), Johnny get angry (Joanie Sommers) and Release me (Esther Phillips), Release me began life as a country song in the early fifties, but although Esther's top ten cover re-launched her career, it would be Engelbert Humperdinck who would make the song his own, having an even bigger American hit with it as well as a British number one.

Etta James' cover of Glenn Miller's At last only scraped into the American top fifty, but it gave her career a direction to go in.

There are many other great songs, mostly sung by long-forgotten one-hit wonders. Anybody interested in female singers of the era and looking for less obvious material should check this out.

I need another one, because my 11 year old daughter stole it. Fantastic for singing along in the car for me, great for dancing all over the house with for her. It crosses generations because it is just great music, no other way to describe it. I wish there were more because I can't seem to find Don't They Know It's The End of the World on any CD anywhere.

As with everything that I've ever bought from Ace Uk, this is superb! The sound is great and the selection is diverse. The great thing about the Ace UK label is that they are not afraid to include the rare hard to find oldies that you may have missed along side the familiar tracks. I have NEVER been disappointed with anything that I've ever purchased from ACE UK. In fact, I've even bought compilations from them that I'd never heard before and was pleased with then. You can never go wrong with anything that they offer.

This c.d. is overall a very good collection of Female Classics.
The songs span from 1953 to 1963, with a very nicely done 23 page booklet
that contains all this information and much more.
The information about the artists and the music on this c.d.
is very interesting, and the booklet includes many vintage pictures.

Here are some songs you don't see offered very often --
1. "My one and only Jimmy boy" by The Girlfriends #49 in 1963.
2. "What are boys made of" by The Percells #53 in 1963.
3. "I want you to be my baby" by Lillian Briggs #18 in 1955.
4. "With all my heart" by Jodie Sands #15 in 1957.
5. "Pease don't talk to the life guard" by Diane Ray # 31 in 1963.
6. "Birthday party" by The Pixie Three #40 in 1963.
7. "Party girl" by Bernadette Carroll #47 in 1964.
8. "Better tell him no" by The Starlets #38 in 1961.

It was great to get this music.
These are songs I remember hearing and had forgotten all about until this c.d.
It is wonderful to find old songs that you haven't heard since they went "off the air".

Here also are many well known classics --
1. "I will follow him" by Little Peggy March #1 in 1961.
2. "Johnny Angel" by Shelley Fabarea #1 in 1962.
3. "At last" by Etta James #47 in 1960.
4. "Don't you know" by Della Reese #2 in 1959.
5. "Old cape code" by Patti Page #3 in 1957.
6. "Hurt" by Timi Yuro #4 in 1961.
7. "Johnny get angry" by Joanie Sommers #7 in 1962
8. "Gee whiz" (look at his eyes) by Carla Thomas #10 in 1961.
9. "Release me" by Esther Phillips #8 in 1962.
10. "Look in my eyes" by The Chantels #14 in 1963.

With all the classics that are here plus the hard to find tracts,
that makes this 28 track c.d. a great one to add to any oldies collection.

One disappointment for me about this collection is that
I ordered it mostly for one song, "Ain't gonna kiss ya".
I LOVED to hear that song on the radio back in the day.
It played so much in my hometown that I always thought it had been a big hit.
I didn't know till recently that it only reached #81 on the pop chart,
and was the only song the Ribbons had chart, AND would be very hard to find.
So I was thrilled to see it on this great collection.

However, when I received the c.d., is when I relized the song I wanted
did NOT sound the same, it is NOT by the original artist "The Ribbons"
who had the song chart in 1963, but instead by Suzie Clark,
a cover version in 1963 which never charted.
Still Clark's version here is HER original recording, she's just not the original artist.
I should have checked that out before I ordered.

Still all ARE original recordings, and this is a GREAT collection.

Tired of hearing the same old songs on the radio? Spice up your listening with another of the great offerings from England's premier oldies label Ace Records. There are three volumes in the "Early Girls" series. I own two of them and they are both great but to me Volume 3 is clearly the pick of the litter. There are a generous 28 tracks on this single disc that spotlights the decade between 1955 and 1964. It is an eclectic mix of tunes from that period featuring some old reliables like "I Will Follow Him" from Little Peggy March and the Carla Thomas classic "Gee Whiz". But you are also going to find some other tunes you are sure to remember that are not all that easy to come by these days. When was the last time you heard Margie Rayburns 1957 Top Ten smash "I'm Available"? Or how about "Please Love Me Forever" by Cathy Jean and the Roomates or one of my favorite tracks "With All My Heart" by Jodie Sands also from 1957? And there are a good number of other outstanding tracks in this collection that I simply had never even heard before. Lillian Briggs was a white big band style singer who was discovered by Alan Freed. Her 1955 recording of "I Want You To Be My Baby" was a Top 20 smash back in 1955. I had never heard it before and it simply blew me away. Other lesser known hits you might get a big kick out of include Diane Ray's "Please Don't Talk To The Lifeguard" and the sensational "My One and Only Jimmy Boy" by the Girlfriends.
As usual the included 24 page booklet is a true collectors item just packed with photos and information on the artists. And the sound quality is impeccable as usual. Absolutely nothing negative to say about this one. Very highly recommended!!!

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 overlap in this six-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, about what I was listening to, 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 six of these volumes in the series. For instance the saga of a love-struck girl willing to follow her man, well, okay boy wherever the winds take him in I Will Follow Him by Little Peggy March. Or in one of the endless angels sagas that would make those fighting it out in the heavens in John Miltons's Paradise Lost blush in Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares. I will pass Dumb Head by Ginny Arnell except to say that dumb head girls passed me by, by the baskets full. Or how could I relate to the boy-girl eternal thing in Please Love Me Forever by Cathy Jean and The Roommates when I could get a girl to answer my telephone calls after endless ringing ups (no speed dial, instanto-call then so hard finger work) Or Etta James' thrill in At Last. Or, speaking of telecommunications, the failure to provide a telephone number, address, or e-mail (oops, no can do in 1950s America) in I'm Available by Margie Rayburn. I am still waiting on that information even as I write. E-mail me, Margie. Or the smaltzy sea air breezes of Miss Patti Page's In Old Cape Cod. Or that whimsical look that Ms. Carla Thomas is giving her guy, or maybe 'guy to be' in Gee Whiz. Or where is my party girl in Party Girl by Bernadette Carroll. Ya, I could relate to Hurt by Timi Yuro, a little but what about boy hurt. And who needs, who needs it at all, to be told for the twelve-thousandth time Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya by Suzie Clark and she means every word of it.

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. And from girls even.

The cd is great! The cd was sent in a timely manner and was brand new. I love buying from Amazon. I have never had a problem buying new or used.

This is another incredible compilation by ACE Records. The sound is amazing. The songs are well crafted and produced. Having Billboard Chart listings is nice. I love all the songs. I just find Dumb Head a bit disturbing. I guess understanding the times from whence it came...Just incredible!!