Customer Reviews

The Golden Age Of American Rock 'n' Roll, Volume 9: Hot 100 Hits From 1954-1963

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Highly anticipated, here we are offered the ninth installment in the best CD compilation series on early American rock and roll ever produced. As in the others in the series, there are a few top-10 tunes here but the majority are less well known, lower charting songs including some seldom, if ever, found on CD. Included among the rarities are "A Wonderful Dream" (Majors), "Queen of My Heart" (Rene and Ray) and "Shortin' Bread" (Paul Chaplain).

As has come to be expected, Ace has produced these tracks from the best sources available and their efforts are evident in the overall sound quality. Of the massive 30 total tracks, 6,8,9,24 and 30 are in true stereo with the remainder in mono. The liner notes consist of a 28-page booklet with background notes on each track on the CD and many pictures of the artists and associated promotional material.

Reinforcing their repution with this amazing new volume, we collectors and casual fans alike can relish in this latest superb entry in Ace's reissue-history making series.

just got volume nine in the series...let it be known that ace records uk is doing by far the best job of any label out there reissuing vintage music. The sound quality is excellent--the packaging is superb--and most importantly, the track selection combines the best of well-known and very obscure. Each volume in this series is extremely enjoyable and highly recommended!

The Golden Age of American Rock 'n' Roll, Vol. 9 gives us a generous thirty track portion of some great early rock and roll songs. The quality of the sound is great and I like the artwork, too.

"I'm A Fool To Care" by Joe Barry gets a great, jazzy arrangement; Joe sings this to perfection and the musical arrangement makes great use of the guitars, percussion and brass. I love it! Freddy Cannon continues the high energy with his hit entitled "Palisades Park." I like the musical special effects and Freddy sings this without a superfluous note. His youthful voice conveys all the right emotions in all of the lyrics, too. Moreover, listen for "I Wonder Why" by Dion And The Belmonts. They harmonize well for this doo wop ballad and they never miss a beat.

Charlie Rich's "Lonely Weekends" shines as brightly as it did when I first heard it; and I like that horn solo, too. Charlie sings this well. "I Really Love You" by The Stereos has a great doo wop beat with a twist of Latin to make this number shine. Man, how they do this number really well.

"Daddy's Home" by Shep and The Limelites is a tune I really enjoy; the lyrics are positive but the ballad has a somewhat somber feel to it--although some people might say that the slow tempo serves to make the ballad more soothing than anything else. In addition, there's also "Coney Island Baby" by The Excellents. This number is classic doo wop and I predict that you will enjoy this number very much.

"Fever" by Little Willie John gets the royal treatment as Little Willie John delivers this sultry ballad with style and a certain amount of romance in his voice that will make the ladies happy to this day. "Tonight (Could Be The Night)" by The Velvets still gets some airplay on the oldies station here; and I really like this number. The Five Keys also score a huge goal with their number entitled "Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind." Wow!

We also get the liner notes in the form of a twenty-eight page booklet with note on each track; the artwork is terrific!

This album is great for anyone who appreciates the great sound of doo wop and early rock and roll in America before "The British Invasion." There are hits you'll recognize right away; and there are other songs that got airplay in their time but are more obscure in these times.

I highly recommend this CD.

As usual, the folks at ACE have turned out another great re-issue package. Every cut on this package is from the original master tape, sounding better than they did when originally released on vinyl. I highly recommended this package to any collector of the golden age of rock'n roll.

This one is just a good as all the others in the Golden Age series from ACE

a great collection of not so popular old songs, but very enjoyable to hear again!

... with Volume 9 in what, so far, has been an 11-volume series, this one features 14 hits that forced their way onto the Billboard Pop Top/Hot 100 charts despite being distributed by tiny, independent labels which simply had to rely on the appeal of their offerings and word-of-mouth as opposed to the publicity resources available to the large operations, represented in this Volume by Smash, Okeh (these two the main subsidiaries of Mercury and Columbia), Columbia itself, ABC-Paramount, and Capitol. Even medium-sized operations such as the following, also represented here, were better able to spread the word of their releases: Laurie, Swan, Phillips Int'l, King, Imperial, Warwick and Monument.

Of the 14 hits produced by the small indies and contained in this volume, half made the Top 40, two more just missed entering that group, while the other 5 settled for the lower regions of the charts, in some cases because the distributors had virtually no funds at all for publicity (or palm-greasing in the days of the infamous Payola scheme). The best of this lot, in terms of chart position, were Jimmy Soul's If You Wanna Be Happy, which hit # 1 Hot 100 AND R&B in the spring of 1963 for S.P.Q.R., a label related to Legrand, and Daddy's Home by Shep & The Limelites, which got to # 2 Hot 100/# 4 R&B in spring 1961 for Hull Records, as a sequel to an earlier hit, A Thousand Miles Away by The Heartbeats, which also featured led James "Shep" Sheppard (see Volume 8).

Four Top 30 hits in the group are Baby Oh Baby by The Shells (# 21 Hot 100 in December 1960/January 1961 on Johnson); A Casual Look by The Six Teens (# 7 R&B and # 25 Top 100 in the summer of 1956 on Flip); Ooh Poo Pah Doo Part 1 by Jessie Hill (# 3 R&B and # 28 Hot 100 in May/June 1960 on Minit); and I Really Love You by The Stereos (# 15 R&B and # 29 Hot 100 in late 1961 on Cub). The Top 40 is Fannie Mae by Buster Brown, a # 38 in late 1950/early 1960 on Fire Records, which also became a # 1 R&B. The two that just missed the Top 40 were No, No, No by The Chanters (# 41 Hot 100 in summer 1961, but which also climbed to # 9 R&B for DeLuxe, and So Tough by The Original Casuals (# 42 Top 100 in March 1958 and also a # 6 R&B on Back Beat).

Those that had to be happy with lower rankings were: Coney Island Baby by The Excellents (# 51 Hot 100 on Blast in late 1962/early 1963); Rang Tang Ding Dong (I Am The Japanese Sandman) by The Cellos (# 62 Top 100 in June 1957 for Apollo); Just Got To Know by Jimmy McCracklin (# 64 Hot 100 and # 2 R&B in late 1961 on Art-Tone); Queen Of My Heart by Rene And Ray (# 79 Hot 100 in June 1962 for Donna Records); and Shortnin' Bread by Paul Chaplain & His Emeralds (# 82 Hot 100 in September 1960 on Harper Records).

All the Billboard rankings and label details are contained on the back cover, augmenting the 24 pages of track-by-track background notes (including the interesting story as to why they were billed as The Original Casuals) by British music historian Rob Finnis, preceded by two pages commenting on the concept of Rock 'n' Roll written in 1971 by Frank Zappa. Sprinkled throughout with poster,advertisement and 45 rpm reproductions are photographs of Joe Barry, Dion & The Belmonts, The Six Teens, a young Charlie Rich, Buster Brown, Paul Chaplain & His Emeralds, The Stereos, Dr. Feelgood & The Interns, Boyd Bennett, Ronnie Self, Clint Miller, Matt Lucas, The Chanters, The Cellos,Little Willie John, Johnny & The Hurricanes, The Shells, Wanda Jackson, The Velvets, and The Five Keys.

The sound quality is perfect.

Could anyone out there give me the tittle of the song and artist. Where in the lyrics it contains to the words Boogie woogie rock n roll