Customer Reviews

Hey Little Cobra

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Next to Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds concept,this album is one of the best, high quality sounds ever recorded by a vocal group.Don't try to challenge me on this one.Just listen to the hot rod music and relax on the beach with your fold-out lawn chair.Three Window Coupe was better,but only because all four members including Melcher,Johnston,Bringas and Stewart were working together at once. There is much debate about who appeared on what album, at which time and when.That's where producers become very important and we all know Mulcher was tampering with some of the voices and cross-overdubbing by putting voices ontop of one another.I see nothing wrong with doing that.It sounds cool, but it's hard to tell who's which on what.You get my point bro? Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston deserve a little bit of credit for the success of Hey Little Cobra, because they stepped in at a time when Bringas(one of the original members) was off becoming an educated man. Left with only Phil Stewart to pick on, I think they felt more in control of their work, and took their talent to a whole new level. It is very apparent when you listen to the #4 song in the nation, Hey Little Cobra,which of course says it all. Phil Stewart claims to be in it,but Bruce & Terry try to deny he ever had part in it. I give this second best album in the world (behind Pet Sounds) five plus stars and stripes. A must for any vintage rock and roll music collection. One last note before I go, none of my opinions are correct, but everything else is true. E-mail Dan with your thoughts. frostbirds@mediaone.net

Despite rumors to the contrary, The Rip Chords were not a "front" for Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston, although their input was significant and they were/are brilliant producers. The Rip Chords (and especially "Hey Little Cobra") are examples of mid-century Americana, and millions agree that it is still great music. To over-intellectualize it would be doing it a great injustice. It was not recorded to make a statement, but to reflect the times, invoke fun and sell records, all of which it brilliantly accomplished. While The Rip Chords indeed owe much of their sound to the studio geniuses of the 60's L.A. scene, so do The Association, Grass Roots, Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, Mamas & Papas, Gary Lewis and countless other acts coming out of the L.A. scene at that time. That's just the way it was - and when you listen to all of this great music, aren't you glad?! Relax and enjoy the music!

Whenever people remember great surf & hot rod music of the '60s, these days they almost always remember the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, and... nobody else. While these two groups indeed wrote the mega smash hits and were superb talent (in my book, the best band of all time isn't the Beatles, it's the Beach Boys), lots of great music goes largely unremember by all but the diehard fans. The Rip Chords are, in my opinion, the greatest of these forgotten bands. "Hey Little Cobra," their first album, despite the many Beach Boys and Jan & Dean covers, is a true classic. "Hey Little Cobra," "Here I Stand," "Trophy Machine," and the rest are pure good times. The Rip Chords have a great, unique sound; they were one of those rare collections of talent that doesn't come along every day. It's a shame they don't get the recognition they deserve. When I'm driving in one of my custom cars, I always have a Rip Chords CD nearby. My hot rod may only be a VW Karmann Ghia, but in my mind I'm sitting at the starting line, eyeing the Sting Ray Corvettes and Jaguar XKEs as the flag man unfurls the green...

Who cares about the soap opera politics about the credits. This album is a classic of the pre-Beatles era! It is to the Boomer generation what Glenn Miller was to our parents. It first appeared in our house in the original vinyl version around 1964. I still have that original, albeit, badly scratched and abused from being played on everything from a late 40's Hi-Fi (before Stereo) to that ubiquitous plastic portable record player that every preteen owned. This album, Jan & Dean, & Roy Orbison were the early 1960's. The Beach Boys didn't hit the Midwest until after the Beatles. It was played everywhere from the laundrymat to the local Root Beer stands. And it still holds up after 40 years. Ah! For the days when a carb was something on your engine and gas was 25 cents a gallon. Now if I could just find a real Root Beer stand still in operation...

"We've been going steady, and you've been making me cry. Now it's your turn baby, so I'm saying bye-bye". Over the sound of a revving engine Gracia Nitzsche from the Blossoms utters these iconic words at the start of Gone, before blasting away in a hot-rod into a new world of empowerment, leaving the Rip Chords standing alone on the corner, recalling the event in a frenzy of tattered emotion. When I first heard this on the radio in the stuffy environment of the BBC Light Programme in 1963, it seemed the perfect pop statement of a new era. It was the time of the surf and hot rod crazes, the Beach Boys, Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound and some new guys from Liverpool, but still a year before the Shangri-Las, and it made Birmingham, England, seem a million miles too far from California.
The Rip Chords were essentially originally Phil Stewart and Ernie Bringas, formerly known as the Opposites, augmented or replaced on record by producers Terry Melcher and Bruce Johnston and others, and backed by the top Los Angeles studio guys. Collectively referred to as the Wrecking Crew, they featured among their number Leon Russell, Steve Douglas, Glen Campbell, Carol Kaye, Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine, to name but a few.
Hey Little Cobra was released to capitalise on the US hit of the same name and also included the earlier singles Here I Stand, a revival of a minor hit by Wade Flemmons and the Newcomers from 1958, and Gone. The B-sides were The Queen, Karen and She Thinks I Still Care. The "Jackie" referred to in The Queen, is apparently the great Jackie DeShannon, then the girlfriend of Terry Melcher, apparently given to putting on airs, driving around in a Sting Ray, thinking she's a queen and treating everybody mean, according to this Dionesque ditty. She Thinks I Still Care had been a hit for George Jones the previous year, and is included in its album version, which has additional vocals compared to the original single version.
Most of the album has a hot-rod theme, including Beach Boys and Jan and Dean revivals among several Melcher/Johnston originals, and is one of the most prime examples of the genre. There are three bonus tracks not found on the original album, these being Karen, the 1964 single Don't Be Scared and its instrumental flipside Bunny Hill.
Apart from the two bonus B-sides all the tracks are in stereo. These have been taken from the original master tapes but, due to imperfections of balance that would have been corrected at the mastering stage for the vinyl release, sometimes lack oomph. My only other criticism is the rather short playing time of under 31 minutes.

The Rip Chords were the duo of Phil Stewart and Ernie Bringas. The duo sang their first two singles themselves. But then, producer Terry Melcher recorded a song called "Hey Little Cobra" with himself on lead vocals that he was sure would be a hit. Since the Rip Chords had some minor success with their first two singles, he followed up that momentum by releasing "Hey Little Cobra" as a Rip Chords single. It became a #4 hit, and the rest is history. With a Top Five single, naturally an album was called for, so a handful of new songs were recorded, with producers Bruce Johnston and Terry Melcher handling most of the vocals. These new songs were all car related, following the theme of the hit single. The album was a mixture of older songs with the "real" Rip Chords and newer songs, mostly without the original members. Surprisingly, the album works very well. Despite the different vocalists, the songs all have a similar style to each other. It's that early '60s California sound, complete with the obligatory Beach Boys cover songs. The CD adds three single sides that never appeared on an album. Recommended to fans of the California sound.

This album of well written and fine musical performances is a must for any muscle car fan.