Very Best Of / Beach Blanket Bingo

Donna Loren | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 16, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Collectables
• ASIN: B000055YSZ
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,732 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #74 in Music > Rock > Oldies & Retro > Surf Rock
  • #96 in Music > Pop > Oldies > Girl Groups

Track Listings

1. Cycle Set

2. I Think, You Think

3. It Only Hurts When I Cry

4. These Are the Good Times

5. I'll Never Change Him

6. Fly Boy

7. New Love

8. I Am My Ideal

9. Beach Blanket Bingo

10. Freeway

11. Blowing Out the Candles

12. Just a Little Girl

13. Ten Good Reasons

14. Ninety Days Guarantee

15. So, Do the Zonk

16. Smokey Joe's

17. Call Me

18. Play Little Music Box Play

19. I Believe

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Anticipation - but - buyer beware........, September 25, 2002

By 

Michael B. Marshall "mikeymars" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Very Best Of / Beach Blanket Bingo (Audio CD)

Donna Loren - who is an interesting story, more on her below - appeared in the non-speaking but singing role of "Donna" in four of the Beach Party movies. She briefly appears in a duet in the second (Muscle Beach Party) and perfomed does solos in three others.

Compared to most female teen celebrities of the 60s, Donna was the proverbial renaissance girl. Only nineteen when she first appeared in the Beach Party series, she was already an experienced singer, model, actress and clothing designer.

Prior to her Beach Party appearances, Donna had already spun a moderately successful career as a teen singer into a lucrative role as the "celebrity spokesmodel" for Dr. Pepper, and continued in those roles even after she started appearing in the AIP movies. On that tangent, think movie product placement deals are a recent trend? Think again - everyone sitting in the "Big Daddy's" club scenes in Muscle Beach Party just happens to have a bottle of -- guess what? (hint: think "Donna Loren...as spokesmodel for......") -- sitting in front of them. But Donna didn't stop there: in 1965, she started appearing in an ongoing singing guest spot on ABC's Shindig and even managed to cram in a guest star role (as Robin's girlfriend) on the Batman TV show. She also liked to design clothing and sew, and in 1964 spun that interest into a spokesperson deal with the Simplicity Pattern Company.

As far as Donna's recording career, it was a short one, running from the early to mid 60's and involved the release of scores of singles on a number of labels (the only album was the Capitol "Beach Blanket Bingo" LP). The material is hard to characterize, ranging from bubble gum pop ("I'm In Love With The Ticket Taker") to the grand diva-ish ("Everytime We Touch") to weird "let's invent the latest dance fad" stuff ("Do The Zonk"). Suffice to say she had an excellent but under-challenged voice; listening to her recordings of generally forgettable material, one is left wishing she had come under the wing of better agents and producers, ones who might have taken her down riskier but more substantive paths (case in point: Atlantic Records took such a risk in 1969 when they shipped fading, outdated pop diva Dusty Springfield down to Memphis to record with classic blues talent, the result being "Dusty in Memphis," a pop masterpiece that most reviewers now label as one of the greatest albums of the entire decade.)

Which leads to discussion of this CD.

While it contains some other material, most of the songs on it are from Donna's "Donna Loren Sings songs from Beach Blanket Bingo" (Capitol, released October 1965). While Buena Vista used the four Beach Party movies as an opportunity to produce Annette releases, they for whatever reason passed (or were possibly outbid) on Beach Blanket Bingo. As a result, the fifth film in the series -- and considered by most critics to be the best - was snapped up by Capitol, who had in their arsenal multi-talented Donna, who was presumably chomping at the bit for a shot at an LP. So one sits down with great anticipation to listen to Donna Loren Sings Songs From Beach Blanket Bingo.

However, that anticipation readily turns into disappointment.

This is because what appeared intriguing ends up being a conflicting listen: on the one hand, Donna was a much more capable singer than Annette, one with a unique style that mixed a strong, confident alto with emotion. On the other hand, management at Capitol clearly didn't know what to do with her or this material. Unlike Annette's carefully produced Buena Vista records (no matter how "silly" the content, Disney Managing Music Director Tutti Camarata always did it well), Donna's LP sounds like it was made in a hurry by people with little experience in guitar-based pop. And the results are frustrating to listen to.

In essence, the album was a huge waste of Donna's potential: the arrangements are unnecessarily busy, with overdone orchestration and chorus, and adding insult to injury everything is always played a little too fast. The result is a breathy, growling Donna who sounds like she's working much too hard to compete with it all. Wonderful Styner-Hemrick ballads like "It Only Hurts When I Cry" and "New Love" - which sounded great in the movie -- turn into blaring, overproduced yawns on the LP. Uptempo numbers like "Fly Boy" become hyper-speed pop, to the point where they are literally fatiguing to listen to. Frankly, the only half-way decent cut on the entire album is her version of the Hondell's The Cycle Set (sadly, their great original version of this song never appeared on any their records).

What makes all this even more annoying is the fact Capitol was simultaneously producing some excellent female pop. As example, just a few months before Donna's album, Capitol released Jody Miller's Queen of the House LP, her second record and in my opinion one of the best pop albums made by any American female singer during the mid 60s (due not only to Miller's obvious talent but also some outstanding production work by the legendary Billy Strange). If only Donna had received the same treatment!

Donna Loren Sings songs from Beach Blanket Bingo was released as Capitol 2323 (mono) and ST 2323 (stereo). At this time, there is also this compilation CD of Donna Loren material (orginally released in 1997), which includes the entire stereo version of this LP. If you are looking for an original 1965 LP copy of this album, understand they still do appear on online auctions, in fact copies come up on the web auction sites relatively frequently (most in mono, stereo is rare). Note that despite all the issues mentioned above, this LP has become a big, hot collectible, likely because of the wonderful close-up of a gorgeous twenty-one year old Donna on the cover.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars GOOD CD, BUT I AGREE WITH WHAT IS ALREADY POSTED, June 14, 2003

By 

G. A Siessel (Leesburg, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Very Best Of / Beach Blanket Bingo (Audio CD)

This is a great collection of Donna Loren's songs. I LOVED the Beach Blanket Bingo Movie and some of the songs from that movie were great. I do wish "It Only Hurts When I Cry" was kept as a ballad since it's impact is lost in this uptempo version (or at least have both versions on the CD). It is very 60's sound and similar to Lesley Gore's albums of the same time frame.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The original TEN--10!--songs + 9 bonus tracks, October 18, 2001

By 

jon sieruga (Redlands, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Very Best Of / Beach Blanket Bingo (Audio CD)

The previous reviewer stumps me--this is Donna Loren's original album("Beach Blanket Bingo")plus NINE bonus tracks! What is there to be disappointed about? The first ten songs were included on Donna's Capitol album and the rest are all bonuses(including the rare single-only "Call Me" b/w "Smokey Joes" and another single, "Ten Good Reasons" b/w "Ninety Day Guarantee"). But he's REALLY wrong in calling Annette Funicello a 'no-talent'(this obviously not true). Both girls were wonderful in the "Beach" flicks, but this CD gives fans a chance to hear Donna's renditions of some of Annette's songs. If he wants to be upset about anything, it's the fact that Donna's output from the Challenge label isn't included(I know of one particular song from these early sessions, "I'm In Love With The Ticket Taker At The Bijou Movie"). Otherwise, RELAX and ENJOY!!!