Customer Reviews

Very Best of

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

 

 

By now there should be a much more extensive collection of this groovy singer's work on C.D.

The poor sound quality here is typical of early C.D's.

I've got a copy of Len's original 1965 album, 1-2-3, and there are so many great songs on it that aren't here and the sound of the original recordings is SO fabulous...so sharp and LOUD, baby.

Len Barry represented all that was right about mid-'sixties American pop/dance music, when the coolest thing a white singer could do was sound like a black guy, which Lenny does, in trumps. I'm amazed there isn't anything better out yet.
If I were you I'd wait until that happens. These recordings sound muddy and bassy.

P.S. One thing I did like about this collection is the very groovy intro, which I've never heard before, when Lenny thanks all the D.J's for making his song (1-2-3) a hit...he talks in his hip/cool voice, over a swingin', switched-on, finger clickin' soundtrack...check out the soundbite for a cool taster.

LENNY, YOU'RE THE GREATEST!

YOUR WORK WITH THE DOVELLS IS LEGENDARY.

AND THE HEART AND SOUL YOU BRING TO THIS ALBUM SPEAKS VOLUMES.

WE ALL STRUCK IT RICH WHEN YOU STEPPED UP TO THE MICROPHONE.

IT'S A CLASSIC ... AND MUST NOT BE OVERLOOKED.

Another reviewer takes issue with this CD for its lack of content, but when you consider that this was first released in 1994 by Taragon, it was pretty much par for the course back then to produce 10- to 12-selection CDs [this is a 10-track issue since track 1 is just a promo by Barry].

Then again, when you figure that "the very best of" an artist should offer all or most of his/her charted hits where possible, this certainly fills the bill since he only had six as a solo artist. And if they'd only re-release it you'd get all of them at a pretty decent price.

Whether or not, as legend has it, he actually sang with The Bosstones in 1958 on their rocking Mope-Itty Mope for the Boss label (uncharted) is open to conjecture, but as the lead singer with the racially-mixed Dovells, and recording for Parkway, the man born Leonard Borisoff in Philadelphia on June 12, 1942, had three Top 40 pop hits in 1965/66 - right at the peak of the British Invasion - one of which crossed over to the R&B charts.

After failing briefly as a solo artist at Mercury he moved to Decca where he hit the charts in June 1965 with the # 84 Billboard Pop Hot 100 Lip Sync [To The Tongue Twisters], a nonsense tune along the lines of The Clapping Song, b/w At The Hop "65". He then followed in November with the smash 1-2-3 which rose to # 2 Hot 100 and # 11 R&B b/w Bullseye. Four more charters followed in 1966: Like A Baby - # 27 Hot 100 in February b/w Happiness (Is A Girl Like You); Somewhere - # 26 Hot 100 in April b/w It's a Cryin' Shame; It's That Time Of The Year - # 91 Hot 100 in June b/w Happily Ever After; and I Struck It Rich - # 98 Hot 100 in September b/w Love Is.

No further hits ensued, including You Baby [track 11] which was his last cut for Decca, but he did carry on with his stage act for a while, doing his best James Brown imitation. Other work at Buddah and Paramount [in the U.K.] in the early 1970s failed to produce any more hits.

It would have been nice had producer Eliot Goshman dropped tracks 1 and 11 and, instead, turned it into a 12-track CD by including the flips of his first three hits. Still, for collectors of charted singles, this was one of the better bargains offered by Amazon in that it also includes a complete discography of his solo Decca singles and LPs, along with some nice photos and three pages of informative [and revealing] liner notes by Steve Kolanjian in which Barry, alluding to some troubled times with The Dovells, is quoted as saying "I'm not a singer ... I'm a sounder."

And the sound was never better.

LEN BARRY IS MY FAVORITE SINGER AND HAVE FOLLOWED HIS CAREER SINCE 1961.THIS CD CAPTURES HITS FROM HIS TIME WITH DECCA IN THE MID SIXTIES.i STRUCK IT RICH IS WONDERFUL.IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A BIG HIT.ALSO HAS HIS BEST KNOWN HIT 123.A GREAT ARTIST WITH AN UNFORGETTABLE VOICE YOU DON'T FORGET ONCE YOU'VE HEARD IT.IN SHORT I LOVE THIS RELEASE AND PLAY IT CONSTANTLY.MORE ON CD BY LEN BARRY PLEASE.I WILL BUY THE BOX SET WHEN IT IS FIALLY COMPILED AND RELEASED.

LEN BARRY WAS ALWAYS RELATED TO 1-2-3, THIS CD SHOWS HE HAD SOME OTHER VERY GOOD RECORDINGS, AND ALSO THERE ARE MANY MORE. IT'S A PITY THAT THE LABEL HAS INCLUDED VERY FEW TRACKS