Customer Reviews

Whenever a Teenager Cries

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As numerous compilation albums and CDs have documented, the girlgroup phenomenon was substantially deeper than the well-known hits. Much like the Beatles, the advent of girlgroup stars spawned innumerable imitators. Reparata & The Delrons were a Brooklyn-based group whose recording career came at the tail-end of the girlgroup phenomenon, and despite a lack of chart success, they gained substantial notoriety for their appearances as part of Dick Clark's tour packages. Additionally, having released a full album (on the World Artists label), as well as singles for several follow-up labels, their work remained visible in used record and cut-out bins for many years afterwards.

Collected on this disc are sides primarily from their World Artists' years. Included is the group's one marginally successful U.S. single ("Whenever a Teenager Cries"), other singles ("Tommy"), album tracks, and covers ("Do Wah Diddy Diddy" "If I Fell" "Dedicated to the One I Love"). This is fine Angels-esque girlgroup music, though generally not as memorable as the brighter lights of the genre. The exception is the group's breathtaking cover of The Chiffons "I Have a Boyfriend." This one track gets the full Brill Building treatment: romantic strings, Wall of Sound atmosphere, and a melody as fine as any recorded in the era.

What's presented here is fine, but what's missing is disappointing. Collectables effort on this disc is several notches below what one would expect from premier reissue labels like Rhino or Varese. Mark Marymount's liner notes provide a good summary of the band's personnel and label changes, but, frustratingly, many of the key tracks he discusses are missing from this collection. Also disappointing is his failure to discuss or place several of the tracks that are included. No songwriter or discographical information is provided, and the liner notes contain some rather obvious typos.

Missing tracks include the group's first single for Laurie ("Your Big Mistake"/"Leave Us Alone"), failed singles for World Artists ("The Boy I Love"/"I Found a Place") and RCA ("I Can Tell" and the Jeff Barry penned "I'm Nobody's Baby Now"), and their UK hit on Mala ("Captain of Your Ship"). Also MIA are their later sides for Kapp. The Laurie, RCA, Mala, and Kapp sides may have fallen prey to licensing considerations (or perhaps just a lack of licensing effort), but the missing World Artists side is a mystery.

The lack of chronological sequencing is also surprising. The mid-60s single "Tommy" is placed at the end of the disc, after Mary "Reparata" Aliese's 1975 comeback, "Shoes." And the flip to the comeback, "A Song For All" is placed five songs after its A-side. "Love For You and Me" appears to be a later side, but is left without description as to its release. A little more effort could have made this disc a great deal more satisfying.

It's gratifying to have a good portion of Reparata & The Delrons' catalog on CD, and this is currently the best you can get. Still, the bare-bones nature of this release (the cover photo is the only one included!) is very disappointing.

3-1/2 stars -- four stars for the music, three stars for Collectables' effort.

there is a disc called Reparata and the Delrons - R&R Revolution with these tracks:

1. Whenever A Teenager Cries

2. He's My Guy

3. Tommy

4. Angel Baby

5. Do You Remember When

6. I Met Him On A Sunday

7. I'm My Dairy

8. Do Wah Diddy Diddy

9. Be My Baby

10. Summer Thoughts

11. Who Do You Love

12. Please Love Me Forever

13. Maybe

14. He's The Greatest

15. Dedicated To The One I Love

16. A Song For All

17. Eddie My Love

18. Every Beat Of My Heart

19. Love For You And Me

20. Shoes

21. That's How It All Began

22. He's So Fine

23. Lollipop

24. If I Feel

25. To Know Him Is To Love Him

26. Mr. Lee

27. I Have A Boyfriend

28. The Loneliest Girl Town

29. Till

30. Bye Bye Baby

You should be able to locate it via google.

This little-known group really could put out great songs. Their covers of "Who Do You Love" and "I Have a Boyfriend" are right on target with fresh teen harmony and big music backgrounds. The cover is worth the price of the CD - the best bouffant flips ever seen outside the Ronettes! Great addition to your 60's teen queen collection.

I ordered this CD because of my love for girl-groups and of Reparata and the Delrons singles "Panic," "Captain of Your Ship," "Nobody's Baby Now," "I Have A Boyfriends," and "Tommy".
Surpirise! Out of all the ONLY songs I like by them only two made it on to this disc! Lucky me! At least I could find "Panic" and "Captain of Your Ship" on KaZaa.

I thought I had to specify what this CD is about, since some other customers complained about some missing hits: this isn't a compilation nor a Best Of here, but the reissue of the band's first original LP released in early 1965, not long after the hit of the title-track (which remains one of the most lovely hits of the girl group era). This reissue respects the original sequencing of the vinyl LP with the first twelve tracks, then adds 6 bonus ones. If you want a more comprehensive collection, purchase the Ace one. But here's some songs you won't find on the Ace collection either, such as the cover of the Beatles If I Fell.

Anyway, anything by Reparata & the Delrons is worth the purchase. To my taste, it's one of the ten best girl groups of the sixties (with the Shangri-Las, the Ronettes, the Tammys, Martha & the Vandellas, The Paris Sisters, The Shirelles, Rosie & the Originals, The Exciters, and the Supremes).

During the height of the "Girl Groups" from 1962 to 1965, when they seemed to be coming out of the woodwork, four teenagers attending St. Brendan's Catholic School in Brooklyn, N.Y. decided to join the fun. At the outset The Delrons were Mary Aiese, Anne Fitzgerald, Nanette Licari, and Regina Gallagher, although the last three were soon replaced, for various reasons, by Cathy Romeo, Sheila Reilly, and Carol Drobnicki. Mary also decided around this time to adopt the unusual name Reparata after one of the teaching nuns, Sister Mary Reparata.

After Romeo also dropped out the remaining trio was signed to a contract with Laurie Records where they cut Your Big Mistake. When it went absolutely nowhere they moved over to World Artists, and there cut their biggest hit, the Ernie Maresca-penned Whenever A Teenager Cries, which peaked at # 60 Billboard Pop Hot 100 in January/February 1965 b/w He's My Guy. However, the follow-up Tommy couldn't repeat even that modest success, and it topped out at # 92 Hot 100 in May b/w Mama Don't Allow. All four sides were backed by the orchestra of Hash Brown.

Their quite limited success at World Artists certainly isn't attributable to an indifferent sound. They were quite good, in fact, in covering everyone from Manfred Mann, to The Chiffons, Shirelles, and even The Beatles as you will see from cuts like Do Wah Diddy Diddy, and went so far as to try Phil Spector's Wall of Sound on a few. Rather it was a combination of the plethora of girl groups, not to mention the British Invasion which was under a full head of steam at that time.

When they next moved to RCA Victor, Drobnicki and Reilly pulled out, replaced by an original member, Nanette Licari and Lorraine Mazzola replaced by Lorraine Mazzola. There, in spite of some more fine cuts like I'm Nobody's Baby Now in 1968, the charts eluded them. After leaving the group to Mazzola for a period lasting to 1973, Reparata Aiese re-emerged in 1975 as simply Reparata to take Shoes to # 92 Hot 100 b/w A Song For All on the Polydor label and, a year later, formed part of Barry Manilow's back-up group Lady Flash. That same year the group had a solo # 27 Hot 100 with Street Singin' b/w Hypnotizin'.

In a mix of hundreds of "girl groups" in the mid-Sixties, they definitely had a better sound than is indicated by the performances of their singles. Give them a try, you won't be disappointed.