The Doo Wop Box III
(Rhino)
You gotta love the fine folks at Rhino Records for their tenacious pursuit of the quintessential compilation, but sometimes they simply don’t know when to stop. This is especially true during the holiday buying season. The money tracks on the 4-CD The Doo Wop Box III could probably could fit on two discs, three max, but a double-disc set wouldn’t look quite as good under the tree, would it? Solution: Pad the set with one disc of “Celebrity Picks” and another of “Modern Doo Wop.” With doo wop aficionados such as George Carlin, two Neville brothers (Art and Aaron), Frank Zappa (posthumously), and Dave and Phil Alvin on board, the celebrity half of the equation turns out fine. The Alvins choose the Colts’ “Sheik of Araby,” the Honey Bears’ “One Bad Stud,” and the Cadets’ “Wiggie Waggie Woo,” three souped-up gems featuring, respectively, subterranean bass vocals, suggestive content, and an intoxicating call-and-response refrain that’s just dumb enough to make you love it. On the slow-dance side, the Nevilles pick lesser-known numbers by the Moonglows (“Most of All”) and the Flamingos (“The Vow”), both of which serve their backseat rhythm constituencies well. Unfortunately, the “Modern Doo Wop” angle doesn’t fare so well. Starting off the disc with Kenny Vance’s bathetic “Looking for an Echo” was a cardinal sin. The freakin’ Sandpipers sang with more raw emotion than this! Worse, too many “modern” selections are throwaway novelty remakes of songs you’re sure to recognize, like “Whole Lotta Love” and “Eye of the Tiger.” If they were going for total irreverence, they might as well have included Vince Vance’s hostage crisis-era “Barbara Ann” remake, “Bomb Iran.” Instead, they include the loosely pedestrian Beach Boys’ version of “Barbara Ann,” which doesn’t do the Beach Boys or doo wop any favors. To be fair, the Bobs’ a cappella “You Really Got a Hold On Me” and Boyz II Men’s slick, R&B-flavored “In the Still of the Night” do better. In the end, though, the disparate mishmash of styles fails to cohesively link up with the golden age of doo wop in anything other than a precursory, “they had singing groups, we have singing groups” fashion. Padding aside, the first two discs in the Doo Wop Box III are essential for fans and highly entertaining for everyone else. Beginning with the Clyde McPhatter-led Dominoes screecher “Have Mercy,” disc one is all the cream that didn’t make it onto Rhino’s first two doo wop box sets. Hank Ballard’s Midnighters up the risqué ante considerably with “Sexy Ways” at a time when the s-word was seldom heard, while the Cadets’ “Stranded in the Jungle” tickles the funny bone with a keen sense of mondo kitsch approaching Screamin’ Jay Hawkins territory. The second disc covers should’ve-been hits such as “Your Last Chance” by Lewis Lymon & the Teenchords (yes, that’s Frankie’s little brother) and the Valentines’ “Don’t Say Goodnight,” a melancholy note often used by Alan Freed to close his radio show. The seamless, hit-after-hit nature of the first two discs stands in razor-sharp contrast to the incoherent mess of the “modern” disc. If it meant paying $20 less, most listeners would surely lose that disc and forego the indulgence of box set packaging for two jelly-tight CDs in a conventional jewel case. That is, unless you’re buying this set as a gift in lieu of a coffeetable book.
This article appears in December 15 • 2000.
