Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Carla Thomas performing her classic Gee Whiz.
CD Review
Early Girls, Volume Three, various singers, Ace Records , 1997
As I mentioned in a review of a two-volume set of, for lack of a better term, girl doo wop some of the songs which overlap in this six-volume series, I have, of late, been running back over some rock material that formed my coming of age listening music (on that ubiquitous, and very personal, iPod, oops, battery-driven transistor radio that kept those snooping parents out in the dark, clueless, about what I was listening to, and that was just fine, agreed), and that of my generation, the generation of ’68. Naturally one had to pay homage to the blues influences from the likes of Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, and Big Joe Turner. And, of course, the rockabilly influences from Elvis, Carl Perkins, Wanda Jackson, and Jerry Lee Lewis on. Additionally, I have spent some time on the male side of the doo wop be-bop Saturday night led by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers on Why Do Fools Fall In Love? (good question, right). I noted there that I had not done much with the female side of the doo wop night, the great ‘girl’ groups that had their heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the British invasion, among other things, changed our tastes in popular music. I would expand that observation here to include girls’ voices generally. As there, I make some amends for that omission here.
As I also noted in that earlier review one problem with the girl groups, and now with these generic girl vocals for a guy, me, a serious rock guy, me, was that the lyrics for many of the girl group songs, frankly, did not “speak to me.” After all how much empathy could a young ragamuffin of boy brought up on the wrong side of the tracks like this writer have for a girl who breaks a guy's heart after leading him on, yes, leading him on, just because her big bruiser of a boyfriend is coming back and she needs some excuse to brush the heartbroken lad off in The Angels' My Boyfriend’s Back. Or some lucky guy, some lucky Sunday guy, maybe, who breathlessly catches the eye of the singer in the Shirelles' I Met Him On Sunday from a guy who, dateless Saturday night, was hunched over some misbegotten book, some study book, on Sunday feeling all dejected. And how about this, some two, or maybe, three-timing gal who berated her ever-loving boyfriend because she needs a good talking to, or worst, a now socially incorrect, very incorrect and rightly so, "beating" in Joanie Sommers’ Johnny Get Angry.
And reviewing the material in this volume gave me the same flash-back feeling I felt listening to the girl doo wop sounds. I will give similar examples of that teen boy alienation for this volume, and this approach will drive the reviews of all six of these volumes in the series. For instance the saga of a love-struck girl willing to follow her man, well, okay boy wherever the winds take him in I Will Follow Him by Little Peggy March. Or in one of the endless angels sagas that would make those fighting it out in the heavens in John Miltons’s Paradise Lost blush in Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares. I will pass Dumb Head by Ginny Arnell except to say that dumb head girls passed me by, by the baskets full. Or how could I relate to the boy-girl eternal thing in Please Love Me Forever by Cathy Jean and The Roommates when I could get a girl to answer my telephone calls after endless ringing ups (no speed dial, instanto-call then so hard finger work) Or Etta James’ thrill in At Last. Or, speaking of telecommunications, the failure to provide a telephone number, address, or e-mail (oops, no can do in 1950s America) in I'm Available by Margie Rayburn. I am still waiting on that information even as I write. E-mail me, Margie. Or the smaltzy sea air breezes of Miss Patti Page's In Old Cape Cod. Or that whimsical look that Ms. Carla Thomas is giving her guy, or maybe 'guy to be' in Gee Whiz. Or where is my party girl in Party Girl by Bernadette Carroll. Ya, I could relate to Hurt by Timi Yuro, a little but what about boy hurt. And who needs, who needs it at all, to be told for the twelve-thousandth time Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya by Suzie Clark and she means every word of it.
So you get the idea, this stuff could not “speak to me.” Now you understand, right? Except, surprise, surprise foolish, behind the eight- ball, know-nothing youthful guy had it all wrong and should have been listening, and listening like crazy, to these lyrics because, brothers and sisters, they held the key to what was what about what was on girls’ minds back in the day, and maybe now a little too, and if I could have decoded this I would have had, well, the beginning of knowledge, girl knowledge. Damn. But that is one of the virtues, and maybe the only virtue of age. Ya, and also get this- you had better get your do-lang, do-lang, your shoop, shoop, and your best be-bop, be-bop into that good night voice out and sing along to the lyrics here. This, fellow baby-boomers, was our teen angst, teen alienation, teen love youth and now this stuff sounds great. And from girls even.
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