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| TRACKLIST |
| 1. Bye Bye Love 2. Wake Up Little Susie 3. All I Have To Do Is Dream 4. This Little Girl Of Mine 5. Brand New Heartache 6. Hey Doll Baby 7. Claudette 8. Bird Dog 9. Devoted To You 10. Poor Jenny 11. Love Of My Life 12. Problems 13. Take A Message To Mary 14. Since You Broke My Heart 15. 'Til I Kissed You 16. When Will I Be Loved 17. Cathy's Clown 18. Let It Be Me |
| SPOILER (EAC Log) |
| SPOILER (AccurateRip) |
| QUOTE |
| The Everly Brothers' Best. DCC Compact Classics GZS-1141. When this disc arrived for review and I first glanced it, my eyes saw "The Everly Brothers" but my mind registered the Righteous Brothers. After a moment's consideration, I sorted things out yet felt a mild disappointment. Frankly, I hadn't given the Everly Brothers a second thought since their glory years over four decades ago. Still, as remastered on gold by DCC's Steve Hoffman, this collection of their biggest hits brought back fond memories of high school days as well as reminded me what a good engineer can do with good source material. It's not hard to see the appeal of the Everlys. Their tunes were straightforward rock-and-roll standards, rooted in the overtones of country-western and rockabilly. The lyrics proclaim the heartaches of young love, a fairly direct stab at the teenage youth market that comprised their primary audience. But they had something else going for them I'd forgotten--musicianship. Their harmonies are smooth, pointed, and unerring in their inflection. What's more, they did something few rock singers then or now even attempt--they enunciate. Every word is clearly and expressively sung. Remarkable, indeed. Probably the most memorable pieces are things like "Bye Bye Love," "Wake Up, Little Susie," "All I Have To Do Is Dream," "Bird Dog," "Take A Message To Mary," "(Til,) I Kissed You," "Cathy's Clown," and "Let It Be Me," and there are 19 tracks in all, taken from the original Cadence and Warner Bros. master tapes. The recordings were made between the years 1957 and 1960, and all of them sound unusually good for their age (or any age, for that matter). But there's one thing DCC fail to mention anywhere on their packaging or in their booklet insert: the first nine tracks are in monaural, while most of the last nine are in stereo. Not that this makes much difference, since the actual sonic quality is about the same in any case, and, in fact, the stereo spread on some of the later issues places the singers so far to the left of center it sounds distracting. Well, what are you going to do? It was early stereo and engineers were still experimenting with the format. Anyway, the sound on the gold disc is vibrant, alive, clear, and clean, with just a hint of background noise. If you like what the brothers did back then, you couldn't ask for a better product today. |