Gene Vincent
 Tracks: 1. Crazy Times / 2. She She Little Sheila / 3. Darlene / 4. Everybody's Got A Date But Me / 5. Why Don't You People Learn How to Drive / 6. Green Back Dollar / 7. Big Fat Saturday Night / 8. Mitchiko from Tokyo / 9. Hot Dollar / 10. Accentuate the Positive / 11. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain / 12. Pretty Pearly Comments:Gene Vincent's sixth album “Crazy Times” from 1960 was recorded after the final dissolution of The Blue Caps. The music was recorded in August 1959 with i.a. guitarist Jerry Merritt and drummer Sandy Nelson and as a whole it became Vincent's most commercial to date.
Despite good material and an inspired Vincent, the album was not a huge sales success and the album was to be Vincent's last for the Capitol Records. As usual, there is a fairly wide variety in the choice of material, ranging from ballads over traditional and country to actual rock’n’roll. The album features four new original songs partly written by Vincent himself and partly by guitarist Merritt and manager Whitney Pullen. Among these, the three upbeat rock’n’rollers are actually pretty good and catchy; especially "Pretty Pearly" and "Everybody's Got a Date but Me", while "She, She Little Sheila", may a little too much like something you've heard before. Vincent's very own "Darlene" is a traditional 12 bar blues; possibly the album's least interesting track.
Vincent also chose to record a version of the traditional country song “Greenback Dollar”, which here has been given a completely new sound and an inciting infectious rhythm - my favorite on the album; perhaps in close competition with "Accentuate the Positive", which also stand; not least because of the very fine and slightly unusual melody line - a song Bing Crosby had previously recorded.
Pure pop can be found in songs like "Crazy Times", "Big Fat Saturday Night" and "Mitchiko from Tokyo" - all three are really nice. Equally fine is the country-based “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”. Very unfair that this album did not catch on, as it is definitely among the best he released on the Capitol.
|
