GENE VINCENT - CRAZY TIMES CAPITOL RECORDS T-1342 LP is 180 Gram Heavy Vinyl Limited Edition pressing.

Heavy Vinyl re-mastered from the Original Analog Tapes (with no noise suppression or bass roll-off) that “music erupts out of total silence from these thick 180 Gram Virgin Vinyl discs with a velvety smoothness, spaciousness, and ultra high resolution that stuns even the most committed CD die-hard.”

The Musical Industry Trade Journal says about this GENE VINCENT LP “indispensable - virtually every track is a classic. If you could have only one pre-sixties album in your collection (then Elvis Presley withstanding), this would have to be it. It’s extraordinary that such simple songs can still sound so bright after four decades.

TRACKS:

CRAZY TIMES

SHE SHE LITTLE SHIELA

DARLENE

EVERYBODY'S GOT A DATE BUT ME

WHY DON'T YOU PEOPLE LEARN HOW TO DRIVE

GREEN BACK DOLLAR

BIG FAT SATURDAY NIGHT

MITCHIKO FROM TOKYO

HOT DOLLAR

ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

BLUES EYES CRYING IN THE RAIN

PRETTY PEARLY

 

 This four CD set containing 114 tracks.

In addition to thirty songs from singles, this four disk collection includes the following albums:
Blue Jean Bop (1956)
Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps (1957)
Gene Vincent Rocks and the Blue Caps Roll (1958)
A Gene Vincent Record Date (1958)
Sounds Like Gene Vincent (1959)
Crazy Times (1960)

The box set also includes what may be rare collectible numbers from these releases:
"Well I Knocked Bim Bam" - from Teenage Rock (1958)
"Dance in the Street" and "Lovely Loretta" - EP tracks (1958)

Closing out the set are nine live tracks from 1958 and 1959 appearances on the Town Hall Party TV show the fact that the nine songs appear there in the same sequences suggests that it was the source of those tracks.

Sound throughout this box set is uniformly good, as is the case with other box sets in this series, not taken from vinyl. The only asterisk might be the final three tracks on the final disk. These are the three songs taken from Gene's 1959 appearance on the Town Hall Party show. It's marginal enough that I'd relegate those three tracks to historical interest. The 1958 live recordings fare better; although they do have some of that "TV sound", it's acceptable quality.

An interesting peculiarity appears though with Gene's spoken introduction to the live "High Blood Pressure". He calls the song one of his "brand new records". With a box set like this you tend to assume that the compilers just start at a certain point in time, shovel everything the artist did into one big bin, pour it onto four CDs in chronological order, and there you have a complete collection of an artist for that window of time. Apparently this is not so. Since the live performance was dated October 1958 you'd think the studio version of "High Blood Pressure" would surely be included here. Nope, missing in action. That must be one of the 46 tracks on the EMI 6 CD box set not included here.

As with other entries in this "Classic Albums" series there are no credits. This is the first time I've missed them. When Gene performs a song mimicking the style of Buddy Holly it makes me wonder if he wasn't covering a rare Holly tune and using a hiccupping delivery in tribute. As the set progresses into the latter two disks Gene stretches beyond the narrow confines of rockabilly vs. vocal pop, putting a toe in the waters of the blues, burlesque bouncers, Boots Randolph jitters, and others. That's where I become curious to see if the slightly different styles are related to any kind of a lineup change in his band.

In sum, this 4 CD set will appeal most to those who avidly consume fifties rock. A generous collection like this comes with a lot of good songs but its narrow range means it may be a bit much for those with only a passing curiosity. Even for me, the repetitious use of the word "Bop" over the first part of this set gets to be annoying.

"Six Classic Albums" contains everything Gene Vincent released on Capitol from the beginning of his career in January of 1956 through year's end 1960. What remains of the Capitol years that's not picked up here? Twelve tracks from a final 1963 Capitol album "The Crazy Beat Of Gene Vincent", and ten songs from five singles released between 1961 and 1963. Turns out that "High Blood Pressure" referenced in the live performance on disk four of this box set is a track from that last album.

According to Mark Barry's discography Gene also released a twelve song album for Columbia along with another eight songs on four singles in 1963-64. All of these details can be found in his comments on his review.