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Various Artists - Early Girls Volume 3

Track listing:
  1. My One And Only Jimmy Boy - Girlfriends 2:17
  2. I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March 2:34
  3. He's Mine - Alice Wonder Land 1:58
  4. Johnny Angel - Shelly Fabares 2:21
  5. Dumb Head - Ginny Arnell 2:16
  6. Please Love Me Forever - Cathy Jean And Roommates 2:54
  7. At Last - Etta James 3:00
  8. What Are Boys Made Of - Percells 2:19
  9. Don't You Know ? - Della Reese 2:34
  10. I Want You To Be My Baby - Lillian Briggs 2:31
  11. With All My Heart - Jodie Sands 2:44
  12. I'm Available - Margie Rayburn 1:53
  13. Old Cape Cod - Patti Page 2:36
  14. Angel On My Shoulder - Shelby Flint 2:18
  15. Hurt - Timi Yuro 2:28
  16. Johnny Get Angry - Joanie Sommers 2:33
  17. Please Don't Talk To The Lifeguard - Diane Ray 1:45
  18. Birthday Party - The Pixies Three 2:07
  19. Gee Whiz (Look At His Eyes) - Carla Thomas 2:21
  20. Shake A Hand - Faye Adams 2:53
  21. Don't Go To Strangers - Etta Jones 3:53
  22. Party Girl - Bernadette Carroll 2:17
  23. Better Tell Him No - The Starlets 2:32
  24. What Kind Of Girl (Do You Think I Am ?) - The Charmaines 2:27
  25. Release Me - Esther Phillips 3:18
  26. Hey Lover - Debbie Dovale 2:09
  27. Look In My Eyes - The Chantels 2:18
  28. Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya - Suzie Clark 2:28

Notes


The third installment in Ace's series of female-sung pop/rock from the pre-British Invasion era is an erratic combination of well-known classics with more obscure items that are sometimes decent, and more often forgettable. Mostly it's from 1960-1964, with a few odd inclusions of solo female performances from 1953-1959, several of them pop with little or no rock influence. The best cuts are usually the most famous ones: Etta James' "At Last," Little Peggy March's "I Will Follow Him," Carla Thomas' "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)," Esther Phillips' "Release Me," Timi Yuro's "Hurt," and the Chantels' "Look in My Eyes." The thing is, none of these have been very hard to find on reissues. The majority of the disc is in fact comprised of songs that have escaped oldies radio rotation, whether because they only made it to around the middle of the Top 100, or because (as in Patti Page's "Old Cape Cod" or Jodie Sands' "With All My Heart") there was no rock & roll in their soul. However, with the exception of the Girlfriends' dynamite 1963 mid-charter "My One and Only, Jimmy Boy" -- one of the best Phil Spector soundalike productions ever, and a should-have-been Top Ten hit -- none of the rarer items are great. In fact most are inconsequential, and some are downright bad: there ought to be a law against licensing Ginny Arnell's 1963 single "Dumb Head," one of the most idiotic records ever to crack the Top 50. Some of the more interesting also-rans are Lillian Briggs' 1955 hit "I Want You to Be My Baby," which in fact is far more like jazzy Tin Alley pop than rock; Faye Adams' 1953 crossover R&B/pop hit "Shake a Hand"; and Suzie Clark's "Ain't Gonna Kiss Ya," a non-charting cover of a song on an obscure girl-group single by the Ribbons that was later covered by the Searchers.