The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
brand new never been opened. Great gift for any music lover.

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Amazon.com
The second set of Rhino Records' The Doo Wop Box includes such gems as Robert & Johnny's "We Belong Together," Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl" and the Robins' original version of Leiber & Stoller's "Smokey Joe's Café." The box set contains 39 Top 30 R&B hits plus such pop smashes as the Platters' "My Prayer," the Clovers' "Love Potion No. 9," Dion & the Belmonts' "Where or When," the Crests' "Step by Step," the Marcels' "Heartaches" and Don & Juan's "What's Your Name." Putting more emphasis on uptempo tunes than its predecessor, the new box includes both the Cadillacs' "Zoom" and the Collegians' "Zoom Zoom Zoom" as well as Frankie Lymon's giddy, boy soprano on the galloping "ABC's of Love." The first Doo Wop Box is still the better collection, for it had first crack at the widely acknowledged classics of the genre, but The Doo Wop Box II is full of historical milestones and dizzying music. --Geoffrey Himes

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-07-10 rating:
More pure doo-wop gold
Rhino hit the mother lode when they released the first "Doo Wop Box", but doo-wop is such a rich musical genre that there was plenty of gold left to mine, and they've reaped a sizeable haul in "The Doo Wop Box, Vol.2". They included some veritable gems omitted from the first box such as the Rivileers' "A Thousand Stars In the Sky", "Crazy For You" by the Heartbeats, "You Baby You" by the Cleftones, "The ABCs of Love" by the Teenagers (I always thought this was their best song, followed by "I Want You to Be My Girl"), "Pretty Little Girl" by the Monarchs, "The Woo-Woo Train" by the Valentines (Bye-bye, baby, move on down the line), "Castle In the Sky" by the Bop-Chords, "We Belong Together" by Robert and Johnny (one of the least known and most under-appreciated doo-woop groups -- these guys were great), and the hauntingly beautiful "Bad Girl" featuring Smoky Robinson's incomparable tenor as lead singer with the Miracles. But this volume also explores the flip side of some records that were less known than their original hit sides, such as "Hey Señorita" by the Penguins (the other side of "Earth Angel"), "I'll Be Forever Loving You" by the El Dorados (the flip side of their hit "At My Front Door"), and "Two People In the World" by Little Anthony and the Imperials, the flip side of -- and way better than -- their hit song "Tears On My Pillow". My friends and I, coming up in the 1950s, always said the DJs pushed the wrong side of that record.

Like the first volume, "The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2" spans the period from 1955 to 1962, and the earlier tracks are better than the late ones, when much of the street spontaneity that gave doo-wop its attraction had been diluted by wannabe groups that didn't understand what it was all about. The last disc on this set is probably the weakest of the four. But there's more than enough in the first three to make up for it.

Could this set have been improved? As I said in my review of the first Doo-Wop Box, if only Rhino had included two tracks by Nolan Strong and the Diablos, "The Wind" and "You Are", two of the greatest doo-wop songs ever recorded, I'd be in doo-wop paradise. But this set is very, very good. And for comic relief, check out a track on the second disc, a hysterical piece by the Chips called "Rubber Biscuit". Second only to the Cadets' laugh classic "Stranded In the Jungle" (nobody ever topped that one), it's the funniest doo-wop song ever written.

Judy Lind

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review by: West sider date: 2005-09-24 rating:
Not too great
While all of the music is good, there are only a few well know songs so I feel it was a big waste of a lot of money.

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review by: date: 2005-09-21 rating:
Another great Rhino Doo Wop collection.
The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2 takes up where the excellent Box #1 left off.
For the most part the songs are great, with the notable exception of The Falcons "I Found A Love" which suffers from not being doo-wop (it's proto-soul) and having terrible sound to boot. But only one clunker out of 101 is a pretty good batting average!
The rest of the songs are great and the recording quality is excellent.
This is a must-have set for fans of the genre.

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review by: date: 2005-08-27 rating:
Excellent selection & sound quality
Many of these songs are not commonly found on other CD collections. They are all the original versions and are of excellent quality. A couple of them are the same songs as on a Time-Life doo wop CD I bought over 10 years ago and the difference in sound quality is amazing.


review by: date: 2005-05-25 rating:
Sometimes the second helping is better
Most of the great classics of the genre are on the first Doo Wop Box, so Volume II has far fewer readily familiar titles to its credit. But if anything, the relative obscurity of most of these songs makes the second collection fresher and rootsier than the first. It definitely reaches deeper into the doo-wop canon.

Although few of this collection's songs were hits, many of the artists were successful elsewhere in their careers. There are lots of one-hit wonders represented here with their non-hits, quite a few of which have held up better than their more famous song(s). There are also at least two great entries in the "before they were famous" category: "Bad Girl" by the Miracles (about two years before "Shop Around" put them on the map); and the delightfully lush "Dear One" by the Scarlets, featuring a pre-Five Satins Fred Parris. Speaking of the Five Satins, the less famous of their two hits, "To The Aisle," is also here.

The collection is a pretty good mix of ballads and uptempo numbers, but it's heavier on the ballads. There is a surprising number of jazz and pop standards from long before the rock era (it's easy to forget that doo-wop didn't start out as proto-bubblegum!), but some of these are among the collection's best. Standouts include The Larks' "My Reverie," The Moonglows' "Secret Love," and the album's finale, The Classics' "Till Then." A more uptempo entry, The Four Tunes' rendition of "Marie," is less convincing but a lot of fun.

Of course, plenty of the ballads are in the more familiar '50s rock and pop style: The Vocaleers' "Is It A Dream," The Hearts' "Lonely Nights," Robert and Johnny's "We Belong Together," and especially The Five Keys' "My Saddest Hour" are sure to conjure your favorite necking-in-the-backseat scene (as are dozens of other songs included here; those are just my favorites). There are quite a few fast songs thrown in as well, to keep things from getting too misty. My favorites among these are The Cleftones' "Heart and Soul" (did you know that song had words?!), The Falcons' "You're So Fine," "In My Heart" by The Timestones, and The Spaniels' fast but still silky rendition of "Stormy Weather."

And there's more where that came from in all of the above categories. If you liked the first set, don't be gunshy about this one just because you don't know as many of the songs.

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