Review: Gene Vincent - Gene Vincent And His Blue Caps (1957)
Tracks: 1) Red Blue Jeans And A Pony Tail; 2) Hold Me, Hug Me, Rock Me; 3) Unchained Melody; 4) You Told A Fib; 5) Cat Man; 6) You Better Believe; 7) Cruisin’; 8) Double Talkin’ Baby; 9) Blues Stay Away From Me; 10) Pink Thunderbird; 11) I Sure Miss You; 12) Pretty, Pretty Baby; 13*) Important Words; 14*) B-I-Bickey-Bi, Bo-Bo-Go; 15*) Five Days, Five Days; 16*) Teenage Partner; 17*) Five Feet Of Lovin’.
REVIEW
As we now know, the second and last genuinely important album released in Gene Vincentʼs heyday was recorded in bitter conditions — lead guitarist Cliff Gallup, Gene’s chief instrumental selling point, had actually left the Blue Caps a few months before the sessions (held in late ’56) and had to be convinced to briefly rejoin the band in order to save the day. Apparently, this was not because his replacement Russell Williford was found lacking, but because Williford himself had resigned from the band right before they had to go back to the studio. And given that, according to some sources, Cliff may have resigned from the band precisely because he himself had grown dissatisfied with the «Gallup Sound» and wanted to go for a more conventional Nashville type of sound, it would be easy to suspect that the overall spirit must have suffered as a result.
Yet this is not the main problem with the album — in fact, on the surface at least the level of primal energy necessary to keep the Gene Vincent motor running seems just as high, if not higher, than during the early days of ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’. Indeed, the record is full to the brim with speedy, thrashy rockers, only very rarely interrupted by a sentimental ballad or a slow blues burner. Most of the tunes are originals, too, written by Gene himself or by other members of the Blue Caps or by his personal songwriters — at least one, ‘You Better Believe’, is even credited to Gallup himself, meaning there was more dedication behind his brief return than the one of a mere session player. Whoever says that the album «drags» can easily be sued for libel with no hopes of winning.
In a way, though, the album might be trying a bit too hard. A good example of a song that ends up overdoing it is ‘Cat Man’, on which Gene is sucked into the emploi of Dangerous Ladies’ Man so much that the «wildness» gets all hyperbolic and almost ridiculous. The song uses the same trick of slow creeping build-up as Elvis’ ‘King Creole’: the verse is all about quietly creeping up on the unsuspecting victim, and then the chorus is all about springing out and going for a quick kill — "CAT MA-A-A-A-N!" But there is really no menace felt within the song, though its combination of a «relaxed Bo Diddley beat» with Gallup’s hard-to-define style of playing (something in between the Wild West and Mexico, I’d say) makes it melodically interesting, if not downright challenging. And this is typical of the album: Gene keeps pushing forward his Wild Man agenda, but the friendly rockabilly music does not properly back up that claim. When each second verse on every second tune is capped off with a primal "RO-O-OCK!" before launching into the guitar solo, the gag gets old pretty darn fast: gee wiz, Mr. Vincent, do you have to necessarily end each of these on a fast-rising pitch?
That said, what saves the record and makes it worth revisiting every now and then is the songwriting: as evident as the formula is, you gotta give the boys credit for actually working on each song and trying out various small ideas to capture your attention in various small ways in which it has not been captured before. At the very start, ‘Red Blue Jeans And A Ponytail’ begins in a fairly traditional ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee’ type of way, but a fresh hook is thrown in on the fourth line — instead of letting it be the regular end of the verse, Gene makes a «false stop» with a lecherous oooh-weee, and then mutates the ending ("...red blue jeans and a ponytail!") into becoming the song’s chorus and memorable point. That’s all there is, honestly, but how much else is needed for a two minute long rockabilly song?
Likewise, ‘You Better Believe’ sounds as if it has been welded together from bits and pieces of ‘Hard Headed Woman’ and ‘Got A Lot O’ Livin’ To Do’ (not sure if the latter song came out earlier or later, but it does not really matter), yet what gives it its tiny bit of special edge is the echoey call-and-answer ritual between Gene and the boys as they keep hurling "believe, believe, believe, believe" at each other before the obligatory "RO-O-OCK!" sweeps the moody haze away and opens the gates for another maniacal solo. Or take ‘Pink Thunderbird’, whose opening rockabilly line ("I got a pink Thunderbird, with a red fur seat...") is suddenly broken up by a spoken interlude — "well baby, it’s mine", Gene warns in a very clearly transmitted keep-your-paws-off-it intonation — and then the same shit happens with the next two lines, meaning that the verse never gets a chance to be properly resolved, and it is not until the chorus that a «normal» melody is introduced. It is a classic case of teasing and confusing the listener before delivering the punchline, and at the height of the rock’n’roll era, Gene Vincent could be the mightiest teaser of them all.
He could also get mighty serious: I am not sold on his interpretation of ‘Unchained Melody’ (though I would never call him unfit to take on its epic sentimentality), but the slow and moody ‘Blues Stay Away From Me’ is done really well, with Gene working across several registers and eventually settling upon a ghostly, echoey vocal tone which is neither flat and generic nor overdramatic. He then applies the same ghostly breathiness to the slow-rolling country shuffle ‘I Sure Miss You’, a number you’d rather expect from the likes of Carl Perkins — but Carl would most likely have sung it in his earthy, porch-sitting tone, whereas Vincent always sings as if he were hovering a few inches above ground.
In the end, though, the record comes across as significantly less diverse than Bluejean Bop!, even if in sheer numbers of classic Gene Vincent numbers they are more or less equal. But compared to the subpar quality of the post-Gallup era, it is still essential listening, and it can also teach us quite a few valuable lessons on how to make things fresh, playful, and catchy within the framework of a highly limited melodic and instrumental formula.
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