Review: Gene Vincent - Crazy Times! (1960)

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.

REVIEW

Although all of the recordings for this album date from an early August 1959 recording session in Hollywood, by the time it actually came out Gene was a tax exile in Europe — having run into some unexpected trouble with the mighty IRS, he decided that now, perhaps, was the time to conquer Europe in person, rather than through hearsay, and left for the UK, where he was briefly pampered by Jack Good, the notorious early TV promoter of various rock and roll stars, and then for the Netherlands and Germany, where, I believe, he was particularly well received in Hamburg, paving the road for you-know-who-from-Liverpool half a year later.

Formally, this might have been the right thing to do: British kids likely flocked to their TV screens to watch the leather-clad rock god on Jack Good’s Boy Meets Girl, and rewarded Gene for his effort by putting his latest record, ‘Wild Cat’, on the UK charts — #21 may not seem like such a big deal, but for Gene, it was his first chart entry anywhere since late 1957. The only problem, of course, is that ‘Wild Cat’ is thoroughly mislabeled — only those particular British kids who’d never heard any of Gene’s classic early records could have been fooled into thinking that this is what real rock’n’roll sounds like. In reality, the song, recorded already after Johnny Meeks had left the band (with a couple of totally unknown rhythm and lead guitarists replacing him), is a mid-tempo sax-led R&B shuffle, a slightly upbeat take on a common bluesy pattern (see, e.g., Ivory Joe Hunter’s ‘I Almost Lost My Mind’) over which Gene keeps trying to convince his lady friend to "don’t ever try to tame a wild cat" — the bitter irony of this, of course, being that the song represents a former wild cat being completely tamed and docile. The «wildest» part of the song is arguably Jimmy Pruett’s energetic hammering break on the piano, but even that one sounds like a feeble shadow of the classic Jerry Lee Lewis country-rock vibe. I can’t help wondering if Gene himself felt that irony, or if he really thought that on numbers like these, he was still exorcising his demons with the same verve as he did with the Blue Caps in his prime, without ever pausing to reflect on how drastically his sound had changed...

Anyway, the UK kids bought it (perhaps the black leather outfit proudly displayed on British TV helped more than the music itself), and this led to a small string of similar hits. First, the Buddy Holly pastiche ‘My Heart’, taken from the previous album, went all the way to #15; then came the turn of ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’, actually recorded in England, so we’ll return to this a little bit later; finally, as late as 1961 one of the tracks from this album, ‘She She Little Sheila’, also nearly made the UK Top 20, showing the world that if the blasted Yankees were no longer keen on paying their dues to one of their own, the Brits were still more than willing to take him off those colonial hands. Even that little patch of hits, however, dried up well before the age of Beatlemania, so it is useless to accuse the Fab Four and their retinue of shooting down Gene Vincent’s trans-Atlantic star.

Returning to the album, I’d say it represents a slight improvement over Sounds Like Gene Vincent — the songwriting is a little less «obvious» this time around, in that the various rip-offs of superior composers are at least better masked, and there are no in-yer-face inferior covers of stuff like ‘Maybellene’ or ‘Ready Teddy’ whose only purpose is to show how it is possible to play an energetic rock’n’roll song by leaving exactly 75% of the energy sweatin’ it out outside the studio door. Also, by this time Gene has gotten a little better with his completely new type of charisma — that of a smooth, pleasant, occasionally sharp-tongued young lad who’ll graciously "open doors for little old ladies" as he sends them off with an ironic witticism or two — and at the very least, this image is still way preferable to all the Pat Boones and Frankie Avalons of the new age of teenage entertainment. By the standards of early 1960, Crazy Times! won’t have you growing mush out of your ears, and that’s already an achievement.

Still, it is hard to believe Gene when he declares that "I promise crazy times will happen for you and me" on the opening title track — co-written by Burt Bacharach and Paul Hampton (of ‘Sea Of Heartbreak’ fame), and it may be suspected that the notion of «crazy times» for Burt Bacharach is not quite the same as it would be, say, for Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. The «craziest» thing about the track is its fast tempo, and I keep noticing these really tasty piano breaks from Jimmy Pruett, who seems to have been the best musician in the band on this particular session. Vincent, however, sings the main melody in such a smooth and caring tone as if the girl to whom he was making the promise in question was only just discharged from the hospital — carefully fixing her in place behind him on the bike and making absolutely sure not to drive it faster than 20 mph, not even in the countryside. It’s rock’n’roll, for sure... for kiddies.

This driving association may actually have been triggered by listening to one of the most symbolic numbers on the album — ‘Why Don’t You People Learn How To Drive’, credited to a certain James A. Noble but fully compatible with Vincent’s new vision: a song that, contrary to just about everything we have learned from the foundations of rock’n’roll, encourages the listener to take it easy and drive slow rather than fast: "Well, the wreck on the highway, the traffic’s pilin’ up / I gotta see my baby and I can’t go fast enough / Why don’t you people learn to drive, huh? / You know you just might stay alive / Oh, ain’t it a shame, the smoke an’ the flames / I think you people is nuts". Leaving aside the dark irony of how this message connects with what would happen to Gene himself on April 16, 1960, the idea of a rock’n’roll song admonishing people to drive slow feels somewhere right in the ballpark of Christian rock. I mean, next thing you know, those damn rockers will start teaching us not to use drugs, refrain from smoking, and always use protection during intercourse. Ridiculous!!!

Elsewhere, Gene is engaging in bouts of self-pity: ‘Everybody’s Got A Date But Me’ is pretty much defined by its title, and while it would be a stretch to regard the entire song as a metaphor for the artist’s shriveling career ("Well I’ll find a brand new baby / I don’t know how right now / They’re all booked up, I’m out of luck / I don’t care anyhow"), playing it back to back with ‘Be Bop-A-Lula’ or ‘Crazy Legs’ shall certainly hint at a crisis of confidence. It’s still a nice, fast rock’n’roll number with decent guitar and sax solos, but it’s not even supposed to have a spark of life in it. It’s more of a "too old to rock’n’roll, too young to die" kind of thing, and that’s kinda sad for somebody who was just 25 years old at the time.

That said, at least there’s a touch of melancholic / ironic humor about most of these tracks, which saves them from being complete embarrassments. Only two out of twelve songs are those I’d never ever want to hear again — ‘Darlene’, a slow, stuttery mix of blues and doo-wop for which Vincent has absolutely no voice, feel, or sense of phrasing; and ‘Mitchiko From Tokyo’, a corny pop ditty that must have been inspired by the Crown Princess, but has little to offer as redemption for its silly stereotypes (and, for that matter, I think that Aneka’s ‘Japanese Boy’ is a great pop song, regardless of any «cultural appropriation»; it’s only when the song’s primary purpose is to titillate and exploit when it becomes offensive).

On the other hand, he puts in a surprisingly uplifting take on ‘Accentuate The Positive’ (the song works real good with a steady pop beat), sounds tender and sweet without extra syrup on ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain’, and produces at least one minor classic in ‘She She Little Sheila’, which, as I already said above, gave him one more UK hit. The song’s main vocal hook makes it more of a «comic rock» tune, of course, something in the vein of Larry Williams, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you can no longer provide a steady adrenaline punch, might as well put a smile on their faces, right?

Which brings us up to the paradoxical conclusion: Crazy Times! tries to solidify Gene Vincent’s new image as that of a «jovial» entertainer, stressing the light-headed fun and humor in rock’n’roll, while at the same time concealing a subtle internal bitterness, probably stemming from the artist’s own realization of his fall — once a true King of all the wild cats, now more of a meek, friendly little rock’n’roll clown. Ironically, in real life the meek and friendly clown seems to have still been upholding a threatening image — constantly getting into fights and gun-totin’ like crazy; at least he had nothing to do himself with the terrible tragedy of April 16, 1960, in which Eddie Cochran lost his life and Gene suffered severe injuries — another severe setback to his European career.

I do believe that Gene’s last UK hit for 1960, a cover of the old Bing Crosby / Andrews Sisters hillbilly hit ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’ which he recorded at Abbey Road in May, right after his recovery, was intended as a bit of tribute for Eddie — since it borrows its drum-and-bass intro directly from Eddie’s ‘Somethin’ Else’. It does not change Gene’s overall comic vibe all that much — the lyrics are delivered in a joking manner, the sax break is hilarious, the piano line (played by a very young, pre-fame Georgie Fame) is breezy — but the subject matter seems to be right up Vincent’s alley, as he was pretty pistol-packin’ himself and sang the thing with complete dedication. Still, this is pretty toothless hooliganry; I dare say the song was far more cutting edge back in good old 1943.

To add one final insult to one final injury, the album was released in several countries (France and Sweden, among others) under the odd title of Twist Crazy Times! — as if to suggest that Gene was now influenced by the likes of Hank Ballard or Chubby Checker, which he was anything but. This would be the equivalent of some subsidiary record label releasing Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album as Disco Rumours, just because anything with the word ‘disco’ on it sells 20% more copies automatically. Did they even ask Vincent’s permission?.. I seriously doubt that.

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