Review: Gene Vincent - Gene Vincent Rocks! And The Blue Caps Roll (1958)
Tracks: 1) Brand New Beat; 2) By The Light Of The Silvery Moon; 3) You’ll Never Walk Alone; 4) Frankie And Johnnie; 5) In My Dreams; 6) Flea Brain; 7) Rollin’ Danny; 8) You Belong To Me; 9) Your Cheatin’ Heart; 10) Time Will Bring You Everything; 11) Should I Ever Love Again; 12) It’s No Lie.
REVIEW
The golden era for Gene Vincent lasted approximately one year and 3–4 months: the time it takes to get from ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’ to ‘Dance To The Bop’, his first and last entries on the US charts and a proverbial demonstration of how, sometimes, one artist’s artistic and commercial peaks may totally coincide. What exactly happened after that summer of 1957 is not entirely clear: the only thing that is obvious is that it had little to do with the departure of Cliff Gallup and his eventual replacement by Johnny Meeks, or with any other change in the lineup of the Blue Caps. It is far more likely that the drastic change in style was Gene’s own initiative — an initiative that put his career on the downward track a solid couple of years before his unfortunate accident with Eddie Cochran, which would be the final nail in that coffin.
It is hardly a coincidence that the first song on the Blue Caps’ third LP is called ‘Brand New Beat’: perhaps the beat as such is not new in general, but it definitely is a new kind of beat for Gene Vincent, a beat that he might have thought to be more mature and palatable to a wider audience, but which in reality simply came across as much more tame and conventional. Never even mind the fact that the song was formally credited to Joe Allison (and his wife Audrey), a professional songwriter for country and doo-wop artists: what matters most is that it rides atop a strict, smooth and jangly electric guitar line (and a piano part, for the first time ever on a Gene Vincent rocker), features doo-woppy back-up vocals from a new addition called «the Clapper Boys», and has Gene sing more in Buddy Holly fashion than in his own wild man style. It is still mildly catchy (though the melody feels seriously influenced by Buddy’s ‘Rock Me My Baby’), but it has no personality.
Truth be told, the problem was already evident on the last of Gene’s hit singles, such as ‘Lotta Lovin’ and ‘Dance To The Bop’: the wild man of yesteryear was slowly giving way to a more polished and civilized singer of rock’n’roll for people who wouldn’t mind to see rebellion mutate into entertainment. But on Gene Vincent Rocks!, contrary to the self-assured nature of that exclamation mark, there is very little rock’n’roll as such. There is some pop, some country, some crooning balladry, and, at best, two or three songs that would even formally qualify as the Devil’s music — one of these, ‘Flea Brain’, being little more than a rehash of several of Gene’s rockabilly classics, except for maybe featuring what could qualify as the most misogynistic lyrics of his entire career ("stacked just right from her head to her shoe, she acts like somethin’ that escaped from the zoo"... "if she wasn’t good lookin’ she’d be better off dead").
Some people actually swear by the ballads on this album, finding exquisite quality in Vincent’s soulful deliveries of such classics as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and such new titles as Bernice Bedwell’s ‘In My Dreams’. I would say this is very much a matter of taste, and that while I can certainly see how Gene’s rough, unpolished approach to crooning could stimulate one’s emotional centers, it still feels to me that he was largely trying to emulate the styles and techniques of Elvis, and inevitably failing as a result. Want it or not, there is a reason why Gene Vincent is hardly ever remembered for his romantic side — probably the same reason why we tend to remember the Troggs more for ‘Wild Thing’ and less for ‘Love Is All Around’ (at least, I do surmise that most people who actually remember ‘Love Is All Around’ will have a hard time remembering that it was actually done by the same dudes who did ‘Wild Thing’).
Arguably the single most interesting thing going on here is the rough and rowdy way with which Gene attacks golden country standards — his delivery of ‘Frankie And Johnnie’ is downright hysterical, replete with hiccups, heavy breathing, and drawled-out syllables that occupy 90% of sonic space, so much so that it makes you wonder why he didn’t want to put the finishing touch on it by speeding up the song and turning it into an equally frantic rocker. On the other hand, Hank Williams’ ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ is ever so slightly poppified and made to look like an Elvis number — the deep bass loop of "...will tell on you" is 100% pure Elvis in nature. On the third hand, ‘By The Light Of The Silvery Moon’, which Gene most likely copped from the then-recent Jimmy Bowen hit version rather than the pre-war original, has always been an awfully corny song and gets an equally corny delivery (for some reason, the mesmerizing effect of the song was so huge in the Fifties that even Little Richard tried to remake it in his own style a year later — it’s just that the innate stupidity of the tune always had the upper hand on everybody who tried to defeat it in a fair fight).
In short, the only way to defend the album is by saying that very little on it, with the possible exception of ‘By The Light’, is explicitly bad — at the very least, there are certainly no signs of Gene Vincent trying to remodel himself as a teenage idol, à la Johnny Burnette or any other rockabilly heroes of his generation. But if the first two LPs, and the non-LP singles surrounding them, were and still remain an integral part of the early rock’n’roll canon, this album will only be of special interest to those who are, for some reason or other, fascinated with the character evolution of Gene Vincent — or those who would like to know what exactly it takes to go from Top Artist to Average Artist without embracing a whole new sound or a whole new artistic persona.
Only Solitaire: Gene Vincent reviews