BUDDY HOLLY: SHOWCASE (1964)
1) Shake, Rattle And Roll; 2)
Rock Around With Ollie Vee; 3) Honky Tonk; 4) I Guess I Was Just A Fool; 5) Umm,
Oh Yeah; 6) You're The One; 7) Blue Suede Shoes; 8) Come Back Baby; 9) Rip It
Up; 10) Love's Made A Fool Of You; 11) Gone; 12) Girl On My Mind.
Just one more of these and we're done. Showcase followed fairly quickly after Reminiscing, since the latter sold
poorly, but steadily, and was even more of a pathetic cash-in — this time, the
buying public had learned its lesson and remained completely unimpressed, not
to mention that, by May 1964, Beatlemania was on in full force, and the kids
had plenty of stuff to worry about other than a bunch of decade-old outtakes,
crudely overdubbed and revealing nothing particularly new about the artist. Not
even a King Curtis duet this time around.
Instead, what we get is mostly songs from the
same early 1956 Nashville sessions that yielded the relatively lackluster That'll Be The Day LP (in fact, two of
the songs, ʽRock Around With Ollie Veeʼ and ʽGirl On My Mindʼ, seem to have
simply been carried over from that album, maybe in slightly remixed form). As
usual, half-finished outtakes and demos rule the day, and, as usual, my beef is
not so much with the «sacrilegious» overdubs as it is with most of the songs being
just plain uninteresting.
There is quite a fair share of Holly originals here,
to be sure, but they reflect the earliest and most derivative period of Buddy
as a songwriter, and, for the most part, we either hear pedestrian
country-western (ʽI Guess I Was Just A Foolʼ), or half-developed predecessors
of better songs: ʽLove's Made A Fool Of Youʼ already tries to spice up the
country-western flavor by borrowing the Bo Diddley beat, soon to take full
shape in the form of ʽNot Fade Awayʼ, and ʽYou're The Oneʼ, left here in its
original acoustic demo incarnation, sows the seeds of ʽPeggy Sueʼ and several
other classics. Consequently, they do have historical value, but if we are
talking historical value rather than pure entertainment, why all the overdubs?
As for the covers, there is even less to add to
what has been said before: no matter how many Buddy versions of classic
non-Buddy rock'n'roll hits get added to the catalog, there is simply no way
they can add anything to the originals. In some difficult, incomprehensible way
it may be «fun» to hear how Buddy does ʽShake, Rattle & Rollʼ or ʽBlue
Suede Shoesʼ, just to rest assured how deeply integrated he always was with the
fearless rockabilly crowd, but that's about it.
The finalized album predictably gets another thumbs down.
Throughout the 1960s, Petty would then continue squeezing out «bastardized»
releases (such as Holly In The Hills
from 1965 and Giant from as late as
1969), but they get progressively more difficult to find on CD and, in any
case, have become formally obsolete now that most of the original, undubbed,
tapes have been officially released on various compilations of rarities, so we
shall spare ourselves the hassle of promoting Petty's questionable
understanding of musical ethics and just move on.
This would be on a release after this one, but one Buddy outtake/overdub I can't help but love is "Love Is Strange". Whether the overdubbed or just Buddy and guitar version, I think it beats the original.
ReplyDeleteHey George, big fan of your reviews, but you got a few things wrong here.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, "Love's Made a Fool of You" is not a predecessor to "Not Fade Away". It was actually recorded after "Not Fade Away" was released, and supposedly intended for the Everly Brothers.
Also, "You're the One" surely did NOT "sow the seeds" of "Peggy Sue", as it was actually a quick recording done at a radio station not long before his tragic death. So it came after "Peggy Sue" and surely did not influence it.