THE CHANTELS: THE CHANTELS ON TOUR (1962)
1) Look In My Eyes; 2)
Summertime; 3) Glad To Be Back; 4) Still; 5) I Lost My Baby; 6) My Chick Is Fine;
7) Well I Told You; 8) You'll Never Know; 9) Here It Comes Again; 10) Vut Vut;
11) They Say; 12) You Can't Go It Alone.
Please remember that any time you see an early
Sixties record titled «The So-And-Sos On Tour», it means that (a) with 99.99%
probability, the so-and-sos are not
on tour, and (b) with about 80% probability, you are dealing with a rip-off (I
exclude The Animals On Tour from
this category, because that album still had plenty of great tracks — but, of
course, all of them were recorded in the studio). For The Chantels, both of
these principles work like crazy, because not only is this album a mish-mash of
studio recordings from various sessions, but it is not even completely a
Chantels record: squint your eyes long enough and you will see the fine print
stating "and other selections starring Chris Montez, The Imperials, Gus
Backus" — meaning that Carlton Records, to which The Chantels had been
signed in 1961, couldn't even scrape together enough tracks for a short 12-song
LP, and had to support them with a five-song «sampler» of their other artists.
Including, sure enough, a very very young and still totally obscure Chris
Montez (before he had his big breakthrough hit, ʽLet's Danceʼ), and a couple
generic tunes from Del-Vikings member Gus Backus (one rockabilly and one
doo-wop number).
That said, the remaining seven Chantels songs
are not uninteresting. This is where you will find their last big hit, ʽLook In
My Eyesʼ; but they also do a solid rendition of ʽSummertimeʼ (unfortunately,
spoiled by excessive strings that overshadow both the lead vocals and the harmonies), a funny sequel to
ʽHit The Road Jackʼ (ʽWell I Told Youʼ) where the girls take the liberty of
taking it all back ("Well I told you to hit the road, Jack, I'm sorry now,
won't you come on back?"), and then there's a couple of tracks with
genuinely soaring harmonies (ʽHere It Comes Againʼ), a little roughly produced,
perhaps, but showing that they were still willing to perfect their craft even
when nobody was buying the records any more. And Annette Smith's high register
is so consistently powerful that she is on the verge of inventing a new vocal
style, «kick-ass sweetness» (ʽGlad To Be Backʼ) — typically, most of the
singing girls back then either had it rough and tough or tender and fragile, which makes her somewhat special among the
crowd.
Apparently, this was not quite the end of The
Chantels: in some form or other, they persisted all through the 1960s, with
their last official single released on RCA as late as 1970 (an upbeat mix of
R&B and sunshine pop, called ʽLove Makes All The Difference In The Worldʼ
and featuring a newly returned Arlene Smith); however, this was accompanied by
constant line-up changes, and they never really got a properly solid recording
contract. Which is too bad, because both Arlene and Annette had potential, and
it would be possible to envisage a situation where a girl group, fronted by
both of them at the same time (a pretty nice contrast), could survive and
prosper, given the right publicity and the right material. These girls, alas,
met with no such luck, but, heck, at least they got their three minutes of fame
and a chance to be remembered by small communities of doo-wop and early
Sixties' fans — how many from that epoch were even less lucky?
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