This 3 CD set was a PBS premium for a bit and the music lives up to the PBS standard if not the promise of the title. This might better have been titled The Best of the 50s and 60s. There’s nothing beyond that. No Elvis Costello, Clash, Joe Jackson; not even the Airplane, Dead or CJ and the Fish. No Bonnie Raitt, no Iron Butterfly, no Simon and Garfunkle. The omissions are more extensive than those that made the cut. Unquestionably what is here is good; it’s fun, its rock and roll. And as Danny and the Juniors sing, "it will never die." So, maybe that’s the distinction. Rock and Roll versus Rock. Given that rather substantial caveat, this is a lot of fun, nonetheless. You can’t go wrong with a collection that opens with a 1-2-3 of Carl Perkins doing “Blue Suede Shoes,” Little Richard exploding through “Tutti Frutti” and Elvis Presley singing “Heartbreak Hotel.” The playing order doesn’t seem to have any logic. If it was chronological with one representative song from each year from 1950 to 2000 the title would have made more sense. The first disc is loaded with hits from the Coasters, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Turbans, Wilbert Harrison, Mickey & Sylvia, Dion & The Belmonts, Ricky Nelson and the like, though there doesn’t appear to be any logic to their placement here. Los Bravos, Manfred Mann and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap are here, too. Among the sixty tunes that comprise the discs are familiar smile-inducers like Wayne Fontana’s “The Game of Love” and Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” sharing space with Motown and 50s gems from Danny & The Juniors, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Crickets, Lou Christie, the Four Seasons, the Zombies, Everly Brothers, Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Gene Pitney, Roy Orbinson, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Bobby Darin, Bo Diddley, Tom Jones, Chuck Berry, the Zombies and loads more. It’s a whole lot of fun and for what it is – not a comprehensive overview of 50 years of rock and roll – it’s a first-rate collection.
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