It's anyone's guess who J. Mikel is, but his "Bettyjean Rock" makes a good opener for this collection of 30 rock & roll and rockabilly songs. A few names will be familiar, such as
Roy Moss, but most of these players seem to have toiled in relative obscurity beyond their immediate bases of operations -- although to judge from the photo included,
Danny Zella seems to have sung at least once in front of a few hundred, or maybe a thousand, high school kids somewhere.
The Blue Echoes may never have deserved to get their music heard very far beyond their immediate circle, if the evidence here is any indication, but the Royal Drifters could've become legends with "S' Why Hard," and
Jerry Arnold has an exciting record (with a drummer really riding that bass) on "Race for Time." Some of the stuff here isn't much more than exploitation songs playing off the rock & roll boom. The Vivatones' "The Viva Tones Are Rockin'" is a pretty fair piece of self-promotion by the band, who evidently came from Chattanooga but cut their music out of Nashville, working in lots of places that they probably wanted to play -- whether they did or not, only they (and their management) know. Despite their name,
the Zircons sound like the real article on "Crazy Crazy," a hard-driving outfit with a good rhythm section, a powerful, expressive singer, and lots of tension in their playing -- along with the
Roy Moss sides, they're the best material on this collection, although there's obviously other good stuff. Near the end comes "Fade Away," a piece of melodic rock & roll by
Frank Hudson that sounds like first-rate
Elvis circa 1958 with some fairly ballsy guitar and drums -- it's totally out of place amid the less mature rock & roll stylings all over this CD, but it is pretty, and pretty bracing too.