Jay and the Americans - Live From The Cafe Wha? / Blockbusters (review)
Jay and the Americans - Live From The Cafe Wha? / Blockbusters (BGO; BGOCD791)
review by Michael Macomber
During the turbulent 1960s, Jay and the Americans existed in a kind of bubble world, immune to political, social and musical trends. For over a decade, the squeaky clean pop vocal group released singles and albums that sounded like a throwback to a more innocent time. Despite being a walking, talking, crooning anachronism, the Americans were also a nearly unstoppable hitmaking machine. How did they do it? The evidence can be found on BGO’s new 2-on-1 CD reissue of a couple of long out of print Americans LPs, 1962’s Live From The Café Wha? and 1965’s Blockbusters.
Café Wha? finds the boys in a playful mood, laughing and joking with the crowd, while delivering some lovely harmonies and some marvelous finger-snapping vocal rhythms. “Gypsy In My Soul” is a swinging cocktail number, perfectly suited to five young lads in matching sweaters. A delightfully wacky rendition of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” has a decided Jerry Lewis tone. While it certainly doesn’t rock, it does put the audience in stitches. The Lee Adams/Charles Strouse classic “A Lot Of Livin’ To Do,” from the smash Broadway musical “Bye Bye Birdie,” seems tailor made for the Americans’ highly theatrical style. Another Leiber and Stoller ditty, “Baby, That Is Rock And Roll,” is given a hilariously white-bread treatment. As far from the raucous, raunchy Coasters recording as Motorhead is from Mozart, it is nonetheless intensely entertaining.
Blockbusters boasts what is probably the Americans most well known tune, “Cara Mia.” A 1954 hit for David Whitfield, it was also the song that landed Jay Black (aka David Blatt) the job as the second lead singer for Jay and the Americans. He nailed the audition with a stunning a cappella rendition of the highly operatic number. Ironically, his performance of “Cara Mia” was excised from the Café Wha? album, thought by the label to be inappropriate material for the Americans. It was several years before the group would finally be allowed to record it as a B-side—and it was an immediate hit.
Another signature tune, the rousing and romantic “Let’s Lock the Door (And Throw Away The Key)” is also featured on Blockbusters, along with a glorious reading of the Gene Pitney hit “Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa.” The Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman doo wop ballad “Silly Girl, Silly Boy” sounds more like 1955 than 1965, and is all the more charming for it. “Hang Around” follows in the same footsteps, a malt shop confection brimming over with naiveté and appeal.
The smooth, freshly scrubbed harmonies of Jay and the Americans continued to chart throughout the ‘60s, proving that good music, no matter what the style or presentation, is timeless.
