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Customer Reviews of The Best of Gary U.S. Bonds [EMI]

The previous review
I hate to belittle a Top 100 Reviewer but did he even look at the tracks and the label for this CD? It is not Rhino - it is Capitol. Yes, the CD titles are the same - Best Of Gary U.S. Bonds.

The tracks are not in a different order - they are different altogether except for a song or two done live.

I have the Rhino CD and am looking at it right now. It has 18 tracks from his Legrand period. The 10 track CD here is a Best of from his period with Bruce Springsteen and Little Steven in the 80's.

Shortly there will also be a CD containing all the tracks from 2 Bruce Springsteen assisted LP's - Dedication and On the Line. It contains all of what is on here (except for the live tracks) plus a lot more - 21 tracks. For someone interested in Gary U.S. Bonds in the 80's, it is a must.

There is also a brand new 2004 CD from him called Back in 20.

Appears To Be An Error In Track Listing
Unless Rhino put out two CDs on Gary U.S. Bonds in 1990, then this is the same as the one I have in front of me right now. The contents are exactly the same, only the order in which they appear is different. The cover of mine, titled The Best Of Gary U.S. Bonds, shows him jumping, pointing to his name across the top, and with a clock face just below his name. The CD itself is also shown as a clock face with the hands, of course, pointing to a quarter to three. The issue number on mine is Rhino R 70971, licensed from Legrand Records.

Inside are five pages of liner notes, with a centre fold-out showing Gary in front of a blown-up $100 bond. Three more nice shots of him are also included, while on the reverse is a partial discography of the contents [no chart details].

Born Gary Anderson in Jacksonville, Florida in 1939, he was signed to Legrand by Frank Guida and saw his first hit, New Orleans, reach # 5 R&B/# 6 pop in late 1960. For his next hit, which didn't come until the summer of 1961, he borrowed the melody of A Night With Daddy which had just "bubbled under" at # 111 pop for The Church Street Five. Renaming it Quarter To Three, it reached # 1 on the pop Hot 100 and # 3 R&B. Both hits had been billed to U.S. Bonds, as was Not Me, released in February but which failed to chart.

After that he would be billed as Gary (U.S.) Bonds on all remaining releases, starting with School Is Out [# 5 pop/# 12 R&B in August 1961], School Is In [# 28 pop only that November, and Dear Lady Twist in late December/early January 1962 [# 5 R&B/# 9 pop b/w Havin' So Much Fun - the only B-side included in this set].

Late in the spring of 1962 he again borrowed from another song, in this case the calypso tune Shake, Shake Senora (Jump In The Line) and, as Twist, Twist Senora, it hit the # 9 pop slot in May. A couple of months later Seven Day Weekend from the film Trad-Dad reached # 27 pop, and in September he closed out his Legrand hit career with Copy Cat, which finished at a lowly # 92 pop.

He continued to have releases by Legrand, but nothing else worked. These included Where Did The Naughty Little Girl Go in December 1962, No More Homework [August] and Perdido [November] in 1963, Do The Bumsie in November 1965, and Take Me Back To New Orleans in April 1966.

The cuts Soul Food, I Wanna Holler (But The Town's Too Small), and Lover's Moon were never previously released. All of which is why I reluctantly deducted one star since it would have been much more preferable had they included the missing B-sides to his Legrand hits.

Demonstrating his fondness for Country, Bonds also wrote the 1971 Johnny Paycheck hit She's All I Got, and in 1981 made a comeback with EMI America when This Little Girl reached # 11 pop in June, followed by the old Moon Mullican Country hit from 1947, Jole Blon, which reached # 65 pop in August. He then closed out his chart career in the summer of 1982 with, appropriately, Out Of Work. Produced by Bruce Springsteen and Miami Steve (Little Steven) Van Zandt [as were the other two EMI America hits], and featuring Clarence Clemons on sax, it peaked at # 21 pop snd # 82 R&B.

An exuberant, exciting performer, his tunes had everyone happily dancing and singing along in the early 1960s until, that is, an avalanche known as the British Invasion shoved him and many more like him to the sidelines.