The Golden Age of American Popular Music, Vol. 2

Like the first volume in this series, this is something of a spinoff from the concept driving ' long-running series, which branched out from rock & roll into country, novelty, and folk hits (also covering the era approximately stretching from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s). More than the first volume, however, gathers pop hits from that era that weren't really related to rock & roll or any sort of American roots music, or only tenuously so at most. Some of these 28 tracks, nonetheless, transcended labels to make it onto rock & roll oldies stations' playlists, like ' 's and It's no accident, perhaps, that these are the biggest and best of the hits featured on this 28-track compilation, which concentrates mostly on lower-charting items -- though quite a few of these were solid Top 40 entries -- that have pretty much been forgotten, even by collectors specializing in this era of pop music. To be brutal, there's a good reason for this material's relative obscurity -- most of it just isn't that good or memorable, and most of certainly represents the sort of tame, innocuous, and even fluffy pop that rock & roll was reacting against. There are some pretty good other songs here, like 's oft-covered and some oddball selections with pretty interesting stories behind them, like actor (which actually made the Top Ten) and by (who actually wrote and recorded with shortly before co-founded ). But much of the rest is pretty disposable featherweight pop, even in the instances where the singers are well known, as is the case with the entries by , , and producer (whose seems like an obvious attempt to emulate 's style in ). ~ Richie Unterberger