gullbuy music review

The Girl Group Sound: The Darlings Of The 1960's

title

The Girl Group Sound: The Darlings Of The 1960's

label

Sha-Boom

format
various artists CD

Girl Group Sound CD coverThe Girl Group Sound: The Darlings Of The 1960's series of compilations on Sha-Boom is half way between the One Kiss Can Lead to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost and Found boxset on Rhino and The Girls of Hideaway Heaven on Rare Rockin' Records because it combines some rare and hard to find girl group records with some easier to find sides.

Girl Group Sounds CD coverThis series is more true to the "girl group sound" then the Rhino box (which took jaunts into the girl soul and girls in the garage sound along with the classic girl group sound), but has poorer bootleg like sound quality (the Rhino box had impeccable sound quality for recordings so old), and doesn't dig as deep and as obscure as the Rare Rockin' series.

The Girl Group Sound series seems like it was a blueprint for the Rhino box (they were released in 2003, while the Rhino box came out in late 2005), where some titles that could not be licensed were replaced with a wider spectrum of genres and solo artists. Girl Group Sound CD coverThere's enough difference between each of these though that true girl group collectors won't be disappointed when picking up any and all of these collections. There's bound to be some titles you haven't yet heard. The hard part will be finding these now, since they're not available through the major retailers. Your best bet is to find it through the specialty shops or auction sites. But there's enough hard to find titles here that would make searching these out worth it, if you don't mind the bootleg quality and lack of liner note information.

---Patrick, September 19, 2006