On the turntable today.....BLUE JEANS A SWINGING - The Swinging Blue Jeans

My MFP late 1960's reissue.

BLUE JEANS A SWINGING
THE SWINGING BLUE JEANS
Music For Pleasure MFP 1163
1964


The Swinging Blue Jeans were near the top of Liverpool's rock & roll bands. This album provides the evidence -- ironically, with a little better choice of material, it would rate very close behind the With the Beatles LP as a fresh and brilliant piece of music-making, and even as it stands, it's not too far behind. In order to fully appreciate Blue Jeans a' Swinging, you have to put yourself back in 1964.


Liverpool and the rest of the north are filled with acts that can thump away hard, or harmonize pleasingly, but only a handful that can do both, and even fewer that can do both well, and most of those, apart from the Beatles, can't decide if they want to be the Everly Brothers or Chuck Berry.

The Beatles knew that with a little care, they could be both -- and based on the evidence on this album, The Swinging Blue Jeans were of the same mind and had the talent to pull it off.
Blue Jeans a' Swinging features punchy, crunchy rhythm guitar, jangling lead guitar, some pretty raw singing by all four band members alternating with decent harmonizing.

The original HMV release from 1964

There are also a few offbeat song choices, starting with the excellent opening track, "Ol' Man Mose." On first hearing this track I thought that it would not have been out of place amongst other Liverpool bands who were successful almost 35 years after this album was recorded. The Zutons, The Coral, The Bandits & even The Hokum Clones all echo the sound of this opening track.

Their cover of "Save the Last Dance for Me" is a credible rendition of a contemporary Drifters hit, and their versions of "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Long Tall Sally" are solid pieces of rock & roll.

Their Buddy Holly-like versions of the Hank Marvin/Bruce Welch songs "That's the Way It Goes" and "Don't It Make You Feel Good" have enough hooks that either could've been a single and a hit; the ballad "All I Want Is You," dominated by the quartet's harmony vocals, sounding even more like Holly.

The band reaches back further than the Shadows, covering, "It's All Over Now," an offbeat lament written by Wally Whyton of the Vipers Skiffle Group - this is their Ringo Starr number, slightly goofy, with a vague country-ish tint.

Even the one original here, a group composition called "It's So Right," is a good rock & roll number with acceptably clever wordplay. Only the track "Some Sweet Day" seems second-rate.

That flaw aside, this is one of the best rock & roll albums of its era to come out of Liverpool.

This album can be sampled & purchased on iTunes - click here

 

The YouTube video above is of the opening track 'Ol Man Mose', which is my favourite track on this album.