Dee Clark's second album is a significant advance on its predecessor, a bold and hard-rocking collection of tunes weighted heavily toward stomping rock & roll, and including one killer conceptual track called "The Convention" that's a pounding, driving account of the story of R&B and how it became mainstream music. Clark has fewer originals here, but the overall song quality is equal to or better than his debut, and he's stretching that high-tenor-cum-falsetto voice very successfully into some soulful permutations of rock & ...
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Dee Clark's second album is a significant advance on its predecessor, a bold and hard-rocking collection of tunes weighted heavily toward stomping rock & roll, and including one killer conceptual track called "The Convention" that's a pounding, driving account of the story of R&B and how it became mainstream music. Clark has fewer originals here, but the overall song quality is equal to or better than his debut, and he's stretching that high-tenor-cum-falsetto voice very successfully into some soulful permutations of rock & roll. But even with that emphasis, he finds room on side two of the original LP for some horn-driven R&B of a slightly older school, and shows off the most lyrical side of his singing on the Gershwins' "A Foggy Day," plus a superb cover of "Moonlight in Vermont," and closes with Sam Cooke's "The Time Has Come." The latter, in 1960, was an almost preternaturally early acknowledgement of Cooke's ability as a songwriter, from one R&B star to another. Clark does well by the song, as he does by everything on this record. He could do it all, whatever was expected of a top R&B singer circa 1960, and on this album he pretty much did it and a little more, too. It's worth tracking down and listening to a lot, and anyone who likes Jackie Wilson or the young Clyde McPhatter can safely add another star to this record's rating -- Clark's voice bore an uncanny resemblance to both, even if he was never as celebrated as those two other legends. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
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