Search - Ink Spots :: Ultimate Collection

Good sound of "original" group

Porkchop Proctor (wpro305088@aol.co | USA | 04/22/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Good quality transfers of original Decca material, but the cover is rather disappointing since it is of a 50's version of the Golden Gate Quartet! It is sad that somebody doesn't know the difference in what these guys looked like. One bright spot is the man at the bottom of the photo- Cliff Givens who replaced Hoppy Jones initially in the original Ink Spots group!"

Music from the James Bond novels

simnia | snowy bayou country, USA | 05/29/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Strangely enough, I first heard about these guys by reading Ian Fleming's James Bond novels: "Someone's Rocking My Dream Boat" was mentioned in "The Spy Who Loved Me," I believe, and the lyrics to "Java Jive" were mentioned in "Thunderball." This was the only Ink Spots collection I saw that had both those songs plus the pleasant "When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano," so this was the CD for me. One good song of theirs that was left off, though, was "I Cover The Waterfront." These songs are all surprisingly similar. Most start off with a 4-chord turnaround on acoustic guitar, followed by a slow ballad sung in a low falsetto with that old-fashioned mouth resonance style of the '20s, then a spoken verse in Hoppy's distinctive slow black voice, which repeats the lyrics of one of the sung verses. So predictable and yet so well-done! The songs are quite catchy once you get used to them, and Hoppy's outright candor on the spoken verses is just terrific, even though by all rights it should sound unbelievably cheesy. "When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano" captured one of the famous seasonal events of old (pre-'80s) California, before the swallows stopped trying to find their way through the 100-mile-long megacity that now links San Diego with Los Angeles. "Java Jive" is really cute and catchy, and "Cow-Cow Boogie" is a parody of an old Western standard ("Git Along Little Doggies") with humorous injections by Hoppy ... I can understand now why these guys kept their same sound decade after decade: they had developed a very successful style, and they wisely stuck with it. Nice, melodic, catchy, pleasant music with clever lyrics. And remember: this is same music James Bond heard aboard the Navy's nuclear submarine before he swam off into an undersea speargun battle to save the world!"