Search - Paul Evans :: Happy-Go-Lucky Me: The Paul Evans Songbook

Not quite on the mark....

Zub | Forks Twp., PA | 07/20/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Paul Evans had a brief period of recording visibility with his quasi-novelty tunes in the late 50's and early 60's with "Seven Little Girls Sitting In The Back Seat" being his most recognizable. Three of his tunes made the top-20 and one more scraped the bottom of the pop charts before he, as a performer, virtually disappeared from the music-buying public's radar with the exception of an isolated appearance on the country and U.K. charts during the 70's. Unknown to many music buyers of the time however, Evans was a force behind the musical scenes as a songwriter with many of his individually and co-written tunes showing up in the charts as done by others such as the Kalin Twins (When), Bobby Vinton (Roses Are Red) and more. In 1996, Ace Records of the U.K. did an excellent compilation of Evans' work but it has been claimed that some of the charted hits that appeared only in mono on the Ace piece did in fact exist in stereo. When this Castle piece came along there was some hope that these stereo versions may have finally made it to the digital domain, however that was not to be the case. Also, somewhat surprisingly, Evans' last, albeit minor-charting, hit does not appear on this compilation which seems a bit strange in that there are 28 tracks here with a slew of previously unreleased demos as well as a recorded interview with Evans. While this is overall a competently produced piece, these disappointments lead to the lesser star ranking and give the edge to the Ace CD. Sound-wise, there are no revelations and no new stereo here as noted above. The later tracks (13-15,28) appear in stereo with all the earlier stuff in somewhat flat mono. The demo recordings are sometimes noisy, not surprisingly as they have been taken from acetates. In all, a decent job but it does fall short of and is not an improvement over the Ace CD."