Digital Roundup: 3/18/15

It’s another week where we’ve only got one artist’s work being added to the digital catalog, but they’re a classic group from the early rock ‘n’ roll era, and between the two albums we’ve made available – one studio release and one compilation – you get a pretty good idea of who these guys were, what they sounded like, and why they’re still remembered fondly six decades after their greatest chart success.

The Cadillacs, Twisting with The Cadillacs: When Richie Unterberger reviewed this album for AllMusic.com, he described it as being “like a greatest-hits compilation (leaving aside the fact that they’d only had one hit) drawing from the singles they’d released up to that point, and not material recorded specifically for LP release.” That one hit, in case you’re not familiar with it, was “Speedo,” and if you’re gonna be remembered for a single song, that wasn’t a bad one for The Cadillacs to hang their hat on. Thankfully, there’s a lot of other great material here, too, including the bookends “Zoom” and “Sugar Sugar” as well as “Woe is Me,” “Down the Road,” and “No Chance.”

The Cadillacs, The Best of The Cadillacs: As you might reasonably expect, there’s a fair amount of crossover between The Fabulous Cadillacs and this greatest-hits collection – eight tracks, in fact – but the unique material is solid stuff and includes “Peek-A-Boo,” their second biggest pop hit, as well as “Gloria,” which was a substantial regional hit for the band, even if it never actually made the Billboard Hot 100. A lot of casual doo-wop fans tend to favor compilations of songs from the genre over individual artists, but if you dig doo-wop at all, you can’t go wrong with this set.