The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2

Rhino hit the mother lode when they released the first "Doo Wop Box", but doo-wop is such a rich musical genre that there was plenty of gold left to mine, and they've reaped a sizeable haul in "The Doo Wop Box, Vol.2". They included some veritable gems omitted from the first box such as the Rivileers' "A Thousand Stars In the Sky", "Crazy For You" by the Heartbeats, "You Baby You" by the Cleftones, "The ABCs of Love" by the Teenagers (I always thought this was their best song, followed by "I Want You to Be My Girl"), "Pretty Little Girl" by the Monarchs, "The Woo-Woo Train" by the Valentines (Bye-bye, baby, move on down the line), "Castle In the Sky" by the Bop-Chords, "We Belong Together" by Robert and Johnny (one of the least known and most under-appreciated doo-woop groups -- these guys were great), and the hauntingly beautiful "Bad Girl" featuring Smoky Robinson's incomparable tenor as lead singer with the Miracles. But this volume also explores the flip side of some records that were less known than their original hit sides, such as "Hey Señorita" by the Penguins (the other side of "Earth Angel"), "I'll Be Forever Loving You" by the El Dorados (the flip side of their hit "At My Front Door"), and "Two People In the World" by Little Anthony and the Imperials, the flip side of -- and way better than -- their hit song "Tears On My Pillow". My friends and I, coming up in the 1950s, always said the DJs pushed the wrong side of that record.

Like the first volume, "The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2" spans the period from 1955 to 1962, and the earlier tracks are better than the late ones, when much of the street spontaneity that gave doo-wop its attraction had been diluted by wannabe groups that didn't understand what it was all about. The last disc on this set is probably the weakest of the four. But there's more than enough in the first three to make up for it.

Could this set have been improved? As I said in my review of the first Doo-Wop Box, if only Rhino had included two tracks by Nolan Strong and the Diablos, "The Wind" and "You Are", two of the greatest doo-wop songs ever recorded, I'd be in doo-wop paradise. But this set is very, very good. And for comic relief, check out a track on the second disc, a hysterical piece by the Chips called "Rubber Biscuit". Second only to the Cadets' laugh classic "Stranded In the Jungle" (nobody ever topped that one), it's the funniest doo-wop song ever written.

Judy Lind

While all of the music is good, there are only a few well know songs so I feel it was a big waste of a lot of money.

The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2 takes up where the excellent Box #1 left off.
For the most part the songs are great, with the notable exception of The Falcons "I Found A Love" which suffers from not being doo-wop (it's proto-soul) and having terrible sound to boot. But only one clunker out of 101 is a pretty good batting average!
The rest of the songs are great and the recording quality is excellent.
This is a must-have set for fans of the genre.