These are not the best 25 all-time doo wop hits -- whether because of licensing restrictions or not, there's no "The Great Pretender," "Tears on My Pillow," "Maybe," "Searchin'," "Gee," "Stay," "A Teenager in Love," "I Only Have Eyes for You," "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," "Book of Love," "Silhouettes," or numerous other smashes that might be reasonably championed as among the cream of the cream. As doo wop comps go, though, it's pretty good, and a good disc if you want a few anthologies in the genre without fussily building a systematic collection. To start with, it does have several core doo wop classics: the Silhouettes' "Get a Job," the Five Satins' "(I'll Remember) In the Still of the Nite," the Penguins' "Earth Angel," the Capris' "There's a Moon out Tonight," Don & Juan's "What's Your Name," the Crests' "16 Candles," the Earls' "Remember Then," Johnnie & Joe's "Over the Mountain; Across the Sea," and the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You." There are also a number of low-charting singles that nonetheless got a lot of regional airplay and may be well-remembered even by non-doo wop specialists, like the Willows' "Church Bells May Ring," the Genies' "Who's That Knocking," the Jive Five's "What Time Is It?," and Robert & Johnny's "We Belong Together." And, surprisingly, five of these didn't make the national charts at all, though the Eternals' witty "Babalu's Wedding Day," Tony Allen & the Champs' sillier "Nite Owl," and the Harptones' "A Sunday Kind of Love" were heard by many in their day and remain on the play lists of doo wop-oriented radio shows. It's a good mix of the classic and the less familiar, though the classics are still better than the less familiar. This CD marks, incidentally, the first time the Casuals' "A Casual Look," a big hit in 1956, has been on CD in the U.S. ~ Richie Unterberger
