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Of all the suc­cess­ful pop acts of the 1960’s, few are as crit­i­cally dis­re­spected as Gary Lewis & The Playboys.  This is due to a unique com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors tailor-made to annoy rock crit­ics.  For starters, Gary Lewis is the son of Jerry Lewis and any­thing smack­ing of nepo­tism is off to a bad start with crit­ics.  Also, the group mostly didn’t play on their own records: the cream of the L.A. ses­sion musi­cian scene did the hon­ors and Lewis’s vocals were always double-tracked with another singer, Ron Hicklin, to blend out any imper­fec­tions.  The fact that they didn’t write their own tunes sealed the group’s rock-crit fate.

However, that doesn’t mean their records are junk.  In fact, the Playboys’ sin­gles were always well-crafted affairs dur­ing their boom years.  They had a hid­den weapon in the form of Snuff Garrett, a fix­ture of the L.A. scene who could syn­the­size the trends going on in pop music circa the mid-1960’s (Phil Spector, Motown, the British Invasion) and syn­the­size them into insid­i­ously catchy teen-beat fod­der.  He also had fan­tas­tic taste in ses­sion musi­cians, using a young Leon Russell as his arranger/right-hand man on the Playboys ses­sions and get­ting aces like drum­mer Hal Blaine to pro­vide the back­ing.  The fact that the Playboys racked up top-ten hits in the midst of peak-level suc­cess for the Beatles, the Stones and the Supremes says a lot for Garrett’s skills as a producer.

With Garrett’s help, Lewis and his Playboys rode the pop charts for a few years via a string of hits that would become oldies-station ever­greens: “This Diamond Ring,” “Count Me In” and “She’s Just My Style” are amongst the best pre-packaged pop of the mid-1960’s.  Their suc­cess­ful period was enough to ensure that the hits have stayed in print over the years via a num­ber of greatest-hits col­lec­tions… but what about their non-hits?  A few albums have been avail­able inter­mit­tently on CD but they were often padded with throw­away cov­ers so they weren’t the best way to size up the group. Meanwhile, the greatest-hits discs inevitably skipped the non-hit sin­gles, not to men­tion sev­eral non-album b-sides.

Thankfully, fans who want to go beyond the famil­iar hits now have an oppor­tu­nity to do so via The Complete Liberty Singles, a lov­ingly assem­bled 2-disc set that col­lects the a and b sides of every sin­gle the Playboys cut for this label as well as few odd­i­ties.  The first disc cov­ers the group’s two biggest years, 1965 and 1966.  All the key oldies sta­tion favorites (includ­ing the trio men­tioned above) are here.  There are also some strong sin­gles that aren’t as well remem­bered today but offer the same pop crafts­man­ship of the more famil­iar items: “Save Your Heart For Me” is a breezy bal­lad with nice acoustic gui­tar hooks and a sing-along style while “Green Grass” is lovey-dovey bub­blegum pop with a kitchen-sink arrange­ment that turns what would have oth­er­wise been a mild ditty into a post-Spectorian pop cathedral.

The b-sides on the first disc also pro­vide plenty of enter­tain­ment, some­times the off­beat kind: “Tijuana Wedding” is an instru­men­tal that sounds like the Ventures jam­ming on “Tequila” (it also fea­tures a bizarre gibberish-Spanish recita­tion by a jus­tice of the peace!) and “Time Stands Still” lam­poons its own sac­cha­rine nature with campy back­ing vocals and a funny stretch where Lewis imper­son­ates his famous dad’s “idiot” alter-ego.  An unre­leased cover of the folk stan­dard “Sloop John B.” is a life­less, thin ren­der­ing that deserved to stay in the can but the promo-only “Way Way Out,” theme song from a Jerry Lewis vehi­cle, is jaunty fun.

The sec­ond disc finds the Playboys’ star on the slide but the first half is still plenty inter­est­ing for 1960’s pop fans: “The Loser (With A Broken Heart)” is an odd frat-soul/garage rock blend of with an oddly dreamy bridge and nihilis­tic lyrics, “Jill” is a top-flight sun­shine pop bal­lad that devo­tees of that style will enjoy and a heart-on-sleeve ren­di­tion of “Sealed With A Kiss” suc­ceeds as a well-crafted tear­jerker.  In fact, the sun­shine pop style fits Lewis nicely: “Girls In Love” and “Has She Got The Nicest Eyes” are other gems in that vein that pop up on this set.

There is also some strong on the b-sides from this era, as well: “May The Best Man Win” is a romance-melodrama bal­lad that could have been an a-side and “New In Town” is a low-key dec­la­ra­tion of lone­li­ness with a beau­ti­ful arrange­ment (and a killer bass line).  The b-sides decline in qual­ity as the disc pro­gresses — Lewis’s attempts to rock it up on cov­ers of “C.C. Rider” and “Great Balls Of Fire” sound like self-parodies — but the a-sides are often sur­pris­ingly good.  For instance, “Hayride” is insid­i­ously catchy bub­blegum and “Something Is Wrong” is a con­vinc­ing stab at blue-eyed soul.

The Complete Liberty Singles will prob­a­bly be overkill to those with casual inter­est in the Lewis/Playboys career but truth be told, it wasn’t designed for them.  This is one for the obses­sives, com­plete with a great set of liner notes: Garrett’s com­ments are often hilar­i­ous and you get plenty of inside dirt on how the songs were selected and recorded.  Better yet, the set’s pro­duc­ers went back to the sin­gle mas­ters for each song so each mix is faith­ful to how the orig­i­nal releases sounded way back when.  If mid-1960’s pop of the non-psych vari­ety is your obses­sion, The Complete Liberty Singles is worth the spin.