#615 Gene Vinent and his Blue Caps - Blue Jean Bop

I loved Vincent's second album, and the first one delivers many of the same thrills. This album lacks the menace that made his self-titled followup to exhilarating, and the overall tone is smoother and sweeter, but there's still an edge: notes hit harder than they needed to be, words sneered out when lesser singers would have smiled, and the whole thing lit up by some jigsaw guitar work.

Doing some research reveals the key to these two albums' greatness, especially relative to other similar records of the time. Unlike, say, Elvis, who used session musicians to fill out his early records, The Blue Caps were a band out playing shows night in and night out, and this was them slamming their set down in the studio. The result is a surplus of that energy that makes this era of rock and roll so incandescent. Vincent and his Caps remain the best act out of the era that I've found so far, and while its followup is a stronger, tighter outing, this is likewise simply essential 4.5/5