You Baby: Words & Music By P.F. Sloan And Steve Barri

Aces new "You Baby" CD collection makes a fitting companion to sister-label Big Beats release of a couple of years ago featuring Phil Sloan's solo work for the Dunhill label in the mid-sixties. However, this new collection shows the more commercial and pop oriented side to Sloan's work, written in collaboration with partner Steve Barri.Covering the period 1964 to 1967 this compilation is a mixture of hits and rarities and contains several tracks unavailable elsewhere. Produced to Aces usual high standards for audio quality and well researched and informative booklets the package justifies the premium price Aces products usually command.However, for me there is one major error in the judgement of the compilers here. For reasons they try to justify in more than a page of track details in the booklet the version of "Secret Agent Man" featured here is by Mel Torme rather than that by Johnny Rivers - big mistake! The song is one of the better-known ones featured here, and Rivers' version was used as the theme to the TV series "Danger Man" when shown in the US under the same title as the song. To have included both versions would have been logical, or to feature the actual TV show theme itself - different to the hit version - would have been even better! One star off a five star compilation for a rare lapse of judgement at Ace.Niggles aside the rest of the tracks on this CD are at the very least interesting whilst many are minor or major classics. A mixture of mono and stereo these tracks sound as good as you are ever likely to hear them, thanks to Aces sound restoration and mastering. The booklet contains comprehensive track details and biographies and details about the composers and is very well illustrated."You Baby" is a fitting tribute to an undervalued song-writing duo and will hopefully bring their material to a slightly wider audience. Good effort - but not quite perfect!

Top class. A brilliant compilation from 'Ace'. I only knew 5 of the 25 songs on this cd, so its come as a fantastic surprise that nearly all the tracks are 9/10 or 10/10. The only bad track is 'Secret agent man' by Mel Torme. As for the good stuff, there's too many to mention but a few would be 'Take me for what i'm worth' by the Searchers, 'Kick that little foot' by Round Robin, 'Where were you when i needed you' by Grass Roots, 'Let me be' by the Turtles, 'Eve of destruction' by Barry McGuire and a few of the female solo efforts which are great 'please don't go' by Yvonne Carroll, 'You say pretty words' by Ramona King and Ann Margret's 'You sure know how to hurt someone'. My only wish is that 'Ace' had included Barry McGuires 'Whats exactly the matter with me'.Don't delay buy today.

I like these sort of compilations as they introduce me to artists I might not otherwise have listened to. "Take Me For What I'm Worth", by The Searchers, is one of my 'Top Twenty' favourite records.

Ace has done a great service not only to collectors and fans, but also to the songwriters and producers whose contributions were often underrated because their names were printed in smaller type on record labels than that of the recording artist. But whereas their samplers devoted to such music-bizzers as Jerry Ragavoy and Bert Berns cast light on the underlying stylistic unity that raised them from producers to auteurs, this collection of tracks penned by Sloan and Barri reveals only that they were versatile and eclectic magpies, able to move so effortlessly from surf to sunshine pop to protest and back that their commitment to any of these is open to doubt. Nonetheless a useful sampler, but docked one star for including Murray the K's egregious parody of Barry McGuire on Sins of a Family, which isn't idiosyncratic enough to qualify as camp.