Vary Us and Very Us

One. The primest number, especially when it comes to a song. Though I do celebrate the album-as-conceptual-entity, there is something of a purity — especially in these mix-and-match downloadable times — about the idea of a solitary cut that appeals to your personal and peculiar sensation of taste, chosen as you might a friend, or even a lover; heard on its own, as a single was always meant to be.

To focus on an individual song is to appreciate its unique virtues, a start-to-finish asking to be started and finished over and over again. Sometimes, separated from its genre-mates or taken out of the context of an anthology, a familiar tune might take on a more universal shading, seen not as an example of style or date, but as a great song that just happens to be located within a style or moment in time. The listener can concentrate on nuance and detail: no longer is the experience like a banquet, with a surrounding hubbub of conversation and repartee. Now you're at a cozy candlelight dinner, and the song and you each have the other's complete attention.

Conversely, various-artists compilations overview a genre or a moment in time, creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts, a homing device for artists or tunes which might otherwise fall through the cracks of our collective memory, providing a window into a cultural state of mind and music caught in the fascinations of its evolutionary moment. The framing device of an anthology makes a slighter song seem more in tune with its chronological era, even as it shows that the classic hit of that era did not spring unbidden from its surroundings. The We of One.

I muse upon these matters because thirty-five years ago, as the crow flies, I put together an anthology of mid-'60s rock with the unlikely generic name of Nuggets (thank you Jac Holzman) that seemed to me at the time to comprise the one-shot wonders of many divergent groups, united perhaps by attitude and overall tonal texture and influences, but still appreciated as, in the main, singles. The passage of, yea, these many decades, has shown that while each is capable of being its own under-three minute slice of life, it's their gathering that has become more important, and never more evident than watching the Sonics make their first appearance in almost as many decades on November 4, 2007, out in Brooklyn, seeing the music alive and kicks-ing with the same yearn-and-burn of its adolescent fervor, cheered on by those who exalt the garagic spirit as it manifests in "Strychnine" or "The Witch." The One of We.

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Doo-wop, the onomontopoetic lingual of harmony singing, was particularly susceptible to the classic one-hit wonder.

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Or, getting back on-topic, the Various of Artists. Whether sampling or investigating or indulging, these assemblages are a great way to come upon unexpected treasures, wildcards, madcap scattershot performers and rare performances. I like the serendipity of seeing what randomly touches one's pleasure center, the strange production techniques which transform otherwise pedestrian offerings, the insanely inspired ideas by artists who might have disappeared within an instant of recording their sound for posterity, yet impossibly live on, awaiting their chosen listener.

From the time of its emergence in 1954 (the same year, by my calculations, that rock & roll was born), when Texas Instruments decided the transistors it was using for the military might have a civilian application — replacing the bulky tubes within a radio — the portability of music has greatly added to its appeal and dissemination. Amazing Hits of the Transistor Era Vol. 1 and 2 recreates the sense of innocence and wonder of that moment of liberation with a strange-bedfellow variety of Arizona music from the late '50s and early '60s, covering a variety of then-contemporary styles.

The flashpoint for this compilation seems to be Floyd Ramsey's Audio Recorders in Phoenix, where the late great Lee Hazlewood invented the sound of Duane Eddy. We hear Lee's guitarist-mentor, Al Casey, string-tickling under the name of the Gigalos on "Night Creature," complete with Duane's trademark whoops and hollers, precursing surf music; Waylon Jennings in late 1965 singing "My World" over a Donnie Owens backing track; Donnie himself having a country-rock "Heart Attack"; a teen-age Wayne Newton squeaking through "Start At The Bottom"; and garage-rockers Phil and the Frantics' take on "What's Happening." There are papa-ooh-mow-mow inflections from Brother Zee and funky butts from the Soulsations. Most of all, the anthology celebrates the solipsism of adolescence: "A Teenager Feels It Too" (Deeny Reed), "So Young" (Dave Lowe) and "Teen Baby" (Gary Trexler). My guilty pleasure is Gary LeMel's "Man Overboard," with its jew's harp solo, but I'd also recommend Casey's Hammond-driven instrumental ("Cookin'), which took Al all the way to American Bandstand in 1961, and its follow-up, "Laughin'."

Doo-wop, the onomontopoetic lingual of harmony singing, was particularly susceptible to the classic one-hit wonder. Though many groups were able to sustain lengthy careers, like the Harptones, the Moonglows, or the Drifters, most are known for their single classic slice of oldie. The form took a long time to reach its zenith — for those who'd like to follow the bouncing ball, there is no better place to start than in the volumes of Hot Harmony Groups on eMusic offer, where groups like Three Sharps and a Flat, Deek Watson and the Brown Dots, and the Four Vagabonds all maneuver through the pre-rock & roll era with a stylish sense of chord and rhythm, bridging the gap between the Mills Brothers and the streetcorner symphony that would follow, synchronized fingersnapping and lookin'-for-an-echo becoming an important rite of musical passage in the 1950s.

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For collectors, hits are never as satisfying as a well-unearthed obscurity.

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The aptly-named Best of Doo Wop is the horn of plenty. This comprehensive collation has just about all of the best-remembered tracks of the golden, silver, and brass group-harmony eras, from "In the Still of the Night" (Five Satins) to "Book of Love" (Monotones) to the original, slow-form, "Gloria" (Cadillacs) to "Earth Angel" (Penguins) to "Sixty Minute Man" (Dominoes). You can assemble your own Greatest Hits collection, or just hit "Download All" for an immersion in the human vocal chord. The "Best Of" makes room for Elvis Presley and Fats Domino; as well as the Velvetones' "Glory of Love" and Phil Phillips' "Sea of Love." For those seasonal greetings, Rockabilly Blues Christmas, which has such baubles-in-stocking as Lightnin' Hopkins' "Santa" and a couple of newie-but-goldie tracks from Slim Jim Phantom's Stray Cats spin-off, the Slim Cats. Pick that cherry!

For collectors, hits are never as satisfying as a well-unearthed obscurity, the "unobtanium" that impels an aspiring geek to look through any orphaned pile of recorded music in hopes of finding buried treasure. Will "Quantic" Holland has obviously done his digging and dig-it-ing for the deep-fried drippings that make up The World's Rarest Funk 45s. Everything here is a slice of best-dressed chicken, bass upfront and drums skittering, juicy slabs of organs and horns; stick it to your ribs. And if the thrill of the hunt is only exceeded by the playing of it to the guy standing next to you at the record fair, then he really got to me with Larry Ellis and the Black doing "Funky Thing" — (I thought it couldn't get any better after the wild organ intro, but that's just the warm-up!), or the steam-heat of "Boiling Waters" with Tony Bowers. Vern Blair Debate says it all: "Ooh Ah Ew." An amazing collection, and yes, more volumes to come.

Of all delineations, sorting by label is the most business-like, presenting a top-down view of the creative process; instead of a one-shot, we have the one-stop. Still, distribution is an art, and let us not forget the first two letters of "art" are a&r. The four volumes of Brunswick Finger Lickin' Soul cross-section a company that gave us Jackie Wilson and the Chi-Lites and Erma Franklin, and Brunswick's Top 40 R&B Singles 1966-1975 reveals a depth to the label's roster often overlooked and underlistened.

One and all, amid the varieties of musical experience.