(MCA)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
One of the easier pop music myths to dispel is that which holds that the Andrews Sister's immaculate appeal is purely generational. We might mistake it as such due to the automatic nostalgic mistiness their harmonies generate, but that's a function of the music itself rather than its era -- like Vera Lynn's aching wartime schmaltz on the other side of the Atlantic, their work is designed as timeless sentimentalism, to create a longing for home tempered by wit and a coy youthfulness. Everything about the feelings conjured up in "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" or "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)" (recently used to devastating effect in The Master) is there through the will and desire of Maxene, LaVerne, Patty, and their arranger Vic Schoen.
But even if the sisters' body of work was explicitly tied to the exhaustive amounts of work they did during the War, much of it volunteered as a tribute to servicemen, the world they define is still one in which we live. No event of the last century continues to define our lives like the Second World War, and when we hear these songs now, even complete frivolities like "Say Si Si" and "Yes, My Darling Daughter," it stirs something immediate that isn't hindered by time even if it captures something about that time.
Between the '20s and their first serious breakup in the '50s, the Andrews Sisters recorded upward of 400 songs for Decca. By the time of LaVerne's death in 1967, that number had ballooned to close to 700. A heavy proportion of those first 400 are brilliant -- I can't speak with absolute authority but the couple hundred I've heard are consistently wonderful. This Best Of disc, a double-set put out by MCA eons ago, is as pleasant a place to start as any, and it carries some of the most crucial, innovative, and historically vital sides they issued, but the deeper problem here is how much material of the Andrews Sisters is next to impossible to track down. My own collection consists of this plus a few other wayward compilations and a slipshod library of discs, records, downloaded tracks, and other odds and ends. A boxed set is desperately needed.
As it is, though, you won't go wrong with any collection you pick up, as you'll consistently be warmed up by the adventurous and influential harmonizing, by Patty's seductive asides, by the general air of yearning, sentiment, and sensuality that's really like nothing else in our cultural annals; certainly material like "Daddy," "Rum and Coca Cola," and "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" would've had a difficult time surviving the puritanical, Patti Page-heavy pop charts just ten years hence. (This set is missing the spectacular "Strip Polka," but it's not hard to find.) And of course you should demand that any Andrews Sisters CD you seek out contains the invaluables -- "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön," "Apple Tree," and of course "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," which brings us to the matter of just how startling this music can be.
The Andrews Sisters dabbled in jump blues, of course, as exemplified by "Bugle Boy," and that's exciting in itself -- but they also have songs dating from as early as 1939 that are virtually indistinguishable from rock & roll. Others did too, but no one with success on a level with the Andrews Sisters; the breathless "Well All Right" would sizzle in any era with its tremendously assured beat and winking, shouty, joyous refrain. The odyssey of the finest piano player in Texas, "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" is practically a manifesto; the rhythm he beats puts the cats in a trance. At one point in the Glenn Miller-arranged "Rum and Coca Cola," there's this moment when Patty is about to take over for her solo and drops everything for just a moment to get taken over by the rhythm then wink into the microphone with a sharp, direct, completely out-of-time "ah! You vex me, you vex me." That's everything. And it's mutual.
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