Dore Story: Postcards from Los Angeles 1958-1964

Liner Note Author: Rob Finnis.
Illustrator: Rob Finnis.
Photographers: Stephen J. McParland; Gerd Muesfeldt; Frank Kelsey; Mike Gordon ; Alec Palao; Rob Finnis; Tony Casanova; Bob Zipkin.
In the late 1950s and early '60s, the Los Angeles record industry was a little like the wild west of the music business. Numerous indie labels hustled to capitalize on early rock & roll trends with scattershot operations that seem fly-by-night in hindsight. Even by these oddball standards, however, the small Dore label was fairly strange. It threw just about everything against the wall without getting much in the way of hits, save "Baby Talk" by Jan & Dean (the only artist of the era to even release an LP on Dore) and "To Know Him Is to Love Him" by the Teddy Bears (the first Phil Spector-dominated classic). This CD has 28 tracks issued on Dore between 1958 and 1967 (despite the subtitle indicating a time span of 1958-1964), of which "Baby Talk" and Billy Joe & the Checkmates' early-'60s Top 10 instrumental "Percolator" were the only hits. In the absence of the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is to Love Him" (which is, to be fair, available on many other reissues) and any other early Jan & Dean recordings, it's a zigzag tour through the underbelly of the early L.A. rock scene, little of it outstanding and much of it mediocre. There's run-of-the-mill rockabilly, doo wop, teen idoldom, surf, novelties, instrumentals, and (on a couple of ringers from 1967) soul.
In its own way, however, it's rather entertaining, both for the sheer variety of sounds and the fairly listenable efforts most of the acts managed, even if they obviously weren't chart-bound or all that memorable songwise. Relative standouts include Little Ray's good cover of Bobby Marchan's "There's Something on Your Mind," one of the early quality efforts from L.A.'s budding Mexican-American rock community (though it doesn't include Marchan's lengthy spoken rap); the Premiers' "True Deep Love," which sounds a little like a cross between Carl Perkins and Ricky Nelson; and Billy Saint's moody "Baby Doll," with its Booker T. & the MG's-sounding organ. And while the inclusion of the Teddy Bears' "To Know Him Is to Love Him" would have certainly given the anthology a boost, the obscure and more fully produced 1963 girl group version of the same tune by the Darlings makes for a nice change of pace. The 42-page liner notes by Rob Finnis form almost a mini-book of its own, detailing some little-known connections between Dore discs and pretty famous artists who made their principal mark elsewhere, like Kim Fowley, Vince Taylor, and John Walker of the Walker Brothers. The latter was half of one of Dore's acts, the brother-and-sister duo John & Judy, whose 1959 single "Hideout" is one of the better cuts on the CD, with a growling guitar sound that anticipates the oncoming surf movement. ~ Richie Unterberger