Don And The Goodtimes - So Good (Reissue) (1967/2006)

Don & the Goodtimes started life as a Pacific Northwest rock & roll band stomping out frat rock and hard R&B in the manner of the Wailers and Paul Revere & the Raiders (Don Gallucci, the band's keyboard player, had played with fellow Northwesterners the Kingsmen for a spell and added that memorable electric piano part to "Louie Louie"), but by the time they signed with Epic Records in 1967, they had cleaned up their act, landed a regular spot on the Dick Clark-produced pop series Where the Action Is, and started working on their vocal harmonies. So Good was the group's first long-player for Epic and a far cry from their earlier work; Jack Nitzsche produced and arranged the album, and with the band supplemented by a handful of A-list studio musicians (among them Ry Cooder, Glen Campbell, and Hal Blaine), they recorded ten tracks of first-rate sunshine pop, best exemplified by the minor hit single "I Could Be So Good to You." There isn't a wealth of original personality in this material (this music carries Nitzsche's stamp more than the credited artists), but the craft is superb, the band's harmony vocals are excellent, and the song selection is fine (the inclusion of "A Girl Like You," a minor hit for the Troggs, is a nice touch). So Good is in many respects a fairly typical piece of assembly-line pop from the L.A. studio system of the 1960s, but it reveals just how much soul this particular machine could generate back in the day. Overall, this represents the best of the band's Epic Records repertoire and is a good pick for anyone interested in their pop period.