Johnny & The Hurricanes
Album: Hurricane Force!(Rare, Live And Unissued)
Label: Ace
Tracks: 52
Website: http://www.acerecords.com

One of the iconic sounds of the late-50s and early-60s was instrumental rock’n’roll, and one of the sub-genre’s most distinctive outfits was Johnny & The Hurricanes. Their animated rocked-up treatments of insidiously catchy folky tunes and nursery-rhyme favourites were great fun, yet were also regarded by the establishment as mildly subversive – hard to credit that today, for their innocent good-time vibe, which permeated the air of every good fairground, was exhilarating rather than rebellious. Mere mention of tunes like Red River Rock, Beatnik Fly and Rocking Goose brings back waves of teen nostalgia… But there was more to the Hurricanes than novelty tunes, even though much of the band’s output was – it must be admitted – rather formulaic. In other words, cheesy organ pricking out the melody, with rasping sax counterpoint, then the guitar letting rip mid-track. OK, rarely springing any surprises, but each successive side was dependable. There’ve been numerous “best-of” collections down the years, but this latest limited edition 2-CD set presents a host of rare studio and live recordings, including no less than 20 previously unissued cuts. The lavish package includes a fabulous 40-page booklet that contains a definitive and lengthy (and truly authoritative) background essay full of meaty info that will please hungry Hurricanes devotees, also plenty of unpublished photos. Curiously, though, the major omission is the referencing of recording dates for many of the individual tracks, notably those which are just credited with a 2015 date; one can only glean some of this missing detail from careful scrutiny of the booklet notes on the individual discs.

Until now, there’s been no easy opportunity to hear the Hurricanes in anything other than greatest-hits mode, and the first disc of this new set includes examples of the band’s different incarnations over their long life-span, as well as offshoots like The Fascinators and Dave & The Orbits, and instances of their early back-up roles supporting the likes of Freddie & The Parliaments and The Dream Girls. The band’s confident if uneven excursions into pop are also represented, and in truth these aren’t as embarrassing as they might have been. We’re also treated to some intriguing alternate-versions (Rockin’ T, Sand Storm) and items recognisable from elsewhere in the band’s œuvre and here retitled (Jamaican Moon). There’s lots of quintessential Hurricanes fodder (Ten Little Indians, Hurricanes Boogie) alongside temporal oddities (Strange), and the occasional nigh-unrecognisable cut (the strident, brass-soaked What You Know About Love, and the slick funk of Cannon Blast). But it’s all worth hearing – and there’s much more in the vaults for another compilation I bet…

The great-value (78-minute) live disc is more straightforward in terms of provenance, and moves from a pair of tracks recorded at the Star Club, Hamburg in 1962 through to a couple of titles recorded in Sweden in January 1990. The feisty early tracks have been released before, in the mid-90s, but the 1966 tracks make their first appearance on CD here. The centrepiece of the live disc is the entire contents of the 1981 live-in-the-Hamburg-studio album, again appearing on CD for the first time, which features Johnny Paris using Gee Force as ersatz-Hurricanes (but what a good job of it they make – yeah, they really rock!).

Anyone who objects to the formula aspect will find their ears opened surprisingly often by this set, but I’d still go along with the booklet-note writers in that “you just cannot have too many rocking geese”!

David Kidman