Various Artists: It All Started With Doo Wop

Another year, another gigantic Time-Life offer that seemingly brings an entire era of music right to your door. But while this set is impressive in scope, and even somewhat exacting in its selection, this is not a collection for the hardcore fan. It works, like so many Time-Life sets do, more as an expression of an idea than a musical or historical artifact. Still, it is a great place to score tons of doo-wop classics at once.

Nine discs, a bonus live DVD -- most folks don't even know there <i>is</i> this much doo-wop to savor. And there isn't, not really, because Time-Life operates like a fast-food joint: bigger, bigger, bigger, and quality be damned. This is not to suggest there isn't a lot of fantastic, expertly remastered doo-wop on this humongous set, just that some of it doesn't count, be it non-doo-wop songs by artists associated with the genre (Little Anthony and the Imperials' Uptown soul classic "Goin' Out Of My Head"), vocal groups that aren't rhythmic in nature (The Impressions' "Gypsy Woman"), or ex-woppers who outgrew the style entirely (Ben E. King's "Stand By Me"). There's even a little girl-group and Motown mixed in!

This might be entertaining and even instructive if the 146 songs here were arranged chronologically, or at least stylistically. But despite disc titles like "Looking For An Echo," "The Glory Of Love," and "Street Corner Symphonies," they aren't -- and that leaves one wondering why Jay and the Americans' "She Cried" buts up against the Jive Five's "I'm A Happy Man," or why "Where Did Our Love Go" follows "I Only Have Eyes For You," or why Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops," featuring an operatic approximation of the style at best, is even here.

But enough nitpicking. The two "Symphonies" discs and the single "Lovers Never Say Goodbye" disc are nearly perfect, and swallowing this whole thing at once does get you nearly every big doo-wop hit of the era, not to mention some fine rarities not usually given credence in our own collective maltshop memories, cuts like the Nutmegs' "Story Untold" or the Paragons' "Florence" or "Trickle, Trickle" by The Videos. If you want to cast a wide net over doo-wop, by all means, grab it. But collectors and other fiends will no doubt wonder why the history lesson was botched.