‘Screaming End’ Contains Best Work of Singer Vincent

*** GENE VINCENT

“The Screaming End”

Razor & Tie

In “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” his only Top 10 single, Gene Vincent sounded so much like Elvis Presley that, the story goes, Elvis’ mother called her son to congratulate him on another hit when she heard it on the radio in the summer of 1956.

Released just four months after Presley introduced “Heartbreak Hotel” on national television, Vincent’s hit shared many characteristics with that record, including the tense, rockabilly arrangement and a dramatic, echo-assisted vocal.

Reportedly, thousands of teens around the country even asked for the new Elvis record when they went to the stores to buy “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”

When the fans got the Vincent record home and played it, they found another Presley-esque tune, “Woman Love,” on the B-side of the single. Neither track, however, won the allegiance of the rock audience enough for Vincent to build a strong fan base.

While most other young rock singers at the time, including Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, were also clearly influenced by Presley, they were able to assert more individuality in their recordings than those early Vincent tracks.

Vincent did, however, bounce back into the Top 20 in 1957 with “Lotta Lovin’,” but it was in some ways a last hurrah. Though the Virginia native became hailed in Europe as one of rock’s most respected pioneers, Vincent largely faded from pop consciousness in this country. He died of an ulcer hemorrhage in 1971.

Partly because of his music and partly because of tragic elements in his personal life (including shattering his leg in a ‘50s motorcycle accident), Vincent has become the subject of cult fascination over the years, and there’ll likely be a revival of his music if a long talked-about film biography ever materializes.

This Razor & Tie, (212) 473-9173, package contains his best-known work.

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** 1/2 Various orchestras, “Cinema Century,” Silva Treasury. If you are looking for a general introduction to some classic film music, this four-disc set, featuring 55 “classic themes,” may be of interest. The package brings together some of the most memorable themes in film history, from the lavish “Gone With the Wind” through the ‘60s adventurousness of “The Pink Panther” and “Once Upon a Time in the West” to the large orchestra revival celebrated in “Star Wars” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

The problem, as spelled out on the album cover, is that these aren’t the original scores from the films themselves, but newly recorded versions by various orchestras. For anyone even remotely familiar with the originals, the new versions--especially the more contemporary ones--simply lack the the rich character and color of the originals. That leaves the Silva Screen set, (212) 757-1616, as more of a guidebook to the field rather than a treasury of sounds.

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** The Grass Roots’ “All Time Greatest Hits,” MCA. The Grass Roots--whose records were produced and arranged by such celebrated studio names as Steve Barri, P.F. Sloan and Jimmie Haskell--were a psychedelic-tinged Top 40 group in the late ‘60s that brightened the pop airwaves with a few catchy singles, notably “Midnight Confessions” and “Bella Linda.”

Yet the group simply had too little substance or imagination to inspire anyone but the most devoted fan to search out one of its albums when there are hundreds of better ones available if you want to relive some ‘60s memories. Its place in pop-rock history is so limited that a couple of tracks on some wider ‘60s retrospective would be more fitting.

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