The Crickets'
California Sun (also sometimes referred to as Collection: California Sun/She Loves You, or The Crickets) was their final LP as a contemporary group, released the year before they went on what became an extended hiatus, into the 1970s (at which time they re-emerged on the oldies circuit). It was also sort of payback -- of the most good-natured kind -- as
Buddy Holly's various bandmates and surviving contemporaries --
Jerry Allison (drums, backing vocals),
Sonny Curtis (lead guitar, vocals),
Glen D. Hardin (keyboards, Fender Rhodes piano bass), and
Jerry Naylor (vocals) -- did an album comprised, in large part, of covers of
John Lennon/
Paul McCartney songs. Considering how much
the Beatles owed to the Crickets, it seems even more now than it did then, to be a logical move for the older Texas-spawned group, looking for a contemporary audience. They don't sound that different from the band as it existed in
Holly's time, obviously missing
Holly's unique voice, but otherwise mostly retaining the lean, clean guitar/bass/drums sound, with a texture only a half-generation removed from their rockabilly roots on songs like "A Fool Never Learns"; the rendition of "Slippin' and Slidin'," and their covers of
Doc Pomus' "Lonely Avenue," and the Motown standard "Money" could have been done by the classic (i.e. original) lineup. As for
the Beatles covers, they're a mixed bag -- "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is done too much like the original, with
Curtis emulating
George Harrison's and
John Lennon's guitar parts too closely to add much; "She Loves You" is better,
Curtis' playing very exposed with all of its embellishments, and
Allison's extraordinary drumming nicely delineated as well; "I Saw Her Standing There" isn't quite inventive enough to be more than a fairly routine cover, only the spirited vocals standing out along with elements of
Curtis' playing; "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You," by contrast, are made into de facto
Crickets numbers, with the kind of timbre that recalls the original band, and singing that manages to invoke the memory of
Buddy Holly -- had he lived, it would be easy to imagine him doing versions of either of these songs (perhaps in return for
the Beatles' recording of "Words of Love") that would be very much like what we hear on this album. Among the originals, the
Jerry Allison co-authored "You Can't Be in Between" is a first-rate piece of British Invasion-style rock & roll, with strong playing and singing, a catchy melody and chorus, and a great beat, and the album closer, "Come On," is a rousing and catchy rocker that shows this group to be as contemporary-sounding a band as there was in 1964. ~ Bruce Eder