Bobby Vee's Golden Greats, Vol. 2 was issued by Liberty Records in 1966, just four years after its predecessor -- but in contrast to the first
Golden Greats, which depicted
Vee at the center of the pop world, working in a style that was valid for the time in which the LP appeared, the second shows an artist who was losing ground. Not that the best of the work here isn't perfectly fine 1966-style pop/rock -- the
Vee original "I'll Make You Mine" is a superb piece of music for its time. But it didn't reach the Top 50, and, indeed, only one of the tracks that follows managed to achieve that feat. In point of fact,
Vee's singles and overall image based on those records had scarcely changed since 1962, even after the British Invasion, the folk-rock boom, and all the other changes that had overtaken rock & roll and the larger world of music. "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" seemed a lot more than three years old at the time of this collection's release, and with a couple of exceptions, even the more recent contents of this album come across as dated. Ironically,
Vee's albums of the period captured him pursuing a much more contemporary sound -- very effectively, one might add -- than that represented by most of the dozen recordings included here, and they're generally a much better place to start than this collection, in terms of understanding
Vee or the full range of his talent. ~ Bruce Eder