A quick cash-in effort after the number four chart placement of the title track in early 1963, this album suffers from too much sameness, though
Johnny Thunder is a good singer. Producer Teddy Vann, who wrote (or, more properly, adapted) "Loop de Loop" as an R&B-type song, wrote all but one other cut on this album, and attempted to give the same kind of treatment to "Al-La-Wetta," "All 'Round in a Circle," etc., without similar commercial results. It is a good midtempo R&B album, however, and marked an early success for the songwriting of
Al Kooper, who co-authored the only non-Teddy Vann composition here, "The Chain"; according to
Kooper, he and his songwriting partners worked in the same building where
Thunder did, and the song was written for him because they thought they had a shot at getting it covered, which it was.
Kooper and his partners Irwin Levine and Bob Brass had far greater success with the song "This Diamond Ring" later in the year (ironically, a song written with
the Drifters in mind, and
Thunder had briefly sung with
the Drifters). ~ Bruce Eder