THE AMES BROTHERS
The Ames Brothers/ Destination Moon
(Collectables Records)
***

The '50s were abundant with soft, smooth male vocal groups that served as sanitized, acceptable alternatives to then-emerging scary “racial” doo-wop groups. One of the most commercially successful was the Ames Brothers, who in hindsight were actually pretty darn creepy in an uncomfortably clean-cut, David Lynch sort of way. This CD re-releases two vintage Ames LPs, the first an archetypal example of this arguably cheesy mid-century “boy band” genre.

But Destination Moon, the second LP on this CD, is the one worth caring about. The Ames boys' crooning was never as memorably fun as it is here, with 12 tracks of mood music ideal for your next lunar cocktail party. Like other weird, collectable and more typically instrumental Sputnik-era space-themed LPs, it contains renditions of heavenly-body Tin Pan Alley standards with quirky instrumentation worthy of a '50s sci-fi movie/TV soundtrack. “Stardust” is strangely absent, but “Stella by Starlight” and other expected classics are here. And the original title track is a particular delight, with lyrics like “So away we'll steal in a space-mobile, a supersonic honeymoon.” It may not be “high art,” but its cultural merits as a hip slice of retro-futuristic kitsch are well worth preserving on CD.

(Originally published in The Cleveland Free Times, April 21, 2004)