Dad's Take:
The Platters are one of those mellow vocal groups that bring romance to their era and, undoubtedly, to their share of back seats. Everybody knows their smooth ballads. This group could sing. They are a great example of the fun, sometimes overwrought vocal stylings of their day. Straight singing wasn't always enough. They had to sing with style. And that makes this record drip with cool.
It's hard to find many better vocal groups. Those soaring ballads are well written and have interesting musical arrangements that combine doowop and jazz. When the Platters sing a song, you believe them. If they say they're sorry, or they ask for mercy, or they try to seduce you with a song, it's hard to say no.
What surprised me on this record, though, is that they were much more versatile than you might think based on the handful of hits that make the oldies compilations. They can even rock, like they do on "I Wanna." I don't think I've ever heard that side of them before. You don't hear a lot of it here, either. As you'd expect from the Platters, ballads rule this scene, Gene.
Regardless of who is singing lead on each song (and the whole group gets their chances to shine), you get a quality performance, whether on new rock 'n' roll ballads or explorations of the Gerschwins and other classics.
This is just a quality record from start to finish, the prototype for R&B mellowness for decades to come. There aren't many hits. "My Prayer" might be the only one. But, unlike most records of the day, it also doesn't feel like there's a lot of filler here. Every song is good. Ever performance is golden. And this is about as good as make-out music can get.
Brad's Take:
The Platters are a group I've been listening to for a few years. Whenever I'm in the mood for some doo-wop music, The Platters song "Only You" is always one that I make sure to listen to. I was kind of disappointed that that song wasn't on this because I really wanted to listen to it when I saw that The Platters were next on the list. I've never listened to this album before though so I was especially excited to check out some Platters songs I'm not really familiar with.
This album is pretty much just what I expected. There's only a couple songs that I've heard before, but it's 12 tracks of perfectly solid vocal performances. These guys could really sing! Something that I admire so much in older music is the fact that studio magic was pretty much non-existent at the time. This is 100% talent. There is no auto-tune or compression on the vocals to make them sound perfect and on key. The Platters and all of the other vocal groups from back in the day were just insanely good at singing. Singers these days couldn't pull this kind of stuff off now without over-production done on their voices. I have great respect for the singers from these classic doo-wop groups.
There really isn't much else to say about this album. It's The Platters doing what they do! Incredible vocal harmonies over music that you can snap your fingers to... or make out to. That is in no particular order, by the way.
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