Doo Wop has a long and fascinating history. This genre of music was reinvented over and over again but always remained popular. Even to this day you can always find Doo Wop on TV events and PBS specials. It's obviously still loved by many baby boomers. Time Life of course has offered up a boxed set called, "It All Started With Doo Wop". It seems pretty impressive if you've ever seen Dion's infomercial but is this collection really all that great?
What's Included with the Doo Wop Set?
This boxed set has nine CDs with 146 songs and includes a bonus live DVD of 21 recent performances by the artists. Time Life also has a larger set available. How about the "It All Started With Doo Wop Super Set” It's got a whopping 17 CDs with 266 songs." Wow! That's a lot of Doo Wop entertainment!
Doo Wop on CD from Time Life
Positive Points
- This [tags]doo-wop[/tags]set gives us plenty of great and familiar Doo Wop music to dive into. The casual Doo Wop fan (which all music listeners should be, by the way) will have more than enough music to keep them entertained.
- They do include the lyrics to the songs.
- Reading many consumer reviews I'd say about 80% loved the music on this set. Especially because of all the memories it brought back.
Negative Points
- This is not a collection for a hardcore fan.
- A lot of the music isn't Doo Wop. Some isn't even proper vocal group music.
- Some songs are non-doowop songs by artists associated with the genre.
- Other songs are vocal groups that aren't rhythmic in nature.
- They include songs of ex-woppers who outgrew the style entirely.
- There's a scatter shot approach to the compilation and it's too inclusive.
- These sets aren’t entirely about fit. Each disc (or pair of disc) is collected under a title like “The Closer You Are” or “Looking for an Echo”,are usually taken from a song title. The songs aren’t gathered thematically under these labels and there is no chronological order.
Here's what consumers are saying about this set
As I mentioned above, around 80% of the comments I read mentioned that they loved the music set, especially because of all the memories it brought back.
A few people mentioned...
1. One lady who was aged 60 mentioned that she didn't remember hearing some of these recordings before.
2. Many classic Doo Wop songs were missing from the set or they weren't even Doo-Wop songs.
3. It's wrong to have a name "It All Started with Doo Wop" when the songs aren't all Doo Wop or the best Doo Wop songs.
4. They should contain only the genuine hits from the 50's and 60's, especially considering the price of the set. They were very disappointed.
5. It would be better to have all the top songs instead of such a large collection of some songs that were exactly "Doo Wop" material.
6. There are some original artists but most are not.
7. They were upset with the fact that the songs don't sound like the true artist's version.
8. Someone mentioned that the menu list on the CD isn't the same list that showed up when playing it on the computer.
9. Song selection wasn't that great. Time Life could do more research in picking the hit songs. Although it did still bring back great memories.
10. Time Life mentioned that this set was digitally re-mastered. Although a lot of the songs sounded like they were being played on the original 45's. The sound was scratchy and poor quality. Not what you'd expect for the price of the set.
The Bottom Line
Doo Wop in this collection is not exactly how you may have remembered it. If you want to cast a wide net over Doo Wop, by all means, grab it. But collectors or hard core Doo Wop fans may be disappointed. Of course, it’s not a perfect set but it seems to cohere well enough to do the job. It’s about as much Doo Wop as you’re likely to need for a while anyway. Hope you enjoyed this Time Life music review... I'll do a few more in the coming days. 
If you're looking for other reviews of classic Time Life songs, here the Time Life Rock Ballads collection.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Question: is this a collection of the original music by the actual recording artists from the 50s and 60s, or are some of these song for this collection presented by non original artists?
David, I called the customer service number and they said that they don’t have the Doo Wop collection anymore. The closest thing to it is the Malt Shop memories. All the songs are from the original artists but enhanced by being digitally remastered. If you want to hear some samples you can go to this link and click on the disc 1 or 2 tab and listen to the music.