While the Barbarians live up to a lot of people's vision of the classic garage band image-wise, their album is disappointing and thin-sounding. The material, none of which was penned by the group, is average and doesn't even rock terribly hard. "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl" is here, but much of the rest of the songs are overdone standards ("House of the Rising Sun" is especially lame)…
This DRG two-fer brings together two worthy and neglected Louis Prima/Keely Smith Capitol albums from the late '50s. Hey Boy! Hey Girl! is the soundtrack album from the lounge duo's 1959 film of the same name. Not as cheesy as it might sound at first, it features Louis and Keely (and Sam Butera & the Witnesses) at their Las Vegas peak. The title track is a brisk, lightly swinging duet from the pair while "Oh Marie" almost delicately reprises Prima's Sicilian heavoly scatting classic from the previous year's The Wildest! Saxophonist Butera gets his own hipster vocal on "Fever," and Keely sings at least two ballads, "You Are My Love" and "Autumn Leaves," to lend the proceedings a little class…