Various Fabulous Flips Volumes 2 & 3

Jun 17 2008 By Bev Bevan

(ACE)

AS a kid most of my pocket money got spent on buying records. Every week I would buy three or four singles from my local record shop in Hall Green, Birmingham, cycle home and play them over and over again on my Dansette.

Then would come the second thrill - flipping these 45s over to see what the B-sides were like.

These compilation CDs celebrate the best of those B-sides, some of which were actually better than the hit A-sides.

Outstanding cuts on Vol 2 are Chuck Berry's Little Queenie, Larry Williams' Bad Boy, Sanford Clark's Lonesome For A Letter and the Fireballs' Gunshot.

Best of Vol 3 are the Stringalongs' Am I Asking Too Much, Fats Domino's Before I Grow Too Old, Johnny Burnette's Cincinnatti Fireball and Benny Spellman's Fortune Teller.

If the last one sounds familiar, that's because it was recently covered by my pal Robert Plant on his brilliant duet album with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand.