It's New to Me: Popsicle by Jan & Dean (1966)

Cover illustration of The Alcade magazine, March 1970

So, when I picked up this Jan & Dean CD from a sale at the Sundazed Music website, I had no idea what I was getting. I knew that this was the LP they released prior to Save It For a Sunny Day, which I love (although it's really a Dean Torrence solo record). However, I was surprised to find that Popsicle was actually a cobbled-together compilation album released just months after Jan Berry almost died in a serious car accident in 1966. That seems weird, right? It gets weirder.

In late 1965, Jan & Dean recorded a cover of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and scheduled it for release as a single in January 1966. The song had been paired with a b-side pulled from Jan & Dean's 1963 LP Drag City, a song called "Popsicle Truck" (although they decided to shorten the title to "Popsicle" for the re-release.) Jan's car crash happened in April, and, within a month, Liberty Records had released the "Norwegian Wood"/"Popsicle" single. "Popsicle" ended up getting radio play, and it was Jan & Dean's last real pop hit. By June, the Popsicle LP was ready for release. It included six songs from the duo's 1964 album Ride the Wild Surf, and a few tracks grabbed from other records released in '63 and'64. "Popsicle" was a recycled track as well, so the only songs on Popsicle that hadn't appeared on a Jan & Dean LP were "Norwegian Wood" and a really old (1962) single called "Tennessee".

So, basically, Popsicle appears to be a "junk" album released by Liberty as a crass way to cash in on Jan Berry's terrible car accident. That's gross and everything, but my big issue with Popsicle is that it mostly makes me want to track down the LPs these songs originally came from - the tracks from Ride the Wild Surf are particularly solid. "Popsicle" is a fun single, but it's pretty corny and features a prominent *shudder* saxophone part that bears an unfortunate resemblance to "Yackety Sax" (the music from The Benny Hill Show). I actually quite like their version of "Norwegian Wood" - the vocal arrangement serves the song's melody well, although they don't really pull off the song's psychedelic vibe. Some of the tracks are underwhelming - "One Piece Topless Bathing Suit" in particular doesn't live up to its title - but my favorite track is the real chestnut in the bunch, "Tennessee". It's a pretty slight song and also has that terrible saxophone, but the intro is an undeniably grin-inducing stomp, and the song does you a favor by putting its best foot forward, repeating the intro several times between the song's short verse sections.

"Tennessee" by Jan & Dean