Critic's Review
Greg Adams, All Music Guide
The original High School Favorites LP is a budget reissue of Crew Cut Capers from 1954 with two songs omitted. The 1994 CD reissue uses the cover and title of High School Favorites but expands the track list to 30 songs while omitting even more of the already pared-down budget LP. The result is an expanded anthology of recordings from 1954-1957 that misses several hits and overlaps with The Best of the Crew Cuts: The Mercury Years by about a dozen cuts. The CD is mastered from disc with varying results; the sound quality, with occasional warps and surface noise, ranges from good to acceptable if you aren't too picky about such things. The collection has several of the Crew Cuts' R&B covers as well as a group harmony remake of Dale Hawkins' "Susie Q" that has a surprisingly hot guitar solo and is easily their hardest-rocking performance. Those tracks are in the minority, though -- most of the Crew Cuts' recordings are glee club or barbershop quartet style treatments of traditional pop songs and standards with orchestral backing, more in league with the Four Lads than the Diamonds.
