Published on Jun 15, 1998
Is Disney kitsch from 1962 still cute in 1998? Hayley Mills, the
star of
The Parent Trap, and Walt Disney Records sure hope so with
their re-relase of
Let’s Get Together With Hayley Mills. The disc is part of
Disney’s
The Archive Collection, and is the second in the set.
In one sense, Disney was pressing their luck at this time,
hoping to copy the success that one-time Mousketeer Annette
Funiciello had on the young rock market with her hits. But Mills’s
Cockney accent was still present in some of her vocals, and, well,
let’s face it, her greatest talent wasn’t singing. While she could
hold her own in just basic singing, when she tried to do some fancy
vocal tricks (like at the end of “Sentimental Sunday,” it’s
painfully obvious she shouldn’t have tried that.
And while I admit some naiveness about the 1962 music scene
(gimme a break, I didn’t pop into the world until eight years
later), some of the song selection is very questionable. C’mon, a
rock version of “Green And Yellow Basket,” better known as
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”? I’d normally be blunt about my thoughts on
this, but this
is a Disney album, and kids might be reading. I know the
Beatles were just gaining in popularity in 1962, but am I really
supposed to believe that “Jeepers Creepers” was what teenagers were
singing at this time? Four words: I don’t think so.
However, there are times that Mills does rise above the material
to produce some surprisingly good efforts. “Sentimental Sunday”
isn’t a bad effort, while “Side By Side” and “Cranberry Bog” could
have been hits, even though they were’nt primarily rock efforts.
For that, you’d have to turn to “Little Boy” – if it only weren’t
for her stacatto delivery of the word “boy,” stretching it into the
two-word “boh-oy”. Oy. An interesting take on relationships is
presented on “Cobbler Cobbler,” though some of the terms like
“record hop” might not be understood by some people, even members
of Generation X like myself.
The interesting thing about
Let’s Get Together With Hayley Mills is that the musical
style is often ragtime or jazz, but this style works better for
Mills than the attempts at rock. Light pop is also present on cuts
like “Pollyanna Song,” which took the theme from the movie Mills
starred in and put words to it. (A few songs on this album are
numbers Mills had sung in Disney films.)
Let’s Get Together With Hayley Mills is a very short album –
twelve songs clock in at just over 26 minutes – but depending on
which track you’re on, the album will either seem to fly by or drag
on endlessly. This is a mixed bag that is more aimed towards the
adults who grew up with Mills and want to re-live some memories of
their childhoods. Young kids might get a kick out of listening to
this – that is, if they’ve not too sophisticated for it, thanks to
the Spice Girls.