Back in 1997, Sundazed sampled the best of the recordings
Ronny & the Daytonas made for Mala but Real Gone Music's 2015
The Complete Recordings does it better, containing everything the Nashville hot rod rock group made, not just for Mala, but also Amy and RCA. That amounts to 48 tracks, four of which are unreleased, and all the hits arrive early: "G.T.O." kicks it off, with "California Bound" and "Bucket 'T'," which
Keith Moon later forced
the Who to cover, then "Sandy" shows up toward the end of the first disc. "Sandy" is where the quartet begins to move away from its surf and hot rod origins and into middle-of-the-road pop. While their legacy rests firmly on those anthems for the summer, these soft sunshine pop sides from the mid-'60s are equally indebted to
the Beach Boys and are, as a whole, more listenable than the early rock & roll sides, largely because there's greater variety. That isn't to say this second half of
The Complete Recordings is better than the first -- clearly, the
Ronny & the Daytonas legacy lies with those car tunes -- but what makes this compilation preferable to the Sundazed set, which just serves up the hot-rodding classics, is that hefty dose of landbound sunshine pop, a style that evokes all the forgotten MOR sounds of the late '60s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine